The UNBA explained what could undermine the plan to introduce plea agreements

Information regarding who pays whom, how much, and on what grounds under a plea agreement must be made public. However, as long as this information is classified as a state secret or personal data, the court will continue to be able to close proceedings and restrict access to judgments.

At the request of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on law enforcement, the Ukrainian National Bar Association analyzed Draft Law No. 15563 of August 27, 2026 «On amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine and the Law of Ukraine «On access to court decisions» regarding the transparency and public nature of plea agreements».

According to the authors of the legislative initiative, the document is intended to ensure the transparency and public nature of plea agreements, strengthen judicial and public oversight of their content, and prevent hidden financial arrangements and payments to third parties. The authors attribute the need for changes, in particular, to the scale of the agreements’ application: in 2025, the High Anti-Corruption Court issued 109 verdicts, 72 of which were based on plea agreements.

Therefore, the bill provides for the following: In the opinion of the UNBA, the bill is relevant, timely, and aimed at resolving important current issues in law enforcement. At the same time, the document contains shortcomings that could potentially negate the expected effect if it is adopted in its proposed form.

• open court review of the terms of the plea agreement regarding admission of guilt, sentencing, financial obligations, compensation for damages, payment of funds to the State Budget and satisfaction of a civil claim;
• a prohibition on including in the agreement payments to any persons other than funds credited to the State Budget and funds resulting from a satisfied civil claim;
• publication of the plea agreement and the judgment in the USRCD no later than five days from the date the court approves the plea agreement;
• recognition of failure to fulfill a financial obligation as grounds for the prosecutor to petition the court to set aside the judgment.

A key provision concerns the addition of a new Part Eight to Article 27 (Publicity and Openness of Court Proceedings) of the Criminal Procedure Code, pursuant to which information regarding the amount, basis, method, and recipient of payments under the agreement cannot be classified as restricted-access information, «except for information constituting a state secret in accordance with the law, and information containing personal data». The UNBA is convinced that if this phrase is retained, this single provision alone will negate the very idea and outcome of the bill’s implementation.

Advocates explain the mechanism. The head of a pre-trial investigation body for example, a unit of the NABU has the discretionary right to issue a ruling imposing security measures on a person who has entered into an agreement with a prosecutor. Such a ruling would classify information about the person and the terms of the agreement as a state secret. Furthermore, «in a chain reaction», the court will be forced to conduct closed proceedings, with subsequent restrictions on access to the verdict in the USRCD.

The UNBA also pointed out that the prohibition on courts closing hearings or restricting access to information about financial obligations will not work. The reason is that the exception cited above gives the court discretion to apply it to all situations considered during the approval of a plea agreement. In other words, the situation will remain exactly as it is today.

Advocates also consider the proposal to enter the texts of the plea agreements themselves into the USRCD to be controversial. Following the approval of a plea agreement, a guilty verdict is issued that sets forth its terms; therefore, only the verdict is published in the registry. In the opinion of the UNBA, it would suffice to enter into the registry the full text of the verdict, which contains all information regarding the terms of the plea agreement.

In addition, the UNBA proposed supplementing the new Part Six of Article 476 (Consequences of Failure to Comply with the Agreement) of the Code of Criminal Procedure with specific timeframes within which the prosecutor must take measures to establish the fact of failure to fulfill a financial obligation and file a motion with the court to set aside the judgment.

The full text of the comments and proposals can be viewed at this link.

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