Aluminum Politics

The outraged lawmakers making up the special committee to investigate the MAP case prepared a statement, asking the Cabinet who gave it the right to ignore the parliamentary resolution banning any action regarding MAP before the committee's report and why the government was ignoring the law on economic associations, allowing a board chairman to be dismissed only on the strength of a general meeting decision.

Meanwhile, MAP workers staged pickets by Parliament, demanding Mieshyn's reinstatement. A meeting gathered at the plant that same morning, and the ousted manager delivered a scathing speech.

The Day was told by the MAP office in Kyiv that Vitaly Mieshyn, assisted by friends, resorted to a revolutionary tactic and broke into his office at 2 a.m. on Tuesday, resuming his seat, albeit temporarily.

As for his official replacement, Interfax Ukraine reports that Mykola Naboka worked until recently as director general of a mining combine in Kazakhstan. According to the pickets, the first thing he did on arriving in Mykolayiv was change the security guards at the plant and the previous manager's secretary. He also issued a directive aimed at reducing the social sphere. Naturally, the workers want their old manager back.

All things considered, they must have won some sympathy in Parliament. Speaker Tkachenko promised that he would instruct the General Prosecutor to contest the National Corporate Rights Agency's dismissal's order. The Day received an interesting statement from a group of People's Deputies led by the head of the MAP investigating committee Ihor Kviatkovsky. Among other things, the document reads that Mykola Naboka works hand in glove with the Trans World Group (TWG), a multinational corporation, adding that prior to appointing him the new manager Premier Pustovoitenko met with Boris Berezovsky and TWG representative Dmitry Basov. Naboka's appointment is direct evidence of the Pustovoitenko government's involvement in a conspiracy with ill-famed politicians and firms to conduct a policy aimed at destroying domestic production.

German Tkachenko, vice president of the Russian aluminum giant Sibalko, told The Day, "Naboka represents the TWG managerial team and if the decision on his appointment is sustained, MAP management and all financial flows will be guided in a vein best suiting this industrial group with its ill reputation in Russia and Kazakhstan. TWG head Lev Chorny is popularly known as Boris Berezovsky's wallet."

Mykola Naboka makes no secret of his TWG connections. In an interview with the Ukrayinski Novyny Agency he said, "I brought [buyers'] proposals covering the plant's two-year output program, with better wages and higher costs. Most likely the Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Plant (controlled by Lev Chorny - Ed.) will be our partner."

And further on: "In this market one cannot but reckon with transnational aluminum corporations, otherwise one may end up boycotted as in 1997. We will reach an understanding and no one will hurt the interests of our enterprise."

According to Volodymyr Novozhylov, head of the MAP Work Collective Co., which holds a 26.4% interest in the MAP statutory fund, the MAP working body regards Mieshyn's dismissal as MAP being placed under TWG control (in 1998, TWG held a controlling interest in the Don Alumina Plant, then headed by Mr. Naboka, reports Ukrayinski Novyny).

Industrial Policy Minister Vasyl Hureyev, however, believes that Mieshyn's removal has nothing to do with TWG attempts to get MAP under its control. "I draw no parallels between the new manager's appointment and TWG's coming," he told Ukrayinski Novyny.