Aides to Ukraine’s President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky have announced anti-corruption plans, including scrapping MPs’ immunity from prosecution and making military purchases transparent.
Halyna Yanchenko, a top official at the anti-corruption watchdog Nabu, said “MPs’ immunity must be consigned to the past”. She spoke on Hromadske TV.
Aide Ivan Aparshyn said state defence orders “will be as open as possible”.
Mr Zelensky, a popular comedian, won with 73% of the vote on Sunday.
He made tackling Ukraine’s deep-rooted corruption a major campaign theme, though his political agenda is generally not very detailed.
Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) plans to vote on a bill to abolish MPs’ parliamentary immunity on Thursday, the Rada’s deputy chairperson Iryna Gerashchenko says.
Quoted by Ukraine’s Unian news agency, she said the bill had been checked by the Constitutional Court.
The immunity issue has been under discussion for years.
Article 80 of Ukraine’s constitution says MPs are “not legally liable for the results of voting or for statements made in parliament and in its bodies, with the exception of liability for insult or defamation.
“People’s Deputies of Ukraine shall not be held criminally liable, detained or arrested without the consent of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.”
