The Bureau should transform into an analytical institution focused on prevention and de-shadowing. How to achieve this is explained by Oleg Getman, associate expert at CASE Ukraine, coordinator of the Economic Expert Platform, and Yefrem Lashchuk, director of the Ukrainian Institute of Legal Policy, in an article for Ekonomichna Pravda.
Key theses:
🔹The initial idea of the Bureau of Economic Security (BES) was to abandon the use of forceful pressure on business, switch to an analytical model, focus on large economic schemes, and minimize duplication of functions with other law enforcement agencies.
🔹In the first years of operation, the bureau faced a staff shortage and underfunding: in 2022, the staff numbered only 683 employees, with a need of over 4 thousand, and underfunding reached UAH 280.4 million.
🔹Due to the personnel flow from the old system, the BES partially inherited the practices of the tax police: focusing on quantitative indicators, criminal proceedings and formal KPIs instead of economic effect.
🔹Traditional law enforcement indicators – the number of cases, suspicions or searches – do not correspond to the nature of the BES as an analytical body. Its effectiveness should be assessed by the impact on the budget, de-shadowing, prevention and business trust.
🔹Statistics indicate a gradual growth in the analytical capacity of the BES: the number of analytical products has increased almost fourfold since 2022 – to 1,529, economic risks worth UAH 141.5 billion were identified, 19 proposals for changes to regulatory legal acts and 710 recommendations to authorities were provided.
🔹The financial effect of the BES’s work has also increased: prevented budget losses increased from UAH 1.99 billion in 2022 to UAH 12 billion in 2024. In 2025, the estimated value of seized illegal tobacco products and raw materials was UAH 2.2 billion, alcohol and spirits – UAH 303.8 million, illegal fuel and property – UAH 250 million.
The criminal block of the BES’s work includes 6,896 criminal proceedings, of which 3,276 were initiated by the bureau itself; 1,182 individuals were notified of suspicion; 904 proceedings were sent to court. At the same time, the report does not contain data on the ratio of indictments and verdicts that have entered into legal force.
🔹The KPI system for the BES should be built on the principles: fewer cases – more economic effect; priority of large schemes; prevention instead of repression; orientation on the business climate; transparency and publicity.
🔹The BES should focus on systemic offenses: VAT fraud, the illegal market for excisable goods, large-scale tax evasion and other schemes that cause the greatest losses to the state.
🔹The efficiency of the bureau should be measured through macroeconomic, law enforcement, analytical, social and institutional indicators: the dynamics of the tax gap, compensated losses, the number of prevented schemes, business confidence, complaints, staffing capacity and the workload of detectives and analysts.
🔹To increase the efficiency of the BES, tax administration needs to be improved: risk-based control instead of mass inspections, digital data exchange between the BES, the State Tax Service, customs and financial monitoring, minimization of discretion and development of electronic services.
🔹The BES should finally transform into an analytical institution focused on prevention and de-shadowing. The introduction of a new KPI system at the regulatory level will allow the bureau to be evaluated based on real results, will meet international standards, and will contribute to Ukraine’s European integration.
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