“Auction” of customs positions: How Finance Minister Marchenko controls personnel decisions

“Auction” of customs positions: How Finance Minister Marchenko controls personnel decisions

I see how there continues to be an active discussion online about the sale of positions of regional customs managers.

But all the discussions somehow bypass the key point of the “auction” of customs positions. This point is the approval of any appointments of this level by the Minister of Finance Serhiy Marchenko.

You can sell any position of head of any customs office to anyone, but without Serhiy Mykhailovych’s approval, all your sales are just wet dreams of getting these positions.

Over the last five years, Marchenko’s signature has broken dozens of spears of reformers who tried to appoint their teams but instead received either direct refusals or a 5-6 month approval procedure until the term of the Head of Customs himself ended due to his "inability" to do anything. Both Nefyodov and Ryabikin had direct conflicts over the approval process.

I have written about this many times before.

Only two factors can influence Marchenko’s approval. The first is political, such as the quick approval of an outspoken corrupt official, Denys Pudryk, whose father-in-law, Serhiy Kunitsyn, is not the last person in the Prosecutor General’s Office.

The second option can be called commercial.

Any head of the customs office has to "justify" to the Ministry of Finance the importance of appointing any person to a position higher than deputy regional customs officer.

The Ministry of Finance also has its own separate channel for appointments and "sales" of customs positions, when, in exchange for the appointment of the right people to the Head of the State Customs Service, the Ministry of Finance "asks" to find a place for people who have been "running" in other areas.

In simple words, it’s a " quid pro quo".

We agree on your corrupt officials, and you put ours as their deputies.

If the head of the customs office stands on principle and refuses to play such dirty games, the Ministry of Finance also stands on principle and blocks important personnel decisions.

I am in no way accusing Serhiy Marchenko of involvement in the sale of customs positions, I am simply drawing the community’s attention to the real mechanics of the processes.