The Voice party has lost state funding: what happened?
12 October 2024 06:19
The Supreme Court has confirmed the legitimacy of the NAPC’s decision to suspend state funding of the Voice political party. This was reported by the press service of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports
“The Administrative Court of Cassation (as part of the Supreme Court – ed.) issued a ruling in case No. 855/3/24, which confirmed the legitimacy of the decision of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAPC) to terminate state funding of the Voice political party. The ruling is final and not subject to appeal. This means that the political party in this convocation will no longer receive state funding for its statutory activities,” the statement said.
It is noted that by the end of this year, the party should have received more than UAH 57 million (for two quarters).
The agency reminds that in June 2024, the NACP stopped funding the Voice political party due to inaccurate information in the reports for almost UAH 5 million.
“In particular, a number of significant violations were found in the reports of the Voice political party on property, income and financial liabilities (hereinafter referred to as the report) for the third and fourth quarters of 2020,” the Agency said.
Also, according to the NACP, in two quarterly reports for 2020, the political party “Voice” included inaccurate information in the report totalling UAH 4 million 726 thousand 500. This is the basis for the termination of state funding of the party’s statutory activities.
“According to the Law “On Political Parties”, a repeated violation, which consists in submitting a report to the NAPC containing inaccurate information about the expenses of a political party in excess of 20 minimum wages (as of 01 January 2020 – UAH 94,460), is the basis for a decision to terminate state funding of the party (Order No. 167/24 of 25 June 2024),” the National Agency explained.
What is known about the Voice party
The Voice party was founded in 2019 on the initiative of Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, frontman of the band Ocean Elzy.
The party took part in the early parliamentary elections of 2019 and the local elections of 2020. The party is represented in the Verkhovna Rada by 20 MPs: Yulia Klymenko, Kira Rudyk, Yaroslav Zheleznyak, Oleksandra Ustinova, Oleh Makarov, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, Serhiy Rakhmanin, Solomiya Bobrovska, Olha Stefanyshyna, Volodymyr Tsabal, Andriy Osadchuk, Roman Kostenko, Roman Lozynskyi, Inna Sovsun, Lesia Vasylenko, Rustem Umerov, Natalia Pipa, Halyna Vasylchenko, and Yaroslav Rushchyshyn.
Since 2021, it has been considered an ally of the presidential party “Servant of the People” in voting
The NACP has already suspended funding for “Holos” due to the party’s reporting in the second quarter of 2020 of inaccurate information on expenditures of more than UAH 1.3 million in favour of a number of individual entrepreneurs. After the reporting obligation was restored, the party submitted clarifying documents to the NACP, which provided for the settlement of relations with the said counterparties, and the NACP returned the funding.
In 2020, the NACP suspended funding for two political parties – Batkivshchyna and Holos – due to irregularities in their reports, and in 2021, it suspended funding for the Servant of the People party. After these parties eliminated the violations, the NACP resumed funding them.
