The winner of the competition for the position of head of the Bureau of Economic Security (BES) Oleksandr Tsyvinsky passed a polygraph test.
Sources informed Babel about this.
The check was conducted on August 5, and the result was successful. Babel has contacted the Security Service of Ukraine for confirmation.
A few days before, Tsyvinsky spoke with Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko — they agreed on a polygraph test. At the same time, Svyrydenko wrote that she expects to appoint the head of BES next week.
The MP from “Voice” Yaroslav Zheleznyak writes that a government meeting is scheduled for August 6 at 10:30 a.m.
What preceded
At the end of June, the competition for the position of the BES director was won by the detective of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) Oleksandr Tsyvinsky. His candidacy was submitted for consideration by the government on June 30. And on July 7, it became known that the government did not approve Tsyvinsky for the position of the BES director and is asking the commission to resubmit candidacies. The commission refused to review the winnerʼs candidacy.
The Cabinet of Ministers studied “additional materials from SBU” that “relate to national security issues” and contain “security assessments”. Such additional materials, for example, could have been the results of Tsyvinsky’s polygraph test. At least, SBU warned about this in a letter that the commission received on the day of voting for the winner of the competition. In it, SBU warned that it was still checking candidates, three of them have ties to Russia, and it did not rule out that it would have to check candidates with a polygraph. But according to Babel, neither Tsyvinsky nor the other contestants passed the polygraph.
Tsyvinsky himself stated that for him it was “a matter of principle” to find out what “security assessments” were the basis for the authorities’ respective decision. He stated that as a law enforcement officer he had “successfully passed all SBU inspections” for 10 years, and had also served in the Main Intelligence Directorate (known as GUR) of the Ministry of Defense since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
In an appeal published on the website of the Institute for Socio-Economic Transformation (ISET), more than 50 public organizations called on the new government to appoint Oleksandr Tsyvinsky as the new director of BES.
On July 24, the Selection Commission for the head of BES resubmitted documents on the appointment of Tsyvinsky to the Cabinet of Ministers. The MP from “Voice” Yaroslav Zheleznyak reported on July 20 that the government had not appointed Tsyvinsky to the position.
- On June 20, 2024, the Verkhovna Rada adopted in the second reading a bill on the reboot of BES. The bill provides for mandatory recertification of employees, and also establishes that international partners will have the decisive voice in the selection and recertification of employees.
- The law stipulates that the new head of BES must be elected by a commission of six members, half of whom are international experts with the right to cast a decisive vote.
- Rebooting the Bureau of Economic Security is one of the conditions for Ukraine in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Extended Fund Facility. EU support is also tied to this reform.
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