Zelenskyy’s ex-chief of staff accused in Ukraine corruption investigation
Anti-graft agencies say Andriy Yermak suspected of participating in criminal group that laundered $10.5m in housing project, which he denies ownership in
Before the war Ukraine was generally regarded as even more – yes, even – corrupt than Russia. Which is, you know, going some. Doesn’t surprise in the least that there’s been siphoning.
On the other hand the claim is of a bit of dodgy property development. We’ve burnt through our own anti-corruption minister over that, haven’t we?
Pfft
10 million quid ?
He should have opened a barber’ s shop…
Or a learing center.
Indeed. Minor stuff and, crucially, it is being addressed.
My other half, being Ukrainian, will confirm that Ukraine was, and is, corrupt.
Not just corrupt… outright criminal… Any sane person stayed the hell away from any webpage even *associated* with Ukraine.
They’re only Poster Bois of Freeeeedom because Putin.
Quite a few Ukies that bugg’red off to over here because they didn’t feel quite so Patriotic to be shot at are giving even the various Balkan Vibrancy a run for their money..
$10.5m. That’s rookie numbers. Hell, any ANC cabinet minister could do that ten times over.
Before breakfast !
When there’s accusations of corruption, you always have to consider if it’s actually a power struggle.
For that matter it can be both.
Generally? I wonder who put that about. That Ukraine is corrupted is undoubtedly true; it is widespread, chronic and pathetic. But to suggest that it was ever more so than Russia, really? I mean, who are going to believe, that statement or your own eyes? Russian corruption is vast in scale and brutality in comparison. Where do you think all the oligarchs came from, creative entrepreneurship? They openly murder political and “commercial” opposition and then invite you to pretend along with them that it doesn’t happen. It’s utterly fucking brazen, ffs. Lol
I reckon a fair bit of that goes on in Ukraine too. That was the premise of the 2014 coup.
Scale is the main difference, but then Russia is a lot bigger with huge resources.
And very dangerous unlocked windows.
But to suggest that it was ever more so than Russia, really? I mean, who are going to believe, that statement or your own eyes?
Why, because Russia = Bad, therefore they must also be the worst at corruption?
I tend to believe Ukrainians, who will tell you openly about this stuff. Ukraine was a good bit worse than Russia for corruption. In Russia, at least, people don’t usually steal cancer medicine from oncology wards. Ukraine is home to a huge number of particularly heartless scammers, the only European country to give Africa a run for its money on romance and wedding scams.
Low trust is endemic, and if you’re dealing with the type of country where dozens of strangers, in exchange for a couple of quid and free booze, will think nothing of pretending to be friends and family at a wedding party to help con a complete stranger out of his life savings (haha pass the beer), what do you expect? Would English, Welsh or Scottish people be so quick to assist strangers in fraud? No.
The reason for this, apart from the generic one that the USSR was a ridiculous system which encouraged dishonesty, is that Russia got Putin in 99 and Ukraine stayed under the thumb of its oligarchs. Putin being the apex predator of Slavic gangsters, his regime took control of the Russian state and put limits on how much the oligarchs can steal before meeting gravity’s rainbow. But in Kiev, things never moved beyond 90’s style nick-everything-not-bolted-down. If everyone at the top is brazenly thieving, people at the bottom will too, because to be an honest man in a dishonest society is to be a victim.
Putin, you see, is Chesterton’s Authoritarian. By our standards, little more than a gangster. But by Russian standards, he mercifully delivered them from the hell of 1990’s post-Soviet anarchy and brought some measure of law and order back to a country that had fallen into banditry. That’s how he’s survived so long.
Hope that helps x
@ Steve
Were you in Russia in the 1990s?
John77 – nyet. But I am friends with people who were in Russia, Yugoslavia or Ukraine in them days. Wonderful people, the Slavs. They’re as clannish as Greeks, but also as welcoming.
I spent a winter in Siberia
“By our standards, little more than a gangster”
He is a gangster, and I say that not to insult him but as an accurate diagnosis. And an excellent one.
If your country is about resources, your society will be ruled as though it is ruled by gangsters. Gangsters are about ruling turf and using violence against rivals and collecting dosh and giving it to members of the gang.
And what people don’t grasp is that a lot of the population are part of the gang. The military, the bureaucrats will all be Shia in Iran. They want any Shah types to get tortured and killed because the last thing they want is Pahlavi’s kid getting into power. What’s the first thing he would do? Give jobs to all his loyal supporters and boot the others out.
Last time I looked the overwhelming majority of the oligarchs came from Komsomol, the Communist Party youth organisation.
When I was young I often heard the “Young Conservatives” being described as “a middle-class marriage bureau” but never as a means of getting rich.
Depends how long before the war you’re talking.
The Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) scored
Ukraine 25th most corrupt country in the world in 2015. In 2021, it scored 32nd. Russia was 29th in both.
Any country that will give the crackhead son of the demented president of the USA a very senior and highly-paid role in its national oil company is highly corrupt, and we’re dancing on the heads of pins trying to distinguish the two.
One of the problems post-Soviet Ukraine had was no real external pressure to get their shit together and stop the turboklepto behaviour. Post-USSR Poland had better luck (more Western bourgeois social DNA, higher trust society to begin with due to religiosity and solidarity, less to steal, geographic proximity to high quality markets like Germany where you’d have to meet professional standards in general?)
Ukraine is one of those poor countries cursed with tremendous mineral (and agricultural!) richness. There was a lot to loot after Soviet structures collapsed leaving a lot of outdated but functional and valuable infrastructure and property in the hands of the bankrupt state. Back when being a billionaire was still a big deal, Ukraine was notable for its billionaires. The West didn’t help – apart from token, CYA anti-corruption initiatives they were eager to join in Ukrainian graft. Hunter Biden is one of many Western insiders and nepobabies to be on the board of unlikely, but cash rich, Ukrainian businesses. Because Ukraine was a chew toy with both Russia and the West trying to prop up “their guys” in Kiev and keep Ukraine in Russia’s orbit/snatch it away to NATO, the place was flowing with even more lootables in the form of US dollars and Kremlinbux. Nobody cared about Ukrainian corruption until it started becoming a hazard to their war effort.
I’m not a fan of the EU but the accession process did force the old satellite states plus ex-Soviet republics in the Baltics to sort themselves out re corruption plus also legacy state industries, subsidies and so on. Part of Ukraine’s problem was it was stuck in the Russian economic zone, lots of cross-border activity which suited the oligarchs. In fact many industries were tightly integrated between Russia and Ukraine as the Soviet planners didn’t pay any attention to the border.
Of course “free” economic activity outside the state/oligarchs tended to look more to the West because it was the bigger and more dynamic market. Ukrainians began to prefer migrating to Poland or Germany for work rather than the tradition of spending a few years making coin in Russia, as the living was nicer and the money was better. So Ukraine was heading west naturally, but without the benefits/discipline of an accession path that forced them to clamp down on the corruption etc. And this was still bad enough news for many oligarchs and Putin that they pressured Kyiv to sign up for closer economic integration with Russia, tariff barriers against that EU etc, to counteract the westward drift. Some kind of internal rupture was inevitable from that.
Not that the EU/US played their hand well, but Putin overplayed his badly. Seems to have completely misread the mood of a large chunk of the Ukrainian public – if it’s really true he expected Russia to greeted as liberators in Kyiv in 2022, that wouldn’t be the first time he messed up – or maybe he assumed local political opposition could just be suppressed as quietly and efficiently as he did at home, and overestimated the competence of his stooges to do so. Westerners who see everything through the “goodies and baddies” lens misunderstand Ukrainians badly too, but it looks like Putin’s conception of Ukrainians as just confused Russians with a fake identity and a false consciousness has affected his decision-making process for a long time.
Idk how many illusions they had about Ukraine after Minsk 1 and 2 but the notable thing about Russian power projection is how crap they are at it. Couldn’t stop Their Guy being couped in Ukraine, couldn’t stop Their Man in Caracas being given a free flight to the US, couldn’t prop up Assad indefinitely (tho given how rotten Arab states are, maybe nobody could), can’t do anything to stop their bosom buddies in Iran being shish-kebabbed.
But a 5 year “special military operation” probably isn’t how it was sold to Putin, nyet? This all seems excessive.
Just to add, I used to do a bit of business with the old Eastern bloc via my German employers.
For the first few years after the revolutions: PL, CZ and SK were like the Wild West.
Hungary and Slovenia got their shit together pretty swiftly, because they were a bit detached from their neighbours and no one dared go any where near Romania and Bulgaria.
Not sure how accurate this if you calculate the correlation, let alone analyse the causation, but I get the feeling states with lots of legacy heavy industry struggled more with the transition. Most of that is an economic millstone. Big Bang westernisation would inevitably shut it down (that’s one of the tough things the EU basically demanded had to be done to accede – you couldn’t be allowed to protect your industry forever and be a member of the Single Market) but lots of suddenly unemployed workers with few transferable skills is economically destabilising and a political liability. Plus post-Soviet heavy industry quickly became a power base of the oligarch class in many countries, and they would rather have subsidies or protectionism to maintain the value of those assets.
I think that is pretty true. Slovakia is mostly agrarian, but Poland and CSFR were full of rusty industry. The Germans moved in, bought a lot of it up and modernised it.
There is also the level of authoritarianism to consider. Hungary had a much lighter touch and ploughed its own furrow, cooperating heavily with Austria.
Slovenia was the least ‘Slavic’ of the Yugoslav states and again cosied up to Austria, thanks largely to a sizeable Slovene minority there.
The others were run in proper Stalinist fashion.
I recall the excellent Tim Newman’s observation about how the public view corruption. The people in the worst places think “How clever, why didn’t I think of that” and the people in the high trust society think “Disgusting. Bang ’em up and also bang up the people in government who created that incentive/loophole”