Candidates for the position of head of the Economic Security Bureau: what journalists discovered about their past, connections, and declarations.

The Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine (BEB), created in 2021, was supposed to become a new tool in the fight against economic crimes, cleansed of corruption. Ideally, this body should take over the functions of investigating financial offenses from other law enforcement agencies, eliminate the practice of pressure on business and introduce transparent economic analytics. The launch of the BEB was among the key promises of Volodymyr Zelenskyi within the reform of the law enforcement system.

However, since the creation of the Bureau, its activities have been regularly criticized — in particular, due to the continued pressure on business, which the BEB was supposed to eliminate. The work of the first head of the Bureau, Vadym Melnyk, was found unsatisfactory by the financial and law enforcement committees of the Verkhovna Rada. Even during the first competition for this position in 2021, there were reservations about the transparency of the process: then Melnyk’s victory seemed to be predetermined, and investigative journalists, in particular from the “Scheme” team, recorded a number of procedural violations.

Now a new competition for the position of the head of the BEB is being held. After several stages of selection — testing of general skills, checking knowledge of legislation, performance of practical tasks — 16 candidates remained. The law requires that the head of the BEB be independent of any interests, except those of the state. That is why journalists conducted the “Schemes” project investigation and focused on individual applicants.

Viktor Dubovik currently heads the legal policy directorate of the Office of the President. In the legal knowledge test, he was impressively fast: he answered 40 questions in four minutes, which means about six seconds for each question, including reading all the answer options. Dubovik gave 37 correct answers out of 40, and the closest contestant spent twice as much time. The test questions were known in advance — more than 600 in total, of which the system randomly selected 40 at the competition itself.

In the past, Dubovik was an adviser to Serhii Arbuzov, the former deputy prime minister of Mykola Azarov’s government, who is currently wanted. His activity in that period coincided with the Revolution of Dignity. Journalists asked the candidate what experience he gained from working in Azarov’s government. In response, a general phrase sounded: “The fact that power in Ukraine belongs to the people.”

The public biography of the candidate is also related to the activities of his father, who during the Yanukovych regime held the position of the first deputy minister of internal affairs, Vitaly Zakharchenko, a security officer responsible for violent actions against protesters on the Maidan. The journalists found out that Viktor Dubovyk’s father has a passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation, and also has an individual tax number registered in the database of the tax service of the Russian Federation.

Viktor Dubovik himself claims that he does not know where his father is and has not communicated with him for more than 15 years. When asked by a journalist whether he knew about his father’s Russian citizenship, the candidate answered: “This is unknown to me, I do not communicate with my father.”

Journalists paid particular attention to Dubovyk’s property status. Already after the start of the full-scale war, according to the declaration, he acquired two country houses: one completely, the other partially. When asked about the sources of the appearance of this property, the candidate replied that it was not about a new purchase, but about the distribution of property after a divorce from his wife. According to him, according to the Family Code of Ukraine, each of the spouses owned 50%, and as a result of the divorce, a partition agreement was concluded.

However, journalists discovered that this property had already been in Dubovyk’s possession since 2013 — precisely during the period when he worked as Arbuzov’s adviser. The sources of funds for its purchase are not explained in the declarations or answers.

– Do you understand how exactly you will be evaluated? – journalists asked candidate Viktor Dubovyk.

“None,” he answered. — There is an order, but it is difficult to understand from it exactly how the assessment works.

When asked whether he knew the criteria, Dubovyk said:

“There is a methodology, there is a law, but I don’t know exactly how the commission will evaluate it.”

One of the candidates, whom the mass media began to call the favorite in the fight for the position of the director of the BEB as early as January 2025, is Ruslan Pakhomov. His name appeared in public discussion long before the final of the competition. For many years, Pakhomov worked in management positions in media assets “Media Group Ukraine”, the ultimate beneficiary of which was Rinat Akhmetov. In his declaration for 2024, the candidate indicated almost 8 million hryvnias of income — the salary received in this particular group of companies.

When asked by “Schem” journalists about his connection with Akhmetov’s business structures, Pakhomov replied that he no longer works for these companies. To the remark about a possible conflict of interests, given that Rinat Akhmetov owns dozens of companies that may be in the field of attention of the BEB, Pakhomov denied:

“I worked for a company that belongs to a company that belongs to a company that belongs to Rinat Akhmetov. That is, the structure is very complex. I have never seen him, I have never spoken to him.”

However, the journalists found out another fact: in July 2022, PrivatBank closed the accounts of Ruslan Pakhomov after he transferred 13.5 million hryvnias to a company related to his wife within two days. The court documents, which were found, refer to the bank’s suspicion regarding the possible legalization of funds of unknown origin. The company that received the transfers had only one person on staff and at that time – tax debt.

Pakhomov explained it as follows:

“I had money – partly in accounts, partly in cash. I provided the bank with documents about their origin – salary. The bank gave permission for the operations, but later simply stopped them without explanation.”

In addition, Pakhomov previously worked at the Ministry of Internal Affairs during Yanukovych’s presidency, and was the deputy head of the cybercrime department. It was during this period that the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced the closure of the file exchange ex.ua due to a possible violation of copyright. Searches were conducted in data centers and offices. At the same time, Oleg Tatarov – currently the deputy head of the President’s Office – worked in the investigative department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Pakhomov admitted that it was Tatarov who was assigned the ex.ua case, but claimed that he himself only collected the materials and does not remember the communication between them.

Another candidate is Amil Azad ogli Omarov, head of the Shevchenkiv district prosecutor’s office in Kharkiv. In his scientific work, defended in 2017, he mentioned Oleg Tatarov eight times: six times in the text, twice more in the list of used sources. In one of the sections, Omarov also refers to the experience of the Russian Federation in the field of criminal investigation.

Journalists asked why exactly such sources were used. Omarov explained that the dissertation was created for several years — starting in 2014. According to him, references to Tatarov are not related to his personality, but to his scientific works. And the block about Russia explained as follows:

“We left the same legal system after 1991. It was interesting to compare how it developed in the Russian Federation, Moldova, the Caucasus, and Central Asian republics. Without comparison, we will not be able to understand in which direction we are going.”

Another finalist of the competition — Mykhailo Burtovyi, NABU detective, previously worked in the police of the Shevchenkiv district of Kyiv. In 2022, his scientific work was approved by Maksym Tsutskiridze, the head of the National Police investigation, who has friendly relations with Oleg Tatarov. Journalists asked whether Burtovy had an internship at Tsutskiridze. At first he denied it, but he was shown the act of implementing his dissertation work into the practical activities of the National Police, signed by Tsutskiridze himself.

When asked why he signed the document if they had never met, Burtovyi explained:

“I personally did not hand over the deed. It was handed over by responsible persons, perhaps secretaries, perhaps management.”

Another candidate is Ruslan Rachinskyi, currently works in the tax service of the Kyiv region. He has been in public service for more than 20 years: worked as a tax inspector, senior inspector, head and deputy head of the unit. When asked about the lessons learned from the period of Kuchma’s and Yanukovych’s rule, Rachynskyi gave a general answer:

“It is necessary to understand the properties of the economy. The economy is the artery of the state.”

When asked by journalists to name his own specific result in the work, he noted:

“My result is work with taxpayers, which is aimed at understanding. We provide awareness of the need to pay obligations.”

In a dissertation defended in 2019, Rachinsky cited Russian tax law. Later, he explained in writing that he referred to more than 200 sources, and although there were Russian authors among them, none of the Russian models were offered as an example for implementation in Ukraine. He emphasized:

“In my work, based on a systematic and comparative analysis, the Russian model was not applied as a proposal for adaptation and settlement to the existing problems, its implementation to the national legislation in the raised issues did not take place.”

Name Igor Shepetin appears in the mass media in the context of his participation in the competition for the position of director of the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine with a clear emphasis on his military biography. Shepetin is a colonel of the SBU, a combat officer, a former commander of a territorial defense battalion, who currently continues his military service in the structure of the Security Service of Ukraine.

However, there are details in his dossier that go beyond a classic military biography. Even before the start of the full-scale invasion, Shepetin was suing the SBU regarding the official apartment, and Andrii Portnov, the former deputy head of President Yanukovych’s administration, acted as his lawyer in this case. This fact caused additional attention from journalists.

When asked by journalists whether he knew Portnov, Shepetin replied that he had not communicated with him personally:

“He represented my interests in a group of lawyers, but I am not familiar with him. We have not met in person.”

At the same time, according to the journalist, it was Portnov who was the main defender at the court hearings where the case involving Shepetin against a high-ranking SBU official was considered.

In the candidate’s declaration, two residential buildings are indicated – with an area of ​​140 and 188 square meters. One of them, according to Shepetin himself, was given to him by his sister in 2024.

“She lives and works in Germany, has a small beauty salon, has been doing business for more than 15 years,” the candidate explained.

When reporters asked if the sister had enough resources to buy a house in 2018, he confirmed that she was already financially capable. And the second house, as Shepetin noted, he arranged through the “eOselya” program, which allows military personnel to get a mortgage on preferential terms.

Another candidate is Sergey Mashtabey, who is participating in the competition for the second time. In 2021, he also made it to interviews, but was disappointed with the results and filed a lawsuit challenging the selection and evaluation process. This time, Mashtabey was also included in the list of finalists. But the questions regarding the transparency of the criteria and the clarity of the assessment have not disappeared.

Serhiy Mashtabey believes that the professional experience of the competition participants is not properly analyzed:

“If the law requires choosing the person with the best professional experience, then this should be decisive. But within this competition, the past experience of the candidates is practically not evaluated.”

The tender commission consists of six people, including three foreigners. Journalists turned to one of the members of the commission – Yuriy Ponomarenko, head of the department of Yaroslav the Wise National University of Law. However, he refused to comment on the principles of selection, citing “negative experience of communication with the press”.

The final stage of the competition — interviews with candidates — is expected within a month. After that, the selection board must submit to the government one or two candidates it considers most suitable for appointment. Who exactly will head the key body responsible for the economic security of the state will become clear soon. However, even now media and public interest in the transparency of this selection remains extremely high.

So, the journalists’ investigation proved that among the candidates for the key anti-corruption position are those involved in court cases on suspicion of money laundering, former employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Yanukovych era, candidates with dissertations citing Tatarov or the Russian legal system, as well as persons with unclear explanations regarding their financial transactions. This raises new questions about the transparency of the competition and the criteria for selecting the leadership of the body, which should be an example of integrity.

Despite the declared requirements for the independence, objectivity and professionalism of the head of the BEB, persons with biographies that contain at least signs of a potential conflict of interest appear in the finals of the competition. The Bureau of Economic Security should become the main analytical and investigative body in the field of tax crimes, the head of this institution should have an impeccable reputation and not cause any doubt about his independence. However, the data collected by journalists show that even after the change of the BEB head, the risk of a return to a politically engaged approach remains.