Ukraine’s ministry hopes blockchain can dismantle corruption

As narratives about corruption in Ukraine evolve, the Ministry of Digital Transformation hopes blockchain could solve that problem.

While Ukraine still ranked the second most corrupt country in Europe, after Russia, it is now exploring new ways to battle corruption for fear of losing support from the West.

The head of the virtual assets expert group at the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Yulia Parkhomenko, spoke at the panel discussion held by the Center for Strategic & International Studies. She said the ministry sees new possibilities in blockchain technology in making the Ukrainian government more transparent.

She particularly noted that blockchain can “reliably protect” state ledgers from unauthorized access, increase their transparency, and “reduce corruption in state entities that oversee them.”

“Alongside experts, we are exploring international experience of using blockchain on a state level and develop our own strategy to implement web3 technologies in Ukraine.”

Yulia Parkhomenko, Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine

As Russia continues its offensive against Ukraine, Parkhomenko pointed out the country is already using blockchain technology in “documenting Russian war crimes” with the help of Dokaz.

This project helps prosecutors secure vulnerable digital records. The product was developed by Starling Lab and supported by the FTX Foundation and the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web.

Ukraine is not the first country trying to find a silver bullet solution to this problem.

As crypto.news reported, Puerto Rico’s lawmakers were also eyeing distributed ledgers in late 2021, trying to bring more accountability and transparency to the public sector. It is unclear if the government has made any progress since then, given that in August 2022 the FBI arrested Wanda Vázquez, a former governor of Puerto Rico, on charges of accepting bribes from a campaign donor while in office.