A million dollars for honesty: how the new head of customs, Mandziy, is offering Marchenko the chance to buy integrity ‘in bulk’

A million dollars for honesty: how the new head of customs, Mandziy, is offering Marchenko the chance to buy integrity ‘in bulk’

Integrity is too important and valuable a virtue to be free in this turbulent world.

But even more valuable are the criteria for assessing and tools for measuring this very integrity, which are perfectly mastered only by foreign specialists.

This somewhat lyrical introduction is related to a letter-appeal from the new Head of the Customs Service, Orest Mandziy, to the Minister of Finance, Serhiy Marchenko, which fell into my hands.

The document states that under conditions of critical underfunding of the customs service, which in 2026 amounts to only 48.4% of needs, it is necessary to allocate 1.1 million dollars for the re-certification of customs officers and assessment of their integrity.
Exactly in dollars.

At the same time, only 500 thousand dollars are needed for the certification itself, but a whole 600 thousand dollars for forming commissions from international experts.

At the end of the letter, Orest Mykolayovych notes that in case of refusal and failure of re-certification, there is a threat not only of stopping the customs reform. This also puts at risk the implementation of the National Revenue Strategy until 2030.

How Marchenko reacted to this appeal is unknown so far, but the overall situation is developing exactly as I predicted in my article. 

«Either contact with the system, or conflict with the system».

If Mandziy is ready for compromises, including personnel ones, then Marchenko will fund the necessary reform expenses, standing alongside the reformers.

If Orest Mykolayovych tries to go for principled confrontation, then within the existing customs budget of 48% of needs, the reform will end at the starting point, and by the end of the year, the head of customs’ work will be deemed unsatisfactory - with all consequences in the form of appointing another acting Head, but already with a deep sense of the moment and the delicacy of customs as an institution.

Therefore.
Refusing corrupt funds and collections at the border is a strong step (and we see this at all checkpoints), but these shadow budgets that covered a significant part of the underfunded budget expenses of customs need to be replaced with something.

Customs officers won’t sit hungry for long.
Here it’s either budget or cash.

But so far, there’s nothing to replace the cash collections with, because, according to my data, the Government only laughed at this letter-appeal.

And here, somehow, lines from Vysotskyi came to mind.

«I’ll give you, - she said, - Vasya,
The most precious thing!..»
I said: «Agreed for a hundred rubles!
If more - half with a friend!»