Those who regularly read the Kyiv Post have probably seen this thorough review of the Asset Recovery and Management Agency, known as ARMA. The author reminded that: “ARMA was created in 2016, and tasked with finding, recovering and managing assets stolen via corruption schemes.”
And I will also remind you that: de facto, ARMA started its work in October 2017 (that is, only 1.5 years ago). This is an extremely short period to draw conclusions on the work of any institution of a kind. Even now, the agency is in the construction process: we adopt new regulations, accumulate the practice of managing new assets, and employ staff.
For this reason, I was surprised to read in the article that “most critics of ARMA say its lack of transparency is a huge problem. The agency has yet to provide any public reports on its activities.”
Just as the president is given 100 days to acclimatize, so in the European Union, the work of similar to our institutions is estimated only 2-3 years from the start of work.
ARMA strives for openness in its work. Here are our specific steps:
- Two annual reports (for 2017 and 2018) are available for public analysis on the web site of ARMA;
- At the beginning of 2018, ARMA announced its readiness for audit before the government and Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament;
- In 2018, ARMA volunteered to conduct an international audit of its work, and reputable international experts from EU member states provided positive feedback on its activities;
- At the beginning of 2019, we voluntarily organized the data on all seized assets and placed it on the official website. From now on, anyone (first of all, businesspersons) can apply to ARMA with the initiative to take assets into management or to buy them. You should agree that awareness of the fact that assets have been transferred into the management of ARMA long before the announcement of the competition for the selection of the manager is even better than the broadcast of such competition live on TV!
I cannot agree with the conclusion of the article that “opaque mechanisms used to pick companies to run recovered and frozen assets open up opportunities for corruption.”
Quite often, the critics of ARMA’s competitive selections are silencing the important fact – in the course of 1.5 years of the agency’s work, no manager has received even a penny of the budget funds. The remuneration of the manager of seized property is paid only at the expense of the money he has earned. That is why ProZorro’s electronic auction system is not used to select ARMA’s managers. However, it must be noted: although the agency selects managers not in the ProZorro system, reports on the conclusion of all management agreements are exported to this system. Where have you seen such transparency?
I will add that sometimes the criticism of ARMA is a result of failure to understand the mandate of the agency. Indeed, there has never before been anything similar in Ukraine. Apart from that, the agency often becomes a victim of information attacks on behalf of the dissatisfied owners of seized property. They dislike ARMA’s actions because they affect their material interests. All combined provides for a negative perception of the management of seized property, although, when shifting focus on specific procedures, their soundness and legitimacy become clear.
How are we going to evolve next? The agency sees shortcomings in legislation and has already forwarded to the Cabinet of Ministers a draft law that will deprive many critics of ARMA their means of livelihood. Every day I see conflicts of norms of different laws. While the media turns it into manipulative allegations of the agency on violations of the legislation.
Any criticism of the management of seized property should be criticized in turn, since in reality it may be a simple fake, manipulation of the novelty of ARMA‘s mandate, paid for by the owner of the seized property in order to discredit ARMA. Instead, ARMA is always ready for dialogue in response to constructive criticism. After all, the latter only increases the efficiency of our work.
Of course, after the Revolution of Dignity, the demands of the Ukrainian public to the state bodies are as high as never before. To meet those expectations, we just need from all ARMA’s stakeholders two things – time and patience.
We do not want to gain the reputation of a “secret body,” which tends to use “opaque” practices.
Instead, ARMA’s intentions are clear: it has to be a service governmental body, which equates to the hopes of Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, the country`s civil society and its independent press.
Please, just give us time.
