From the very beginning, the launch and functioning of the Agency caused great interest of the European Union. Creation of the ARMA was part of the action plan on liberalization of Ukraine’s visa regime with the EU. A significant part of the effort made by the EU Anti-Corruption Initiative (EUACI) aims at helping the Agency.

A year after the ARMA started working, Western asset recovery and management experts invited by EUACI visited Ukraine to audit the effort of the still new agency. DW was able to talk to them and ask them what they thought of the first professional steps of the Ukrainian colleagues.

Why It Is Important

Explaining EU’s scrutiny of a separate agency that would work on finding and management of questionable property, MONEYVAL member John Ringguth says this subject has become of great importance for European law enforcement in the recent decades.

Those years demonstrated that the fight against organized crime is often ineffective, since after leaving the prison, criminals got access to illegally obtained property anyway. “That is why many countries have changed and continue to change their legislation to seize such property – from financial assets and securities to real estate and cars,” says the expert. In this situation, European countries started rapidly creating agencies that would search for such assets and preserve their value if they were seized.

Like in Europe

Even though the Ukrainian ARMA has only been working for a year, Western experts assess the first steps of the new agency quite positively. First of all, CARIN founder Jill Thomas points out that the Ukrainian colleagues have all the necessary powers and tools to find assets in order to freeze or seize them subsequently, both in Ukraine and abroad. “When the ARMA was created, the different models of such agencies that exist in Europe were taken into account. I cannot say that the Ukrainian agency is the exact copy of any one of them, but its functions are fully consistent with those of any European office for asset recovery,” says Thomas.

She also says that the Ukrainian agency’s management has established good partnerships with its Western colleagues. It can help not only to obtain information on suspicious assets abroad but also to help with international investigations involving property or other valuable objects on the Ukrainian territory.

Premature Conclusions

Ringguth praises the successful human resources policy of the head of the ARMA. In the conversation with DW, he said that everyone he talked to in the Agency were “young, motivated and competent.” “Many similar agencies made major mistakes starting from scratch, which harmed their reputation for a long time. ARMA has managed to avoid such missteps so far,” says the expert.

Pedro Gomes Pereira, a Brazilian lawyer, holds a post-graduate degree in Constitutional Law and has over 10 years’ experience in the field of asset recovery and in preventing and combating corruption, organised crime and money laundering, recommends to wait with the conclusions, though. He believes it is too early to judge the Agency’s work, since some cases where asset recovery and management are involved can take decades. “Yes, the ARMA currently looks like a European institution, but there has been too little time to judge,” explains Pereira.

Boring Victories

It is already clear, says Ringguth, that the Ukrainian agency needs to make ore effort to succeed. He believes communication with the public and the colleagues in the law enforcement system is crucial for the ARMA. While the public needs information on the actual benefits of the ARMA’s work for the society, the colleagues need to be made aware of the tools that the Agency may provide. “Many people consider the news that the ARMA received a certain asset for management boring, while the courts do not use special seizure stipulated by the Ukrainian legislation, thus losing the chance to preserve illegally obtained assets for the national budget,” says the expert.

Without judicial help, the ARMA has its hands pretty much tied, explains Pereira. “The Agency works in a reactive mode, it needs to be approached by law enforcers or judges to track certain assets or start their management,” says the expert. Thus, without establishment of proper cooperation with colleagues, the ARMA will have rather limited opportunities.

The post One Year of ARMA: Achievements and Plans first appeared on Transparency International Ukraine.

The contest will be held by online voting system on September 5, 2017 from 9:00 to 21:00. After reviewing the candidates, the competition commission selected six candidates only to vote for. This number is lacking to start the next step of the competition, and therefore the launching of the Public Council at ARMA.

It is for the first time in Ukraine when the state body is established with the purpose to identify, seek and manage the proceeds of crime and money, and through corruption schemes as well. It is therefore essential to ensure proper and transparent public control. ARMA Public Council has a wide range of powers and has the right to influence the Agency’s development and its activities. Representatives of the council will monitor budget expenditures, provide expert advise on draft regulations of ARMA, take part in the selection of candidates for vacancies in the National Agency, etc. The requirements for the candidates and the details of the voting can be found following the link.

This publication has been prepared with the financial support of the European Union. Its content is the sole responsibility of Transparency International Ukraine and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.

Transparency International Ukraine works with the National Agency within the project Enhancing the Role of Civil Society in Public Finance Oversight, financed by the European Union. The project aims at empowering civil society and journalists with effective anti-corruption, asset recovery and anti-money laundering tools to perform the public finance oversight, support the launch of Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA) and to update the list of Politically Exposed Persons. Find out more at https://goo.gl/Jgr9ic

The post Apply to the Competition to the Public Council of ARMA! first appeared on Transparency International Ukraine.