The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) is striving to remove corrupt officials from Ukraine's state agencies.
"We want to eliminate certain corrupt links, which parasitize on the state agencies system," an employee of the SBU's main department for fight against corruption and organized crime, Pavlo Kuzmenko, said during a panel discussion in Kyiv on November 18.
"Some time ago corruption was an occasional phenomenon, which occurred in some social spheres, whereas now it is becoming wide-spread and large-scale phenomenon," the SBU employee said.
According to Kuzmenko, corruption cannot be effectively combated in Ukraine because the society is not ready to cooperate with law enforcers in this field. In addition, Ukraine's legislation has to be improved for this purpose.
During the panel discussion organized by the Ukrainian Policy Institute, a poll of 70 political scientists, journalists and public activists on the efficiency of the fight against corruption in Ukraine was presented.
According to the head of the institute, Kost Bondarenko, 44% of the respondents said that the SBU plays the most important role in the fight against corruption, 31.8% said the Prosecutor General's Office is more important in this process, 10.2% voted for the police. A total of 42.6% of experts believe that Ukraine has made much progress in the fight against corruption, while 36.4% did not notice any changes in this process and described notorious cases and arrests of corrupt officials were made for the show and the fight for redistribution of influence areas in the economy.
