In March, a wave of media reports revealed how Denys Komarnytskyi, one of the key suspects in a NABU investigation under Clean City Operation, managed to flee abroad. What made the case especially brazen was the alleged method of escape—Komarnytskyi is believed to have reached the border accompanied by a vehicle marked “Cargo 200.”
Unfortunately, his escape is not an isolated incident. According to the HACC, as of March 2025, around 12% of its cases, 35 out of 292, are being considered in the absence of the accused, who are evading court. That’s one in every eight cases.
So we decided to take a closer look at such incidents and explain how and why suspects in corruption cases have (we hope, temporarily) managed to escape the law.
How have suspects managed to flee justice?
Since 2019, the work of the HACC has shown that “connections” or political clout have no bearing on its decisions. As a result, some defendants in high-level corruption cases have resorted to drastic measures to avoid potential punishment, leaving the country by legal or even illegal means.
For example, former MP Dmytro Kriuchkov, who is accused of embezzling over UAH 1.5 billion from Cherkasyoblenergo and Zaporizhzhiaoblenergo, left Ukraine legally, as he is the father of five children. At first, he made short trips abroad, but on February 15, 2024, he left the country and never returned.
Most, however, opt for illegal escape routes and use every available resource to do so, including their connections with certain officials.
Earlier this year, the NABU and the SAPO carried out Clean City Operation, which uncovered a large-scale land corruption scheme in the Kyiv City Council. However, one of the key suspects, businessman and former Kyiv City Council member Denys Komarnytskyi, still managed to escape investigation and flee to Vienna. According to reporting by Ukrainska Pravda, the suspect was transported across Ukraine to the border in a convoy that included a vehicle marked “Cargo 200,” and then crossed into Romania outside of an official checkpoint.
But the most troubling part is that four individuals carrying Security Service of Ukraine IDs, two officers from the Strategic Investigations Department in Zakarpattia region, and a local council member may have been involved in the businessman’s escape.
The main suspect in the bitcoin bribery case, MP Andrii Odarchenko; MP Yaroslav Dubnevych, a likely organizer of gas and railway-related schemes; and former Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleh Hladkovskyi who is accused of abuse in military vehicle procurement—all allegedly fled the country illegally, bypassing official checkpoints. And just like Komarnytskyi, it is highly likely that more than sheer luck helped them slip away unnoticed.
A similar case involved another high-profile figure, Kyiv City Council member Vladyslav Trubitsyn, who is accused of accepting a bribe of UAH 1.39 million. What makes his escape particularly notable is that in May 2023, he somehow received permission to cross the Polish border from the Head of the State Border Guard Service, Serhii Deineko. The request for such permission reportedly came from the Main Directorate of Intelligence. Interestingly, Deineko had already been mentioned in covert surveillance materials related to MP Viktor Bondar’s case as someone “easy to negotiate” when it comes to arranging an escape abroad.
It is very likely that other fugitives used similar methods—for instance, Viktor Sysa, the state forestry director who was convicted of offering a bribe to a NABU detective. Sysa left the country after the charges against him were paused due to his reported mobilization into the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to data from the State Border Guard Service’s ARKAN database, he crossed the border through Rava-Ruska.
These are far from isolated incidents. Escapes by suspects in high-level corruption cases periodically spark public outrage. Because NABU and SAPO’s “clients” typically have broad networks of influence and substantial financial resources, the risk of them quietly slipping away only increases.
Why don’t interim measures always prevent escapes?
Pre-trial detention, house arrest, bail, surety, and personal recognizance are all interim measures meant to keep suspects and defendants from interfering with criminal proceedings, especially from fleeing. So it’s no surprise that in some cases, escapes abroad have occurred precisely because these measures were eased or lifted entirely.
Such was the case with Oleksandr Mefodii, a Kyiv Regional Council member accused of bribery. In 2019, despite the SAPO prosecutor’s request for house arrest, the court imposed the most lenient option—personal recognizance. Over time, the measure and related obligations were not extended, and Mefodii eventually fled the country in 2021.
An even more curious case involves former MP Dmytro Kriuchkov, who is now evading justice for the second time. His first attempt to hide failed when Germany agreed in 2019 to extradite him in a case involving the embezzlement of UAH 1.5 billion from state-owned companies. He was released after posting bail of UAH 7 million.
But during the trial last year, Kriuchkov, no longer under any travel restrictions, left the country and never came back. In May 2024, the prosecutor asked HACC to place the defendant in custody with an alternative bail of UAH 151 million. However, the court rejected the request, concluding that at the time, there was allegedly no risk of flight. Since October 2024, Kriuchkov has even stopped attending court hearings remotely, leading to his placement on the wanted list.
According to the case law of the ECHR, the longer a person remains in pre-trial detention, the weaker the risk of flight is presumed to be. As a result, courts often reduce the severity of preventive measures over time. However, this can sometimes lead directly to an escape. Based on the cases we analyzed, suspects most often fled at later stages of criminal proceedings, when the case was approaching a verdict. For example, Hladkovskyi, Trubitsyn, Svichenko, Kriuchkov, Odarchenko, and Rachkov all disappeared during the evidence review phase or right before closing arguments. Meanwhile, Poidolov, Sysa, Starovoit, Matiushko, and Mefodii fled during appellate review. Some, however, like Dubnevych and Onyshchenko, vanished even earlier, before the trial began, immediately after being notified of suspicion or even before their parliamentary immunity was officially lifted.
Take, for example, former Prosecutor General’s Office official Oleksandr Matiushko, who allegedly tried to buy a job at NABU. Before fleeing, he was released on bail of just UAH 128,000. In 2020, the court, taking into account his financial and family situation, the reclassification of the offense to a less serious charge, and his procedural behavior, reduced the bail to just under UAH 33,000, nearly four times less. By March 2021, he had already been declared wanted.
A similar scenario occurred with Oleh Hladkovskyi, who stopped appearing at court hearings after his interim measure was softened in March 2022. Back in 2019, HACC had placed him in pre-trial detention with an alternative bail of UAH 10.6 million. However, in March 2022, Hladkovskyi requested that the bail be donated to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and asked the court to replace it with personal recognizance, after which he fled.
Interestingly, as in the case of Hranovskyi, bail for fugitive suspects is often paid by third parties. This may explain why skipping bail was less painful for them—they weren’t losing their own money. Vladyslav Trubitsyn, for example, was released from pre-trial detention after Andrii Stuzhuk posted UAH 14 million in bail on his behalf. Viktor Sysa was freed after a relative paid his UAH 5 million bail. As for Ivan Poidolov, his UAH 1.87 million bail was covered by as many as five different individuals.
The electronic bracelet panacea
Electronic bracelets could be an effective solution to the problem of escapes, offering a better balance between protecting human rights and preventing flight risks. However, the biggest issue is their shortage. As of March 2025, according to our data, there were only 135 functioning electronic bracelets available across all of Ukraine, and all of them were already in use at the time. Even if some were free, that number wouldn’t be enough to cover even half of the suspects in NABU and SAPO cases, let alone the country as a whole.
Due to this shortage, MP Andrii Odarchenko, accused of bribery, managed to flee to Romania in September 2024. In a ruling dated January 19, 2024, the investigating judge explained that no bracelets were available at the time and therefore lifted the requirement for the MP to wear one.
Most often, however, suspects or defendants flee immediately after the bracelet is removed. One such case is Dmytro Kriuchkov. In 2019, his electronic bracelet was removed and his international passport returned, allowing him to leave the country without hindrance, as we noted earlier.
Another example is Ivan Poidolov, who was ordered in March 2023 to continue wearing a bracelet, only for the requirement to be lifted in May. He fled a few months later.
Other instances include the removal of bracelets from Viktor Sysa in January 2020; from Oleksandr Mefodii, Kostiantyn Starovoit, and Oleh Hladkovskyi in 2019.
Catch me if you can
When a suspect flees during an investigation, the usual procedure kicks in: they are declared wanted, placed under in absentia arrest, and their bail is forfeited. However, going through these motions does not guarantee a swift extradition of the fugitive.
One of the key obstacles is Interpol’s refusal to issue red notices for some individuals, often citing concerns that certain criminal cases may be politically motivated. Suspects in corruption cases wanted by Ukraine frequently claim they are being persecuted for political reasons—and Interpol, in response, cancels the notices or declines Ukraine’s extradition requests altogether.
In 2016, Interpol refused to issue a red notice for MP Oleksandr Onyshchenko, who fled Ukraine after his parliamentary immunity was lifted. Later, a German court also denied his extradition to Ukraine, citing potential political persecution and concerns over inadequate prison conditions.
The political persecution argument may also help Andrii Odarchenko avoid extradition. According to journalist Mykhailo Tkach, Hungarian police detained Odarchenko in February 2024, but released him after he requested political asylum. Hungarian authorities have since declined to provide any information about his case.
It’s worth noting that foreign countries also reject Ukraine’s extradition requests on the grounds of war. For example, according to Ukrainska Pravda, Ukraine submitted 14 extradition requests to Austria, but 10 were denied specifically for that reason.
Defense attorneys typically argue that during wartime, detention facilities pose an elevated risk to the life and health of suspects due to regular shelling and the lack of properly equipped shelters. International law requires that detained persons be guaranteed a minimum level of safety. In response, Ukrainian authorities acted promptly and established five “secure” facilities in Chernivtsi, Lviv, and Zakarpattia regions, designated to house extradited suspects.
One of these facilities likely received the most recently extradited corruption suspect, Liudmyla Prykhodko, former head of the State Geocadastre in Kyiv region, who is accused in a case involving the misappropriation of nearly UAH 2 billion worth of land near Kyiv.
Still, the cases in which a suspect, defendant, or convicted person has actually been returned to Ukraine remain the exception rather than the rule. The trend toward increasing such returns is only just beginning to take shape.
As of March this year, there was no information confirming the enforcement of any of the eight in absentia verdicts issued by HACC that have entered into legal force, including those against bribe-taking judge Pavlo Medentsev, Yanukovych associate and banker Volodymyr Ahafonov, and others. The prospects of having such rulings recognized and enforced abroad are often undermined by legal and procedural issues specific to this category of cases.
The Criminal Law Convention on Corruption stipulates that if a country refuses to extradite someone, either because the person is a citizen of that country or because the country can prosecute the individual itself, it is obliged to refer the case to its own courts and hold the person accountable. In other words, a country cannot simply say “no” and drop the matter. It must either extradite the individual to Ukraine or conduct a prosecution under its own laws.
However, despite the existence of such mechanisms under international conventions, several factors hinder their widespread use. These include differences in national legislation, the political relationship between Ukraine and the country where the fugitive is hiding, and the willingness and capacity of foreign authorities to spend time and resources on reviewing the case and enforcing a sentence.
Interestingly, the challenges of enforcing in absentia verdicts in Ukraine extend even to seemingly straightforward confiscations of property. In all eight of the in absentia convictions mentioned earlier, state enforcement officers were unable to identify significant assets for confiscation. In two of those cases, no assets were located at all, possibly pointing to poor asset tracing or recovery efforts.
There are very few known cases of actual enforcement of confiscations from these verdicts. One example is the sale of a five-room apartment in Zhovti Vody for UAH 427,000 and a laptop for UAH 1,500 in the case against Ihor Holoborodko, former deputy director general of the state-owned Eastern Mining and Processing Plant, and Ihor Veduta, director of Eco-Service Trading House LLC. In another case, confiscated household appliances (a TV, printer, and microwave) failed to sell at auction due to a lack of interested buyers.
Conclusions
The issue of corruption suspects fleeing the country poses a systemic challenge for Ukraine’s legal system. Each escape not only allows an individual to evade justice but also undermines public trust in fairness and sets a dangerous precedent for other potential offenders. Particularly alarming is the apparent involvement of law enforcement personnel in some of these escapes, underscoring the urgent need to strengthen internal oversight and accountability within law enforcement agencies.
An analysis of individual flight cases reveals several key patterns:
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Escapes most often occur at the later stages of judicial proceedings, when defendants recognize a high likelihood of conviction
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Interim measures sometimes prove ineffective due to relaxed restrictions or the removal of electronic bracelets
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Despite the ongoing full-scale war and structural challenges in detention conditions, there are emerging positive trends in extradition practices
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Some defendants abuse special exit permits to leave the country legally
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Although eight in absentia verdicts have entered into legal force, there is no confirmed case of any convict being returned to Ukraine or of the effective enforcement of asset confiscation rulings.
At the same time, recent successful extraditions and the establishment of dedicated facilities for holding extradited individuals show that Ukraine is capable of adapting to wartime conditions and finding practical solutions to bring fugitives back. These developments offer cautious grounds for optimism about future progress in combating impunity, particularly with stronger international cooperation and improved domestic mechanisms to prevent flight.
Authors: Pavlo Demchuk, Senior Legal Advisor at Transparency International Ukraine and Andrii Tkachuk, Legal Advisor at Transparency International Ukraine