Ukraine: A corps of reformers recruited from the business world takes on a Herculean task in Kyiv.

Cleaning Ukraine’s Augean Stables

by Sergey Sydorenko

KYIV | There’s a sign on the door to Denys Brodsky’s office at the headquarters of Ukraine’s civil service. It reads: “If you are not ready to show me the core of the problem and to propose a solution in three minutes, you are not ready to speak with me.”

If that sounds more like a businessman’s mantra than a bureaucrat’s, it should come as no surprise. Brodsky, 42, was appointed to lead the civil service in April – his first government post after 17 years managing human resources in private industry, most recently at Platinum Bank. Last year he was named one of the top 50 human resources managers in Ukraine by business newspaper Investgazeta.

Some of Brodsky’s ways – his bluntness and dislike of red tape, for instance – likely shock his subordinates, used to a creaky, Soviet-style government machine, but it’s too early to say if they will be effective. Brodsky acknowledges that he is just coming to grips with some nuances of how the civil service functions.

“Here we have loads of procedures and regulations, authorizations and credentials. I have to learn all this stuff, how it works, how the process goes,” he told Investgazeta two weeks after his appointment.

Brodsky is one of a handful of people plucked from large companies to help the new government set Ukraine to rights – although in a country where business and politics have long been the same thing and the concept of conflict of interest virtually didn’t exist, it might seem logical to look outside the business world for a crop of reformers.

Since early March the Customs Service has been led by Vitaly Naumenko, who formerly worked in the Ukrainian office of accounting giant KPMG. The new director of the tax office is Igor Bilous, an investment banker late of UBS, Renaissance Capital, and Altius.

At a time when Ukraine desperately needs creative thinkers who can manage a crisis, the government says more such appointments are on the way.

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