The Finance Committee of the Verkhovna Rada yesterday agreed on Cabinet Bill No. 10439 regarding the pseudo-reform of the Bureau of Economic Security (BES), which actually leaves the BEB under the influence of Oleg Tatarov.
As the Anti-Corruption Center (ACC) wrote and warned earlier, this bill is probably planned to be brought to the floor for voting by people’s deputies by the end of the week. To simulate the fact that the committee “took into account” the opinion of business, they also agreed on bill No. 10088-1 at the same time.
Although business associations before the committee meeting directly stated their support for Yaroslav Zheleznyak’s bill No. 10439-2.
“The committee meeting was broadcast online. It was attended by Minister of Justice Denis Malyuska, who defended the “Tatar” version of the reform. During the meeting of the committee, the minister admitted that the pseudo-reform bill proposed by the government does not have approval from Ukraine’s international partners and does not have support among businesses,” notes Deputy Executive Director of the Center for Political Processes Elena Shcherban.
“Negotiations with international partners [on bill No. 10439] are still ongoing. And, as practice shows, negotiations will continue until the final vote,” Denis Malyuska said at the committee.
Malyuska also noted that the bill should be adopted because “the president promised business that during what was called a “moratorium” in the media […]. will adopt a number of bills that will ease the fate of business so that harsh reality does not happen later.”
At the same time, the minister admitted that bill No. 10439 does not have business support. In general, the position of business on the BEB reform should not be taken into account, since the business community allegedly has a conflict of interests in this matter.
In addition, the Minister of Justice considers urgent recertification of BEB employees inappropriate, and it can only be carried out after the war. Also, the minister made a strange proposal that, instead of re-certifying employees, the new head of the BEB should reserve “good” employees from mobilization and not reserve unscrupulous ones.
It is worth noting that during the committee the broadcast was interrupted. As the deputies explained in the broadcast itself, such a proposal not to broadcast the committee came from the “servant” Andrei Motovilovets, who had already been recorded for attempts at dishonest lobbying.
The CPC calls on the Minister of Justice, the Office of the President and people's deputies not to arrange pseudo-reforms of the BEB, but to pay attention to the position of business and the public.
The ambassadors of the G7 states, in a letter to the leadership of the Ukrainian authorities, warned against adopting the reform of the Bureau of Economic Security, which does not meet the requirements of European integration and the International Monetary Fund program.
This is evidenced by a letter from the G7, which is at the disposal of European Pravda.
The G7 ambassadors sent a letter to the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Ruslan Stefanchuk, Prime Minister Denis Shmygal, head of the Presidential Office Andriy Yermak and several other officials and parliamentarians from the law enforcement and financial committees.
G7 Ambassadors note that reform of the Economic Security Bureau (ESB) must contain four key provisions:
- Open and transparent competition for the position of the new director of the BEB.
- Independent audit of BEB activities one and three years after the appointment of a new director.
- The possibility of dismissing the director of the BEB based on audit findings and the impossibility of dismissal by government decision on the basis of “unsatisfactory results” of work.
- Recertification of all BEB employees and appointment of new ones according to a transparent and legally regulated procedure.
How did business remove public control over the BEB?
Member of the Public Control Bureau of Economic Security (hereinafter referred to as OGK BEB) Taras Kotov explained how exactly now, according to earlier promises, a goose is plucked so that it does not scream.
Today there is an urgent important urgent battle under the BEBs. Because if you don’t save everything right today, then there will be the same hell as it has been for 3 years. Let me clarify for those who don’t know which one it is.
The problem, among other things, is that victory “always has more parents than shit at the bathhouse.” But in the context of the BEB, there are more parents of victory than there are even more people in the metro in Poznyaki at 8 am. And I want to remind you how we finally found ourselves at this moment of urgently important struggle for a new model of infantry fighting vehicles.
- On January 28, 2021, the law “On the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine” was voted on as a whole, and signed by the president on March 22, 2021.
- On August 20, 2021, Vadim Melnik was appointed head of the BEB. The competition was hellish, and Melnik was completely unsuited to this position.
- On September 14, 2021, we, that is, the BEB Public Control Council, appeared in the lives of BEB and Vadim Melnik.
- On October 28, 2021, the first mass recruitment for positions began at the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine. Denis Zhelo, Mykhailo Lavrovskyi and Anna Mayboroda were present on the selection commission (hereinafter referred to as the personnel committee) from RGC BEB.
Members of the commission from the RGC, immediately after the completion of the first competitions, in December, formulated their proposals on how to make the competition normal. The miller was like a petty swindler and tried to cheat the RGK every time. And he lost every time.
First, he created a Personnel Commission of 7 (non-) BEB employees (civil servants under an agreement for the provision of services by individuals (GPC)) and 3 members from the RGC. When he was grabbed by the ass for this quorum, he began to crawl back to a 6 to 3 ratio.
Since Melnik did not plan to stop, and he had to continue trading positions and servicing all his agreements, Melnik’s competitive procedures were in no way supported by the RGC. At the same time, Melnik did not launch a disciplinary commission on principle, so as not to consider the adventures of his official buyers. In order to ensure the implementation of the agreements and to continue the sale of positions in the BEB, a number of other illegal things were created.
There should be competition for management positions in the same way as for non-managerial positions. But Melnik created the so-called “Promotion Commission”, which simply placed happy customers in management positions.
At the same time, the competition documents of the “undesirables” were lost, the polygraph did not work, and 240 employees were appointed from the competition for 80 people through other legal feints of Vadimivanich and the team.
And when the Council of Public Control recorded all this, informed about it and provided alternative proposals, NONE of the respected parents of the victory under the BEBs was there. All of them appeared only when the conversation turned to who would be the next owner of the ring, who would lead the BEB, and under what conditions.
On 02/23/2022, the RGC BEB sent a letter to the chairman of the BEB, explaining the problems with the regulations of the personnel commission and demanding changes so that the competitions would be open, transparent, with an adequate decision-making system by the personnel commission. The commission should NOT consist of 9 people, where 6 are BEB employees.
Transparency and openness of the competition are not guaranteed. Neither broadcast nor video recording (so that later at any time you can see how a person got into the ESB) is possible without a decision of the commission (by a simple majority) in each interview separately. The openness of voting protocols, so that it can again be seen how a person got into the BEB, is in question. The logic of the formation of commissions, where the presence of members of the RGC is obligatory, is such that not all stages will necessarily take place in Kyiv, and therefore everything will actually be decided locally.
The competition is going in the wrong direction and the RGK BEB does not directly agree with this logic of forming a new body.
A meeting of the Public Control Council with a full-fledged range of events at the BEB was scheduled for Friday, 02/25/2022. For obvious reasons, it did not take place.
Since June 2022, the RGK has been trying to achieve a fundamentally different composition of the personnel commission and a change in the selection procedures in the BEB.
On July 18, 2022, the RGC at the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine decided to temporarily suspend the powers of the members of the BEB Competition Commissions, who were delegated to the RGC (Minutes No. 7 of the meeting of the RGC at the BEB on July 18, 2022).
According to the law, the personnel commission cannot function without those members of the RGC who were delegated by voting. In fact, the RGK under the BEB stopped all recruitment competitions for the Bureau of Economic Security.
The idea was to legally “suspend” the resolved competitions and not legitimize them in any way. In parallel, it was the Council of Public Control that began to constantly officially inform the Office of the President, the Cabinet of Ministers, the financial and law enforcement committees on problems with the activities of the BEB.
On 10/03/2022, a double meeting of the Law Enforcement and Finance Committees of the Council took place, where the first approach to the projectile began around problems with the BEV.
And already on December 13, 2022, the Verkhovna Rada created a temporary investigative commission (VIC) to check and evaluate the effectiveness of the activities of the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine (EBUS), headed by Yaroslav Zheleznyak
RGC members Anna Mayboroda, Mikhail Lavrovsky and Denis Zhelo provided VSK with a lot of materials about problems with competitions and the work of the Bureau. Then other interesting details began to emerge on VSK about the work of the Bureau, about the appointment of physical education teachers as analysts, about dismissal reports with an open date, about a landing of appointments to 3 positions in 1 competition. Also, among other things, Andrei Gmyrin surfaced, whom NABU is now trying to get out of the Dubai cauldron for his adventures with the OPP and OGKhK.
On December 23, 2022, members of the RGK at the BEB wrote a letter to Prime Minister Denis Shmygal and asked to conduct an independent institutional assessment of the effectiveness of the BEB’s activities (this is of course not an audit, yes, sir).
And so on March 24, 2023, the BEB hit the IMF’s structural beacons (Paragraph 22). It is at this moment that the process around BEB begins to rapidly become overgrown with parenthood. Experts and assistants are already buzzing.
Somewhere in the fall of 2023, Alexander Lemenov and I strangely disappear from being involved in the activities of the parliamentary VSK. It happened.
Already 12/12/2023 The memorandum on financial and economic policy, updated as part of the second revision of the EFF extended financing program with the International Monetary Fund, has 12 new structural beacons, including the restart of the Economic Security Bureau (EBES) until the end of June 2024.
We are here. While there is a battle between the project from the Cabinet of Ministers (10439 of 01/29/2024) and from deputies, business and everyone else (10439-2 of 02/12/2024).
And everything seems clear, we need to support the bill from deputies and business, well, let’s go ahead and all that. But, having opened the table of edits, for some reason I see that members of the RGK are not entirely necessary in the personnel commission, there is already order there. I see a simple interest in this - to remove the bad predecessors by telling about their crimes, but to take their holy successors not on such conditions that they do not become troubled, but on such conditions that their troubles are not so noticeable. To make them last longer.
Neither bill is perfect, and that's okay. But. If the idea is that 3 years of hard work is worth it, so that the personnel commission of the RGK BEB goes to hell, and we have new fighters for BEB here somewhere, then I would like to say the following:
Dear business, dear deputies, respected everyone, it’s good that we, as the RGK BEB, coped with our work so effectively that public oversight of personnel processes over the BEB lost its relevance forever. Not like in all other bodies where the Council of Public Control also has a personnel function. Therefore, we, as RGK, go with a sense of accomplishment, and you, as a business, let’s not lag behind us. I hope that people who have achieved significant results in tax reform will do a better job in the future.
