The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine unanimously decided to appoint Semen Kryvonos to the post of director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.
The government made the decision at a meeting on March 6.
Semen Kryvonos in different years held positions in the Holosiyiv District State Administration of Kyiv, the Obukhiv City and District Department of Justice, and the Main Department of Justice in the Kyiv Region. He was also the first deputy head of the Odesa Customs Department of the Federal Tax Service, the acting director of the state enterprise Ploskivskiy Breeding Plant, and from 2021 he headed the State Inspection of Architecture and Urban Planning of Ukraine.
Kryvonos has no experience of working in law enforcement agencies, but he claimed that non-standard solutions will be needed to respond to the new challenges of NABU — and this can be provided by a new person who will come from outside the system and has no experience of working in law enforcement agencies.
The appointment of Kryvonos was preceded by a competition, as a result of which the commission, consisting, in particular, of international partners, identified three candidates for the post of NABU director.
Kryvonos was mentioned in two cases involving a $120,000 bribe — in one he was a corruption whistleblower, in the other, according to the investigation, he demanded a bribe. The second case was closed without proving his guilt.
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, reacting to the appointment of Kryvonos, said that Ukraine fulfilled all the recommendations of the European Union when receiving the status of a candidate for EU accession.
"Ukraine has now fulfilled all seven EU recommendations, which were determined upon receiving candidate status. This demonstrates our determination to move to the start of accession negotiations already this year," the Prime Minister noted.
- Artem Sytnyk, the previous director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, was appointed to this position on April 16, 2015 by the decree of the fifth President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko. On April 16, 2022, his term of office expired, and NABU was temporarily headed by his first deputy Gizo Uglava.
- The start of the competition for the head of NABU was blocked until August 2022. In December, the Selection Committee finished accepting documents from candidates (there were 78 of them), and already on March 4, 2023, it announced three finalists, among whom was Semen Kryvonos.