New Asset Declaration Act Pressures Civil Society

April 1 is not a day for laughter for many Ukrainian civil society members. It was set a deadline for them to file their asset declarations.

Among those who need to declare their assets are international members of the supervisory boards of state-owned enterprises and anti-corruption activists. Sasha Drik, the head of the Declarations Under Control civic watchdog, thinks that by introducing this law the government wanted to collect a "database of anti-corruption activists to prosecute them in the future."

She highlights that it's important that activists don't get discouraged or distracted from their duties. "We need to make sure that this law does not consume all of our time and distract us from fighting corruption," she said.

Oleksandr Kalitenko, the Senior Analyst at Transparency International Ukraine, emphasized that foreigners struggled to go through this burdensome process, to which no alternative exists in the West.

"No means to fill their declarations are provided,"  he said implying that the forms are all in Ukrainian and the process is not fit for non-residents.

Hromadske spoke to Sasha Drik, the head of the Declarations Under Control civic watchdog, and Oleksandr Kalitenko, Senior Analyst at Transparency International Ukraine to make sense of this situation.