Is corporate raiding on the wane? The number of cases has fallen by 36 per cent, but there have been more instances of asset seizures

In Ukraine, an ever-decreasing number of criminal proceedings relating to corporate raiding are being officially recorded. However, behind this generally positive trend lies a warning sign: there are already more cases of unlawful seizure of company assets than there were in the whole of last year.

Details

In the first seven months of 2026, 103 criminal cases were opened in Ukraine which OpenDataBot classifies as involving corporate raiding. This is 36 per cent fewer than in the same period of 2025, and roughly five times fewer than in 2021.

On average, around 15 such cases were recorded per month in 2026. March proved to be the ‘most raider-prone’ month, with 31 cases opened.

The majority of proceedings – 74 cases, or 71.8 per cent – relate to the forgery of documents submitted for the state registration of companies and sole traders under Article 205-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. A further 17 cases were opened under Article 206-2 concerning the unlawful seizure of the property of an enterprise, institution or organisation, and 12 under Article 206 concerning obstruction of lawful economic activity.

The most worrying detail is that it is precisely the cases concerning the unlawful appropriation of property that are bucking the general trend. In just seven months, their number has already exceeded that for the whole of 2025, and their share of proceedings has more than doubled – from 7 per cent to 17 per cent.

Charges were brought in 21 out of 103 cases. Only 11 cases – roughly one in nine – were referred to court. All of them relate to document forgery. As yet, not a single case has been referred to court in 2026 under the articles concerning obstruction of business activities and unlawful appropriation of enterprise property.

Why this is important

The overall decline in the number of cases appears to be a positive sign; however, the structure of the cases themselves does not suggest that the problem of corporate raiding is disappearing. The number of cases involving direct seizure of property is increasing, whilst only a small proportion of registered cases reach court.

At the same time, the statistics reflect specifically criminal proceedings under the relevant sections of the law, rather than the number of proven raider takeovers. Therefore, these figures show the trend in officially registered investigations, but do not provide a complete picture of the true scale of the problem.

Source

OpenDataBot, 25 August 2026: ‘Reports of raider attacks have fallen by 36 per cent over the year’.

OpenDataBot’s calculations are based on data from the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine for the first seven months of 2026.