The Day correspondent Tetiana Korobova asked the ex-member of Crimean government Andry Senchenko (the idea of open economy and one-way budget in Crimea are his) to comment on the project.
Yalta has already had such an experiment. About ten free economic zones have been operating in the region for about three years. Not much was said about them, but the process of money laundering never stopped there. The President issued a decree regulating taxation of enterprises, which belonged to the Cabinet of Ministers, Presidential Administration and Parliament. The decree eliminated all kinds of taxes, customs fees, and excise taxes. The rest was easy. For instance, a cigarette shipment is sent to some resort belonging to the Cabinet of Ministers. The price increases and the cigarettes are passed on to our fellow Ukrainians (no taxes paid of course). The decree did not have any positive effect on the Yalta budget or living standards of Yalta residents. It is hard to estimate trade volume, but I think it is somewhere close to the Crimean budget. Then they started to consider the idea of uniting this into one zone. To unify and legalize income sources is their prime goal. And they are not absolutely sure that they will be able to continue governing Crimea. So what they want to do is create a system, which will be headed by an appointed, not elected, person. In other words, the project will be chaired by whomever they like. Then it will be connected with some international projects or organizations so that the administration along with the appointed man cannot be legally removed. All this means long-term, if not lifetime, control over Yalta, no matter what happens in the rest of Ukraine.
I think the project was prepared by either Ihor or Anatoly Franchuk. The latter's government is going to fall in the immediate future. And the whole idea is totally senseless: " We will push everybody down, we do not care what 2.5 million people who live in Crimea think and of course we do not care for what 50 million Ukrainians think. We are just going to build heaven on earth at other people's expense." To cut the story short, the idea under present conditions is to create of a legal hideout for criminals.






