Anti-Corruption Forum Still Silent

The problem of controlling corruption has reached lately the level of “a real threat to national security.” Thus begins the press release of Anti-Corruption Forum, an all-Ukrainian non-governmental organization. As is the usual practice of covering this kind of issues, The Day does not object to this conclusion: both corrupt officials and those who fight them have in fact been put in the same condition. Therefore, few will venture to predict who will beat who. The Day has already reported in its several issues on the illegal — as the court ruled — transfer of the state-owned shares of three joint- stock companies, including the Odesa-based Eksimnaftoprodukt, with a total face value of UAH 1.5 million, to the Ukrnaftoprodukt holding company controlled by a corrupt grouping. Then those shares were used as security for a knowingly forgivable loan offered to the holding company by the offshore Bevalo Investment Ltd., which in turn sold them to another company, leaving the state in the cold, so to speak. Meanwhile, the State Property Fund (SPF), whose passivity, to say the least, contributed to all these shady deals with state-own property, was in no way perturbed and kept insisting that these enterprises be privatized according to the tried and true formula. The facts The Day revealed furnished ample proof that it was high time the state put an end to all this. Reading an article on this matter in our newspaper (December 25, 2001), Prime Minister Anatoly Kinakh said it touched on a burning issue and told the author that, on spite of the SPF position expressed in a letter from its Deputy Chairman Mykhailo Chechetov, the government had decided not to privatize the businesses named in the article.

However, it turned out that it was too early to consider the matter closed. Just a few days after we published the article “Premier Unafraid of the Smell of Oil” (Den’, Dec. 26, 2001, not translated), news agencies reported from Odesa that the tax police had instituted criminal proceedings against Volodymyr Filipchuk, Hero of Ukraine and chairman of the Eksimnaftoprodukt board of directors, who had been stubbornly defending the corporate interests of state.

So The Day could not leave unattended an Anti-Corruption Forum press conference featuring Mykola Azarov, chairman of the State Tax Administration, and Mykhailo Chechetov, first deputy chairman of the State Property Fund.

The ostensible reason why the leadership of this forum, set up on Mr. Azarov’s initiative, decided to meet the press was registration of a new non-government organization. Leaving tactical matters to his comrades and saying that he would like to be seen as a rank-and-file individual concerned about this country’s destiny, not as a tax authority chief, Mr. Azarov set forth the Anti-Corruption Forum’s strategy.

According to him, the organization is not going to conduct investigations of its own but “will reveal facts of corruption among top executives, officials, people’s deputies, and candidate deputies, especially now, during the election campaign” because, as Mr. Azarov said, “We are interested in having an honest parliament consisting of decent people who know what corruption control is.” The leading untouchable also announced, “We are now receiving a lot of signals that our future people’s deputies are already buying votes, as it were, in their constituencies.” And he immediately raised a natural question — how to react? — and answered it, “I think we must inform these voters, through the mass media, about such facts, and let them (candidates or voters? — Author) deny it.”

Thus the sleaze-busters cut a truly daring and uncompromising figure in front of the press. One could even conjure up the picture of gallant warriors attacking, sabers in hand, enemy tanks. But who specifically corrupts the voters today? It turned out “there are many names and many cases,” but it is too early to disclose them. Mr. Azarov said this would take months if not years.

Then The Day asked the nation’s publican-in-chief (because, after singing praises of transparent privatization in Ukraine, Mr. Chechetov quickly walked out without waiting for question time) a direct and all-too-relevant question, “Why do you, a citizen who takes an active part in the Anti-Corruption Forum proceedings, keep silent about the well-known actions as a result of which a highly cost-effective national enterprise Eksimnaftoprodukt was stolen from the Ukrainian state and the State Tax Administration with you at the head is taking a court action against Hero of Ukraine Volodymyr Filipchuk who resisted this theft?”

Here follows Mr. Azarov’s answer without comment, as he wished at the press conference:

“We have never raised the question of Eksimnaftoprodukt property transfer. This is totally out of our, tax inspectors’, line. But I too would like to ask it. When I was listening to my colleague, Mykhailo Chechetov, whose probity does not raise even a shadow of a doubt in me (I’ve known him for a long time as a people’s deputy), as he was explaining about transparent procedures, I wanted to ask him the same question that you asked: why is this enterprise now in no one knows whose hands? But everybody should mind his own business. Property is not a question for the tax administration. It makes no difference to us who the owner is and whether or not this is moral. And when we were bringing a criminal lawsuit (against Mr. Filipchuk — Author), we meant the Eksimnaftoprodukt managers’ illegal actions in funding housing construction for military servicemen and receiving an illegal, in our opinion, privilege. We are now very minutely scrutinizing this case. I don’t think the matter is as simple as it seemed at first glance. So I think we will see the widely-publicized criminal case through to the end. If we ever made any mistakes, we’ll admit them. If there were no mistakes, we’ll take it to court. As to my civic attitude, I’ve got a host of examples (not only related to Eksimnaftoprodukt) where the Anti-Corruption Forum could say its weighty word. Maybe, the question you asked will also be the subject of our discussions and our interest. Why not? But I am not yet fully informed about this issue. I don’t have the information which would make it possible for me to give you an unequivocal answer: yes, this is illegal, these are machinations and abuse. We must look into this. I haven’t dealt with this matter in the last few years.”