Medical and Social Expert Commissions to be disbanded from 31 December – Zelenskyy enacts National Security Council decision

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has issued a decree on the disbanding of Medical and Social Expert Commissions (MSECs) starting from 31 December 2024, following a meeting of the National Security and Defence Council on 22 October .

Source: decree on the website of the President's Office

Details: The document recommends that the Prosecutor General's Office, the Security Service of Ukraine, the State Bureau of Investigation, the National Police of Ukraine and the National Anticorruption Bureau (NABU) submit reports within a month on the measures taken to identify violations in the process of establishing disability for officials. Following such inspections, these bodies are to make personnel decisions.

The Cabinet of Ministers has been instructed to take the following steps: to set up working groups to review the decisions made by the MSECs on establishing whether officials have a disability; to report on the results of the MSECs’ inspections within three months; to prepare a plan to implement digitalisation of all stages of the MSECs’ processes together with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Digital Transformation and conduct an audit of the calculation of pension payments to officials together with the Pension Fund, the State Bureau of Investigation, the Security Service of Ukraine and the National Police.

It is recommended that the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament), together with the Ministry of Health, develop a draft law on reforming the medical and social assessment system within a month providing, in particular, for the disbanding of medical and social expert commissions from 31 December 2024.

It is recommended that the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption check and update a study of the Top 10 corruption risks involved in the medical and social assessment for establishing disability by 30 November this year.

The document also provides for amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine that would make the chair and members of medical and social expert commissions subject to criminal liability for illicit enrichment.

The decree comes into force on 22 October.

Background:

• On 2 October, the SSU (Security Service of Ukraine) exposed Vira Beliakova, the Head of the Mykolaiv Oblast Medical Enquiry Service, on corruption schemes related to military draft evasion. During searches, the SSU found more than US$450,000 in cash and a collection of jewellery that Beliakova was hiding at different addresses.
• On 4 October, the office of Tetiana Krupa, Head of the Khmelnytskyi Oblast Medical Examination Commission, was searched. The law enforcement found US$100,000, medical documents with signs of forgery, and lists of "evaders" with names and fictitious diagnoses in her office. At her home, the SSU seized USS5,244,000; EUR 300,000; more than UAH 5,000,000; branded jewellery, as well as documents that may indicate money laundering through various business projects. During the investigation, the head of the MSEC tried to get rid of some of the money by throwing two bags with half a million dollars out of the window.

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