Is the “Lazarenko Phenomenon” So Phenomenal?

The case of Pavlo Lazarenko, who has been held more than a year in a San Francisco pre-trial jail pending the US authorities’ decision about his extradition to Switzerland, took an unexpected turn last Friday. As is known, Bern wants to get hold of the former Ukrainian premier to try him on a charge of money laundering. The Ukrainian Prosecutor- General’s Office also hopes to see Mr. Lazarenko in his fatherland.

Now both Switzerland and Ukraine seem to be likely to come unstuck, and the ex-premier, who arrived in the US hoping to get political asylum, may get even more than he wanted: a lifetime US residence — but in prison. The point is the US judiciary has taken a closer look at our former premier for his involvement in money laundering. The Californian federal court jury announced there is evidence of Mr. Lazarenko extorting and receiving money from individuals and companies for doing business in Ukraine. The indictment says, in particular, that Mr. Lazarenko transferred $114 million to American banks and brokerage firms via the banking accounts in Switzerland and other countries in five years, with $20 million having been “laundered” through US banks, AP reports.

If found guilty on all counts of the indictment, Mr. Lazareko will face a total 250-year term of imprisonment. Mr. Lazarenko’s American lawyer thinks the case will be heard in court not before June 16.

However, no matter who orchestrated this twist in the Lazarenko affair (on the eve of Bill Clinton’s visit?), the very sense of what is going on is more important. It is worth remembering that the latest history of practically all post- Soviet states started with the re- carving of national property and financial resources. And one of the main (real, not declarative) functions of the authorities was to secure a share for the old nomenklatura in this re-carving. Mr. Lazareko proved to be “the most talented” pupil among the active part of Soviet functionaries who suddenly got rid of their communist party chains. And after the Donetsk clan was “busted” in 1996, the “boss” faced no resistance: the state was inactive, the Kyiv clan and other regional “elites” were silent, and the political parties were (and still are, by all accounts) weak and pathologically pragmatic. Ukraine’s uniqueness is only expressed here in the degree of international publicity, detective exotica (Panamanian passports, etc.), and the scale on which national shame was made use of in the domestic political struggle.

It would be to the point now to ask the following questions. Does our society have real checks and balances against those who follow “Lazarenko’s techniques” in politics and business? For it is not society and the state that caused the ex-premier’s downfall — he just lost in the competition with those like him. Do the mechanisms of civil control over the government work in Ukraine? Will the state’s reputation be still held hostage to competition between Mr. Lazarenko’s “clones?”