SBI Reform: Changing the Institutional Logic, Not the Director

At the beginning of 2026, the President publicly announced a course towards renewing the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI). He instructed that a relevant draft law be prepared during January and urgently submitted to Parliament. This decision did not emerge spontaneously, as reform of the SBI had been discussed before; rather, it is a political signal of the need to act here and now. Accordingly, it has organically fitted into the agenda both in the context of European integration and against the backdrop of personnel reshuffles.

The quality of these reshuffles is not the subject of this text, whereas reform of the SBI is one of the ten priorities that Ukraine must deliver in 2026 within the framework of frontloading. This is a process launched jointly with the European Union that will allow Ukraine to prepare for the opening of negotiating clusters for EU accession even before the lifting of the Hungarian veto.

In this context, renewal of the State Bureau of Investigation becomes an important test for the Ukrainian authorities: whether they are capable of rethinking the role of yet another law enforcement body with a significant concentration of powers and clear signs of politicisation of its processes.

What, then, should be the role of the SBI in the law enforcement system? Why does this body continue to find itself at the centre of scandals? How can reform be turned from a formality into genuine institutional change?

How and Where Did the SBI Go Off Track?

The idea of establishing the State Bureau of Investigation in 2018 appeared logical. The body was supposed to investigate official crimes — torture, unlawful detention, fabrication of evidence and other crimes against justice — eliminating conflicts of interest when violations are investigated by the same institutions whose employees may be implicated in them. The SBI was meant to become an institution that reduces the sense of impunity and demonstrates that no one stands above the law, not even public officials.

Until November 2018, these crimes were investigated by the prosecutor’s office, and the transfer of jurisdiction to a new body had been envisaged as early as the 1996 Constitution. After several unsuccessful attempts to establish a similar body in 1997 and 2004, the 2012 Criminal Procedure Code required the creation of the SBI within five years. Formally, this task was fulfilled — jurisdiction was transferred, and years-long legislative work was completed. However, the expected effect did not materialise.

The SBI failed to change the rules of the game in combating torture and other official crimes. Medium-level corruption became the de facto priority, and the body itself began to position itself as yet another anti-corruption agency. As a result, its original mission receded into the background — contrary to the expectations of human rights defenders and international partners.

In its first year of operation (2018–2019), the SBI’s governance model resembled a ‘triumvirate’: the Director and his deputies alternated in performing managerial functions, which undermined the vertical of responsibility. This quickly led to scandals, symbolised by the ‘Truba tapes’ — recordings of conversations linked to the then Director, Roman Truba, which gave rise to doubts about informal influence over investigations. It was precisely this that triggered the first attempt at a ‘reset’.

On 3 December 2019, Parliament supported the presidential law on the early termination of the powers of the SBI leadership. While the decision appeared politically understandable, the manner of its implementation raised serious concerns: the powers were terminated automatically, without an individualised accountability procedure. Roman Truba challenged this logic before the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, yet the Court ultimately did not assess his specific case. At the same time, such a scenario is today virtually impossible — as in 2021–2023 the Constitutional Court repeatedly emphasised in its rulings on the attestation of police officers and prosecutors that Parliament cannot substitute personnel procedures with political decisions.

Early termination of the leadership’s mandate made the SBI institutionally vulnerable and entrenched the perception of the Bureau as a body dependent on political expediency. The law was a reaction to a crisis of trust rather than a genuine reset: powers were not reviewed; integrity assessments were not conducted, and safeguards against abuse were not created.

In December 2021, Oleksii Sukhachov was appointed Director of the SBI following a competitive selection. His mandate expires at the end of 2026. However, the volume of criticism directed at the Bureau indicates that even a competitively selected change of leadership did not resolve systemic problems. Thus, the issue is not personalities — but the very model of the SBI.

The SBI Without Focus: From Specialisation to ‘Universal Investigator’

Over time, the State Bureau of Investigation has turned into a universal ‘investigator of everything’, with resources dispersed and priorities shifted. And these are by no means official crimes, let alone those in the field of justice. A significant share of the Bureau’s caseload today consists of military offences (against the order of military service), which is logical in wartime. Although current criminal statistics are classified (given the scale of unauthorised absence), older reporting forms show that in recent years their share amounted to around 80–90% of the SBI’s entire jurisdiction (in particular, in 2024 — 89,000 out of 98,000 proceedings). Yet when the body was created, this jurisdiction was treated as residual, not as a primary one at all.

At the same time, another portion of the SBI’s resources is directed towards investigating medium-level corruption offences, which by their nature was also not the primary reason for establishing this body. Moreover, the effectiveness of such work raises questions: few cases reach verdicts, while the situation with crimes in the field of justice remains consistently poor and impunity — systemic. Ultimately, torture, unlawful detention and fabrication of evidence are among the lowest priorities of this body. Yet this is precisely what it was created for.

As a result, the SBI is simultaneously overloaded and deprived of a clear priority. It is no coincidence that jurisdiction over military offences is regularly proposed to be transferred to a new specialised body, such as a State Military Justice Bureau, as the SBI is objectively unable to cope with such volume. This concerns not only more than 200,000 proceedings related to unauthorised absence, but also military offences more broadly, including corruption which, in terms of the level of public danger, often does not meet the threshold of jurisdiction of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.

For some time, the idea was also discussed of transferring the investigation of crimes against national security to the SBI as part of reforming the Security Service of Ukraine, to strip it of pre-trial investigation functions. Today, however, this proposal evokes rather irony among experts and open irritation in society.

Additional questions also arise regarding the SBI’s dependence on the Office of the President of Ukraine and the role of the Bureau in possible ‘political persecutions’. The SBI regularly finds itself at the centre of scandals, while journalists and civil society representatives have repeatedly accused it of pressure, selective law enforcement and politicisation in the context of excessively broad powers.

Events surrounding the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine (HQCJ) in 2025 were illustrative in this regard. The SBI conducted a series of searches at the HQCJ’s premises and at the residence of the then Deputy Head of the Commission and questioned its members. Formally — within the framework of criminal proceedings; however, beyond the procedural framework, much deeper institutional problems became apparent. The HQCJ publicly stated that it regarded these actions as pressure and interference with the exercise of its constitutional functions, a point noted by both international partners and civil society organisations. The events coincided with the intensification of the qualification assessment of judges of the dissolved District Administrative Court of Kyiv and the Pechersk District Court, which at the same time were considering SBI motions for searches and access to documents. The line between law enforcement and pressure proved to be dangerously thin.

Public perception of the SBI’s activities has also been significantly shaped by the active use of urgent searches conducted without a warrant from an investigating judge. Although the CPC of Ukraine allows for such a tool in exceptional cases, in practice it increasingly appears to function as a standard procedure that is subsequently legalised post factum. When scandals and identified violations do not lead to internal investigations or disciplinary decisions, a sense of impunity emerges. This only reinforces narratives about a ‘political SBI’ and undermines trust in the institution.

How the SBI Reform Became a Condition for European Integration

Scandals surrounding the SBI have not gone unnoticed by international partners. The European Commission, in its Enlargement Reports for 2024 and 2025, explicitly pointed to the need to reform the Bureau. Specifically, Ukraine is required to introduce transparent, merit-based procedures for the selection of the SBI’s leadership with the involvement of independent experts — not a formal competition, but a mechanism capable of guaranteeing institutional independence from political influence. This emphasis is not incidental: previous competitive procedures for the SBI have repeatedly been criticised for lack of transparency and instability of selection commissions, while under martial law their effectiveness has not been analysed at all.

An even tougher position is set out in the Screening Report on the compliance of Ukrainian legislation with EU law (January 2025), which recommends a ‘reset’ of the SBI by analogy with the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine (ESBU). Although this document is not public, such a recommendation was reported back in February 2025 by Member of Parliament Yaroslav Zhelezniak.

The Rule of Law Roadmap provides for a comprehensive review of the SBI’s institutional structure in the fourth quarter of 2026, the development of integrity and oversight mechanisms, and only thereafter — an assessment of the advisability of further reform and the preparation of relevant legislation. At the same time, the governmental approach appears overly slow, given the scale of the problems and the number of questions addressed to the SBI by politicians, civil society and professional communities. Implementation of such a plan may stretch over years.

An alternative path is proposed by Members of Parliament Yaroslav Zhelezniak and Anastasiia Radina. In August 2025, they registered draft law No. 13602, which provides for a ‘reset’ of the SBI based on the ESBU model — a new procedure for selecting the Director with a decisive vote of international experts and the attestation of personnel. However, this should constitute only the first stage of SBI reform, as it primarily concerns staffing issues.

The key issue of SBI reform, however, lies not in replacing the Director, but in rethinking the logic of jurisdiction, the system of oversight and the role of the body within the overall architecture of law enforcement.

Not Only Who, but How: Conditions for a Genuine Reset of the SBI

The history of the State Bureau of Investigation already includes attempts at ‘resets’ that failed to produce long-term effects. If the structure continues to combine an excessively broad portfolio of powers, political influence over its activities will be inevitable.

How can this be avoided? A comprehensive reform should primarily address the SBI’s jurisdiction and its place within the law enforcement system. If the SBI is to focus first and foremost on combating crimes in the field of justice and abuses of office, resources and personnel should be channelled precisely into these areas. The reform should start with the specialisation of investigative units and move towards the creation of secure communication channels, the expansion of the whistleblower institution to cover official crimes, etc. Many ideas articulated back in 2021 in the Government Strategy on Preventing Torture have still not been implemented — and it is precisely the SBI that should take this on.

In parallel, it is critically important to develop analytical capacity to forecast crime, ensure effective counteraction, begin working with European instruments such as SOCTA, improve approaches to criminal policy, etc. This would bring Ukraine closer to an EU-model law enforcement system. European approaches in this area are based precisely on data analysis and the strategic prioritisation of objectives.

There is a need to improve the accountability of the SBI and to introduce genuine oversight instruments. The formal existence of internal control units, public oversight councils, etc. does not guarantee results if these mechanisms are unable to exert real influence over the activities of the SBI. They must be sufficiently independent from the leadership and capable of impartially reviewing complaints against Bureau staff. The institutional trajectory can be reviewed, for example, through periodic audits of activities, as a result of which the head may lose their position and the work of the body may be substantially adjusted externally — by the Government and Parliament.

Reform of the SBI today is a test of the ability to build institutions with real checks and balances. Without a systemic rethinking of the role of this body, personnel changes will not work.

Appointing new leadership is only one of many steps required for genuine reform of the SBI. All the more so given that this is a ‘newly established’ body that emerged after the Revolution of Dignity — with competitive selection procedures, a public oversight council and reporting to Parliament. Therefore, personnel reshuffles alone are insufficient, as even the most transparent competition involving civil society and international experts will not resolve the problem if the body continues to operate with the same concentration of powers, blurred jurisdiction and weak safeguards against abuse, without effective external and internal oversight. Old practices will return unless these deeper issues are addressed. If reform changes the logic of how the SBI operates, fixes its clear jurisdiction and provides for safeguards and control mechanisms, this will offer a chance for real change and for meeting priority European integration requirements.