The Head of the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA), Olena Duma, together with the Deputy Head of ARMA, Grigol Katamadze, held a regular working meeting with representatives of the OECD Office in Ukraine. The meeting was attended by Oksana Guss, Policy Analyst at the Directorate of Public Management OECD, Michal Falenchyk, Acting Head of the OECD Office in Ukraine, and Kateryna Penkova, Policy Analyst at the OECD Office in Ukraine.
The key topic of the meeting was the discussion of ARMA's implementation of the OECD recommendations based on the results of the analysis of the Agency's activities for 2022 and the first half of 2023. Olena Duma spoke about the changes already implemented.
“After our team joined ARMA, we immediately started studying the OECD recommendations and implementing them. Thus, in a month and a half, we opened public access to the Register of Seized Assets. At the time of its public launch, there were 50,000 entries, and now there are 324,000.
However, the register was created according to the terms of reference of 2017 and now requires fundamental changes, so we are working together with the EU Advisory Mission Ukraine on a strategy to improve it,” said the Head of ARMA.
She also spoke about the developed regulatory framework, which now allows for the transparent sale of seized assets exclusively through the Prozorro.Prodazhi online auction system. In addition, Olena Duma emphasized the need to improve the selection of managers of seized assets at the legislative level.
The parties discussed the importance of close cooperation between Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies, which was also one of the key recommendations of the OECD. The Head of the National Agency emphasized that ARMA is constantly in close cooperation with the NAPC and NABU.
The OECD representatives were interested in ARMA's international activities. Deputy Head of ARMA Grigol Katamadze noted that this year alone, 6 international interagency agreements with foreign partners have already been signed, which was not done in the previous 7 years of the Agency's work. He added that work in this area is ongoing.
This meeting is part of ARMA's new strategy to strengthen the management of seized assets in Ukraine and bring it closer to the best EU and OECD standards. ARMA will continue to actively implement the recommendations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, contributing to the country's accession to the OECD.
