Competitions at the State Bureau of Investigations: statistics are stubborn

Competitions at the State Bureau of Investigations: statistics are stubborn

As is known, this spring two parallel competitions immediately began for positions in the newly created law enforcement body — the State Bureau of Investigations 3.

The external selection commission, composed of "political representatives" (3 persons from the government, parliament, and the president), selects mid-level managers. I wrote about this in a previous blog. The situation then was not very cheerful, because according to an analysis by Avtomaydan carried out using the methodology of the expert organization StateWatch, only 45% of people had no reputational stains in their biographies and professional activities. I described more about the "hot traps" and political deal-making in the pages of Dzerkalo Tyzhnia. This time we will tell parallel stories.

Overall, the results of selecting mid-level leadership for the SBI satisfied few. In most cases criticism was voiced, and it truly deserves to be heard. All the more so when individuals with extremely negative reputations entered leadership positions:

– the first investigative department was entrusted to Yevhen Shevtsov, who not only has a negative reputation among law enforcement officers, but whose wife is a multimillionaire with a business operating in a rather dubious field (online games, betting);

– the third investigative department (military crimes) was headed by the odious prosecutor Artem Buhaets;

– the head of the internal control department became ex-SBU officer Bohdan Chobitok;

– the media and public relations department was given to Maryana Haiovska-Kovbasiuk, who could not explain the sources of funds for her husband’s property — he worked as a prosecutor his whole life — and therefore was eliminated from the competition for the chief specialist of the same department during the interview with commission N1 (central apparatus).

Recall also that selection commission N2 conducted its testing at the Service Centers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (formerly MREO) without anonymizing the data — candidates were simply seated at preassigned computers. Then the polygraph was oddly canceled and interviews were conducted by three people (the commission has 5 members in total). Of course, this commission was chaired by SBI director’s adviser Oleh Shram. Sources say that he was once "dismissed under an article" from the prosecutor’s office for failing to submit documents to the court in the "LAZ" case.

It is also worth mentioning the so‑called public representative, lawyer Petro Varyshko.

He strangely fully supported ALL decisions — starting from testing in the former MREO buildings to voting for odious deputies of heads of territorial departments. Either out of misunderstanding or with malicious intent, the representative of a well-known NGO simply plays into the hands of the ruling elites in establishing control over the SBI.

And now an example of when civil society fights with all its might for a result and achieves that result. This concerns the attempts of StateWatch and Avtomaydan to succeed in the selection of civil servants and investigators for the SBI central apparatus. As noted above, we had previously developed a methodology for analyzing candidates, according to which analysts filtered all (!!!) candidates for investigator positions in the central apparatus. And it was this information that I, as secretary of the selection commission, used during interviews to weed out dishonest candidates.

Thus several "interesting" people missed out on positions: Anton Drozd from the prosecutor group "Bald Birds," the "Euromaidan" prosecutor Pavlo Holovko, the aforementioned wife of the former Lviv region prosecutor Maryana Haiovska-Kovbasiuk, and several other odious individuals.

Statistics are stubborn. And now I will show the results of our joint work.

Under quotas "a" (prosecutor investigators) and "b" (investigators from other units), 75 candidates were chosen and these are the ones we recommend for the positions. They were all divided into three categories (by "reputational" colors) — green (no risks), yellow (minor risks), and red (high risks).

As a result, among the above-mentioned 75 potential investigators:

58 people — "green."

17 people — "yellow."

Among these 17 people who have certain risks, 11 — did not know about the obligation to declare property that is not owned but is used by them. 3 — have specific questions regarding assets. 1 — a murky situation where they were nevertheless marked "green." Another 2 — dubious closure of criminal proceedings. And the last one — was mentioned on the blogs of a not very objective resource called Korrespondent.

As a result, we have almost 80% of potential investigators who did not "appear" in dubious cases during their professional careers. Another 11 — should read the Law "On Prevention of Corruption" more carefully so that the right to use an apartment is declared in the e-declaration. Overall, if you count them together, more than 90% of those who will investigate SBI cases can become a support for civil society.

I have already seen on the Internet the words of SBI Director Roman Truba about the success of commission N1’s work. But I state responsibly that Truba had NO ROLE in the work of our commission. Moreover, he created extraordinary obstacles to our activities. I would advise Roman Mykhailovych to associate himself with the work of commission N2 (for territorial departments), which is completely (!!!) under his control. We will definitely analyze whom Truba’s adviser Oleh Shram chose together with lawyer Varyshko and Justice Ministry employee Yakymchuk. And we will publish that data.

And finally, we will not close our eyes to what plays almost a key role in the work of law enforcement bodies. I mean HOW and WHO will manage investigators. And here total control from the media and the public is indispensable. A few battles may be lost, but this is far from defeat in the war. Especially with the next presidential and parliamentary races on the horizon, during which the political map will be redistributed and, as a result, SBI leadership will begin to orient toward new elites. God grant that these elites be pro-European in values and approaches to state governance.

Oleksandr LYEMENOV