The Role of Business Integrity in Ukraine’s Reconstruction

In November 2025 for BriberyMatters, I examined the status of Ukraine’s ongoing fight against corruption. With the next annual Ukraine Recovery Conference taking place in several weeks in Gdansk, Poland, it is a good moment to return to the question of how to ensure transparency in the reconstruction process, and, in particular, the role of businesses in the effort. To that end, I spoke with Sofiia Sapihura, a leading Ukrainian anti-corruption researcher and consultant, who was lead author of Leveraging Integrity for Ukraine’s Reconstruction: The Role of Ethical Businesses, prepared by Accountability Lab and the Corporate Governance Professional Association of Ukraine with the support of the Denmark-funded New Democracy Fund. Our conversation covered both what Sapihura considers reasons for genuine optimism as well as the real risks that still remain.

Sapihura sees real improvement in Ukraine’s integrity landscape, which is backed up by recent data. For instance, she pointed to the OECD’s 2026 Anti-Corruption and Integrity Outlook for Ukraine, which found that the country’s “strategic framework for anti-corruption and public integrity is among the top performers compared with OECD countries.” As Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) points out, that review covered criteria such as anti-corruption strategies, lobbying, conflict-of-interest, political financing, public information transparency, judicial integrity mechanisms and public procurement. 

Sapihura further noted a range of factors driving this performance, including the work of civil society groups and the media, as well the war, which has created a link between fighting corruption with patriotism. In particular, her work has focused on the anti-corruption role of the private sector itself, notably how local firms are grounding their operations in integrity. As she told me, “Companies that have invested in compliance systems and internal risk management frameworks are seeing positive results, and the climate supports those who want to do business the right way.” Ethical Ukrainian businesses should not be viewed as potential victims of a corrupt system or as risks to be managed, but as active partners in mitigating corruption.

Some caution can be drawn from Corruption in Ukraine 2025: Understanding, Perception, Prevalence, an annual survey of both entrepreneurs and citizens at large conducted by the firm Info Sapiens, ordered by NACP with a range of EU funders. That report notes that while 2025 saw “a break in the trend of increasing perception of corruption,” “the share of respondents who report having corruption experience in 2025 does not differ statistically significantly from the indicators of 2023–2024.” Further, the report states that “corruption for the third consecutive year remains in second place among the main problems,” facing citizens. But by the same token, among businesses, “the assessment of corruption as a ‘very serious’ problem…decreased significantly, from 76% in 2024 to 65% in 2025.”

These trends are playing out, Sapihura told me, in two sectors that are at once central to the reconstruction effort and, historically, the most corruption-prone in Ukraine: energy and construction. Here she noted a certain type of bifurcation. Energy companies tend to be sophisticated with compliance officers and risk frameworks and are increasingly integrated into EU networks. On the other hand, construction companies are largely domestic-facing with fewer integrity systems, and integrity rarely features in their priorities. Further, as we discussed, given that reconstruction needs are estimated at roughly $524 billion over ten years, and that the money will flow through multiple channels, there remain risks in Ukraine’s tender processes.

In response, Sapihura proposes a mechanism whereby business associations would be engaged as monitors, drawing on the expertise of business owners and association staff. The organizations can review bid documentation, assess the quality of bidders’ work and verify that their quoted prices are fair. Careful design would be essential: companies should assess proposals from regions other than their own to reduce collusion risk, and the mechanism would need safeguards against misuse to gain competitive advantage. The sheer scale of reconstruction actually reinforces the case for diversified, private-sector-engaged monitoring, as no single centralized government mechanism could cover everything.

Overall, as she advances her ideas, Sapihura remains optimistic for Ukraine’s anti-corruption prospects in the reconstruction process. Citizens and businesses alike, she says, want to ensure that the money is used for its intended purposes.

Marc Schleifer

Governance, Democracy and Economic Development Expert