Report of the Head of delegation of Ukraine on High Level Political

Conference on Signing of the UN Convention Against Corruption

Mr. Chairman, distinguish delegates,

The present situation arises for the whole countries of the world the question how to find the suppression to such an issue, which has tremendous impact not only on the social life of some countries but also at the world in general. This issue is corruption.

Despite of the difficulty of identification of offenses related to corruption, we can see and feel it's consequences and impact to the social development and formation of international relations.

States of almost all types declare the fight against corruption. More over, all states are compelled to fight against it to a certain extent. Such fight can consist in creation of a system of reliable legal and institutional guarantees of social and political control (democratic or autocratic) over activity of state bodies, different organizations and individuals or it can consist in forced measures of power structures, aimed at reestablishment of common order in society.

The question of suppression of corruption is also in agenda for Ukraine. Intentions of Ukrainian people to build state institutions, to create a functional social society, to reform economic mechanism during such a short historical period have visible positive results. At the same time we absolutely aware what kind of loses our citizens have because of corruption in different parts of social life.

We aware, that for us the main threat of corruption leads in the sphere of public policy.

With the purpose to create legal conditions for a transparency and for a system of social control over financing of different levels of election campaigns, we have been changing Ukrainian election legislation tremendously for the last five years.

The understanding of this problem forced Ukrainian Parliament to approve a new law "On state financing of political parties". This law has become a logical step in a struggle against corruption in it's different forms.

Moreover this law was elaborated in compliance with the article 6 of the Convention, which I have just signed on behalf of Ukraine.

The large scales of corruption activities, especially on the international level, connect to money laundering and legalization of corruption assets. We are not just aware of this problem - we suffer from it.

Unfortunately, Ukraine was included to the FATF black list of list of non-cooperative countries and territories. This fact has become a serious impulse for the intensification of work. We adopted all necessary legislation and established a special financial monitoring unit during this year.

Nowadays we can say that we have created an affective legal and institutional mechanism to combat money laundering, including corruption proceeds. That is why we can state that this part of our national legislation is absolutely compatible with the Convention.

We extremely satisfied that the return of assets is a fundamental principle of this Convention. This issue is not only theoretical for our State but is the practical one. I truly hope that these norms of the Convention will be fulfilled by all countries including those where "found asylum" corruption proceeds origin from Ukraine and this money will be returned to it's legal owner - Ukrainian people.

I am sure that adoption of this Convention will be supported by the society of all countries and implementation of it's norms will create necessary conditions only for "clean hands" in political and economical life of our planet.

Mr. Chairman, distinguish delegates,

Thank you for your attention!