A lawyer has criticised the re-evaluation process at the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine: Tsyvinskyi’s friend – the head of the Lviv regional office – was the first to come under scrutiny
This has been reported by Ukrainian News.
As the lawyer noted, Mykhailo Borusovsky was appointed to the post of chief specialist at the ESBU on 10 September 2025 without having gone through a competitive selection process. Just 20 days later, he was assigned to temporarily act as head of the ESBU’s territorial office in Lviv Oblast. The peculiarity of Borusovsky’s status lies in the fact that, whilst he effectively performs the duties of head of the regional office, his official position is that of an ordinary specialist in the ESBU’s legal department.
“Borusovsky and the director of the ESBU have a long history of working within the law enforcement system in the Lviv region: the director of the ESBU from 2003 to 2015, and Borusovsky from 2005 to 2019. It was precisely following the appointment of the new director that Borusovsky was incorporated into the ESBU’s structure as a chief specialist, and shortly afterwards was effectively put in charge of the Lviv Regional Office,” the lawyer wrote.
Bronievytskyi also pointed out that in his 2025 declaration, the newly appointed head of the Lviv Territorial Administration stated that he and his family were renting a 74.9 sq m flat in Lviv. The landlord is Rostyslav Matselyukh, the owner of “Sykhivska Narodna Torhivlia” LLC, which owns the “Narodnyi” food market in Sykhiv, and also operates a sole trader business in the non-specialised wholesale trade of food, beverages and tobacco products.
According to the lawyer, this fact is of particular significance in the context of the so-called ‘fruit case’, which was previously reported by Ukrainian News. This concerns the artificial reduction by investigators of the amount of damages caused by almost a third in the criminal proceedings concerning Fetsat’s sole trader business.
“During searches carried out immediately after Borusovsky’s appointment, as part of these proceedings, off-the-books accounts, cash and collectable coins made of precious metals were seized. Subsequently, the case strangely shifted the focus of the investigation: instead of the episode concerning the wholesale trade in fruit and vegetables and losses of over 49 million hryvnias, the ESBU announced the conclusion of the investigation into an individual who allegedly sold collectable coins, had failed to declare income, had repaid 13 million hryvnias in taxes and had been exempted from criminal liability. “Thus, the case involving losses of over 49 million hryvnias ended with a completely different episode involving 13 million hryvnias and the exemption of the individual concerned from criminal liability,” noted Stanislav Bronevitsky, adding that the sale of fruit and vegetables, which was the subject of the proceedings, took place mainly at the food market in Sykhiv, owned by Rostyslav Matselyukh – the very same landlord of the head of the Lviv ESBU.
The lawyer also drew attention to the fact that during the 2018 recruitment process at the State Bureau of Investigation (DBR), when asked by the selection panel where Borusovsky had obtained the money for his Touareg, he stated that he had saved up the money by eating only what his mother sent him, not using restaurants and not buying any groceries at all.
“According to the same sources within the circles involved in the assessment process, Mykhailo Borusovskyi will pass the competition successfully and without any problems and will be appointed as the full-fledged head of the Lviv Territorial Directorate of the State Security Service. What a spectacle of integrity,” remarked the lawyer.
He also added that, during Borusovsky’s tenure as head of the Lviv Regional Office of the State Security Service, there had been many negative incidents which were being hushed up. As an example, Bronevitsky cited an incident involving the consumption of alcohol in the workplace and sexual harassment of a female Bureau employee in March this year. The scandal was hushed up and no internal investigation was ever carried out, in order to conceal the incident from the Public Oversight Council, which examines such cases in its disciplinary committee.
The editorial team at ThePublic has already contacted the Economic Security Bureau for an official comment regarding the material published by Stanislav Bronevitsky.
It should be recalled that the lawyer had previously called for public access to the meetings of the Bureau’s performance appraisal committees, citing a lack of transparency in decision-making and the failure to address corruption violations.
