Candidate for the position of Director of the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine: “The future of the ESBU is about legality, efficiency and trust”

Candidate for the position of Director of the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine: “The future of the ESBU is about legality, efficiency and trust”

On January 24, the deadline for submitting documents for participation in the competition for the position of Director of the Bureau of Economic Security (ESBU) expired. The selection of the Head of the Bureau will involve foreigners – members of the commission – from the United States, Lithuania and Romania.

According to the terms of the competition, a citizen of Ukraine aged 35 or older, with a higher legal and/or economic education with a degree of at least a specialist (master's), at least 10 years of work experience in the specialty, and at least five years of experience in senior positions in government agencies, enterprises, institutions, organizations, regardless of ownership, may apply for the position of ESBU director.

There are currently 43 candidates for this position. Among them are employees of the NABU, ESBU, tax service, customs, business and prosecutors.

Among the latter is Attila Kovci, a prosecutor at the Prosecutor General's Office. He has more than 25 years of legal experience, including in investigating economic crimes and supporting public prosecution. Mind asked the candidate about his vision of reforming the Bureau, creating a system for countering economic risks, and problematic issues: cryptocurrency, the shadow tobacco market, gambling, conversion centers, bioethanol, and others.

- Until 2020, you worked as the Head of the Department of Legal Support and Development of Legislation in the Field of Plant Variety Rights Protection at the Ukrainian Institute of Plant Variety Expertise. Your CV shows 17 years of scientific experience. However, you have 15 years of experience in the tax police, including as the Head of the investigative department of the tax police in the Ternopil region. Did you combine this position with your scientific work?

- First of all, thank you for your careful preparation for the interview and attention to details that are really important. No, my scientific work lasted from 2016 to 2020, when I headed the legal support unit and the tender committee of the scientific and expert institution – the Ukrainian Institute of Plant Variety Expertise. In 2020, I resigned of my own free will, as the competition commission decided to appoint me to the position of prosecutor following the results of the first external selection to the Prosecutor General's Office.

Unfortunately, in the professional resume you mentioned, which was prepared by the secretariat of the Academic Council of the Institute, there was an unfortunate mistake, my total length of scientific work was incorrectly indicated. I will definitely contact the Institute to correct this mistake.

- Over these 15 years, you have had both resonances and conflicts in the Ternopil region. In particular, with the Party of Regions. What experience have you gained from this experience that you will implement in your new position?

- The future head needs to create many different prerequisites to ensure the effective operation of the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine, but the main one, in my opinion, is strict, unconditional compliance with the law by the Bureau's employees. This applies to all areas of the Bureau's activities, in particular: transparent competitive selection of employees; inability to abuse the procedural rights of detectives, in particular in situations of multi-day searches; eradication of the practice of registering criminal proceedings on false pretenses on the basis of analytical reports; ensuring the actual implementation of the requirements of the relevant Law of Ukraine “On the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine” regarding the organization of the Bureau's activities, which should be based on a risk-oriented approach (ROA –  Mind), etc.

- Your position on the purpose of the ESBU is not typical: you believe that decisions on resource allocation should be based solely on risks and how to minimize them, giving priority to criminal analysis. We know that you are an advocate of a risk-oriented approach, so to speak. Therefore, I have a rather frank question: please tell us in simple terms and with examples how you plan to change the ESBU's activities and what a “risk-oriented approach” to cases will mean in practice. In particular, obtaining a lot of information involves cooperation with other agencies, and there are always complaints about this, and this is not unique to Ukraine.

- Thank you for an interesting and really informative question. First of all, I would like to note that the application of the risk-based approach in the Bureau's activities should not be a matter of personal priorities or wishes of the Head, as the application of the ROA is a categorical requirement enshrined in Article 12 of the Law. However, the content of the ROA, the risk criteria used in its application, as well as the procedure for applying the ROA are approved by the Director of the Bureau.

Now let's get to the point and try to answer the question: how will the Bureau's activities change after the full implementation of the ROA?

First, the main emphasis should be placed on the fact that the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine, like any other law enforcement agency, has expensive and limited resources. First and foremost, it is the working time and physical capacity of the Bureau's employees. In my personal experience, no one, even the most trained and hardworking detective, is physically capable of conducting an effective and proper pre-trial investigation of more than 8-10 complex criminal proceedings in the economic sphere at the same time.

Second, let's try to understand how this precious resource is currently being used. If we take into account only two categories of criminal proceedings that cause a public outcry and fall within the Bureau's competence: tax evasion and criminal offenses committed in the field of public procurement, the statistics of previous years show that about 90% of criminal proceedings in these categories are closed at the pre-trial investigation stage and do not go to court. In the context of our issue, this means that hundreds, if not thousands, of working hours of the Bureau's employees, forensic experts, prosecutors and investigators-judges have been wasted, and dozens of investigative actions, such as temporary access, searches, inspections, interrogations, examinations, have been a waste of time and effort. The result: irritated businesses, another blow to the Bureau's credibility, and dozens of volumes of closed criminal proceedings.

Moreover, about half of the criminal proceedings that were sent to court result in acquittals due to deficiencies in the pre-trial investigation or in maintaining public prosecution in court. How does the state benefit from such “law enforcement”? How does it cleanse economic relations of corruption and crime, and thus affect the economic development and investment attractiveness of Ukraine? The answer is obvious.

Thus, the use of the ROA is intended to prevent and eliminate the vast majority of these problems. There is a wide range of developed, scientifically sound, and practically proven methodologies used in the ROA. For example, this is the prioritization of economic sectors, when, based on the results of a risk analysis at the strategic level, the areas of economic activity most affected by criminal activity are identified, i.e., where the economic interests of the state are most damaged. Obviously, the Bureau should pay maximum attention to such industries. Another example: identifying priority areas for risk management, taking into account regional aspects. After all, criminal threats to the economic interests of the state that may occur, for example, in Odesa region will differ significantly from those that prevail in Zhytomyr region, etc.

It is the risk analysis that makes it possible to identify vulnerabilities related to the spread of criminal threats and to build the Bureau's institutional capacity in the state's economic security system. These innovations primarily relate to the introduction of an appropriate internal policy and corporate culture. As part of this task, it is crucial to form top-level management with appropriate risk management skills and to make informed and effective decisions.

We should also mention the need to develop criminal analysis in the Bureau's activities. Effective criminal analysis literally turns information into knowledge, i.e. the final result of processing large, unstructured data sets will be an indication of the group of beneficiaries and organizers of specific criminal schemes. Identification and termination of such schemes is one of the main tasks of the Bureau.

An important component of criminal analysis is to ensure the Bureau's proactive work by identifying current patterns of crime in the economy and preventing their commission in the future by identifying organized crime actors and influencing their ability to implement criminal plans.

Regarding cooperation with other law enforcement agencies, I would like to note the following. At one time, I was struck by the information that one of the main prerequisites for the September 11 attacks was the inadequate exchange of information within even one law enforcement agency. A special commission found that one FBI unit did not know anything about what the neighboring unit was doing and what information it had, although the totality of this knowledge indicated a high probability of preparing terrorist attacks.

The Commission concluded that, in general, the U.S. law enforcement system has a policy of keeping information for the needs of its own agency only, and exchanging it reluctantly on a quid pro quo basis. Subsequently, tough measures were taken to improve the situation, a “need to share” policy was proclaimed and a special information exchange hub was created at both the local and federal levels.

I am committed to implementing similar principles in the activities of the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine, and I will also convince my colleagues from other law enforcement agencies that the state's interests will be better protected if full and rapid information exchange is established between the agencies.

- Do you consider the exchange of information between agencies to be a problem? If so, how will you solve it? In general, how are you going to build cooperation with customs officers, the State Tax Service, the Security Service, etc.

- Article 7 of the relevant law stipulates that the Bureau, in order to perform its tasks, has direct, including automated, access to information and reference systems, registers and databases held by state or local authorities. According to the information I have, as of February 2025, the Bureau does not have such automated access, so of course, this problem will have to be solved. I am confident that I will be able to convince the Heads of the relevant agencies of the need to provide such access, provided that the Bureau ensures proper technical and cryptographic protection of information.

As for the agencies you mentioned, of course, cooperation with each of them has significant differences. With regard to the State Customs Service, it is, first of all, a full exchange of customs information, and further cooperation should be organized in matters of prompt response to violations of the rules of customs clearance of goods, etc.

The Bureau will send materials to the State Tax Service that may potentially indicate the taxpayer's involvement in tax evasion schemes. At the request of the Bureau, the STS will conduct unscheduled documentary audits on the completeness of tax calculation and timeliness of tax payment, which, subject to confirmation of the amount of additional charges by a forensic accounting report, may be used to serve a notice of suspicion in the relevant criminal proceedings on tax evasion.

With regard to the Security Service of Ukraine, in addition to establishing the exchange of information of a purely operational and investigative nature, I intend to provide maximum organizational support to the activities of both the SSU and the SBI (State Bureau of Investigation), NABU or the National Police aimed at exposing dishonest employees of the Bureau. This is my public position, which will be communicated to every employee of the Bureau.

- The ESBU's institutional development strategy until 2027 envisages the creation of an effective system for counteracting economic risks at the national level by introducing and periodically conducting a set of measures to assess such risks. How exactly are you going to implement this in practice? Tell us step-by-step: you come to office, recruit staff, possibly create a relevant unit if it does not exist, and give the task to prepare a document with a list of risks, then assess them, then actually develop a countermeasure system. What guidelines will you give your subordinates, what methods will they use? And in general, how do you see the counteraction system today? What will be its cornerstone?

- An extremely important issue that is directly defined by the Law as the Bureau's responsibility, but which has remained unfulfilled since the launch of its activities in 2021. This area really concerns the institutional competence of the Bureau, which is simply absent as of today. A step-by-step description of this process takes considerable time, but it must be regulated, which is what I will do from my first day in office.

It would be unprofessional of me to list specific risks, methods of their assessment and ways to develop countermeasures, as this should be preceded by careful and painstaking work of analysts, which should lead to reasonable conclusions, which has not been done to date.

I know of domestic experts who professionally operate the risk assessment methodology, are honest and take a proactive stance. I see my task in this area primarily in building a powerful team of professional analysts in the Bureau, in particular to properly fulfill the task of periodically conducting a set of measures to assess risks in the economy.

- The same document lists among the tasks the effective prevention, detection, suppression and investigation of criminal offenses that infringe on the functioning of the state's economy by, among other things, introducing modern methods and means of operational and investigative activities in the work of detectives. What kind of modern methods and tools are you going to implement?

- I am convinced that the very paradigm of operational and investigative activities (hereinafter – OIA) should be changed in the Bureau's activities, because the classical approach to OIA, based on the reaction to already committed offenses or the collection of materials to support pre-trial investigation, demonstrates its limitations and does not allow to effectively prevent criminal manifestations and adequately respond to criminal threats at the early stages of their occurrence.

In view of this, it is necessary to introduce a risk-based approach to the system of the OIA, which will allow to move from a reactive model to proactive risk management. This means that operational and investigative activities should be aimed not only at combating crimes, but also at strategic control of criminal threats, including identification, analysis and management of risks.

The main directions of the OIA transformation include the expansion of the analytical component of the OIA, which should ensure the formation of operational positions in the criminal environment to collect primary information and is necessary for criminal analysis and risk analysis, which will increase law enforcement agencies' awareness of the trends and structure of criminal threats; integration of the OIA into the risk management system through the implementation of special operational and investigative measures to influence risks, which provides for the restriction of opportunities for committing

Within the framework of criminal proceedings, the OIA is carried out through covert investigative (detective) actions, operational measures to document criminal activity and analysis of criminal networks, including financial flows, but the OIA capabilities should be supplemented by preventive measures that will reduce the number of criminal offenses at the stage of their inception.

Therefore, the main areas of reforming the OIA should include improving the institution of criminal intelligence for early detection of criminal threats and influence on the criminal environment, developing mechanisms for preventive influence on criminal environments without the need to open criminal proceedings, as well as increasing the level of coordination between law enforcement agencies through a unified risk management methodology and determining the proper place of the OIA in the law enforcement system.

The criteria for law enforcement performance should also be revised – the emphasis should not be on the number of crimes solved, but on the level of criminal risk reduction and public trust.

- Can you tell us more about how you are going to recruit/evaluate staff?

- I have developed a list of priority measures to restart, restore confidence and improve the activities of the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine. This is a voluminous document that I intend to submit to the competition commission, make public and act in accordance with it after my appointment as Director of the Bureau. A separate section of this List, which contains 38 items, is devoted to the algorithm of actions aimed at selecting and certifying the Bureau's employees.

This algorithm was developed taking into account the fact that the Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Improving the Work of the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine” defined a special procedure for the establishment and operation of personnel commissions for the first three years of the newly elected Director of the Bureau, as well as the procedure for mandatory one-time certification of the Bureau's employees within eighteen months from the date of appointment of the Director of the Bureau. In addition, the said Law introduced internal control units that may operate in the central office and territorial departments of the Bureau and defined their powers.

In view of this, I consider it necessary to first establish the aforementioned internal control units, select candidates and fill their staff through a competitive procedure, ensure their access to personal files of employees, and only then begin the procedure of mandatory one-time certification. I am confident that this approach will make it possible to provide the appraisal committee with maximum objective information about each employee of the Bureau. Based on the results of the appraisal, it will become clear how many new employees and for which positions should be selected in the course of the next competitive procedures.

Regarding the general requirements for conducting appraisal and competition procedures, I am confident that my personal successful experience of participating in the selection to the Prosecutor General's Office in 2020 will be extremely useful.

First, it is maximum openness and transparency, which will include, among other things, a ban on holding any stage of the competition or certification without online video broadcast; publication of the results of each stage of testing or interview on the official website of the Bureau on the day of the stage, etc.

Second, there are high requirements for the level of knowledge of Ukrainian legislation. For example, the test for the position of detective will contain approximately ten thousand questions on criminal, criminal procedure, civil, tax, customs, budget, financial, public procurement, and anti-money laundering legislation, etc.

Thirdly, there are high requirements for the level of general abilities, which will be tested in writing using information and communication technologies.

Finally, an interview with the selection committee to assess the candidate's compliance with the criteria of integrity and professional competence, approve the final rating of candidates and appoint them to the positions.

I am confident that by carefully fulfilling the requirements of the law through the relevant procedures, I will be able to gradually restore public and business confidence in the Bureau, whose future is about legality, efficiency and trust.

- Could it be that cases with a political coloration will not be considered if they pose certain risks, including from the Bank, to your institution?

- I am convinced that the cases you mentioned will be investigated on an equal footing with all others, but I want to emphasize that this will not depend on the wishes of the Head. My goal is to build a strong institution in the sphere of economic security of the state that would work equally effectively regardless of the name of the Director of the Bureau.

The system of checks and balances defined in the relevant law, namely: a special procedure for competitive selection of the Bureau's Director, selection and certification of employees, a legal prohibition on interference in the Bureau's activities, public control, attention of the media and business structures, an internal control system, etc. minimize or prevent abuse of office by the Bureau's management or employees.

- Are you proposing to introduce the institution of benign neglect of a smaller problem in order to solve a larger one? I would also like to hear from you on the examples of current high-profile cases. Which of them do you consider lesser problems, and which ones are worth giving up?

- I carefully study the documents related to the investigation of criminal offenses under the jurisdiction of the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine, including court verdicts in this category of proceedings, according to which persons are often brought to criminal liability for the purchase, storage and sale of several dozen liters of alcohol-containing substances, hundreds of packs of tobacco products or e-cigarette liquids, etc.

At the same time, every time I have a question: is this exactly the task for which the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine was created? Undoubtedly, such actions are illegal in themselves, but do they deserve to be investigated with the expensive resources of a powerful analytical law enforcement agency?

And most importantly: will the investigation of this “crime” and the punishment of the perpetrator in the form of a fine lead to a real improvement in the crime situation in the field of economic security of the state, will the illegal trafficking of excisable goods stop, etc. Obviously, no, because the person who is the real beneficiary of the illegal scheme of manufacturing and mass distribution of excisable goods was not brought to criminal responsibility, but only a minor link in it, one of the retailers.

It seems appropriate to transfer a significant part of the described acts to the sphere of administrative responsibility, and to direct the Bureau's efforts to criminal schemes and the persons behind them who really influence economic crime, for which a risk-based approach will be useful. Of course, this requires legislative changes based on a thorough criminal analysis.

- Andriy Borovyk, Executive Director of Transparency International Ukraine, noted that there are certain questions to your property, although much less than to your competitors. Two apartments, two houses per family, acquired before 2020, is nothing, at first glance, alarming. How can you communicate this?

- Until 2012, my family owned and used only one apartment in the city of Ternopil, but when we moved to Kyiv, we had to rent the place where we live today.

In 2016, we bought a small house with a garden in a picturesque village on the border of Kyiv and Poltava regions, where I personally planted and maintain a garden, berry and vineyard.

In 2018, my wife inherited a house and a garden plot located in the Ternopil region, but they are not currently used by my family.
All of these real estate objects owned or used by the family were declared by me in my annual declarations for 2019-2023, which can be viewed on the NACP (National Agency on Corruption Prevention) website.

- What is your position on the main potentially conflicting issues between the ESBU and business: the cryptocurrency market, the shadow tobacco market, gambling, conversion centers, bioethanol? Do you have a vision for each area, what needs to be changed and what are the risks?

- I will start answering your question with more general things. As you know, globalization has resulted in an explosive growth of economic crime, which has elevated transnational organized crime to the level of a global problem. As offenders learn and adapt, and their physical and electronic mobility increases, they cross national jurisdictional boundaries to a greater extent than at any time in history, and the criminal environment becomes more complex, so law enforcement is forced to constantly adapt.

Despite this, the dominant model of domestic law enforcement remains the traditional model of crime investigation, while crime prevention is not given due attention. The traditional strategy assumes that increasing detection rates will reduce the number of offenses and become a deterrent to criminals, thus fulfilling a preventive role, but in reality, law enforcement officers do not detect and investigate crimes with such speed and efficiency, or even come close to implementing this strategy.

The current tactics of responding to crime are those of a fire brigade, where the fire is put out, the case is reviewed, and then law enforcement retreats to wait for the next incident that requires attention. There is nothing strategic about the response policy, there are no long-term goals, there is no goal other than to cope in the here and now.

Instead of fighting crime in one painstaking investigation of an event that has already occurred, which will not actually affect the crime structure, law enforcement should take a step back and put threats and risks into a holistic perspective, assess their social harm, and reallocate their resources accordingly, which will allow them to be smarter and more effective in exercising their unique powers and capabilities.

That is why the Bureau's leadership should be more flexible in their views of the criminal environment, ready to allow the risks and threats identified in strategic documents to override their personal perceptions and prejudices, media pressure and the expectations of their colleagues. When a serious crime has been committed, it is nothing short of common sense to ensure that law enforcement actions are based on thorough criminal intelligence rather than intuition, even though the latter may be rooted in years of experience.
Of course, I have my own vision in each of the areas of the Bureau's activities you mentioned, formed over the years of practice.

For example, with regard to the shadow markets of alcoholic beverages and tobacco products, I believe that the Bureau's comprehensive approach in this area should begin with the establishment of a system of covert monitoring of the illegal sale of such excisable goods in all regions of Ukraine. At the same time, given the above, I realize that I do not have an answer to the question: what actions of the Bureau can be most effective in stopping the illegal trafficking of excisable goods, since the formation of such recommendations is the prerogative and task of the Bureau's analytical units.

To fulfill its tasks, the Bureau will proactively intervene in shadow business processes, which will inevitably lead to conflicts, but the Bureau will act exclusively in the interests of the state and will have sufficiently effective means to disrupt criminal schemes, bring perpetrators to justice and protect Ukraine's economic interests.

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