The commission did not support the only candidate for the head of ARMA. He reacted

The competition commission for the selection of the head of the Assets Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA) twice did not support the candidacy of the sole candidate Viktor Dubovyk in the vote on April 17.

This is reported by Transparency International Ukraine.

Both times, four members voted in favor and two against. By law, a decision is considered adopted if at least four members of the commission, including at least two members from international partners, voted in favor. This requirement proved decisive.

Two experts voted against Dubovykʼs candidacy: an asset recovery specialist at the Basel Institute for Governance Rita Simoes and the Deputy Executive Director of Transparency International Ukraine Kateryna Ryzhenko.

Simoes stated that, in her opinion, the justifications for the sources of Dubovykʼs assets "reduced to statements that are difficult to verify independently", and this does not meet the requirements of a position of this level.

Ryzhenko said that Dubovik provided many explanations for the origin of the assets, but not all of them were supported by documents. According to her, the candidateʼs answers to questions directly related to the work of ARMA were too superficial.

Dubovik himself reported the next day that he had sent additional mathematical calculations regarding his assets. He emphasized that these were not additional documents, but merely a mathematical summation of the figures he had previously provided to the commission in supporting documents.

"If the reason for not voting was indeed the reasons stated, and not some other reason, then these additional calculations should finally dispel any doubts," he noted.

Dubovyk added that his status is currently uncertain: although the commission did not support his candidacy, it did not reject it either — this requires an additional vote and the decision to be supported by three members of the commission, two of whom are representatives of international partners.

Lawyer Viktor Dubovyk was the head of the anti-raiding office of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine until 2024. Last year, he participated in the competition for the head of the Bureau of Economic Security.

• On July 27, 2022, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law on the reform of ARMA, which provides for new requirements for the head of the agency, a competition with the participation of international experts, transparent management rules, and control over the transfer of assets.
• After that, Olena Duma wrote a letter of resignation from the post of head of ARMA. Currently, the agency is temporarily headed by Yaroslava Maksymenko, who was the deputy head of the Agency for European Integration.

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