BEB, instead of countering risks, is mainly engaged in the investigation of already committed crimes: Accounting Chamber
In its four years of existence, the Bureau of Economic Security mostly focused on investigating crimes that had already been committed, instead of preventing risks. The main reasons for this were gaps in the legislation, insufficient funding and lack of personnel, as well as the lack of effective coordination by the Cabinet of Ministers. This was reported by the press service of the Accounting Chamber.
“BEB was never able to start performing preventive functions. And a number of other factors deepened the crisis in his activity, the report says.
These are the main conclusions of the compliance audit on the topic “Combating offenses affecting the functioning of the state economy”. The report of this audit was approved by the Accounting Chamber at the meeting on September 23. Elizaveta Pushko-Tsybulyak, a member of the Accounting Chamber, was responsible for the audit.
The report notes that the legal framework, which was supposed to ensure the full functioning of the BEB, remained incomplete and imperfect, due to which the Bureau was actually unable to implement part of its tasks.
For example, the BEB was responsible for providing recommendations to authorities in the field of economic security, but no regulatory act obliged other bodies to implement these recommendations. As a result, there was no reaction from the authorities to 1,778 BEB recommendations with a total risk assessment of UAH 22.9 billion. Due to limited funding and a lack of personnel, as of 2024, only 9 of the planned 24 territorial offices of the Bureau were actually functioning.
On average, only a fifth of the financial needs of BEB were met. However, even the allocated funds were not fully used: in 2021–2024, 66.3% of the funding (2.2 billion UAH) was used, and almost 1.1 billion UAH was returned to the state budget.
