Another People's Deputies' inquiry with the Prosecutor General, which was supported by Verkhovna Rada, cannot be considered other than the willingness of the lawmaking corps to actively collaborate with President Kuchma, who is known to be strenuously fighting corruption.
The inquiry, signed by People's Deputies Oleksandr Zhyr and Oleksandr Yermak, raises the question of the necessity to verify information on the “opening of foreign accounts and using them to hide receipts in foreign currency by People's Deputy and presidential advisor Viktor Pinchuk, as well as the facts pointing to the theft of state property in especially large amounts and tax evasion by executives of individual commercial entities.”
The long title of the inquiry states the essence of the accusations, with a further detailed account of information to be verified by the General Prosecutor's Office. The matter primarily concerns the Interpipe group, presided over by Viktor Pinchuk before his election to Verkhovna Rada (now he retains a 65% interest in the company). The inquiry states that the financial and commercial structures under Interpipe “carried out transactions involving settlements for electricity and natural gas supplies to individual enterprises in Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Luhansk, and Donetsk oblasts...”
The receipts for export-import transactions by the Interpipe group in foreign exchange did not return to Ukraine... Settlements for natural gas supplies were carried out through the Itera Energy Company, and later Itera- Ukraine for many large enterprises.” Yet, according to the conclusion of the Price Waterhouse Coopers international auditing firm, Interpipe's profits on joint operations with Itera subsidiaries (which in 1996 alone totaled $150 million according to accounting documents), seems to be significantly understated, which gives reason to conclude that receipts in foreign exchange had been hidden outside Ukraine. According to information which needs to be verified, during 1997-1998 through the Interpipe group's Turbotrade and Bipe foreign dollar accounts, $18 million and $20 million were transferred to Pinchuk's accounts that had been opened in The First of Boston Bank without NBU permission. But this information does not include the data about other Pinchuk's accounts in the Bank of Boston and Bank of New York, as well as banks in Cyprus and Switzerland.”
Further, the inquiry presents information that can be treated as its authors' gibe at the current system. On February 11, 1999 People's Deputy Yermak sent an official appeal to General Prosecutor Potebenko requesting to “establish, within the framework of the investigation into the criminal case against Lazarenko”, who in “his entourage” was the owner of the two personal dollar accounts in the Bank of Boston (accounts No. 320495517 and No. 95200630, in which $13,447,883 and $8,424,341 were kept as of early 1999, respectively), as well as three other accounts in the Bank of New York. The Prosecutor General's Office replied to the People's Deputy that the information will be verified “during the course of the investigation into the criminal case against Lazarenko et al. , and the results will be reported separately.” Thus far Yermak has received no answer from the Prosecutor's Office, but now the deputies' inquiry says that “according to reliable information, which, however, should be checked,” two personal dollar accounts in the Boston bank belong to People's Deputy Pinchuk, and three dollar accounts in the New York bank, to the Interpipe group.
There is also an abundance of interesting information about the Nyzhnedniprovsk Pipe Rolling Mill (with Interpipe having a controlling interest), the Marhanets and Ordzhonikidze Coal Cleaning plants (25% +1 shares), the Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant, the Novomoskovsk Pipe Works, etc.
In addition, the authors of the deputies' inquiry point to the fact that Interpipe's dollar accounts had been opened with the Bank of New York, which according to the mass media, is suspected by US and UK law enforcement bodies of laundering billions of dollars of the Russian Mafia. Along with this, the inquiry mentions that “on April 2, 1997 presidential aide Volkov signed and sent a fax to the Kreditiebank of Belgium ordering transfer to specifically this bank the rest of his hard currency funds totaling $2,530,000 kept in the dollar accounts of his offshore firms.”
In his letter of September 8, 1999 the General Prosecutor informed the deputies that a criminal case was initiated based on the facts of some People's Deputies and officials' opening and operating foreign accounts and other malfeasance. Now the deputy inquiry demands that within the framework of cases opened by the General Prosecutor, materials be checked with regard to Pinchuk's dollar accounts, the legitimacy of handing over the management of the shares of major state-owned enterprises, and, based on the results of the findings, “adopt decisions envisioned by law, giving legal appraisal to the actions by the guilty persons regardless of their posts and personal relations with President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma.”
It should be added that cloakroom interviews showed Pinchuk's case being somewhat unexpected to the deputies, because the issue already concerns “a person most close to the President” with regard to family relations. Some unofficial informants come up with quite an interesting version: according to them, Oleksandr Volkov's shadow should be looked for in this case, because everyone knows about the furious hidden fight between Kuchma's trustee (in all senses), Volkov, and Pinchuk, a member of the President's family. If true are the rumors that Volkov's positions have been dramatically shaken due to the disclosed criminal tails allegedly trailing behind him, then the countermove to find similar atavism with Pinchuk seems to be equalizing the chances of the both in their fight over “influence on daddy.” However, without ruling out that the members of the immediate and extended presidential families would be only too glad to drown one another in a spoon of water by releasing the requisite information to their common opponents, we may classify this as too bold and absolutely unacceptable to the authors of the inquiry.








