For more than half a year, the State Property Fund of Ukraine has been headed by lawyer Ivanna Smachilo. She became the acting head of the State Property Fund after the previous head, Vitaliy Koval, took the post of Minister of Agrarian Policy. The media and the public focused exclusively on his new position, while Smachilo remained unnoticed, although she headed one of the most influential bodies for managing state assets.
Who is Ivanna Smachilo
Ivanna Smachilo worked for many years as a legal advisor in private companies, a labor inspector in the Rivne Regional Committee of the Trade Union, and later engaged in advocacy for several years. Later, she was the head of the Main Territorial Department of Justice in the Rivne and Lviv regions.
Ivanna Smachilo took her first really noticeable position in 2018 - when she was appointed Deputy Minister of Justice in the government of Volodymyr Groysman. She worked in this position until September 2019. Some time after leaving her post at the Ministry of Justice, Smachilo became an advisor to the then head of the Rivne Regional State Administration, Vitaliy Koval (now the Minister of Agrarian Policy). In 2021, Koval appointed his advisor as Deputy Head of the Regional State Administration for Digitalization.
"Rivne team"
In November 2023, Vitaliy Koval received a new position - he headed the State Property Fund of Ukraine. And already in January, the Cabinet appointed Smachilo as his deputy in the Fund. Ihor Tymoshenko was also appointed as another deputy of Koval at the same time, who was also his deputy in the Regional State Administration.
That is, Koval brought his personnel reserve from trusted and trusted persons to the Fund, who went through the difficult path of managing the region with him, which, by the way, was mostly written about only in the context of ineffective, inconspicuous work and that Koval was about to be dismissed (especially after Andriy Bohdan, who lobbied for Koval's appointment as head of the Regional State Administration, left the post of head of the Office of the President).
But, probably, Koval and Smachilo have older connections. In order to understand this, it is necessary to delve into the biography of both.
Vitaliy Koval is a businessman from the city of Berezne, Rivne region, who, before his transition to the civil service, headed enterprises in the agricultural, transport and construction industries.
Berezne also appears in the business biography of Ivanna Smachilo's husband - Andriy. The latter was the founder and ultimate beneficiary of Berezneholod LLC (which once had a "registration" in Berezne) for a long time. He has now left this company and, together with his brother Taras, is one of the beneficiaries of the Association "Legal Protection of National Business", which studies market conditions and identifies public opinion.
But it is noteworthy that the already mentioned "Berezneholod" acts as one of the founders of this association.
And although Koval and the Smachilo family do not have direct business ties at first glance, it is difficult to imagine that businessmen from Berezne, whose population, according to open information, barely exceeds 13,000 people, did not intersect in any way. Moreover, both Koval and Ivanna Smachilo were quite active in public activities in Rivne even before their appointment to positions in the state vertical and, obviously, were familiar.
And when Koval headed the State Property Fund in 23, he, quite logically, decided to pull his people there, including Smachilo.
In September 2024, Koval was appointed to the position of Minister of Agrarian Policy, and the management of the State Property Fund passed into the hands of Smachilo without announcing a new competition. Although it is quite logical that the first deputy, Denys Shugaliy, who was the first deputy at the time of Koval's appointment to the ministerial post, should have become the acting head of the State Property Fund.
Such a personnel sequence raises a logical question - is it about management efficiency or continuing control over state assets through "one's own person"?
Ironically, back in 2020, Ivanna Smachilo in an interview stated:
"The common thing between my work in different cities and in different positions was that in Rivne, Lviv, and Kyiv there were many temptations. And most people succumb to them sooner or later. This is a normal production process. Starting with requests to get someone a job and ending with being more loyal to some of the millions of enforcement proceedings."
At the same time, her own career, which, at least in recent years, has been almost entirely connected with Vitaliy Koval, looks like an example of the same personnel loyalty that she publicly criticizes.
Not amber, but land
The fact that Ivanna Smachilo did not accidentally become the head of the State Property Fund is also hinted at by the joint "favorite" assets with Koval.
One of the most famous initiatives of the State Property Fund during Koval's time was the creation of the so-called "Land Bank". This is a system through which agricultural land owned by the state is transferred to the management of the Fund and subsequently put up for auction.
According to official information, this is a transparent mechanism for land lease through an auction. However, some experts point to the risks of concentration and controlled redistribution of resources.
After Ivanna Smachilo headed the State Property Fund, she became responsible for further promotion of the land direction.
Recently, the State Property Fund announced that it wants to withdraw more than 135,000 hectares of land from the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine. The Academy strongly opposed this and declared a threat to national food security and destruction of scientific infrastructure.
Instead of conclusions
So, it seems that the fact that Ivanna Smachilo headed the State Property Fund may not be an accidental coincidence, but an illustration of the so-called "hidden nepotism" and the transfer of "schemes" to trusted hands.
It was also not the subject of attention that Ivanna Smachilo was previously Koval's deputy, and even earlier - his subordinate in the Rivne Regional State Administration. If we analyze her career in recent years, this appointment looks like an example of informal personnel lobbying, when state positions are held by "own trusted people".
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