Prosecution for the Commission of Corruption or Corruption-Related Offenses: Theoretical Aspects and Practical Application

The article outlines the theoretical aspects of prosecution for corruption or corruption-related offenses and analyzes the national court practice of consideration of relevant cases. At the beginning of the study, the meaning of the concepts of corruption, corruption offense and offense related to corruption are revealed, and the characteristics inherent in each of these offenses are determined. The main part of the article is devoted to the disclosure of the issue of criminal and administrative responsibility for the commission of the relevant group of illegal acts. A distinction between criminal offenses that are considered corrupt only if they are committed due to abuse of official position and corruption offenses directly, and the conditions under which criminal liability for their commission arises are determined. The article provides statistical data and percentages on the number of criminal proceedings for violation of anti-corruption legislation, the number of persons subject to various types of punishment for committing illegal corruption acts in 2018-2023. The conditions and grounds for bringing to administrative responsibility in case of a person committing an offense related to corruption are described, and judicial practice for 2018–2023 is analyzed. The article also focuses on the conditions under which civil responsibility for corruption offenses arises, and the essence of material and moral damage is revealed. The peculiarities of bringing perpetrators of corruption and corruption-related offenses to disciplinary responsibility are determined. It is emphasized that there is no single codified normative act in Ukraine, which would provide for the procedure for bringing a person to disciplinary responsibility. Statistical data on the number of persons brought to disciplinary responsibility for committing corruption or corruption-related offenses in 2018-2023 are provided. At the end of the article, the functioning of the Unified State Register of Persons who have committed the relevant offenses in Ukraine is described, and the ranking of the regions by the number of entries in this register is shown. In summary, based on the analyzed data, the effective work of judiciary, including specialized anti-corruption and other law enforcement agencies are noted.