Representatives of the state in the competition commission for the position of the head of the Bureau of Economic Security (BES) disrupted the last stage of the competition, namely the interview with the candidates, citing the need for additional verification by the Security Service of Ukraine. This was reported by ZN.ua with reference to a statement by MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak.
‘I won’t go into details here, I’ll just state three things: the team is from the OP…; they will disrupt the competition through three members of the commission from the government; then the competition will be blocked under various pretexts. I think they will come up with something about security, so that it is as stupid and open as possible,’ he wrote on social media.
A few hours later, it turned out that the MP was right. Although all the candidates passed the special vetting on 15 May, according to Yuriy Ponomarenko, the state representative in the commission, information emerged at the last minute that at least three candidates might have ties to Russia.
‘Now, when the very survival of Ukrainian statehood is at stake, we must be as careful as possible. Only the Security Service of Ukraine can be the only authoritative source of verification of information about possible ties between the candidates and Russia,’ she said during the meeting.
Commenting on the commission’s actions, the MP said: ‘Why are they doing this? Because they can. After they disrupted the customs reform, saw that society as a whole does not care, business is silent, and international partners did nothing about it…., they decided to disrupt the election of the new BES chairman.’
According to him, ‘the OP immediately abandons the IMF (the deadline for the election is 1 July), the EU and the G7… They expect that they will not be able to do anything but tweet.’