Unrealistic numbers vs harsh reality: the head of ARMA reported on the work of the Agency in 2023

Recently, Olena Duma reported for the first time on the results of the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA) – it was about the successes of the agency in 2023. We saw a lot of interesting things in the department's report, and a lot of important things we didn't see there. Therefore, we will assess with reason whether the work of ARMA has changed qualitatively after the change of management.

 

What we saw and what we didn't see in the report

Despite all the changes experienced by the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA) 2023, we equally see that the Agency's key areas of work, namely tracing and management of seized assets, still show no progress. And this is sad, because this is exactly what ARMA was created for.

Here, by the way, statistics from reports on the results of evaluating the effectiveness of the budget program for different years are indicative.

Yes, last year we observed a significant decline in the number of discovered and searched assets compared to 2022. In 2020, the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA) employees searched for 45,808 such assets, in 2021 - 24,957, in 2022 - 196,631, and in 2023 half as many - 92,064. At the same time, last year the Agency provided a lot of answers regarding searches assets, but the amount of wanted property itself decreased (see Fig. 1).

The Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA), in the presentation of the report for 2023, contrasts the figures for the first and second half of the year, promoting the thesis that the effectiveness of the search for assets is increasing. After all, Mrs. Olena Duma was appointed at the end of the first half of the year, so this approach is not particularly surprising. The Agency also considers the increase in the number of requests for asset searches to be a record merit (see Fig. 2).

Of course, at first such numbers can be impressive, but after studying the topic in more detail, we saw not so much the real state of affairs, but the ability of the current leaders of the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA) to adjust statistics and present this data from a favorable point of view. And if you compare the data by year, the situation for Ms. Olena will not be very pleasant.

By the way, the number of assets transferred to ARMA management (3,078 in 2023) also decreased sharply compared to 2021 (14,092) and 2022 (14,161) –  now it is only slightly more than in 2020 (2,530) (see Fig. 3). This indicator is influenced both by the number of cases when there are grounds for transferring assets to the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA), and by trust in the Agency. After all, if the investigator believes that after the transfer of the property it will be squandered or the asset will be damaged or lost altogether, he will not turn to the investigating judge with a corresponding request.

Despite the extremely large number of seized assets transferred to the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA) 2022, the situation with the number of concluded management contracts has hardly changed. In 2021, the Agency concluded 16 contracts, in 2022 - 10, and in 2023 - 11 (see Fig. 4).

However, unfortunately, in the report for 2023, ARMA did not show these trends, as well as explanations on how to change such negative dynamics. But it communicated about extremely high revenues to the state budget of Ukraine (see Fig. 5).

And here it should be reminded that the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA) is not a fiscal body. Its task is precisely the effective management of seized assets, and given the number of concluded management contracts, the performance of this function is far from ideal. Seized assets are not efficiently used, lose value, and their owners get additional reasons to file lawsuits for damages.

In the presentation to the activity report, the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA) also mentions the most profitable managers. Among them are "Vozdvizhenka" LLC (the management contract was concluded in 2018), "Ukrtransnafta" JSC (2021), SE "Central Laboratory for the Analysis of the Quality of Medicines and Medical Products" (2022), Krytex-Service LLC (April 2023-th) and "Naftogazenergia" LLC (April 2023). As we can see, all these managers appeared even before the beginning of the work of Olena Duma as the head of the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA), but we never saw successful managers during her tenure.

At the same time, control over the effectiveness of concluded management contracts only decreases. For example, there were almost half as many on-site inspections last year as in 2022.

It is the on-site inspection that makes it possible to establish the presence and condition of assets and to carry out their photo or video recording, and not only to evaluate the effectiveness of document management. At the same time, the total number of inspections is rapidly decreasing: from 17 in 2020 to five in 2023.

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All this again shows that the Agency must take decisive measures and better perform its core functions. Today, the management of the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA) shows its achievements mainly through the direction of money management.

And if the sale of seized property was "fixed" by the efforts of many partners, the transfer to management still remains extremely imperfect. Unfortunately, all attempts to use the legislation on public procurement for this will not be able to correct the existing problems with the selection of managers of seized assets. The specifics of such property and its status require significantly different approaches, and these ways are known both to us and to the Agency, in addition, this topic has often been discussed publicly. However, their implementation seems to the current leadership of the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA) to be much more difficult than focusing on regulatory documents from other areas.

The management of immovable and movable property is very significantly declining, although, according to the law, this should be one of the main tasks of the Agency. In order to make the field successful, it is necessary to establish a transparent and understandable procedure for the business to determine the manager of seized assets and to ensure that such procedures are carried out quickly. Then both the state and the asset owners, to whom this property can potentially be returned, will be satisfied.

However, at the moment, we see that ARMA's management is focused mainly on simple and quick results, which do not really correspond to the main functionality of the body. And the annual report presented by the Agency only confirms this pessimistic thesis.

Read this article in Ukrainian and russian.