Ukraine's Tarnished Poster Child for Reform
Feb 24, 2015 2:59 PM EST
By Leonid Bershidsky
Less than a year ago, Igor Bilous was a symbol of hope and change for Ukraine. The 36-year-old investment banker's appointment to lead the country's tax service seemed to confirm that the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych's corrupt regime would mark a generational shift and a radical cleanup of the Ukrainian state. Today, however, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk suspended Bilous and two of his key deputies pending a corruption investigation.
Bilous's fall bodes poorly for the stability of the current Ukrainian government. But Yatsenyuk and President Petro Poroshenko must see the investigation through. If they can't win a war against Russian President Vladimir Putin, they at least have to show they can defeat corruption.
Bilous joined the government on a wave of enthusiasm following Ukraine's "revolution of dignity". On March 12, 2014, the day he was appointed, Russia hadn't yet annexed Crimea, there was no war in eastern Ukraine, and young, well-educated Ukrainians were trading in good private sector jobs for nearly unpaid work in the public sector in hopes of helping turn Ukraine into a European nation. Prosperous, multilingual Bilous, who had engineered some of Ukraine's notable mergers, was the perfect poster boy for the trend.
His first job was to kill off a tax evasion scheme typical of post-Soviet states, whereby companies turn money in their bank accounts into cash through fictitious deals and then pay it out to workers in envelopes, avoiding payroll taxes. This reverse money laundering was one of the leading causes of Ukraine's budget shortfalls. "I get calls from all over the place," Bilous told Liga.net in a May 2014 interview. "People suggest I leave everything as it is. The first month they tried to cut a deal. It didn't work. Nor the second month. Then they went to a lower level, and now they're trying to get everything done on a local level -- it's easier for them. They just don't get it that we see everything here."
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http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-02-24/ukraine-s-tarnished-poster-child-for-reform
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uhnope
(6,419 posts)to Ukraine and its economy that Russia has done by waging war on it and occupying its land. Really sickening.
newthinking
(3,982 posts)No surprise though, since the group in power are all long term politicians just from the minority parties.
Imagine how they can even spend the kind of money they have on more weapons while their people are sufferring due to ignoring the depression they are in.
Ukraine Finance Minister’s American ‘Values’
Ukraine Finance Minister’s American ‘Values’
February 18, 2015
Special Report: Among the arguments for why Americans should risk nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine is that the regime that took power in a coup last year “shares our values.” But one of those “values” – personified by Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko – may be the skill of using insider connections, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Ukraine’s new Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who has become the face of reform for the U.S.-backed regime in Kiev and will be a key figure handling billions of dollars in Western financial aid, was at the center of insider deals and other questionable activities when she ran a $150 million U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund.
Prior to taking Ukrainian citizenship and becoming Finance Minister last December, Jaresko was a former U.S. diplomat who served as chief executive officer of the Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), which was created by Congress in the 1990s and overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S. AID) to help jumpstart an investment economy in Ukraine.
But Jaresko, who was limited to making $150,000 a year at WNISEF under the U.S. AID grant agreement, managed to earn more than that amount, reporting in 2004 that she was paid $383,259 along with $67,415 in expenses, according to WNISEF’s public filing with the Internal Revenue Service.
Later, Jaresko’s compensation was removed from public disclosure altogether after she co-founded two entities in 2006: Horizon Capital Associates (HCA) to manage WNISEF’s investments (and collect around $1 million a year in fees) and Emerging Europe Growth Fund (EEGF) to collaborate with WNISEF on investment deals.
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/18/ukraine-finance-ministers-american-values/
