I am responsible for that problem in parliament. I am chair of the anti-corruption committee, unfortunately.
First, thank you for your warm words about our progress. We totally agree with you. We have a new society now because of the war of independence, because of the Euromaidan revolution. Unfortunately, at the same time, at too many levels, we have old state, post-Soviet, very corrupt, especially at the central level, institutions. If you are talking about the general prosecutorial office, the most important courts, especially courts that are responsible for business conflicts—let's be honest among colleagues—their corruption remains the main problem inside our parliament, inside our government.
What is our proposition on that? Of course, this corruption blocks every important initiative, blocks the defence of property rights, and blocks what business strongly needs for success. What are our propositions?
First, we formed very ambitious legislation for transparency after Euromaidan, and now we joke in our parliament that corruption is very open to every citizen in Ukraine. State and local budget expenditures are open. All information about all ownership is open. It's the same with e-declaration systems. We now have more than 1,100,000 e-declarations of our officials, including politicians, judges, prosecutors, and so on.
Second, we have now made unique progress in bringing top corrupters to justice. The current chief of tax administration is now under investigation. The acting head of the central election commission is under investigation. Some very important MPs also are under anti-corruption investigations. All these investigations are the result of a newly established anti-corruption bureau and an anti-corruption prosecutorial office.
Having an ocean of corruption, we have decided to establish something like islands in that ocean, and we have given them good salaries by law and prohibited hiring people from old structures to this new one.