Since the beginning of the year, 10 times more criminal proceedings have been sent to court than in 2022. The Acting Director of the Bureau said this in an interview with Yur-Gazeta. He also noted that in all criminal proceedings, UAH 1.8 billion was recovered to the state budget. In addition the embezzlement of UAH 7.2 billion of public funds was prevented.

According to Andrii Pashchuk the economic crimes that the ESBU currently pays the most attention to can be divided into areas. These are the budgetary, fiscal, excisable goods, financial service and virtual assets sectors. Crimes in the field of grants and international financial assistance are a separate block.

Each of them has its own challenges and trends.

Currently, the most pressing ones include the misuse and inefficient use of budget funds, as well as thefts, including in procurement for the Ministry of Defense.

"Recently the ESBU served a notice of suspicion to the heads of companies producing canned food for the Ministry of Defense who had been claiming pressure from the beginning of the pre-trial investigation, appealing to politicians and NGOs but detectives have collected sufficient evidence of their involvement in the illegal scheme," said the Acting Director of the Economic Security Bureau.

According to Pashchuk economic crime quickly adapts to new conditions and any changes in the country. It adapts and introduces new tools. This is especially true of criminal groups.

And one of the key tasks of the ESBU is to understand how and why the budget loses or does not receive funds and then to propose an algorithm for eliminating these losses. In this process of course a timely reaction of parliamentarians in the form of appropriate amendments to the legislation is also important.

The full interview is available here.