“Can the new dashboard from the Ukrainian authorities really become a tool for reducing pressure on business and why is its effectiveness questionable?”, — write: www.epravda.com.ua
In July 2024, Ukraine launched a dashboard that collects data from the register of pre-trial investigations. According to representatives of the Office of the President, this tool provides a complete and accurate picture of criminal proceedings related to business.
It is noteworthy that no state funding was spent on its implementation – the project was implemented by the Prosecutor General’s Office together with the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Council for the Support of Entrepreneurship in Martial Law.
The dashboard provides an opportunity to view the number of open business cases, filter them by articles of the Criminal Code, periods and bodies investigating these crimes. However, as in many other similar projects, the question of effectiveness remains open.
The invisible part of the problemDespite the launch of the Dashboard, the pressure on business from law enforcement agencies not only does not decrease, but also remains at a fairly high level. The problem is that the data provided by the Dashboard do not always reflect the real situation.
First, law enforcement officers, as before the existence of this information panel, have many ways to bypass it – not to display real information to the Unified Register of Pretrial Investigations, from where the dashboard takes its information.
Often, there is only one “plot” under which the investigation is actually conducted, and within the framework of the criminal proceedings, an “inspection is carried out” in relation to a certain, often quite wide range of subjects, including and entrepreneurs. This approach makes it possible to conduct inspections of many enterprises without a clear reason.
Example: the investigation into counterfeit Apple products
As an example: “The pre-trial investigation body or operatives established that in the territory of Kyiv and some regions of Ukraine unidentified persons are distributing counterfeit Apple products.”
This plot poses a threat to any business that imports or sells Apple equipment, even with all the legal documents in hand. Such companies, according to the investigators, will be subject to so-called “checks”, which means that they can expect a visit with a search at any moment.
Manipulations and statisticsAnother problem is the manipulation of statistics. Even in the case of entering data into the ERDR, case plots can change: new details are added or important aspects are removed. Thus, the real picture regarding criminal proceedings involving business remains unclear.
After all, it is actually impossible to automatically determine the number of criminal proceedings related to “business”. Such data can be derived only after analyzing the materials of each criminal proceeding, which is simply impossible.
Society has repeatedly been convinced that some Heads of the General Prosecutor’s Office do not have real statistics on the state of pre-trial investigation in criminal proceedings related to business. Therefore, at first glance, it seems that this Dashboard was designed just for them.
Systematic control over the accounting and discipline of registrations of criminal proceedings is a necessary step to reduce the pressure on business. Law enforcement agencies must strictly monitor that the plots in open criminal proceedings correspond to the actual circumstances. This will avoid manipulation and concealment of real crimes.
What to do?Instead of creating regular information panels that show only the number of cases, the authorities should pay attention to the number of complaints submitted by businesses to the prosecutor’s office and law enforcement agencies, investigate the results of their consideration with a report on the number of satisfied complaints, the number of criminal proceedings actually investigated and the measures taken in them , as well as the number of persons brought to disciplinary or criminal responsibility by law enforcement officers.
Effective processing of complaints from businesses does not require another Dashboard from the authorities regarding complaints from previous years – the authorities should make this report objectively for themselves, and after seeing shameful indicators – revise the strategy from quantity to quality.
And in the future, record every complaint from the business, displaying reporting on such complaints in the mentioned Dashboard.
Such a quarterly public report on the number of satisfied complaints and measures taken could become an important tool for increasing trust in the authorities and actually reducing the pressure on business.
ConclusionDashboards and reports with good numbers may look convincing, but real reduction of pressure on business is possible only through effective work of law enforcement agencies and strict control over discipline in the field of accounting and registration of criminal proceedings. Business in Ukraine deserves real protection tools, not just another reporting panel.