Subjects of service offences in the legal system of Ukraine

The article is devoted to a theoretical and legal analysis of the subjects of service offences in the legal system of Ukraine, considered against the background of the transformation of public service, the development of anti-corruption legislation and the gradual approximation of national law to European standards of good governance. It argues that the traditional reduction of this category to “officials” in the criminal law sense does not reflect the real plurality of public power holders who are capable of causing public harm even outside the framework of formal public service, including in local self-government bodies, publicly owned enterprises, professional self-government and public-private partnership arrangements. The novelty of the research lies in an integrated understanding of the subject of a service offence as a bearer of public powers who combines enhanced status guarantees with aggravated regimes of legal liability, as well as in developing a multi-dimensional classification of such subjects according to the level of public authority, the nature and intensity of their functions and the form of organisational linkage with the state or local community. The aim of the study is to reconstruct the range of these subjects on the basis of current Ukrainian legislation, case law and secondary normative acts, to identify transitional and “hybrid” groups, to compare the national model with approaches in Central and Eastern European countries and international standards, and to formulate proposals for harmonising the institution of service offences with contemporary requirements of integrity and accountability in the public sector. The research demonstrates that three concentric circles of subjects of service offences have emerged in national law (the core of public service, delegated public functions, private actors with indirect public influence), each requiring differentiated procedural safeguards, coherent regulation of disciplinary and delict proceedings and a proportionate combination of disciplinary, administrative and criminal liability. The article substantiates the need for legislative codification of a coherent definition of the subject of a service offence, for setting minimum standards of status guarantees for key groups of public power holders and for further development of a typology of service misconducts based on the risks of public harm and the needs of law-enforcement and judicial practice.