GAB is pleased to welcome this Guest Post by David Bernstein, an international development consultant and lawyer who spent more than 30 years working on rule of law, governance, and anticorruption programs at the State Department, the EBRD, and the World Bank. He recently served as one of the three international commissioners on the Selection Commission for the Head of Ukraine’s State Customs Service (SCS).

Our Commission was tasked with identifying two candidates to head the SCS from a list of finalists we were given. After interviewing the first few, my fellow international commissioners and I worried that we would be hard pressed to find even one to recommend to the Finance Minister and the Cabinet of Ministers; our potential dilemma was the Customs Code required us to name two. Fortunately, in the end we did find two, both investigators from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU): Ruslan Damentsov and Orest Mandziy. On April 10, 2026, the Cabinet, acting on the Finance Minister’s recommendation, appointed Mandziy as head of the SCS (the decision is here; the government’s announcement is here). Damentsov accepted the post of deputy head.

Ukraine pioneered the use of international experts to help select the heads of national agencies (here). Over the past several years, international experts have played a key role in selecting the heads of NABU, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, and the Economic Security Bureau, as well as the judges of the High Anti-Corruption Court (here). Ukrainian civil society, many members of the Verkhovna Rada, and key international donors believe that international participation in selection commissions can help combat systemic corruption in key institutions and build or sustain public trust in anticorruption and law enforcement agencies. This post describes how the process worked, why it was possible, and what lessons my experience on the SCS Selection Commission offers for the future.