Prominent world Ukrainians initiate Ukrainian National World Bank

The initiative group of the founding board of the Ukrainian National World Bank — comprising well- known human-rights champion and ex-political prisoner Petro Ruban, People's Deputy and honorary chairman of the Ukrainian Republican Party Levko Lukyanenko; Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists leader Slava Stetsko; People's Deputy and chairman of the Ukrainian Culture Foundation Borys Oliynyk, National Bank of Ukraine governor Viktor Yushchenko, and other well-known sociopolitical figures — has issued an appeal to the world Ukrainian public.

The address states that the socioeconomic situation in Ukraine is disastrous, one of the causes being that almost 95% of commercial bank capital is in the hands of insiders of non- Ukrainian origin. In this sense Ukraine lacks a national commercial and financial system which could serve Ukrainian interests. The authors stress that the state-run nomenklatura-based governing structures are working, quite consciously, toward economic collapse, being parasitic on foreign loans. “A debt noose is being prepared to effect the creeping annexation of the Ukrainian national wealth,” the appeal states.

To protect the socioeconomic interests of the Ukrainian nation, the initiative group called upon Ukrainians to avert an economic and political collapse, by jointly creating the Ukrainian National Worldwide Bank designed to promote “a truly Ukrainian small and medium business sector” and to form “Ukrainian property and its Ukrainian owner.”

Petro RUBAN , an initiator of establishing such a bank, told The Day, “The people, who have familiarized themselves with the appeal and understood the crux of the issue, consider this the only chance to save not only the economy of Ukraine but also our statehood.

“About 20 million Ukrainians now reside outside Ukraine. If 10% of them buy one share each ($1000), we will get $2 billion. This can be done in the course of 3-4 months. Our intention was approved by the National Bank governor Viktor Yushchenko. It was also accepted with understanding by prominent national democratic politicians. The point is that the current regime is out of place, mindless, and criminal, it not only does not help implement this idea but also tries to wreck it.

“I made this idea public for the first time at the session of the International League of Ukrainian Entrepreneurs (I am its US and Canada regional director). And I was supported by Yevhen Marchuk. But as soon as two weeks later, a business partner of mine was invited to write a libel on me and send it to the President of Ukraine. The libel said that Petro Ruban is collecting ОmigrО money to help Mr. Marchuk in his election campaign.

“Meanwhile, I myself had intended to spell out my idea to the President. But I was kept away from him. For this criminal gang, which is robbing the Ukrainian people, does not need ideas aimed at straightening out to the least extent the socioeconomic situation in this country. I, a Ukrainian who did a 23-year prison term, am ashamed of what is going on in this country.

“For example, Leonid Kuchma's hireling and former Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers Lobov has fled to France. Both the Security Service and the prosecutor's office knew it. But he was made economic representative in France retroactively.”

“Why do you think the idea of a Ukrainian bank will be supported?”

“Since 1988 (for three years only) I visited eighteen countries, propagating there the idea of Ukrainian independence. But both then and now nobody has been in any hurry to render Ukraine any effective financial assistance. The International Monetary Fund appropriates money for Ukraine, only to decide by itself who will benefit from it and for what purpose. Flowing through certain circles and certain hands, these funds eventually stay behind in the West.

“A Ukrainian cannot in fact get money on credit in Ukraine. While our ethnic minorities are being helped by their historical homelands, the Ukrainian does not get anything from anybody. Loans in Ukraine are only extended to certain well connected individuals. This leaves only one option: to set up not another new bank in Ukraine but a worldwide Ukrainian bank. For there are Ukrainians in Canada, Australia, Germany, Japan, etc.”

“What kind of guarantee do we give to those people that their money will not be lost...”

“Their money will work... It is planned to pay 10-15% annual interest. The bank will be deposited not in Ukraine, because this country has not yet become stable in the political and economic sense. We will establish it Switzerland or Australia, or maybe in the US. In a word, the money will be placed in an account of an institution in a stable country. Even this guarantees that it will not vanish as happens with IMF funds. But here, nobody can give such a guarantee for the Ukrainian nation that does not yet have a state of its own. What it has is only a phantom.

“Let me give you an example. When I carry precious stones or metals to the US, I am levied with a tax amounting to 0.014 % of the declared value. Will I be afraid of this tax and hide the valuables? But when I arrive with the same goods in Ukraine, which does not produce gold, the tax jumps to 180%. Is this not a crime against our own people? This crime is being committed because the International Monetary Fund has plans of its own, about which neither our government nor our citizens have the foggiest idea. IMF funds are only utilized for maintaining the parasitic state apparatus, which now feeds not even off its own people but off a foreign sop.

“Thus a financial alternative, a Ukrainian world bank, is required. This is not a loan. This is money from the sympathetic Ukrainian world community. It will work in Ukraine for its development. The point is our land should not be sold out the way our factories were. Now we have nothing to do with them! Or take the stores on Khreshchatyk, now in foreign hands.

“Former Minister of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade Serhiy Osyka once told me: ‘We should forget about patriotism in the economy.' After that, all we think about is how to sell something abroad. And this is our highest goal.

“Only a new president can put an end to this. But where will he get the money to put this country on its feet? He will be given it by the Ukrainian World Bank. Yevhen Marchuk will be able to seize this chance and implement our plan of involving the Ukrainian public in the economic renaissance of this country.”

“How will the Ukrainian World Bank work in practice?”

“Each oblast center will have its own branch, which will loan at a low interest for promising projects implemented in Ukraine by Ukrainians. And decisions to give the loan will be made by people for whom the Ukrainian nation is not an empty phrase.”