"A candidate who scored 17 out of 100 points reached the final of the customs chief competition, simply because he is from NABU" - experts criticized competitions for state bodies

The winners of the competition for the position of customs chief were NABU employees who, according to the results of three stages of testing, did not even make it into the top ten. Profile experts declare the discredit of competitions for leadership positions in state bodies, since the only criterion was the candidates' affiliation with the Bureau. 

According to experts, the negative effect of the competition is reinforced by the existing conflict of interest: a memorandum signed in December between the commission and NABU on checking candidates for integrity. 

"Thanks to anti-reforms, everything has become much more transparent and simpler: it is enough to hold some position in NABU, any, and the surname does not matter, as does experience, knowledge, competence, capability, ability, results of competitive procedures, place in the rating, previous merits, etc.," – commented the well-known lawyer Oleg Shram on the results of the competition for the position of head of the State Customs Service. 

According to information from the specialized resource Customs of Ukraine (and not only), which covers customs affairs in Ukraine, NABU employees Ruslan Damentsov and Orest Mandziy were chosen as the winners of the competition, who, according to the results of three stages of this testing, did not even make it into the top ten among candidates in the overall rating. 

"If they just wanted to appoint one of them, they would have just appointed them, and not staged this masquerade," the resource noted. 

Shram added that the "winners" scored only 34.6 and 17.8 points out of 100 possible in practical tasks, taking 12th and 13th places in the rating. 

Ex-prosecutor of the SAP Stanislav Bronytskyi questioned the expediency of competitions as a phenomenon and declared their discredit due to predictability and controllability. 

"It is thanks to competitions that we got Klymenko, who trades airports and agreements, Synyuk, who lives under a birch tree and informs members of the organization about investigative actions, and Kryvonos with a child, land, and a criminal trail that any NABU case defendant would envy," he emphasized. 

Competitions, according to him, have long turned into a sham and a procedure for weeding out proactive and principled, honest and incorruptible individuals. 

"These competitions do not select the best and strongest candidates, not those who possess unique knowledge and abilities, not people with vast experience. They select those who are compliant, those who will not ask unnecessary questions, who will not question requests from above," Bronytskyi concluded. 

Earlier, political expert Oleg Posternak reported that the competition commission for the selection of the head of the State Customs Service of Ukraine got into a scandal: its members signed a memorandum of cooperation with NABU on checking candidates for integrity, although representatives of the Bureau themselves are applying for this position. "NABU showed the Russians how to influence Ukrainian state bodies without a single shot. Foreign guys are jointly raiding entire government bodies to manage them from abroad," he wrote.