Loyalty for money. What you need to know about envelopes for MPs

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau has awarded suspicion leader of the Batkivshchyna faction Yulia Tymoshenko in the proposal to provide unlawful benefits mPs of Ukraine. The diagram on the tapes released by NABU describes how the voting for the appointment of new and old ministers of defense and energy unfolded. Although Tymoshenko herself calls this suspicion political persecution.LIGA.net talked to MPs of different convocations to add more context to this story, because the practice of paying MPs extra is far from new. And, ironically, it was Tymoshenko herself who introduced it in the parliament.$10 thousand in envelopes: when did the extra payments to the Rada start and what does Tymoshenko have to do with it? The practice of salaries in envelopes emerged in the parliament during the time of the second president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma. And it hasn't disappeared yet, confirms LIGA.net yaroslav Yurchyshyn, MP from the Voice party and first deputy chairman of the Committee on Anti-Corruption Policy.Veteran of Ukrainian politics and twice Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Alexander Moroz assures LIGA.net Tymoshenko was the author of the practice of "salaries in envelopes" for MPs.This was introduced by Yulia Tymoshenko "It happened after she was first elected as a deputy. I was told about this by my colleagues, MPs who were in her faction and whom she later lured away from other factions.According to him, Moroz has personally encountered offers of additional payments. In 2006, when he was elected to the parliament for the second time, a representative of the Party of Regions approached him with a proposal to pay MPs: "We pay our own MPs extra, let's pay yours extra."When I asked what exactly they were talking about, I heard: "Ten thousand [dollars] a month." Moroz refused, saying, "Why should I pay extra? Every deputy has a normal salary. The interlocutor apologized and left. However, the next day he returned with a new offer to increase the amount. After the second refusal, no new offers were received.Since then, according to NABU records, the amounts involved in such transactions have not changed much. On the tapes, a voice that sounds like Tymoshenko also offers ten thousand for a vote. Only now it is not for a month, but "in advance for two sessions."Ex-deputy Viktor Chumak, one of the authors of the laws on NABU and NAPC, confirms that the practice became widespread and systemic under Yanukovych. It was the Party of Regions that turned surcharges into a permanent tool of control over factions."We couldn't track this directly, but in private conversations, people said that on average, the additional payment to one MP was $2-5 thousand, if the MP was just sitting there, no one and no one. The MPs who were speakers and went on air received much more," says LIGA.net Viktor Chumak.Deputies like, for example, Party of Regions member Volodymyr Oliynyk, who later fled to Moscow, could receive the same $10,000 a month. Voting for specific laws was paid separately.After 2014, the situation changed somewhat. Chumak claims that the UDAR party, with which he came to parliament, did not have such surcharges – "the party was not financed by oligarchs, or there was no money."At the same time, he heard from People's Front deputies that they were paid an additional 1,500-2,000 dollars. LIGA.net tried to clarify this information with the head of the People's Front faction, Maksym Burbak, but was unable to reach him.In the Block Petro Poroshenko, which Chumak was a member of after his re-election, "no one approached him." Although, according to him, "they definitely paid him". Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, MP of the 8th convocation from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, in a commentary LIGA.net said she was not aware of any such cases.The head of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc parliamentary faction in the Verkhovna Rada of the 8th convocation, Artur Herasymov, also denied having any such information. "I am not aware of this. And Mr. Chumak, if I am not mistaken, was a deputy prosecutor general and acting prosecutor general under President Zelenskyy and had all the opportunities to investigate such facts if he was aware of them," he told LIGA.net.The situation did not change with the arrival of the Servant of the People. According to Chumak, the new MPs faced the fact that their salaries did not correspond to the status of a European parliamentarian:"To keep this mass of people who actually own the buttons, we had to pay extra," he believes. "It was necessary for voting discipline: if you don't vote, we won't pay extra.Yurchyshyn does not deny that abuses have not disappeared: the official salary of deputies is about 40-60 thousand hryvnias:"When a billion-dollar issue is being resolved and a million-dollar bribe is offered, the temptation is great."He does not name specific amounts, saying that everything is a rumor: "That's why I can't say how much. But there were options for monthly "motivation" and for specific votes."How to break the stopcock on investigationsSo why has the practice of salaries in envelopes existed for 20 years, and the revelations have only begun now? The answer lies in Article 482-2 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which effectively blocks investigations into corruption among MPs.After the abolition of parliamentary immunity in 2019, Article 482-2 of the CPC appeared. Formally, MPs can be investigated, but with one caveat: permission for any actions – wiretapping, searches, detention – is given exclusively by the Prosecutor General in person.The SAPO is formally autonomous, but legally part of the Prosecutor General's Office. And its head has no right to give such authorizations. As a result, without the Prosecutor General's signature, any evidence against an MP becomes inadmissible."This is a problem because the Prosecutor General is 100% the president's man in Ukraine. Therefore, it is much easier to get permission to wiretap an opposition MP (which is abused by the SBI)," explains LIGA.net Yaroslav Yurchyshyn.Interlocutor LIGA.net in law enforcement confirms: "If the head of the SAPO had the right to initiate investigations on his own, we would have documented many cases since 2022. The results would have been different."Information about bribes for voting has been circulating since 2019, but cases began to reach the court systematically only after 2022, Yurchyshyn says. "But the main bottleneck is still the Prosecutor General's permission," he says.By the way, Tymoshenko herself actually said from the rostrum of the parliament immediately after the searches that the searches in her office began on the evening of January 13, and representatives of anti-corruption bodies, according to her, did not provide her with a court decision. It should be clarified here that on July 22, 2025, Bill 12414 was passed and signed into law. The amendments proposed therein, in particular, allow investigators, inquirers and prosecutors to enter a person's home or other property before the investigating judge's ruling if it is necessary to immediately seize or preserve evidence related to crimes. And Tymoshenko was among those MPs who voted for these changes.The story of payments MPs from the Servant of the People party and the suspicion that Tymoshenko received shows that it is possible to fight vote buying if you want to.The tools have been available since 2014, agrees Chumak: "The first drafts of the laws on NABU and NAPC were written in my office: Khavroniuk, Presnyakov, Riaboshapka, Ivashchenko, Siversk, Banchuk. Later, Shabunin joined in," he lists. "This tool works only when there is political will or when it is not interfered with.However, many structural changes are needed to make this fight systemic. One of the key ones is a competitive mechanism for selecting candidates for the position of Prosecutor General. It would also be advisable to suspend those suspected of corruption at the stage of court proceedings from performing the functions of a member of parliament.The key is the inevitability of punishment, adds Yurchyshyn. There should also be an increase in the salaries of MPs to a level that would motivate professionals to run for office, greater transparency of the authorities through periodic reports by MPs, and a conscious choice of candidates by voters – instead of "cats in a bag" under the name of the party leader.This is not the end. What will happen nextTymoshenko herself, given all her political experience, is likely to try to use this story as another booster for her political career. Political repression is her favorite tool for building her own image.Batkivshchyna MP Serhiy Vlasenko in an interview with LIGA.net insists that it is them"Listen, you are now talking to a person who worked in the convocation before last in a faction where Yulia Tymoshenko was absent for three and a half years because Yanukovych put her in prison for politically motivated persecution," Vlasenko insists. "So we have already been through this. We know what political repression is, how it is organized, how it starts and how it ends."Tymoshenko has already promised to prove the groundlessness of the charges against her in court.Parliament's work is unlikely to change after publication of NABU tapes, says LIGA.net one of the Servants of the People on condition of anonymity. There will be no parliamentary crisis due to the need to constantly look for votes. Because they started looking for votes a long time ago. Batkivshchyna MPs supported their votes only "when they wanted to," he assures."We were already constantly looking for votes. We haven't had 226 votes for a long time. All our partners are situational," the source concludes, "Every time we come to an agreement, and then we consolidate these agreements at the conciliation board. This does not always work either. It won't be easy from now on, although it hasn't been easy before. But we are working out what to do."Read also"He will be reckless". 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