The Ukrainian deputy minister of infrastructure has reportedly received bribes to facilitate the purchase of generators at inflated prices. The Defense will have taken the same step with the food rations for the soldiers. The deputy leader of the ruling party reportedly bought a house in Kiev above his means and a deputy attorney general vacationed in Spain in a Mercedes owned by a prominent businessman, while fighting-age men are banned from leaving the country . . The number two in the presidential office was also caught driving a car sent by General Motors to rescue civilians in combat zones and on humanitarian missions.
The five are part of a group of at least 15 senior officials who have resigned or been fired in recent days by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a bid to clean up the house amid a war against Russia and as millions of dollars and euros are poured into help come to Kiev. “I want to be clear. There will be no return to how things used to be,” Zelensky said after the arrest of deputy infrastructure minister Vasyl Lozinskyi, the only one officially charged by authorities.
Corruption is nothing new and existed in Ukraine even before the invasion – the country was the second most corrupt country in Europe (after Russia) in Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index. Zelensky was elected in 2019, in part on the promise of broad reforms to address the endemic problem – despite the fact that it was revealed in October 2021 in the Panama Papers that the former actor also allegedly used offshore accounts and would not have declared them.
Despite the promises, in late 2021, at a time when there were already warnings that Russian troops were gathering at the border, the US and the European Union were “disappointed” with the delays in appointing an anti-corruption attorney general – the The post was vacant from August 2020 until July last year, when Oleksandr Klymenko took office (after another institutional cleanup). Earlier, in June 2022, when Ukraine was officially granted candidate country status for the European Union, one of Brussels’ demands was to strengthen the fight against corruption.
At that time, the country was already at war. “No circumstance is more conducive to the existence and development of corruption than armed conflict,” wrote Slovenian expert Drago Kos in an analysis in June when he led the working group on bribery at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Kos recalled that, in the event of a conflict, “the state system of social control – law enforcement and judiciary – is unable to perform its essential functions; in the absence of basic commodities, such as food, medicine, etc., levels of predatory behavior and disregard for legal norms and ethical principles are on the rise; and there is never enough focus on fighting corruption during conflict in the ensuing chaos.” In addition, said the Slovenian specialist, “the potentially significant influx of foreign aid, and the result is a mix of objective and subjective circumstances and conditions, which may well lead to an explosion of corruption at all levels”.
The refurbishment carried out by Zelensky in recent days, after several reports of corruption scandals, is the largest reorganization since the Russian invasion on February 24. It represents an attempt by the president to polish the image of the country that wants to be part of the European Union and NATO and that is waiting for a decision on the shipment of the much-coveted Leopard 2 heavy tanks from corruption,” the president said. president. a spokeswoman for the European Commission.
“Ukraine will not show weakness. The state will not show weakness”Zelensky wrote in the Telegram post announcing that he had made some “personnel decisions” involving “officials of various levels in ministries and other government agencies, in regions and in the law enforcement system.” Nowhere in the message was there any mention of corruption, but it did say that no official was allowed to travel abroad for non-governmental reasons – after the deputy prosecutor went on holiday to Spain.
At the regional government level, the departures of Valentin Reznichenko, from Dnipropetrovsk (center), Oleksandr Starukh, from Zaporizia (south), Dmytro Zhivytsky, from Sumy (north), Yaroslav Yanushevich, from Kherson (south), and Oleksiy Kuleba announced. , from the region of the capital Kiev. The latter, thus Kiev independentwill take up a post in the Presidential Office after the departure of Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
Source: DN
