For the first time in Ukraine, a court has ordered the payment of a reward to a corruption whistleblower in the amount of UAH 13,299,950 (about 362,000 dollars), the press service of the High Anti-Corruption Court has said.
It is noted that whistleblower Yevhen Shevchenko reported an attempt to bribe the heads of anti-corruption agencies for $6 million in 2020.
A $5 million bribe was intended for the head of the Specialised Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office, Nazar Kholodnytskyy, in exchange for withdrawing a notice of suspicion from former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevskyy in the case of embezzlement of the Real Bank stabilisation loan. Another $1 million was allegedly intended for intermediaries.
The HACC judges also approved the agreement between the SAPO prosecutor and Mykola Ilyashenko, the former first deputy head of the Kyiv State Tax Service, the last defendant in the case of attempted bribery of anti-corruption agency heads for $6 million. Thus, no-one went to jail in the case of attempting to bribe Kholodnytskyy for $5 million. Everyone was given a suspended sentence.
Shevchenko has been called a "freelance employee of the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine" since 2016.
On 6 September 2023, the National Agency for Preventing Corruption" launched the Unified Whistleblower Reporting Portal, where citizens can report corruption they have witnessed. This resource allows employees to anonymously report corruption in their organisations.