Chairman of the Board of Transparency International Ukraine Andrii Marusov told about the situation with the competition to select NAPC members.
Andrii Marusov has refused to participate in selection process of candidates to the National Agency for Prevention of Corruption.
«Why participate in the commission where we cannot influence what is happening there? Just in order to be in the commission and, by our participation to legitimize it, giving hope to active citizens all over the country that it will be possible to choose decent members of the NAPC? It makes no sense. It is better to focus on a different activity that can help to create a proper, legitimate NAPC than to bless the process that will yield no result.
Back in spring, the same members of the Government proposed an option of adopting a new law, cancellation of collegiality, establishing the position of the NAPC’s Director, meaning de facto a full reset of the whole agency. But, as it seems, the power elite has abandoned this option and the remaining option is to elect two lacking members of NAPC.
Later came the resignation of Ruslan Riaboshapka, who was responsible for settlement of conflicts of interest, then Radetskyi resigned, who was responsible for checking the officials’ e-declaration. And it became obvious that the NAPC was not viable, as was its management –Nataliia Korchak should resign too,” stated Andrii Marusov.
Andrii Marusov is convinced that the NAPC is becoming politically dependent.
“On the one hand, it is clear that the power elite benefits if the NAPC is more alive than dead if it carried out some activities merely as a part of the plan on visa liberalization. On the other hand, they benefit if this or that question can be solved by a telephone call, plus let’s keep in mind that the elections are coming soon. And the NAPC has a huge amount of authority that can be used by politicians for their own benefit.
The same scandal over Poroshenko’s Spanish villa. We, for one, are convinced that it is a violation of law, and he should have shown this Spanish villa in his e-declaration. But he has not done this, so the NAPC had to inspect it. And it did, but found no violations,” explained Chairman of the Board of TI Ukraine.
Andrii Marusov also told us about the current situation with inspection of e-declarations..
“We are speaking about a huge delay with the whole inspection. Only now, the NAPC has started to speak that they are going to implement an automatic check of e-declarations. But it should have been done a year ago, and it was possible. But they constantly delayed it, and this raises not only the question of political affectability but also of professionalism and management skills,” said Andrii Marusov.
