Control over ARMA's activities exists only on paper: the public council is not functioning and the audit is blocked
Kyiv • UNN
The work of ARMA is not transparent due to the lack of external audit and blocking of the public council. A former official criticizes the leadership for populism and the inability to conduct a full audit this year.
The work of the Asset Recovery and Management Agency remains non-transparent and uncontrolled due to the lack of external audit and blocking of the work of the public council. This was stated by Vladyslav Romanov, former head of the Central Interregional Territorial Department of the ARMA, in an exclusive commentary to UNN .
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Recently, Transparency International Ukraine presented a report on Ukraine's achievements in anti-corruption reform for the period from February 2014 to March 2024. Among other things, anti-corruption activists emphasized the need for an independent audit of the ARMA to improve its performance.
According to Romanov, it will definitely not be possible to conduct a full-fledged external audit at ARMA this year, as the commission that is supposed to oversee this procedure by law has not yet been formed.
The commission consisting of representatives of the Cabinet of Ministers, the Verkhovna Rada and the President, which is supposed to control the actual external audit and the procedure for selecting the company that conducts the external audit, has not yet been formed... This is important. Therefore, we have a situation where a full-fledged external audit will not be conducted this year
According to him, there is currently no mechanism of external control over the work of the ARMA, including the public council.
In fact, the Public Council has not been allowed to work for a year and a half, and has been obstructed in its functions of controlling the activities of the ARMA. These are legal instruments, but they do not exist de facto today
He emphasized that the team of the new head of the ARMA, Olena Duma, although it declares transparency in its work, is nothing more than “serious populism.
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Three weeks ago, all members of the Public Council at ARMA resigned from their positions. Thus, the ARMA was left without external control at all, and therefore, the activities of this body cannot be called transparent.
In general, statements about the need for an independent external audit of the ARMA have been made repeatedly. Amid the criticism, ARMA Head Olena Duma even made a statement that she had ordered an audit of the agency's activities for 2023 from the Accounting Chamber.
MP Oleksiy Kucherenko believesthat the results of the audit of the Accounting Chamber may be grounds for dismissal of ARMA head Olena Duma.
