Ukrainian Officials Learn From U.S. Internal Investigation Units
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| A U.S. study tour provided ten Ukrainian government officials with
valuable information on best practices for operating effective and
independent internal investigation units to combat corruption.
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The ten representatives of Ukraine's Ministry of Transportation and Communication, Ministry of
Interior, and the State Customs Service recently returned from a U.S. study tour where they learned about the work of independent Internal Investigations Units (also known in the U.S. as Inspectors General Offices), ready to implement best practices they observed.
A fully functioning independent Internal Investigation Unit (IIU) is an effective anticorruption mechanism, which aims to prevent, detect and investigate cases of fraud, waste of funds and abuse of position by employees of a governmental office. The functions of IIU include inspection, auditing and investigation of cases related to corruption, such as bribery and conflict of interest.
The participating Ukrainian ministries are among six Ukrainian Government offices implementing the IIU Project under the Millennium Challenge Corporation Threshold Country Program; the study tour participants are members of the working groups created at each of their ministries to implement this project.
During the tour, participants had meetings with Inspectors General and their respective staffs from the Federal Communications Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Postal Service, the U.S. Department of Transportation, Amtrak, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service. They also had an opportunity to meet with representatives of the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, the U.S. coalition of Inspectors General.
Representatives from each of these American departments and agencies made presentations describing the structure, authority, functions and the standards of work of their IIUs and provided members of the Ukrainian delegation with copies of printed materials as well as copies of annual Office of Inspectors General reports to the Congress. Representatives of Ukraine's Ministry of Interior also had an opportunity to hear a presentation by the head of the internal affairs unit of the Fairfax County Police Department and to spend an afternoon accompanying police officers in their squad cars on their daily tours of duty.
"The experience is invaluable for the purpose of improving the work of internal investigation units in Ukraine. The model of an Inspector General Office, which includes three major functions, namely, auditing, inspecting and investigation, lends itself to step-by-step implementation in Ukraine, taking, of course, into consideration the peculiarities of legislative adoption," stated the head of the Controlling and Auditing Department at the Ministry of Transportation and Communication of Ukraine, Oleksiy Prokhorenko.
The study tour participants believe that the information and materials received during the visit will provide a strong basis for preparing drafts of a regulatory framework for the creation and operations of an internal investigations unit at the Ministry of Transportation, and the knowledge and experience received on this visit by representatives of the Ministry of Interior and the State Customs Service will help improve the operations of existing internal investigation units within those agencies.
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