When the Bureau of Economic Security presented its 2025 report to the Verkhovna Rada, the main achievement cited was damage compensation to the state amounting to 3.8 billion hryvnia. Danylo Hetmantsev, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy, did not take the figures at face value: the committee cross-checked specific payment orders with payment dates and actual receipts to budget accounts.
The audit results: 47 million hryvnia in actual receipts for 2025. A discrepancy of nearly 80 times.
"If you publish and announce unreliable data, you thereby discredit yourself, us, and our entire cause"
Danylo Hetmantsev, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Finance
The question posed by Hetmantsev to the BES leadership — why there are unreliable data in the report — remained unanswered.
How they counted: an old scheme known to auditors
According to UNN, the BES included in its reporting amounts of compensation actually paid in previous years, rather than those that actually arrived in accounts in 2025. This is a classic "date shifting" technique: formally the figure exists in the system, but does not belong to the reporting year. Ukrainian auditors have documented similar practices of inflated indicators using "transitional" payments in other law enforcement agencies.
What legal experts say
Retired judge Oleksandr Sytnykov, in a comment to UNN, insists that the situation requires thorough internal disciplinary investigation and bringing guilty officials to disciplinary responsibility. According to the BES Disciplinary Commission Regulations, it is this body that, based on such an investigation, can make a conclusion about the presence of a disciplinary offense and recommend the type of sanction.
Denis Neviadomskyi, President of the All-Ukrainian Association of Retired Judges, goes further: according to him, an attempt to mislead a parliamentary committee may have criminal legal consequences for the BES leadership.
- Disciplinary proceedings — within the BES itself, initiated by the director or Disciplinary Commission.
- Criminal liability — if the investigation proves intent to mislead a state authority.
- Political consequences — undermining public confidence in the reporting of the entire law enforcement bloc, which is already under pressure from EU reform demands.
Scale: not one figure, but a control system
The matter extends beyond one scandalous slide in a presentation. The BES received funding of 1.8 billion hryvnia in 2025 with a staff of about 1,200 people. If the declared 3.8 billion in compensation is fiction, then the actual effectiveness of the agency per hryvnia spent turns out to be significantly lower than its leadership reports to the Rada and society.
At the same time, there is still no independent verification mechanism for BES reports to parliament: the committee verified the data on its own initiative, essentially playing the role of an auditor — which is not its direct function.
If a service investigation is not launched within the coming weeks, this will mean one thing: the BES leadership is independently checking its own integrity — and apparently finds it satisfactory.
