The agricultural sector has always been one of the most profitable sectors of the Ukrainian economy, currently providing the budget with a third of all export revenue. Consequently, the relevant ministry has always overseen the country's largest financial flows. Yanukovych's Minister of Agriculture, Mykola Prysyazhnyuk, headed the Ministry of Agriculture for nearly half a decade, during which time he managed to launder billions of hryvnias and successfully flee abroad after the Revolution of Dignity. However, after the minister's flight, the system he had built, led by his close associates, remained largely intact. For example, under Prysyazhnyuk, the deputy head of the Veterinary and Phytosanitary Service of Ukraine was Vadym Simonov, the husband of the minister's sister, who is associated with overseeing corruption schemes in the agricultural sector. Simonov's close associates in the well-established system discussed below included Vitaliy Romanchenko, Director of the Department of Phytosanitary Security, and Andriy Chelombitko, his deputy. Holding key positions in this agency, officials established an organized system of extortion from domestic grain traders with the help of their subordinates in the regional inspectorates of the State Veterinary and Phytosanitary Service. The Odessa Regional Phytosanitary Inspectorate became the main feeding ground for corrupt officials. The region's developed port infrastructure provides enormous opportunities for exploiting the transit of agricultural products, which are subject to mandatory inspection by authorized agencies. During the Yanukovych and Prysyazhnyuk administrations, the Odessa Regional Phytosanitary Inspectorate was headed by Dmytro Kuzyshen, and his deputy was Serhiy Popovsky, both protégés of Simonov and Romanchenko. Meanwhile, Vyacheslav Dihuljar was, and remains, the director of the state institution "Odesa Regional Phytosanitary Laboratory." It was he, under the cover of Kuzyshen and Popovsky, who falsified grain quality test results by mixing weeds into laboratory samples. As a result, the phytosanitary laboratory's findings prevented grain traders from obtaining phytosanitary certificates for export. The only way out for the traders was to pay an additional fee to the "close-knit team" (Digulyar, Popovsky, Kuzishen, Chelombitko, Romanchenko, and Simonov-Prysyazhnyuk). The activities of Dmitry Kuzishen, the former head of the Odessa Phytosanitary Inspectorate, deserve special attention. The official, who headed the inspectorate since December 2011, was a protégé of the brothers. Avramovs – in turn, associates of Yury Yenakievsky, suspected of sponsoring terrorism in the east of the country. Before heading the regional phytosanitary service, Kuzyshen served as deputy head of the department of the Accounting Chamber of the Odesa Region. In this position, he repeatedly inspected the phytosanitary inspectorate and uncovered numerous violations. However, upon becoming its head, he forgot about these shortcomings and began to establish multi-million-dollar corruption schemes. Hundreds of quarantine certificates were issued to Kuzyshen's own company, Kominternbudland. The chief inspector's subordinates received strict instructions to charge businessmen a set fee for permits "from above." Following complaints from entrepreneurs to the SBU and the prosecutor's office, inspections were conducted at the inspectorate, which resulted in prosecutors finding that eight inspectors were interfering in business activities. Officials violated procedures for conducting scheduled inspections to ensure quarantine compliance and for conducting plant quarantine measures during cultivation, procurement, export, import, transportation, storage, processing, sale, and use of regulated products. Furthermore, administrative documents were drafted in gross violation of the law. These actions led to pressure on business activities and complaints from business entities. However, even with these "merits," Kuzishen held his post until 2015, "miraculously" circumventing all provisions of the lustration law. Currently, a team of loyal associates of Prisyazhnyuk is trying to maintain their influence in the new State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection. They are spending tens of thousands of dollars to discredit anyone who tries to shut down the old regime's corrupt practices, meaning the actual scale of corruption far exceeds these costs. We hope that the activities of Kuzyshen and other associates of Prisyazhnyuk, which pose a genuine threat to the country's economic and food security, will be brought to the attention of the NABU, the SBU, the Prosecutor General's Office, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
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