What Ukraine’s 360 anti-corruption investigations actually measure

Ukraine’s headline anti-corruption numbers for the first half of 2026 look simple: 360 investigations, 107 suspects and 76 convicted people. They are useful only if they are read as separate stages of a legal process rather than as one pool of alleged wrongdoing.

NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office opened 360 investigations between January and June. A total of 107 people became suspects. Prosecutors sent 56 indictments involving 106 defendants to court. Separately, 55 guilty verdicts involving 76 people became legally effective. A suspect is not a convicted person, and an indictment is not a judgment.

That distinction is essential because the most prominent cases in the report are still at the investigative stage. A former head of the Presidential Office and six other people are suspected of laundering more than 460 million hryvnias through a high-end residential development in Kozyn. Investigators say almost $9 million of the money was linked to a corruption scheme at Energoatom. The inquiry is continuing and the suspects retain the presumption of innocence.

A former energy minister is suspected of money laundering and participation in a criminal organization. NABU alleges that, while the official was in office, the organization received more than $112 million in cash through a trusted intermediary from illegal activity in the energy sector. The case matters politically because it reaches a former cabinet-level official, but legally it remains an allegation that prosecutors would have to prove.

The report also identifies a former deputy head of the Presidential Office in a green-energy case. Investigators allege that more than 141 million hryvnias in green-tariff payments were improperly obtained for electricity associated with solar facilities located in occupied areas of the Zaporizhzhia region. Again, the case is at the allegation stage.

The defense section explains why the report is not only about elite politics. NABU points to investigations involving military property, more than 32 million hryvnias allegedly taken in a Ukroboronprom-related scheme, and an alleged $1 million bribe demand tied to an FPV-drone procurement contract. In wartime, corruption controls are also an allocation problem: money lost through a procurement scheme is money that cannot purchase another system, vehicle or drone.

The court outcomes provide the other side of the pipeline. In April, the Appeals Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court kept a six-year prison sentence for former tax chief Roman Nasirov after partially modifying the lower court’s judgment. In June, the High Anti-Corruption Court approved a plea agreement with former Supreme Court chief Vsevolod Kniaziev and sentenced him to five years in prison, along with confiscation measures.

The financial data helps connect enforcement to state capacity. NABU’s detailed report calculates an economic effect of more than 2.06 billion hryvnias in the first six months of 2026. More than 864 million was reimbursed to the state, more than 139 million in assets was transferred to the Defense Forces, and the agencies attribute 726 million hryvnias in savings to intervention in unmanned-aircraft procurement. Court-ordered confiscations exceeded 321 million hryvnias.

For context, NABU says cumulative reimbursements in its and SAPO’s cases reached 12.3 billion hryvnias by June 30, while cumulative assets transferred to the Defense Forces exceeded 3.2 billion. The distinction between half-year and cumulative figures is important for the same reason the suspect-versus-conviction distinction matters: good institutional analysis depends on keeping categories clean.

The useful takeaway from the report is therefore not that Ukraine had “360 corruption cases” in some uniform sense. It is that the anti-corruption system generated work at several stages at once: new investigations, notices of suspicion, court filings, final judgments and financial recovery. The health of that system will depend less on how large any one number becomes than on whether cases consistently move from credible evidence to fair trial and enforceable outcomes.