ANALYSIS: Ukrainian lawmakers release findings on crime and corruption (01/05/03)

ANALYSIS

Ukrainian lawmakers release findings on crime and corruption

by Roman Kupchinsky
RFE/RL Crime and Corruption Watch

On December 2, 2002, the head of the parliamentary Committee on Combating Organized Crime and Corruption, Volodymyr Stretovich, released a report on the state of criminality and corruption in Ukraine. The report was reprinted, with minor deletions, in the newspaper Ukrayina Moloda on December 5, 2002.

The paper noted that, traditionally, this committee has been headed by a member of the opposition. Now, however, the pro-presidential majority in the Verkhovna Rada has decided to change the committee leadership. As a result, Oleksander Bandurko of the Democratic Initiatives party is slated to become the new chairman.

The report notes that the committee in its present composition was able to work for less then six months. From the very start, the report states, most of the letters it received were from citizens asking that they be protected from state law-enforcement agencies. It is those agencies, in the view of the committee, that are among the most corrupt entities in Ukraine. They, along with the Department for Combating Organized Crime (DCOC), are the root of the problem, the report concludes. Not one case of organized criminal activity initiated by the DCOC in recent years has gone to court, it notes.

Citing fact-finding trips to various regions of Ukraine, the report found that criminal organizations were able to operate in the open in every region of the country. The reason for this, the report states, is that law-enforcement agencies do not hamper their activities - and in fact are often in league with the criminals.

The report cites a case in the city of Kryvyi Rih, where a police investigator was forced to turn to the committee for help in trying to solve the murder of his son because police colleagues refused to work on the case. The report also mentions the case of Ihor Aleksandrov, a television journalist from the Luhansk Oblast who was murdered after exposing widespread corruption within the local DCOC. Mr. Aleksandrov's killers still have not been found.

In the past year, not one organized criminal group with ties to local corrupt officials has been uncovered in 12 regions of Ukraine. In nine regions, fewer than three cases were discovered. The vast majority of "organized-crime" organizations uncovered by police consist of small groups of two to three people engaged in burglary and petty crime.

Yet, the report continues, the statistics provided by Ukraine's Interioral Affairs Ministry distort the situation. For instance: "In the past year, 627 organized criminal groups were uncovered" is a meaningless piece of information without further explanation of their structures. Court statistics cited in the report show that, in the past six months, 253 individuals were sentenced for membership in organized-crime groupings, without a single individual who held a position above the raion level among them.

The report continues:

"Formal indicators in the fight against organized crime do not convince the world of the sincerity of our efforts to liquidate the mafia and do not dispel the skepticism prevalent among the broader masses of our own population. Mail received by the committee, as well as numerous individual meetings by members of the committee with citizens, show a total lack of confidence in the ability of law-enforcement agencies to protect the average person from criminal lawlessness acting in tandem with officialdom.

"But why talk about average citizens when even members of Parliament can be dragged out of their cars and thrown onto the pavement? We all know, but most of us prefer to remain silent, about the superdemocratic methods used to create the majority in the Parliament a half year ago. In the entire civilized world, of which we allegedly want to be part, the majority is created by voters. Here, it is created by an almighty 'someone.'

"It is sad and unfortunate that bribing and threatening an elected member of parliament does not surprise anyone in our country. Thus no one reacted to the official statement made by our colleague, Oleksander Turchynov, when he presented examples of attempts to bribe parliamentarians prior to voting for the new prime minister. During this shameful episode, I [Stretovych] was approached by three members who told me of attempts to buy their votes for between $300,000 and $500,000. But they refused my request to file formal complaints."

According to the report, corruption in the Ukrainian court system also is widespread. Despite that reality, reports by neither the Internal Affairs Ministry nor the Security Service of Ukraine mention this fact. Another factor is that court-ordered fines are rarely if ever paid. In the Donetsk Oblast alone, more than 400 fines have not been acted upon - for a total lost sum of 2 billion hrv.

The report recommends that a special anti-corruption unit be formed in Ukraine based on the Hong Kong Anti-Corruption Committee. Such a unit would have to be independent of the executive branch of government and its actions transparent, according to the report.

Such a special unit is feasible, Mr. Stretovych states, adding that: "Even this would be not enough without broad openness and the inclusion of civic groups, as well as objective media in a discussion of this problem. The committee believes that organized crime in the country has reached such proportions that it constitutes a real danger to the constitutional basis of government in Ukraine. The present efforts of law enforcement and other government agencies are ineffective and inadequate."

Roman Kupchinsky is the editor of RFE/RL Crime and Corruption Watch.

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