The Boryspil international airport’s Deputy General Director for Economics and Finance Kyrylo Zvonarev, who filed the lawsuit that prompted the suspension of the competition for selecting general director of the State Railway Administration (Ukrzaliznytsia) and the directors of the Boryspil international airport and the Lvov airport, has said that the competition has no clear requirements and that the evaluation criteria were opaque. He was speaking to the Interfax Ukraine news agency.
Zvonarev said that he wanted to avoid litigation, but he warned that litigation was a possibility.
"I provided the necessary clarifications and additional information to the [Infrastructure] Ministry’s ‘free consultant’ Roman Bondar, appealed to Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Volodymyr Shulmeister, officially informed the ministry about violations, and warned of possible litigation. Unfortunately, I was not heard," Zvonarev said.
According to him, the level of qualification of the ministry’s "selectors" was not high. "When the ministry announced that it would hold a fair and transparent competition for the posts, I - probably like most of my colleagues from the transport sector - believed in the possibility of change. Openness and transparency were supposed to replace the flawed practice of backstage and under-the-carpet appointments," he said.
Zvonarev said that the experts that selected candidates for the abovementioned positions drafted strange and unclear requirements for candidates and non-transparent evaluation criteria.
He also said that the lack of transparency and the bias in the competition were confirmed when the commission submitted its selected finalists for the post of Ukrzaliznytsia general director but the Nomination Committee refused to approve them.
Zvonarev also denied media reports alleging that he filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Dnepropetrovsk region’s Governor Ihor Kolomoiskyi. "The reports are untrue," he said.
As CFTS earlier reported, the the Dnepropetrovsk District Administrative Court has prohibited the Ministry of Infrastructure from selecting candidates for the posts of general director of Ukrzaliznytsia and directors of the Boryspil international airport and the Lvov airport based on a lawsuit filed by Zvonarev. The ministry has said that it will appeal against the court’s decision and that it may launch a new competition because of fears that the consideration of the lawsuit might take a long time.
