The situation with Boris Berezovsky raises a question: why
does every person President Leonid Kuchma recommend tends "to go up the
river?" The Day's Tetiana KOROBOVA asked Hryhory Omelchenko,
member of the parliamentary Organized Crime and Corruption Committee, to
express his opinion on this odd tendency:
"It has already become a chronic disease with our President. No matter
how many documents we submit showing malfeasance by high officials, we
remain, alas, like an advertising agency. Those deserving to be dismissed
from their posts on the basis of such evidence of for abuse of power
by presidential decree - here I have in mind a number of ministers and
people from the presidential entourage - were in fact promoted by the President
to a higher post or transferred horizontally, or even honored with various
presidential decorations. And all this accompanies his sound bites about
reinforcing the struggle against crime and corruption.
"Well, maybe, our President has found that the field of action for such
fruitful patronage work is too narrow for him in Ukraine. And Mr. Kuchma
decided to use his experience on the CIS expanses. So we got his protОgО,
Mr. Berezovsky.
However, as soon as our anti- Mafia team got to know that Mr. Kuchma
was going to recommend Mr. Berezovsky as CIS Executive Secretary, we sent
our warnings through the President's close entourage: you, Mr. President,
have already come unstuck with Pavlo Lazarenko and a long series of other
high officials, but it was our country's internal affair. In this case
you may become the laughing-stock of the whole world.
"Mr. Berezovsky, having a well-lined wallet, engaged himself in such
bustling international politico-economic activity in the CIS states that
Mr. Kuchma elevated him to the status of friend, perhaps to take advantage
of this in the presidential elections. And who paid court to Mr. Berezovsky
in Kyiv when he failed to reach Moscow flying from Paris? A presidential
advisor, deputy of the President as Chairman of the Domestic Policy Council,
whose accounts were impounded by decision of a Belgian court and who is
now being prosecuted abroad for financial abuses.
"The President has already compromised himself so much that his actions
should be looked upon in the light of the Criminal Code. So there are ample
grounds today to start an impeachment procedure not for purely political
or ideological reasons, as the Communists want, but - I stress this - from
the viewpoint of law.
"Today, the No. 1 task for all democratic forces, all honest people,
patriots of our state, for each citizen of Ukraine, is to go to bed and
wake up with one thought: what have I done to remove from power Leonid
Kuchma and the corrupt Mafia-type pyramid he leads?"






