A bad tradition has been established in Ukraine: every new government not only condemns its predecessor for unskillful actions, but also brings them to trial. On the one hand, it is good — one should not feel impunity after reaching the height of power. But the country, its citizens, and foreign investors lost confidence in our government even without this. And Ukraine’s reputation is getting worse with each passing year. What will happen when it reaches zero? The people on the street will justify their own crimes by those of the authorities.
Everyone remembers how the head of the previous government calculated how much was stolen in a year, a month, a week, up till seconds. However, it ended up with nothing. There were no criminal cases launched. Now it is the turn of the new winners. President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych states that those who are guilty of corruption, including the incumbent leaders, will be held accountable. “We already have cases of corruption amidst the current government. You may also know about bribes with which some of the raion administrations heads were caught. Some criminal cases were launched based on those facts. There will be no difference,” said the president, responding to a reproach that only representatives of the previous cabinet are tried. “I believe that the Ukrainian people are wise and that they will understand. Soon there will be concrete results and we will name all the ‘heroes’ — those former government officials who robbed the country, impudently broke laws, and did this on a massive scale,” threatened Yanukovych, and noted that he deliberately avoids answers to specific questions, because they will be given by prosecutors and judges. The president said, “The answer to them will be provided when we will establish order and rule of law in the country.”
By now it became clear what was meant by that. Foreign law firms hired by Mykola Azarov (Trout Cacheris PLLC and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, as well as the investigation agency Kroll Inc.) put out on the Internet their preliminary reports on the investigation of the previous government’s financial activity administered by Yulia Tymoshenko. The reports include many exciting episodes worthy of a swirling detective novel. They wrote about how Renault cars were bought for the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Opel cars, medical equipment, vaccines, and medicines — for the Ministry of Health, sugar — for State Reserve; how the money received from the Japanese for selling Kyoto quota were used, in violation of contracts; how the budget money was used for giving out free state acts on land, but not all the peasants were lucky enough to receive them.
MP Volodymyr Oliinyk explained that the results of the foreign companies’ investigation can be a sufficient reason for conducting checks by the Accounting Chamber and Control and Inspection Department, which, in their turn, have a right to involve law enforcement bodies to examine this case.
However, our opposition is capable of defending its interests. The leader of Batkivshchyna party Tymoshenko rebutted the accusations of the American investigators. According to what she said “they found only that I transferred money, that was allocated for the environment, to the Pension Fund and this is my biggest crime.” In one of the TV broadcasts the ex-premier reminded that when she held the office of prime-minister she appealed to the Prosecutor General to check the activity of the Ministry of Health, including the purchase of medicines, but at that time police found no abuse.
“At that time the person responsible for purchasing medicines was today’s Health Minister in Azarov’s Cabinet. By the way, he is also Azarov’s personal doctor,” deftly added Tymoshenko. Her former Minister of European Integration Hryhorii Nemyria, proved himself to be a worthy fighter when he described the preliminary report of former American prosecutors as being nothing more than a well-prepared script of political repression.
In any case, the facts provided by the Americans are sufficient for conducting further investigations by the Control and Inspection Department, the Accounting Chamber, and the Prosecutor General’s Office. They certainly will be able to dig up much more. Another question is how much money they will be able to return to the state treasury, and, most importantly, whether the government will manage to arrange everything in such a way that its current officials would not be caught for stealing. However, ideally the goal should be to have no stealing at all. Will the president’s favorite threat, “All of you, I’ll beat your hands off,” be enough? Unfortunately, it is not possible to keep everything and everyone under control. There should be created such conditions when there will be nothing for the officials to steal. One of the possible ways out is no contact communication with consumers of various public services, applicants for various permits and licenses. The number of these documents and, therefore, of corresponding officials can and should be minimized.
But officials are usually vivacious, brisk, and, as they say, aware of where their interests lie. If licenses are revoked, they would introduce quotas for, say, grain exports. The Ministry of Economy, for example, asks for the right to increase the threshold for state-guaranteed orders of one participant and a right to have an additional right to control them if all of a sudden there appeared new, previously unknown circumstances. At first glance, the last measure is aimed at fighting corruption. But you can also make good money if you have something to blackmail people with. On the other hand, in such a way one can easily disrupt plans of state departments and enterprises and thus distribute the right people to the best posts.
Therefore, the task of the present authorities is not so much to punish people for sins past as to return to the budget all that was stolen by both opponents and their own people. They also have to make sure that none can nestle at the state breadbasket.
