Ukraine has progressed in fighting corruption - Petro Poroshenko

Україна досягнула значного прогресу у боротьбі з корупцією, заявив Президент України Петро Порошенко на 14-тій Щорічній зустрічі Ялтинської Європейської Стратегії (YES), організованій Фондом Віктора Пінчука.

Ukraine has made significant progress in fighting corruption, Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko has said at the 14th Yalta European Strategy Annual Meeting, organised by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation.

“Definitely, the situation with corruption has significantly improved. If you take any sphere of corruption, for example, energy and the purchase of gas from Russia. For almost two years, we have not bought a single cubic metre from Russia. We launched an efficient VAT refund mechanism. Yesterday, when I had a meeting with the business community, there was a completely different mood," the president said.

According to Poroshenko, he could see enthusiasm in the business community to invest in Ukraine.

“There is investment enthusiasm among businessmen, both local and international. They plan to increase their investments in Ukraine by up to 30%. All funds created to invest in Ukraine - there are five of them, as far as I remember - are full of investors,” Poroshenko revelead.

He also recalled that Ukraine had launched an e-declaration system. “We have launched the world’s biggest system of electronic declaration of income. About 1.2m people fill in their statements. This never happened anywhere in the world before, let alone in Ukraine,” he added.

Poroshenko praised the country’s new anti-corruption agencies for their work. High-ranking officials, including from the parliamentary majority, are being arrested on a weekly basis on suspicion of corruption, he noted.

The president expects the new Supreme Court to be introduced in the next year and the Anti-corruption Chamber to be established next month.

“It has taken us a year and a half to establish the Supreme Court - testing, polygraph, vetting by NGO representatives. We do not have another year and a half to wait for a new Anti-corruption Court to emerge. In this situation, I hope that next month we will be able to establish the Anticorruption Chamber. When the Anti-corruption Court is created in 2019-2020, you are welcome. Every day without an anti-corruption judicial authority is dangerous for Ukraine,” the president concluded.

The online stream of the Yalta European Strategy (YES) 14^th Annual Meeting will be available online at yes-ukraine.org as well as on the websites of our media partners, in both English and Ukrainian.

The official Twitter of the 14^th YES Annual Meeting is @yes_ukraine, and participants and followers can include the hash tag: #YESUkraine2017