Zelensky signs law to restart State Bureau of Investigation

On December 3, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a law introducing amendments to the law of Ukraine on the State Bureau of Investigation to improve the activity of the SBI.

The law, in particular, provides for a change in the legal status of the State Bureau of Investigation. Thus, the SBI is defined as a state law enforcement agency tasked with preventing, detecting, stopping, solving and investigating crimes within its competence (under the current wording of the law on the State Bureau of Investigation, the SBI is a central executive government agency that carries out law enforcement activity to prevent, detect, stop, solve and investigate crimes within its competence).

The SBI director is empowered to make decisions individually and to bear full responsibility for the results of the bureau's activity. The parliament's oversight function is strengthened. In particular, the Verkhovna Rada, following the consideration of a report by the SBI director for a calendar year, may find the work of the body unsatisfactory, which may serve as a ground for his or her dismissal from this position.

In order to ensure the continuity of the investigation into Maidan cases, [the document] envisages the possibility of transferring investigative bodies of the prosecutor's office and prosecutors who investigated these cases to the SBI without the mandatory conduct of a competition.

Thus, due to a significant change in the powers of the SBI director and a change in the status of this body, from the day the new law comes into force the powers of the SBI director and his deputies are terminated ahead of time and the process of restarting the bureau begins.

The law also specifies the SBI system, the procedure for approving the organizational structure of the body, and the procedure for setting up its territorial departments.

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