Head of the selection commission for the chief of the State Customs Service Kunio Mikuriya said there had been no political influence or pressure on commission members during the candidate selection process.

"Personally, I did not receive any messages from the government, business, the international community, or anyone else – nothing at all. They said they trusted our commission, and we were pleased that there was no interference whatsoever," Mikuriya said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

The head of the selection commission said that neither the international nor the Ukrainian members of the panel had felt any pressure to promote specific candidates. According to him, the interview process was aimed at determining whether candidates met the expected standard, everything took place transparently, and the stages of the competition were broadcast live.

Commenting on the reputation of certain applicants, Mikuriya said the commission had reviewed information from civil society, the media, and state anti-corruption bodies, which had checked the candidates’ integrity records. He stressed that this information was used as a basis for the commission’s own analysis.

As reported, at its meeting on Friday, March 27, the commission selected two candidates as winners of the competition: Ruslan Damentsov, deputy head of the second detectives unit of the fourth main detectives unit of NABU, who had also taken part in the competition for the post of head of the Economic Security Bureau and reached the final alongside the agency’s current head, Oleksandr Tsyvinsky, and Orest Mandziy, head of the sixth detectives unit of the fourth main detectives unit of NABU.

The candidacies of both men will now be submitted for consideration to Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko and then to the Cabinet of Ministers.