President Petro Poroshenko asked the new parliament to amend legislation to allow foreigners to take top jobs in the nation, including head of the Anti-Corruption Bureau.
“I have a concrete suggestion to all who is involved, according to procedure spelled out in law, to the appointment of this extremely important institution. I suggest inviting to this job a person from outside of Ukraine,” Poroshenko told the new parliament on Thursday, the day of its opening.
“Thus we will have an advantage – an absence of connections in the Ukrainian political elite,” Poroshenko explained.
The Anti-Corruption Bureau is yet to be created, and is supposed to fight top-level corruption. It has already been dubbed “Ukraine’s FBI,” and the process of its creation is closely watched by Ukraine’s foreign creditors and local business community.
Corruption has been endemic in Ukraine, earning the nation 144th spot out of 177 in the global Corruption Preception Index published annually by Transparency International, a watchdog.
Moreover, Poroshenko said he wanted to amend the law to allow foreigners to take other top jobs, or simplify the procedure for granting Ukrainian citizenship to foreigners.
“My idea is, by changing the law, to allow foreigners into state service, including government seats, or extend the list of persons the president can grant Ukrainian citizenship, through fast tracking,” Poroshenko said.
Poroshenko’s administration hired an international recruiting company, Korn Ferry, and its local branch WE Partners, to identify candidates for the next government. They approached foreigners in Ukraine and abroad. They are American, Lithuanian and Georgian nationals, according to Insider.ua, a Ukrainian site that specializes in political news.
Currently, the law has a limited list of reasons to gain Ukrainian citizenship. It can happen through birth, adoption or in cases when at least of the parents has such citizenship. Foreigners wishing to gain Ukrainian citizenship have to give up their original passports.
Poroshenko implied in his speech that there may be people who are prepared to consider such an option. “The decisive steps of such foreigners, which will be prepared to turn down their own citizenship and accept a Ukrainian citizenship, will be a confirmation of their decisiveness of the intentions of our potential partners and candidates,” he said.
Poroshenko’s suggestion to appoint foreigners was met with some skepticism in the session hall, which the president also noted: “I can see that not everyone in this hall likes this idea.”
Kyiv Post deputy chief editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected].
