If the National Bank of Ukraine wants to gain more public trust, reprimanding top officials for talking to the press is not going to help. In fact, it’s backfiring.
Last week, the NBU Council, including governor Kyrylo Shevchenko, passed a no-confidence vote on deputy governors Kateryna Rozhkova and Dmytro Sologub for talking to the Kyiv Post.
Shevchenko told news outlet Dzerkalo Tyzhnya that the NBU must speak with “one voice” because contrasting views could disrupt delicate negotiations with international financial institutions.
He’s right. The international financial institutions’ trust has wavered since former governor Yakiv Smolii resigned over “systemic political pressure.” Shevchenko said securing this trust is paramount.
But imposing a legally ambiguous “reprimand” is not the best way to convince them that political pressure is gone. Neither is a council member’s Facebook post about how the deputy governors are lucky they aren’t running into assassins on their front porch. Ridiculous.
First of all, Ukraine’s international partners trust Rozhkova and Sologub. The International Monetary Fund has worked with them and knows what to expect. It does not know what to expect from the new team. Censuring them will only raise suspicions.
Second of all, context matters. The Kyiv Post had set out to find whether the NBU Council and the new governor were pressuring the old team to leave. Multiple sources mentioned a wave of disenchantment that led people to resign.
Except Rozhkova and Sologub defended the new team and praised the central bank’s healthy collegiality. Sologub later told Interfax-Ukraine that the IMF’s trust is broken and needs to be rebuilt — something everyone knows already.
The reprimand signals that maybe collegiality isn’t so healthy after all.
IMF resident representative Goesta Ljungman cautioned that “ensuring the NBU leadership’s accountability should follow the governance framework.”
How firm is the vote’s legal foundation? Unclear. It’s also unclear what it will mean for Rozhkova and Sologub.
Council member Vitalii Shapran, who introduced the vote, said it was a “disciplinary” action. The message seems clear: stop spouting off unauthorized comments.
But between the lines, it reads like pressure. Council head Bohdan Danylyshyn has wanted the duo gone for a long time. Council member Vitaliy Shapran has accused them of sabotage, writing that if this had been the 1990s, they could have been sacked or killed. Rozhkova is widely hated and has been investigated for allegedly letting Mikhailovsky Bank’s management steal Hr 1 billion prior to its bankruptcy in 2016.
Seeing Rozhkova’s and Sologub’s names on an article so critical of the council seemed like just the excuse its members were looking for. As for Shevchenko, by voting for the resolution, he is sabotaging the united front that he’s so desperately trying to present.
