On the initiative of president Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada adopted the Act On preventing threats to national security associated with excessive influence of persons with significant economic and political weight in public life (oligarchs). I consider it is worth devoting some time to analysing the situation.
The biggest problem with this law in my opinion is not that the Ukrainian lawmakers have taken up a topic in order to meet one of the Americans’ requirements. What bothers me is that it will be another one among those countless Ukrainian legal acts that allow the selective application of law and make Ukraine’s Criminal Code equal to a wrapping paper, and degrade the Committee of National Security and Defence (which appoints who is an oligarch) to the level of a Marionettes show.
Considering that it is quite complicated to determine with objective figures the exact level of one certain actor’s influence on media (although in simple cases some official data regarding the owners and their shares in television channels are publicly available), it is likely that expressions such as determining or dominant will appear in reports of law enforcement agencies, not to mention how one can objectively determine someone’s influence on politics…?
It is absolutely predictable that the oligarchs who maintain a good relationship with Ze and his surroundings, those who have supported them by financial means in recent years and those who have joined this team nowadays, will by no means be included in this list, but those who play on the opposite side of the field will surely be declared oligarchs. In addition, we must not forget that a possible entry into the sanctions list can be used as a way of threatening, in other words, simple blackmail. After hearing such an option, poor oligarch will be ready for whatever they want.
It is quite likely that the law on oligarchs will raise the popularity rating of Ze to some extent, but it does not last long. Such short-term fame will disappear at the very moment when people realise that oligarchs from the surroundings of the president have nothing to do with the blacklist, they are not listed amongst the dangerous criminals. I am sure that Zelenskiy mistakenly considers the process of de-oligarchization an effective call for his next successful presidential election campaign.
If the president really wanted substantial changes, i.e. he was firmly intending to fight against the oligarchs-parasites, and against widespread corruption, he could do it without any effort, by guaranteeing the legitimate work of numerous anticorruption organizations, services and all kinds of institutions, which in the current situation can even put the ’CLOSED’ sign on their doors.
If Ze had set clear demands towards these anticorruption organizations, and without neglecting the control over them, they would have had to comply with the rules of accountability, and regularly report on what they had achieved concerning their basic duties, it would make sense to consider the candidacy for his second presidential term, and with good perspectives. But I am afraid while president Zelenskiy might leave not the worst mark on the pages of history textbooks, his de-oligarchization paints an image of Ukraine, where discriminating decisions are made arbitrarily, for pure political reasons, in order to achieve short term success in domestic politics.
Unfortunately I do not have better or any alternative answer regarding the timing of the arrest of Viktor Medvedchuk, who was recently charged with high treason and supporting terrorism. In last decades, both journalists and law enforcement organizations collected a lot of information about Medvedchuk, but these data have only now been accepted as hard evidence by Public Prosecutor’s Office. And — what a coincidence — suddenly there were opinions in the press that Poroshenko should sit in the same cell with Medvedchuk, also for committing high treason.
And all this is happening at the peak of the pandemic, when numbers of persons got affected with coronavirus and also mortality rate in Ukraine shows new negative anti-records, and red quarantine zones are introduced in several regions of Ukraine. It happens at the beginning of the heating season after Russia had increased gas prices and had decided to supply its European clients with gas bypassing Ukraine, and following ex-president and ex-prime minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev wrote in an article that Ukraine was seeking its identity and own way, and Ukraine’s leaders were dependent from the US and the EU.
So, under such circumstances, does Ukraine really respond to all these challenges by putting its cherished old oligarchs in jail? Well, of course, not everyone will be put behind bars. Those who had suddenly declared themselves true patriots will probably not go to jail. Bravo NABU, Public Prosecutor’s Office, State Investigative Bureau, SBU and others! But what will you do with your decade-old dossiers full of compromising data regarding these new patriots???
Leave a Reply