The commission’s lack of transparency and its turning a blind eye to corruption – a lawyer has criticised the conduct of the ESBU’s performance appraisal
Bronetsky is convinced that if this continues, the whole process will ultimately result in the dismissal of those deemed undesirable and the retention of those who should remain in their posts.
Furthermore, in his view, given the documented violations, the question should be raised as to whether all interviews should be made public for public scrutiny, and a request should be made to ensure that all interviews are preserved and that the media on which they are recorded cannot be destroyed.
“By no means are all interviews broadcast. It turns out that if a person simply states that they do not wish their interview to be made public, the broadcast is simply stopped and the interview takes place behind closed doors. For some reason, interviews at the SAPO and NABU are broadcast, but not here. This is a very worrying trend. Given the complete failures with competitions and appraisals, tomorrow all interviews will be closed to the public,” noted the former SAPO prosecutor.
According to his information, for certain posts at the ESBU – among those whose heads did not pass the interview – there are already suitable candidates from NABU. In particular, a detective from NABU’s Third General Investigation Department is set to become the head of the Chernivtsi Territorial Office of the ESBU. Meanwhile, the current head of the Odesa Territorial Unit of NABU is set to become the head of the Odesa Territorial Unit of the Economic Security Bureau.
Among the staff of the Economic Security Bureau, excerpts from whose interviews were published by Stanislav Bronevitsky, are three heads of departments and one head of a division.
Specifically, this refers to Lyudmyla Bondarenko, head of the Economic Security Bureau’s Department of Classified and Confidential Work.
“In 2012, Ms Bondarenko bought a flat in Kyiv for $120,000. In 2015, she submitted a declaration in which she did not disclose this value and continued to do so from 2016 to 2025. She says it just happened that way. By a decision of the assessment committee, Lyudmyla Mykhailivna Bondarenko was recognised as having successfully passed her interview,” wrote the lawyer.
He also published an excerpt from the interview with Natalia Boguslavska, deputy head of the ESBU’s personnel department, whose son and daughter-in-law also work at the ESBU.
“During the interview, it emerged that Boguslavska had not declared her husband, who had had problems with the law. She says this was because they were temporarily living apart, but were still married. It also emerged during the interview that, for quite some time, her husband had been the founder of a number of companies, including Linden White Ltd, Hromads’kyi Dozor and Oksi Rent Ltd. Criminal proceedings are underway regarding the activities of some of these companies. Boguslavska says she was unaware of these companies because her husband had not told her about them, “as he did not want to upset her”. “By decision of the assessment committee, Natalia Ihorivna Bohuslavska was deemed to have successfully passed the interview,” noted Bronevitsky.
In another of the videos released, Andriy Myzyuk, head of the ESBU’s audit department, was unable to explain to the commission members how he had acquired the plot of land on which a garden house, a garage and a gazebo are situated, and why he had not declared them in his declaration.
Separately, the lawyer drew attention to the interview with a former employee of the NABU Legal Department, and now acting head of the ESBU’s Legal Department, Oleg Volodymyrovych Tsybuľa, who moved to work at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau at the suggestion of a former colleague who, at the time, headed the NABU admissions committee, and subsequently joined the Bureau.
“During the interview, Tsybulia said that he realised he looked like someone trying to hide something and pointed out that the director of the ESBU had told him to answer the phone when he received a call. After that, the deputy director rang Tsybula and offered him the chance to continue working at the ESBU. When asked why Tsybulia had moved from NABU to the ESBU for half the salary, he hesitated and stammered, but never actually formulated an answer. “By decision of the assessment committee, Oleg Volodymyrovych Tsybula has been recognised as having successfully passed the interview,” wrote Bronevitsky.
Another former employee of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau who now works at the ESBU is Yevhen Viktorovych Dzis, head of the ESBU’s polygraph detective unit.
According to Stanislav Bronevitsky, in 2018 Dzis took part in a joint round-table discussion with the wife of the ESBU director on ‘Current issues regarding the implementation of international standards for the use of polygraphs in Ukraine’.
“During the discussion, Dzis explained how he and his wife had been receiving their salaries in envelopes for a long time. As he himself put it, the salary was paid ‘under the table’. I would remind you that receiving a salary in an envelope constitutes a criminal offence under Article 172 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. By a decision of the assessment committee, Yevhen Viktorovych Dzis was deemed to have passed the interview successfully,” the lawyer concluded.
As previously reported by ThePublic, the appraisal of Economic Security Bureau staff is due to be completed within 18 months of Oleksandr Tsivinsky’s appointment as director of the ESBU, i.e. by February 2027. The government has allocated 244 million hryvnias for this process. The Bureau has received a further 1 million euros from the Netherlands for the reform.
