Buzhansky accused NABU of seizing control of government agencies through rigged tenders
6 April 16:11
MP Maksym Buzhansky criticized the competition for the position of head of the State Customs Service. In particular, he noted that during this selection process, “the reputation of international experts has been completely ruined,” as their role “consists solely of announcing the winner based on their casting vote.” The lawmaker wrote about this on his Facebook page.
Maksym Buzhansky also called the results of the competition for the position of customs chief a farce, with the winner chosen from among two outsiders.
“Everyone saw that the experts gave no explanation for their choice, offered no justification for why they selected those who performed the worst rather than the best; they simply announced a name and vanished forever, bearing no responsibility for their decision,” the MP noted.
In his view, after the competitive selection process, everyone has finally realized that there is no point in applying for open competitions. After all, the winner is determined in advance, and all other participants serve as a “smokescreen to legitimize this winner through various stages of the competition, the results of which have absolutely no impact whatsoever.”
This situation will eventually lead to a rapid decline in the number of competition participants across all professional fields, as no one wants to be bombarded with tons of information garbage without any chance of winning, the politician believes.
The parliamentarian also emphasized that the open competition system itself has definitively and irrevocably turned into a system for legitimizing one’s own people, which differs little from stuffing tens of thousands of fake ballots into the ballot box during an election.
“It would be far more honest, transparent, and reasonable to simply propose—without any competitions—that NABU, as an organization, take responsibility for managing the customs service, publicly establish performance evaluation criteria, and appoint as head any employee of that agency whom they would delegate. But our grant-funded liberal friends seek neither honesty, nor transparency, nor adequacy, nor efficiency, nor, much less, accountability, which is why things are unfolding as they are. Is this bad? No, it’s good; it would be worse if they weren’t so open about their desire to seize control of all state agencies,” Maxim Buzhansky concluded.
Some experts supported the parliamentarian’s view, noting that the negative impact of the competition exacerbates the existing conflict of interest: the memorandum signed in December between the competition commission and NABU.
“Thanks to anti-reforms, everything has become much more transparent and simpler: it is enough to hold any position at NABU, any position at all, and one’s surname is of no importance, nor are experience, knowledge, competence, capability, ability, results of competitive procedures, ranking, prior merits, etc.,” commented lawyer Oleg Shram on the results of the competition for the position of head of the State Customs Service .
Earlier, MP Anna Skorokhod stated that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Customs Service’s competition commission had signed a memorandum of cooperation. According to the document’s provisions, it was the Bureau itself that vetted all candidates for integrity. Meanwhile, current NABU employees were among the competition participants.
“NABU is giving a master class on how to take over Ukraine’s state bodies without firing a single shot,” the MP wrote on the matter.
She also added that, in her opinion, today’s anti-corruption agencies have turned into instruments of influence and power.
The former prosecutor of the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), Stanislav Bronevitsky, also questioned the very purpose of such competitions. He also cited discrediting due to predictability and controllability.
“It is precisely thanks to these competitions that we ended up with Klymenko, who trades in airports and deals; Sinyuk, who lives under a birch tree and informs organization members about investigative actions; and Kryvonos with his child, land, and criminal record—a record that would make any NABU case suspect envious.
…These competitions clearly do not select the best and strongest candidates, nor those with unique knowledge and abilities, nor people with extensive experience. In these competitions, they select those who are compliant—those who won’t ask unnecessary questions, who won’t question orders from above. All of this has long since turned into a sham and a procedure for weeding out the proactive and principled, the honest and incorruptible,” the lawyer noted.
The Competition and Results
The finalists in the competition for head of the State Customs Service are NABU employees Ruslan Damentsov and Orest Mandziy.
“The finalists’ candidacies, having successfully passed a complex multi-stage selection process, will be submitted to the Minister of Finance of Ukraine to determine a single candidate to be presented to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine for consideration,” the Commission for the Selection of the Head of the State Customs Service of Ukraine stated.
At NABU, Orest Mandziy holds the position of department head, while Ruslan Damentsov serves as deputy department head.
At the same time, according to the test results, these candidates scored very low marks.
The vast majority of questions in the practical tasks concerned the application of the Customs Code of Ukraine, procedures for declaring various goods, and the specifics of the State Customs Service’s operations.
