When the state is at war and needs every hryvnia, a department tasked with protecting the budget from embezzlement submitted a report to parliament with figures inflated 81 times over. This happened at a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy, where the Bureau of Economic Security reported on 2025.
What happened in the committee meeting
The committee chair Danylo Hetmantsev did not take the figures at face value. Committee members cross-checked specific payment orders with the dates of payment transfers and discovered that 2.8–2.9 billion hryvnias out of the declared 3.8 billion hryvnias were received into the budget in 2022–2024, not in the reporting year.
"The analysis we conducted of the information you provided us shows that 2.8–2.9 billion hryvnias is not 2025 at all. This is from 2022 to 2024. Why are you writing unreliable data in the BEB report?"
Danylo Hetmantsev, chair of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy
No answer to this question came from the BEB leadership.
The figures and what they represent
47 million hryvnias is not an abstraction. For comparison: this is roughly the cost of two artillery shells per minute at the average pace of modern combat, or the monthly maintenance of several hundred soldiers. The BEB's task is to protect the economic front: identifying tax evasion schemes, smuggling, money laundering. If the actual compensation for damage to the state for the year is 47 million hryvnias, not 3.8 billion—this is a signal not of an accounting error, but of the effectiveness of the entire department.
It is telling that the scandal occurred precisely now: the BEB is in the process of one-time personnel certification with the participation of international organizations—a procedure that was supposed to demonstrate the department's reform.
Legal consequences: from discipline to criminal case
Retired judge Oleksandr Sytnykiv insists: the first step should be an internal investigation—to establish who exactly formed the indicators and why data from previous years ended up in the report. According to him, manipulation of data in public reporting is misleading not only the parliamentary committee but also society.
Denys Neviadomskyi, president of the All-Ukrainian Association of Retired Judges, goes further. In his view, if the facts voiced by Hetmantsev are confirmed, BEB officials could face cases under several articles of the Criminal Code: official forgery (Article 366 of the CCU), abuse of power (Article 364 of the CCU), as well as obstruction of the activities of people's deputies and committees.
Chronic disease or one-time failure?
Experts interviewed by UNN emphasize: the practice of embellishing reports in law enforcement bodies is not new to Ukraine. For years, departments have been accustomed to closing indicators with results achieved in previous years or by other structures altogether—and this has not been punished. The absence of systemic accountability is what creates an environment in which such practices become possible.
- The BEB declared 3.8 billion hryvnias in recovered funds for 2025
- The actual verified amount is 47 million hryvnias
- The difference—2.8–2.9 billion hryvnias—belongs to 2022–2024
- The department leadership provided no explanation directly at the committee meeting
Now the question is not only whether an internal investigation will be opened. If it concludes with a disciplinary reprimand without personal accountability—next time, the figures in BEB reports could be anything again.
