Corruption stalks Ukraine's cemeteries as officials profit from dead soldiers

The funeral trade can be a lucrative source of income. In Pokrovsk, the last remaining grave digger's only focus is burying the dead.

- Alistair Macdonald, Serhii Bosak & levgeniia Sivorka

In the spring of 2023, as war raged in Ukraine, a funeral director and a local government worker met in a city cemetery to make a cash deal for the rights to transport a particularly macabre cargo: 23 dead soldiers.

Prosecutors say the official agreed to give the funeral director the contract to bring the bodies from a morgue in Dnipro in return for a quarter of the money the council would pay. They say that later that month, the funeral director met the official to hand him his 13,200 hryvnia cut, some $320.

The alleged bribe, now the subject of a court case, seemed almost straightforward at first. Petty corruption is endemic in Ukraine and across many of the countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.

Transparency International, a corruption-tracking nonprofit, ranks Ukraine 105th out of 180 countries.

Yet the investigation into the alleged backhander in the cemetery in Poltava illustrates how corruption follows Ukrainians through every aspect of their lives, even to their graves.

Police, emergency officials and medical workers are routinely paid by funeral homes for tips on imminent or actual deaths.

And despite the reverence for Ukraine's war dead, they, too, have become an income stream for corrupt officials.

Some funeral homes pay officials to win large contracts for transporting or burying dead troops, according to officials with knowledge of the transactions. Funeral homes overcharge councils for soldiers' headstones and coffins and split the difference with officials, police say.

When the war eventually ends, tackling corruption will be one of Kyiv's most important tasks. Failure to do so will hurt the economic recovery and make it harder for Ukraine to achieve its ambition of joining the European Union, which sets aspiring members specific goals on tackling graft.