Ukraine regional customs directors placed on leave

The State Fiscal Service placed on leave the entire leadership of the Zakarpattia regional department of the State Customs Service in order to investigate corruption allegations that surfaced after this weekend’s armed conflict, the body’s press service announced on July 13. Customs officials from other regions will be brought in as temporary replacements, the press service said. The same day, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk called for the dismissal of the entire Zakarpattia regional customs service, as written on his Facebook page. He called on Interior Minister Arsen Avakov to conduct an investigation of the facts of contraband and abuses and file criminal charges based on the results.

State Fiscal Service Head Roman Nasirov vowed to replace the leadership of all regional customs service during the next three months. “Currently, we replaced more than 60 percent of the directors of all customs offices,” he told the U.S.-Ukraine Business Forum in Washington on July 13. “We will finish this process during the next three months.” The service is working on implementing a systemic approach to hiring, given that it’s among the most corruption state bodies, he said.

Zenon Zawada: The government undertook the standard, scripted response to the allegations of corruption at the Zakarpattia customs, which spilled into an armed conflict this week that resulted in at least two casualties. It placed on leave state employees pending an investigation. Just what will happen afterwards is anyone guess, but the odds are they won’t be prosecuted, let alone convicted or punished. The established pattern is that they will also retain posts in the customs service.

Nasirov offered some impressive figures about dismissing customs directors, but just who will replace them, and with what intent, is the bigger concern. The president has already demonstrated that he’s building a fierce chain of command of loyal state officials. We expect that policy to be extended to the State Customs Service.

An effective approach to corruption in state bodies, particularly those as vulnerable as the customs service, would be a wholesale dismissal of the entire corps and its replacement with younger inexperienced employees who can be retrained, placing those with Western training and exposure in the leadership. But instead, we have this strange patchwork approach to the corruption battle, in which fighters like Mikheil Saakashvili are pursuing serious measures while being surrounded by posers.