Russian channels are tripping over one another, reporting from Geneva
about the Ukrainian scandal. In fact, this information starts every news
broadcast. We must thank Mr. Yeltsin for leaving his hospital for three
hours to make another series of cadre changes in power structures, sicking
his Administration on his Security Council, diverting our strategic partners'
attention from the struggle between the Ukrainian state and ex-Premier
Pavlo Lazarenko on the territory of neutral Switzerland.
True one gets the feeling that President Kuchma, who recently was joined
by Premier Pustovoitenko in declaring that Lazarenko's money belongs to
the people, is now somehow very restrained in his public reaction to the
news that there will be a trial. He seems less than overjoyed at the news
that justice will prevail now that the former Premier's parliamentary immunity
cannot help him and that the investigations of our gallant prosecutors
who have been combating corruption will be crowned with success now that
their Swiss colleagues have taken up the case. He has not even issued a
recommendation to the court as he did in the serial murder case.
The impression is that the President would very much like to know exactly
what the Swiss investigators are after, what lines of investigation they
intend to follow, whether they will broach any subjects related to the
Lazarenko case, whether their findings on how Pavlo Lazarenko built his
fortune be generally applicable to the whole system of capital accumulation
in "Ukraine undergoing reform," or will be limited to his bank accounts,
assuming that Switzerland has decided to clean up its image and refute
further accusations of its being a haven for assets of dubious origin.
It is possible that official Kyiv's restrained attitude to the scandal
is explained by the fact that it cannot bring itself to admit that Lazarenko
is just a black sheep in the Ukrainian pedigree family, a holdover of the
recent totalitarian past and a chance occurrence. If so, this tactic will
not look good against the background of Parliamentary inquiries addressed
to the General Prosecutor's Office and dealing with the same topic of financial
machinations and money laundering but with a different cast of characters.
It will not look good despite the President's unpretentious commentary
that the General Prosecutor's Office has prepared a "substantive response"
to the Swiss queries. This author is personally prepared to believe that
Mr. Volkov is "clean," but certain distrustful citizens, after reading
indefatigable Hryhory Omelchenko's next well substantiated expose of the
President's number one aide, might think differently: that when someone
close to the President is stealing and stashing away money everything is
fine and dandy, but once this person drifts away from the President, things
start to go wrong. The fact remains that Mr. Omelchenko tried to draw the
Chief Executive's attention to Pavlo Lazarenko when the latter was not
in "opposition." His attempt was abortive and the same may be true of his
current endeavors so long as Mr. Volkov is in favor with the President.
The whole things boils down to the simple fact that Ukraine's "reform"
has provided conditions in which no tangible capital can be accumulated
using legitimate methods. Everybody knows as much and that the law steps
in only when friends have a falling out. In other words, nothing depends
on the law and everything depends on the authorities.
Hromada has launched a protest campaign. Characteristically, the first
to take the floor in Parliament to fight to restore the "good name" of
the party's leader was Mr. Turchynov, of late inconspicuous in Pavlo Lazarenko's
close proximity, but rather to the contrary, who used to represent the
dissenting wing together with Yuliya Tymoshenko. To suspect that Mr. Turchynov
was driven by some personal business interest would mean portraying him
as dim, which he is not. Rather, his was an attempt to show that Hromada
comes together at a time of danger, and this also seems the purpose of
its clumsy picketing. The party has no alternative, it is aware of its
vulnerability, and all it can do is to continue to struggling in every
way possible, hoping to remain in one piece as a political force. Although
it is anyone's guess how this struggle of now leaderless Hromada will be
compatible with Ms. Tymoshenko's political aspirations.
To do away with Hromada quickly and effectively, those in power need
to have Pavlo Lazarenko in their hands, not in a Swiss prison. Yet it is
hard to imagine under the circumstances on what grounds the Swiss could
agree to extradite him, considering that Ukraine could actively insist
on it after his fatuous antic with the Panamanian passport (which fact
is still to be ascertained, by the way). Moreover, his lawyer insists that
Pavlo Lazarenko is Leonid Kuchma's major presidential rival, one who has
sustained one attempt on his life here and recently declared that he was
threatened with another one. In any case, the Swiss are not likely to let
him out of their hands while an investigation is in progress, even less
if his guilt is proved. In other words, we had it coming, did we not? Or,
to put it differently, does all this mean that official Kyiv, while struggling
to receive official information from Switzerland about Pavlo Lazarenko's
bank accounts, counted on him and this information remaining in Switzerland,
so the Swiss investigators could get his testimony and allow him to try
to justify himself? Justify how? By stating that he did not do anything
that everyone else in the President's entourage were not doing and that
doing it was generally accepted practice. Pavlo Lazarenko recently demonstrated
his methods of self-defense by publications in two Kyiv newspapers. Among
other things, he posed certain questions that have remained unanswered.
And the questions were quite interesting, specifically, "Number one. Which
of the ranking Ukrainian politicians keeps accounts with the Bank of Boston
in the United States? Number two. Whose very big money is stored in Brunei,
a country whose name sounds so very exotic to an ordinary Ukrainian ear?"
Of course, this is only part of the questions Pavlo Lazarenko intended
to answer himself or make a horse trade using this knowledge. Either way,
on November 19, in his last interview with The Day before going
on a business trip from which he has not yet returned, when asked why no
names are mentioned in any of his accusations concerning abuse of office
upstairs, the ex-Premier replied, "I need time and help from people living
in Western Europe, America, and elsewhere to prove everything, to receive
original documents, and produce irrefutable evidence." In answer to a rather
provocative question, intimating that Pavlo Lazarenko was "physically"
afraid of the President, he was not visibly offended and promised to "raise
the curtain and let you into a world to which you have no access and of
which you don't know much." He added that "a lot of people," after reading
the Kievskie Vedomosti material "found themselves there. I mean
that there are things some people don't know and others do, and those others
can read between the lines very well." He also promised that the first
of the six questions posed in his interview would be answered "perhaps
on December 15." Would it concern the accounts kept with the Bank of Boston
or maybe City Bank in Bern? Well, man proposes but God disposes... Incidentally,
there is just the possibility that Pavlo Lazarenko made a detour from France
to Switzerland not to take care of his bank accounts (and it remains to
be seen that the accounts in question are really his or "related ones"),
but to get information about others, so he could use it as counter-evidence.
After all has been said and done, we have bright prospects, whatever
the outcome of the Lazarenko case. We can just sit back and watch the President's
entourage devour itself. All right, folks, who will be next? There is still
time before the October 1999 election, and all the time in the world after.






