Even by post-Soviet standards Boris Berezovsky is considered
an especially odious figure. Some time ago Forbes Magazine described
how he got where he is by essentially sucking dry the AvtoVAZ auto factory
in Volgograd, selling cars for cash in advance and paying the factory late,
if ever, in inflated rubles and pocketing big-time profits. It also pointed
out how he might be implicated in the murder of Russian television star
and mogul Vlad Listiev and how Russian law enforcement quickly closed the
case when they saw where the evidence was pointing. Hence, when President
Leonid Kuchma nominated the oligarch to be Executive Secretary of the CIS,
it caused some raised eyebrows. Now that he is after the Mykolayiv Alumina
Plant, one of Ukraine's few economic cherries left to pick, with the support
of the government and, no doubt, chief executive, (pardon my clichО) the
plot thickens.
The aluminum scandal described in this issue is a particularly good
illustration of how in this country (and the CIS in general), public politics
have far less to do with determining how things will be than what goes
on behind closed doors. Politics is always to some extent about who gets
what, but seldom is it as blatant or downright odoriferous as in the former
Soviet Union. Without putting too much of a spin on it, it looks like the
incumbent is not only in cahoots with some pretty shady figures; he is
ready to pay them off regally in exchange for their financial and political
support in getting elected. Lawmakers have tried to block this, and for
once have done the right thing. Few can doubt that if Berezovsky's Transworld
Group gets its hand on the plant that turns bauxite into aluminum, it will
not end up sucked just as dry as the Volgograd carmaker.
There is a great deal of talk in Ukraine about integration, whether
it should integrate with Europe, Russia, or God knows who. I would argue
that the regular Berezovsky-Kuchma trysts point to the fact that on the
level of the shadow economy and its sibling, shadow politics, Ukraine has
already become deeply integrated into the CIS theater of operations. Take
the energy market, directly and officially controlled by the National Security
and Defense Council which basically hands out licenses to make money. The
oil and gas come from Russia, and it has for this reason long been apparent
that the Ukrainian energy Mafia, which includes the core of the country's
political elite, simply could not exist without close relations with the
Russian structures that supply the crude. The Berezovsky affair illustrates
to what extent the current regime in this country is willing to kowtow
to Russian oligarchs. De jure, Ukraine remains independent, but
the question still arises of just how independent it is de facto.






