Ukraine is fighting corruption. Prime Minister Yatsenyuk cheerfully reports to television viewers about anti-corruption reforms as a guarantee of Western loans. He is echoed by dozens of corrupt officials of various stripes and statuses, engaging in cheap PR on all sorts of talk shows and forums. Meanwhile, the corruption schemes created by Viktor Yanukovych's team remain alive and continue to enrich them.
Beneficiaries. Entrenched corruption schemes have become firmly ingrained in Ukraine's battered state, as evidenced by the criminal redistribution of the state-owned enterprise Ukrspirt under the pretext of yet another bankruptcy proceeding.
The state-owned monopoly Ukrspirt, which unites 42 distilleries across the country, long served as one of the former regime's favorite purse strings. Corruption scandals have rocked the state monopoly for years. Before the revolution, it was led for two years by Alexander Hart, who had ties to the "family," but who, shortly after the Maidan, was placed on the wanted list for billions of hryvnias in damages to the budget. However, the new director, Mykhailo Labutin, who replaced the "criminal power" protégé, is now wanted by Interpol for embezzling 172,5 million hryvnias of company funds and evading 28,2 million hryvnias in taxes. A new director has been elusive for almost a year. After the scandalous resignations, the authorities promised to hold a fair and open competition for the position. They announced it twice, both times to no avail. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk personally overturned the results of the first competition, citing the alleged criminal pasts of two finalists. The only participant in the second competition to pass the qualification committee, Acting Director of Ukrspirt Roman Ivanyuk, withdrew at the last minute.
The Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food is currently holding a third competition to fill the vacant position of director of Ukrspirt. This time, four candidates are vying for the position: Kostiantyn Burkovsky, Hryhoriy Tripulsky, Anatoliy Dalibozhik, and the current acting director of Ukrspirt, Serhiy Bleskun. However, there is every reason to believe that this "competition" with such a lineup is a sham and only superficially resembles an open and transparent procedure. The appointment of any of these candidates will only strengthen the control of the company by those who have been plundering Ukraine for years, even under Yanukovych. The fact is that Burkovsky and Dalibozhik are protégés of Oleksiy Chebotarev, one of the organizers of the illegal alcohol trade in Ukraine and the godson of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. It was thanks to his relationship with Shokin that Chebotarev escaped criminal prosecution for organizing the Anti-Maidan movement with former Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko. After surviving temporary exile, he returned to Ukraine without incident and began reviving the scheme he had previously tried, along with his accomplices: Zakharchenko and Atamanyuk, the former first deputy head of the tax police and current vice president of the Association of Taxpayers of Ukraine. As is known, Zakharchenko is currently hiding from justice in Russia. In contrast, the notorious corrupt official Yuriy Atamanyuk, infamous for his involvement in schemes involving the production and distribution of illegal alcohol and cigarettes, as well as extortion, bribery, and coordination of illegal cash-out centers, has found a cushy position in the Association of Taxpayers of Ukraine under the new government. Now he has a secure rear and patronage in the person of Grigol Katamadze, the president of the Association, and his close friend and ally Mikael Saakashvili, the head of the Odessa regional administration.
According to journalists, Atamanyuk chose the Association as a springboard from which he plans to return to the tax police, his venal heart's home. Incidentally, Tripulsky and Bleskun are protégés of Odessa businessman Boris Kaufman, who, before the regime change, was a close business partner of Oleksandr Yanukovych and oversaw three airports—Boryspil, Odesa, and Simferopol. These airports accounted for 75% of all passenger air traffic in Ukraine. Moreover, according to media reports, Kaufman, even now, under Governor Saakashvili, controls at least part of the financial flow from tobacco smuggling through ports near Odesa. Whether he is a monopoly is debatable. However, local journalists refer to Kaufman as nothing less than the "tobacco king." It was thanks to Kaufman's machinations that the new acting governor was appointed. Director of Ukrspirt Bleskun.
Incidentally, rumor has it that Kaufman's name was on the last list of people seeking an audience with Viktor Yanukovych. Judging by the fugitive ex-president's audience book, Kaufman attempted several times to gain access to the absconding Yanukovych. Who knows, maybe he even succeeded.
However, it doesn't matter whose protégé wins. Kaufman and Chebotarev had long ago agreed to cooperate. Apparently, the situation at the state-owned enterprise will stabilize soon, and the rivers of alcohol will once again flow financially into the pockets of those behind the C2H5OH carve-up. Let's recall how the enrichment scheme of the Chebotarev, Zakharchenko, and Atamanyuk criminal group worked.
During Yanukovych's rule, the group controlled virtually all of the concern's factories, where management was forced to produce illegal alcohol, which was subsequently used to make counterfeit beverages. The factories' operations were monitored by supervisors.
Factories were forced to pay 0,5 hryvnias per bottle produced, and the "illegal" vodka was distilled from the supplied "illegal" spirit. It got to the point where the "supervisors" forced the factories to produce only from their own "illegal" spirit. Those that refused to comply were assigned 24/7 "supervisors." If that wasn't enough, law enforcement agencies were dispatched to the factories.
Experts estimate that the black market for vodka and tobacco products at that time generated nearly 120 billion hryvnias annually. This amount was equivalent to the annual budgets of Ukraine's healthcare, education, military, and police forces. Counterfeit stamps printed in Turkey, the Czech Republic, and China were and continue to be used to sell illegally manufactured and smuggled products, using the following criminal schemes:
1. Purchase of alcohol for perfume production (such alcohol was taxed at a reduced rate)
excise tax rate) and the use of this alcohol for the production of vodka with
counterfeit excise stamps.
2. Organization of fictitious export of alcohol through controlled enterprises and
the use of this alcohol to produce vodka with counterfeit excise stamps.
3. Theft of alcohol from distilleries using forged documents through controlled entities
enterprises, destruction of documents and use of this alcohol for production
vodka with fake excise stamps.
To control personnel, the gang used a combination of carrots and sticks. If they obeyed, the manager received preferential treatment and a share in the business. Otherwise, their sales were blocked, and the company fell into wage arrears. A decline in economic performance led to the termination of contracts with those deemed undesirable. Thanks to the gang's business activities, some Ukrspirt enterprises were driven to the brink of bankruptcy, including the Trostyanets, Zirnensky, and Zbruchansky distilleries.
Furthermore, due to Ukrspirt's artificial unprofitability and inertia, the issue of privatizing both the monopoly as a whole and its individual clusters has been repeatedly raised. Almost a year ago, former Minister of Agrarian Policy Ihor Shvaika attempted to push Ukrspirt into the hands of the right people. Then, competitors from the People's Front intervened in the privatization operation, and a battle erupted between politicians to find new owners for the enterprise. According to Labutin, the former head of the concern, who is currently wanted (rumor has it, due to his intransigence with the authorities), Yatsenyuk's team planned to sell Ukrspirt for a symbolic sum of 100-150 million hryvnias. However, had Ukrspirt's fixed assets been reconstructed, the company would have been worth at least $5 billion.
This development was absolutely unacceptable to Poroshenko's team, which was clearly planning to profit from Ukrspirt and place its people at the mercy of the state's "rivers of alcohol." As a result, the BPP faction initiated a return of Bill No. 1567, "On the List of State-Owned Objects Not Subject to Privatization," to the government for revision. To privatize Ukrspirt, it was necessary to remove the state monopoly from the list.
This fact greatly angered Yatsenyuk. The prime minister even threatened to name all the corrupt officials who disrupted the "concert," regardless of their origin. The last time the privatization of Ukrspirt was raised was in December 2015, but no real chance of implementation presented itself. The Rada again rejected the bill. Furthermore, as Nemiroff CEO Yuriy Sorochinsky puts it: "Now it's easier to build factories from scratch with the money they're offering to buy them for."
Although the Ministry of Economy expects parliament to consider the bill during the first quarter of 2016, according to sources at Ekonomichna Pravda, the privatization of Ukrspirt may remain blocked for a long time. Labutin blames a group of high-ranking officials and a group of Yanukovych's thugs. True, the former head of Ukrspirt doesn't name names. But they are obvious. They are old friends: Chebotarev, who is hiding behind the influential Prosecutor General Shokin, and Atamanyuk, who is hiding under the umbrella of the Taxpayers' Association and has secured the support of Saakashvili's comrade, Katamadze. And let's not forget their new partner, the Odessa tobacco and vodka king Kaufman, who has apparently replaced the fugitive Zakharchenko in the team of shrewd businessmen.
Rumor has it that Atamanyuk has already begun calling major wholesalers and supermarkets to distribute illegal alcohol wholesale. And the enterprising Kaufman is working on a new approach to working with Odesa customs to import fresh excise stamps. Why are the vocal anti-corruption campaigners, Saakashvili and Yatsenyuk, silent about the scandal at Ukrspirt? It's hard to explain this other than the assumption that they're also in on it.
Everything points to the privatization of Ukrspirt once again being shelved. Meanwhile, corruption schemes will continue to generate profits for their perpetrators and the new corrupt government, causing significant damage to Ukraine's state budget.
In topic: Kaufman-Granovsky and their business interests: airports, vodka, cigarettes, banks, hotels
Oles Boyky for SKELET-info
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