A detective from the SBU's Territorial Department in Kyiv region demanded $150,000 from an entrepreneur — in exchange for "guarantees" of avoiding prosecution and unblocking accounts. An analyst from the same agency received $2,000 for influencing colleagues in the tax service. Both were exposed by NABU and the SAP. Two arrests weeks apart — and suddenly an uncomfortable question arises: if criminal proceedings can be bought or sold, how can one understand how many of the thousands of open SBU cases exist for legal rather than commercial reasons?
Aircraft as "Intellectual Property"
Parallel to the corruption exposures — cases against five Ukrainian airlines, including MAU and "Konstanta". The SBU reclassified lease payments for aircraft rental as royalties — effectively declaring aircraft as intellectual property. Hence the claims: the companies allegedly had to withhold taxes from payments to non-residents, ignoring Article 8 of conventions on the avoidance of double taxation with the UAE and other countries.
Such an approach not only contradicts international tax practice — it destroys the very possibility of aircraft leasing in Ukraine. No foreign lessor will send an aircraft to a country where the value of a contract can be reinterpreted by an investigator.
"A truly reformed SBU could block the largest fraudulent schemes in the Ukrainian economy, which amount to between 100 to 200 billion hryvnia annually. The share of the shadow economy in excisable goods is growing, currency exchange centers are operating. We can conclude that the SBU is not performing its functions".
Volodymyr Dubrovsky, Senior Economist at CASE Ukraine
What "Audit of Proceedings" Means in Practice
Lawyer Oleh Shram, in an exclusive comment to UNN, called the corruption exposures a symptom of a systemic problem: criminal prosecution is used as an instrument of pressure on business, rather than as a means of restoring rule of law. Checking the legality of open cases — including aviation cases — should have been the first step.
In Parliament, too, there has been talk of a review following the scandal: some MPs are demanding checks not only of personnel, but also of the proceedings themselves. The logic is simple — a detective who traded cases through official summonses could have opened them with the same ease.
According to the SBU's own data, in 2024, thanks to its activities, 12 billion hryvnia in state funds were preserved. But compensation for damages in cases sent to court in the first half of 2025 is only 3.1 billion hryvnia. The gap between declared results and actual convictions is a chronic problem of the agency.
Reboot Without Mechanism — Is Not a Reboot
"Ukrainska Pravda" in August 2025 listed ten challenges for the new SBU director: from independent status on the NABU model to establishing dialogue with business. One of the key points is granting the SBU the status of a central executive authority with special status. The corresponding bill was to be submitted in the fourth quarter of 2025, but according to one of the candidates for the director position, Tsivinsky, "changes face some resistance".
For now, an audit of proceedings is only a demand from some parliamentarians, not an established procedure. If the new SBU director launches an independent review of open cases with the involvement of external experts — this will become the first real test of whether "reboot" is a word or an action.
