Today, on September 28, representatives of the Civil Network OPORA and the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption signed a Memorandum of Cooperation to prevent and combat political corruption, including during election campaigns.

The Memorandum of Cooperation was signed by Olga Aivazovska, Chair of the Board of the Civil Network OPORA, and Oleksandr Novikov, Chairman of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption.

Within the Memorandum, it was agreed to join forces in order to prevent violations in the field of financing of political parties and election campaigns, and to combat the non-compliance with the principles of political impartiality of the civil service. They also consolidated common intentions in awareness-building among political parties, electoral actors, civil servants, and other stakeholders.

One of the NAPC's priority tasks is to ensure government control over compliance with statutory restrictions on the financing of political parties, control over the election funds of election subjects, prevention of conflicts of interest and violations of the principle of political neutrality by public officials, control over restrictions on charitable activities of political parties, both in the inter-election and in the election periods. At the same time, the Civil Network OPORA has many years of experience monitoring election processes and detecting philanthropy on behalf of political parties, cases of non-abidance by the political neutrality and the conflicts of interest, analyzing election campaign financing, and methodological and technical developments in monitoring social media that facilitate the identification of such offenses.

Areas of cooperation:

  • joint development of proposals to improve the legislation on the procedure for financing political parties, the election process and campaigning;
  • holding events (conferences, round tables, seminars, etc.) involving international and Ukrainian experts in the field of political finance;
  • preparation and implementation of training activities for NAPC employees and assistance in the development and implementation of an effective training model for entities involved in political financing;
  • establish cooperation with shared access platforms, such as Facebook, Google Ads and others, on monitoring the financing of political advertising and campaigning on the Internet.
  • prevention of conflicts of interest or non-compliance with political impartiality among civil servants and local self-government;
  • ensuring transparency in the financing of political parties and election campaigning.

“The memorandum is an action plan that highlights the areas of coordination of cooperation between the non-governmental organization Civil Network OPORA and the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption in the field of political finance, election finance, and political campaigning. A special focus will be on political campaigning on social media, but it is not determined or regulated by either the election legislation or the legislation on political parties, – said Olga Aivazovska, Chair of the Board of the Civil Network OPORA. - OPORA wants to offer NAPC its own tools for monitoring social media so that they can compare the actual expenditures that we accumulate in our databases through monitoring with those declared by political parties or election actors during campaigns."

According to Oleksandr Novikov, Head of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, the Civil Network OPORA is one of the NAPC's key partners in building a good political system. “The main areas of our interaction are control over political finances in terms of their use on the Internet, in particular, those used for political advertising. Another area is the adoption of a new version of the law on political parties," – said Novikov.