The Cabinet of Ministers prepared and agreed on a new bill at its meeting yesterday, the purpose of which is to bury the reform of the Bureau of Economic Security (BES) and ensure further control of Ermak’s deputy Oleg Tatarov over this law enforcement agency.
This was reported by the Anti-Corruption Center (ACC), citing its sources.
Let us recall that the reform of the BEB in the form of cleaning the institution is a requirement of international partners. On October 16 of this year, the Verkhovna Rada Finance Committee already agreed on a model for rebooting the BEB in the form of bill No. 10088-1. The project provides for the reboot of the BEB - in particular, through the selection of a new head of the body with the participation of international experts and the certification of existing personnel.
However, in order to prevent this reform, back in November the Cabinet of Ministers prepared its own bill, which the Government decided to approve today - on the eve of the New Year - when the attention of Ukrainians and partners is focused on other events.
As early as next week, the Government plans to submit this bill for consideration by parliament, but to the law enforcement committee of the Verkhovna Rada.
This bill does not contain regulations that ensure the cleanup of BEB. Thus, the Cabinet of Ministers determined that it will independently determine the rules for recertification of BEB personnel. This means that such recertification will occur manually under the control of Oleg Tatarov.
According to CPC sources, they plan to quickly pass it through the law enforcement committee and adopt it in the hall of the Verkhovna Rada as a whole. After all, it is the law enforcement committee of the parliament that is controlled by Oleg Tatarov, and it was this committee, led by the “servant” Sergei Jonusas, that blocked the complete abolition of the notorious “Lozovoy’s amendments” and refused to provide the SAP with procedural autonomy and independence from the Prosecutor General. Thus, the BEB reform will be blocked, and Oleg Tatarov will retain his control over the body, primarily due to the lack of a procedure for clearing the body of dishonest employees.
Moreover, the government project proposes to make a number of changes to the Criminal Procedure Code, which are supposedly designed to protect business, but in fact they are not. The government proposes that representatives of the Business Ombudsman Council be present during all searches and the implementation of court orders on access to documents in cases regarding the business of the BEB under investigation.
Such an initiative will in no way solve the problems with pressure on business for the reason that the body’s manual staff will remain working there in the future. This means that these workers will continue to be able to draw up fictitious proceedings and investigative actions, the presence of representatives of the Council at which will in no way help the pressure.
Moreover, it is simply physically impossible to ensure the presence of representatives of the Business Ombudsman Council during dozens of simultaneous procedural actions in different regions.
Any procedural changes to the law on the activities of the BEB before the approval of the competitive procedure and the election of a new head through a transparent competition and complete re-certification of existing personnel risk only concreted existing problems rather than solving them.
This is not the first time government officials have sabotaged the creation of a strong body to investigate economic crimes in Ukraine.
Thus, one of the main reasons for the failure of the reform is the fact that in 2021 the selection of the head of the BEB took place in a completely non-transparent manner. Then the competition commission, which did not include international experts, chose Vadim Melnik, the ex-head of the tax police, as head of the BEB.
Because of the latter's business nightmare, Ukraine had to create a new law enforcement agency for financial investigations. The chairman of the commission for holding the competition was then Timofey Milovanov. The journalist of the program “SCHEMES: corruption in details” Sergei Andrushko spoke in detail about the transition of the then competition.
Due to the failure of that competition for the head of the BEB, this structure, with dubious leadership, managed to recruit a considerable staff in a similarly non-transparent way. Given this, changes in the rules for selecting leaders are clearly not enough to reboot. The Institute needs a mechanism for renewal and cleansing of unscrupulous personnel. Otherwise, even the most professional new manager will get stuck in opposition to his own staff.
Also, according to the Government, international partners are given the opportunity to participate in the competitive selection procedure for the head of the BEB and the right to a preferential vote in this process. But at the same time, the Government provides for such an opportunity only for two years, and the draft does not contain guarantees against the manual dismissal of a leader elected through a transparent competition. This means that after two years the newly elected leader can be fired quite easily.
“While the Government is once again sabotaging the reboot of the BEB, discussions continue in the West about providing financial assistance to Ukraine to counteract the Russian Federation. It’s just that now, under the pretext of insufficient control over their money, the United States has put money on our weapons. However, it seems that relations with Oleg Tatarov are a much higher priority for the Cabinet of Ministers than relations with Western partners,” notes Vitaly Shabunin, Chairman of the Board of the CPC.
Ermak, through his deputies in the Office of the President and Ministers, is maneuvering to establish control over a large part of the Ukrainian economy, as well as its law enforcement and security apparatus, notes the BBC.
Vladimir Zelensky, speaking about the chief of his administration, uses the words “powerful manager”, “real patriot”, but most often - “trust”.
In the summer of 2020, Zelensky appointed as Ermak’s deputy a controversial figure, Oleg Tatarov, who is associated with mass detentions and criminal prosecutions against participants in the “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014. This also caused a flurry of criticism against the president's office.
But despite all the reproaches of Tatars, the OP is still in fact Ermak’s “supervisor” of the law enforcement sector.
