What the Themis raid inquiry revealed about property registers
A look back at the anti-corruption investigation into forged court rulings and hacked state registers, reported in the days before 24 August 2026.
How secure are the records on which property rights depend? That question sat behind reports in the days before 24 August 2026, when details emerged of an investigation into raiding of assets in Ukraine.
On 20 August 2026, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) described a further part of their inquiry into the same organisation, an operation called Themis. It concerned the raider-style seizure of assets of enterprises and of real estate in the capital, valued at more than 455 million hryvnias.
According to the reports, the perpetrators worked through forged court rulings and forged documents of title, and by hacking state registers of the Ministry of Justice. The methods targeted the very systems that record who owns what, which is why the case drew attention beyond the sums involved.
The inquiry was reported against a grim backdrop. On 19 August 2026, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv had killed at least 15 people and injured 40, damaging residential buildings, a children's hospital and a school.
The two sets of reports described very different pressures on public life: war damage on one side, and the integrity of state registers and courts on the other.
