ARMA's “glossy transparency”: former head of public council explains why he resigned

After the self-dissolution of the public council, the Asset Recovery and Management Agency has no external control at all, and therefore ARMA's activities cannot be called transparent. This was stated by Ihor Chobitko, a lawyer and former chairman of the public council at the ARMA, in an exclusive commentary to UNN .

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Recently, all members of the ARMA Public Council resigned from their positions. At the meeting, they emphasized the lack of transparency in the work of the ARMA and the fact that the agency creates artificial obstacles to the implementation of public control over its activities. In addition, the council members stated that the ARMA leadership systematically ignores their appeals and does not involve them in the development of regulations, in violation of the law.

Ihor Chobitko noted that the existence of the public council is provided for by law, and therefore it will be “difficult for ARMA to exist without this body,” as there are certain decisions that must be coordinated with the council

There are two bodies that, according to the law, control ARMA's activities. This is the external control, which consists of three people: one from the President, one from the Verkhovna Rada and one from the Cabinet of Ministers. But this external commission, which evaluates the activities of the ARMA, has not been created since the beginning of the ARMA's activities and still has not been created. And the second controlling body is 9 people from the public who are selected through a competition - we are the ones. Now there is no controlling body. Moreover, there was also an internal control, whose activities were effectively canceled during the change of leadership. So today, in my opinion, there is no effective control that could provide the public with answers to questions about the transparent activities of the ARMA

According to him, the ARMA leadership is creating a “glossy transparency” of its work, i.e., creating a picture on social media that will demonstrate to an ordinary citizen that the agency is working.

From this point of view, it is transparent. But if you understand it documentarily, or if you check it from the public side through access to information, real verification, conclusions of the experts who work, then I cannot call the ARMA's activities transparent

Chobitko said that after Olena Duma joined ARMA, the public council tried to establish relations with her, but failed to do so for a year. The main reason why the relationship did not work out, he said, was the concealment of documents from the council members.

The law explicitly provides that we have access to all documents, except for those that constitute state secrets. But for some reason, we were denied information, citing commercial secrets, relationships with contractors, and the need to obtain permission from them to provide us with information - something that contradicts Article 12 of the ARMA Law

He said that the ARMA leadership denied the council members access to the information, citing state secrets. However, the public council asked the SBU to verify whether the information was indeed a state secret and received a response that it was not.

Our access to information is directly provided for by the current law on the ARMA... We could not analyze the information disseminated by the ARMA itself, including on the website, to analyze it for compliance with the documents or materials on which we could confirm the information. That is, we actually had such a discussion all the time, but we did not actually have access to the information

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Recently, the ARMA and its head, Olena Duma, have been increasingly involved in scandals, and experts have made statements about the agency's ineffective work and the need for an international audit of its activities.

Recently, a new scandal has begun to erupt around ARMA because the agency has been managing about 21,000 Russian-Belarusian railcars for more than two years and has not found a use for them. Only after the media coverage, Olena Duma announcedthat ARMA had selected a manager for a batch of 436 seized railcars and was launching tender procedures for another 100 railcars.

Former MP Ihor Mosiychuk believesthat the head of the ARMA, Olena Duma, may have deliberately delayed the process of finding managers for the Russian-Belarusian railcars, which indicates that she may have been “working for the enemy.

In addition, there are many questions about the valuation of assets that ARMA transfers to management. After all, the agency has to manage assetsseized in criminal proceedings in order to preserve or increase their economic value. In order to preserve or increase the value of an asset, it must be valued and, by law, entered into the Register of Seized Assets. However, the reality is different, and a good example of this is the story of the Truskavets sanatorium and the garbage trucks transferred to ARMA, which do not contain any information about their valuation.

Security expert Serhiy Shabovta suggeststhat ARMA selectively publishes information on the valuation of seized property because it is beneficial to them for corrupt reasons. In his opinion, such facts should be addressed by law enforcement.

In addition, in recent years, the ARMA has accumulated a lot of property that could not only generate revenue for the state budget, but also be useful during a full-scale war. For example, most of the sanatoriums that have been transferred to ARMA could accept wounded soldiers for rehabilitation or provide shelter to IDPs.

In addition, ARMA has a lot of heavy equipment that could work for the benefit of the state. Excavators and bulldozers could be used to strengthen the defense or restore infrastructure, but in fact they are idle .