On March 4, the Commission announced the three winners of the competition for the selection of the NABU Director. Subsequently, the winner should be chosen by the Cabinet of Ministers.
According to the commission, among all the participants, Serhii Hupiak (Head of the 4-th Investigative Department of the Territorial Department of the SBI in Khmelnytskyi), Semen Kryvonos (Head of the State Inspectorate for Architecture and Urban Planning), and Roman Osypchuk (Head of the Internal Control Department of the NABU) are the worthiest of the position of the NABU Director.
Commission members Karen Greenaway and Oleksii Savchuk refused to vote for the election of the three finalists because, according to them, they did not support these candidates. However, both Ms. Greenaway and Mr. Savchuk stressed that they hoped for a reasonable approach of the Cabinet of Ministers to the choice of a worthy head of the NABU.
“The NABU Director is one of the key persons who directly influence the fight against high-profile corruption in Ukraine. The selection was thorough and quite scrupulous,” comments Kateryna Ryzhenko, Deputy Executive Director of TI Ukraine for Legal Affairs, on the competition. “All the interviews, both for integrity and competence, were really thorough and provided an opportunity to show the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates. In the final stages, several candidates proved themselves deserving of the position. So, now we hope that the Cabinet of Ministers will be as balanced in its approach and that we will find out the name of the future head of the NABU in the near future. We, for our part, will carefully monitor the activities of the new NABU Director.”
The Prime Minister will select the future Director of the NABU out of the three winners of the competition chosen by the Commission and submit him for approval of the government.
Let us remind you that a total of 21 candidates passed to the interview stages. According to the results of testing for knowledge of legislation and general abilities, 22 people were to reach the interview stage. However, after additional verification, the selection commission found that the candidate Ruslan Habrielian did not have enough leadership experience, so, he was removed from participation in the competition, and candidate Yevhenii Tenytskyi withdrew from the competition during integrity interviews.
Before the interviews, Transparency International Ukraine analyzed all the candidates who passed the testing stage and formed a list of questions to which the candidates provided their answers at the stage of integrity interviews. TI Ukraine told about the details of these interviews on Telegram.
This publication was prepared with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of Transparency International Ukraine and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
All the interviews, both for integrity and competence, were really thorough and provided an opportunity to show the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates. So, now we hope that the Cabinet of Ministers will be as balanced in its approach.
Kateryna Ryzhenko