Corruption in Ukraine is so bad, a Nigerian prince would be embarrassed

[MattSh]

NOTE: My apologies to all those who clicked on this link expecting an article from RT or Sputnik. This time, instead of bashing the messenger, you'll need to analyze and debate the message. Or just ignore it. But if you choose to ignore it, remember that your tax dollars are going to support this train wreck of a government. Do enjoy that. The oligarchs and crooks of Ukraine thank you for that and hope that in the future you will continue to ignore or apologize for events in Ukraine.

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Corruption in Ukraine is so bad, a Nigerian prince would be embarrassed

United States Vice President Joe Biden has never been one to hold his tongue. He certainly didn’t in his recent trip to Kiev. In a speech before Ukraine’s Parliament, Biden told legislators that corruption was eating Ukraine “like a cancer,” and warned Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that Ukraine had “one more chance” to confront corruption before the United States cuts off aid.

Biden’s language was undiplomatic, but he’s right: Ukraine needs radical reforms to root out graft. After 18 months in power, Poroshenko still refuses to decisively confront corruption. It’s time for Poroshenko to either step up his fight against corruption — or step down if he won’t.

When it comes to Ukrainian corruption, the numbers speak for themselves. Over $12 billion per year disappears from the Ukrainian budget, according to an adviser to Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau. And in its most recent review of global graft, anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International ranked Ukraine 142 out of 174 countries on its Corruption Perceptions Index — below countries such as Uganda, Nicaragua and Nigeria. Ordinary Ukrainians also endure paying petty bribes in all areas of life. From vehicle registration, to getting their children into kindergarten, to obtaining needed medicine, everything connected to government has a price.

The worst corruption occurs at the nexus between business oligarchs and government officials. A small number of oligarchs control 70 percent of Ukraine’s economy, and over the years have captured and corrupted Ukraine’s political and judicial institutions. As a result, a “culture of impunity” was created, where politicians, judges, prosecutors and oligarchs collude in a corrupt system where everyone but the average citizen benefits.

While there are numerous examples of high-level corruption in Ukraine, a few stand out for their sheer brazenness. In one case, $1.8 billion of an IMF loan to Ukraine meant to support the banking system instead disappeared into various offshore accounts affiliated with PrivatBank in Ukraine, which is owned by Ihor Kolomoisky — one of Ukraine’s leading oligarchs.

-----> http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/12/30/corruption-in-ukraine-is-so-bad-a-nigerian-prince-would-be-embarrassed-2/

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The Ukrainians starting a new life – in Russia | World news | The Guardian

It’s a scary feeling when you land at the end of the earth and you literally know nobody,” said Tatyana Kurlayeva while sipping a cappuccino in a cafe in Magadan, a bleak city in the far east of Russia.

Kurlayeva, 32, fled to Magadan in 2014 from her hometown of Komsomolsk, near Donetsk in east Ukraine. She was one of dozens of refugees from the conflict zone to make a new life in Russia’s former Gulag capital. Across Russia, hundreds of thousands of east Ukrainians have arrived since the conflict started.

Some want to return now the fighting has stopped but many more want to stay. Icy Magadan is more than 4,000 miles from east Ukraine, but Kurlayeva has chosen to make it her new home.

She decided to leave Komsomolsk in August 2014, after her brother was kidnapped by the far-right Azov volunteer battalion. Although he was later released, the experience had shaken up the family and made them unwilling to stay.

Her husband wanted to join the pro-Russia rebel militia, but she persuaded him that the pair of them should take their daughter and flee. She closed down the children’s clothing shop she ran and the three crossed the border, then spent a week in a refugee camp near the city of Rostov.

“It was horrible, I’m not used to living like that. I never thought I would be a refugee. We wanted to get out as soon as possible, and I had always read that Magadan was an interesting and friendly place, so we spent all our savings on tickets from Rostov via Moscow to Magadan. It was the first time I’d ever been on a plane.”

-----> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/05/ukrainian-russia-refugee-conflict

A couple of problems with this story though.

1. The 300,000 number of refugees in Russia is the lowest number I've ever seen, going back over a year. Even the Speaker of the Ukraine Parliament acknowledges Russia hosting over 1 million refugees.

http://www.kyivpost.com/content/russia-and-former-soviet-union/moscow-russia-receives-twice-as-many-refugees-as-europe-without-any-fuss-and-political-moaning-399181.html

2. Before people flee on political considerations, 9 times out of 10, they'll flee to a place where they know somebody. Even if that person or persons cannot physically accommodate them. And the Guardian certainly knows that.

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Kiev Struggles to Battle Rampant Corruption - WSJ

KIEV, Ukraine—At a parliamentary meeting on combating corruption, Ukrainian lawmaker Volodymyr Parasyuk sought to land his own blow against graft—by kicking in the face an official he says owns luxury properties worth much more than a state salary could provide.

Almost two years after a revolution that brought down a president, Mr. Parasyuk’s outrage reflects public frustration that the new government isn’t doing enough to tackle the rampant corruption that fueled the uprising and that keeps Ukraine among the poorest nations in Europe.

“I wanted to remind him that he is made of the same sweat and blood as the rest of us, because that is what these bureaucrats forget," said the 28-year-old, one of the most visible protesters in the demonstrations that helped oust pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. He has since apologized to the nation for the attack in parliament in November, but says he won’t do the same to the official, who denies enriching himself.

In the chaotic and combative politics of Ukraine—where parliament is the site of frequent mass brawls—it is hard to untangle all the overlapping corruption allegations and squabbling over who is to blame. Mr. Parasyuk himself was named this week as receiving money from an organized crime suspect, a claim he denies.

-----> http://www.wsj.com/articles/kiev-struggles-to-battle-rampant-corruption-1451641811

To actually read the article, click this link...

https://www.google.com/search?q=Kiev+Struggles+to+Battle+Rampant+Corruption&gws_rd=ssl

then click on the first story listed.

[hobbit709]

1. There's corruption here that would embarrass a whole club of Nigerian princes.

[Wilms]

2. Relax, Matt. Don't worry.

Victoria Nuland is going to tell them to "cut it out".

[MattSh]

4. What? No cookies?

What do they have to do to get more cookies?

Back at ya!

[WinkyDink]

3. Why should a former subject differ from Mother Russia? Everyone wants to be an oligarch!

[MattSh]

5. And another one, while I'm at it...

Sundown in the Somalia of Europe

The startling reversals in Syria and Iraq now afford us our daily whiff of gunpowder and desperation, and Ukraine has been largely swept from the front pages. This is a matter of no small concern to the incompetent train wreck that is its government, because the flow of financial life support on which it relies is, to a large extent, dependent upon the sense of urgent emergency it is able to convey. So long as Kiev is able to fog the media’s glasses with “Russian aggression!!!” and a dire sense of a building menace, western leaders do not press it too hard for reforms, and are more likely to spit fat wads of cash because…well, because it’s an emergency.

And, of course, it is. I don’t want to create the impression I think the Ukrainian government is faking its sense of crisis, because Ukraine as a state is in a power-dive that is making the the wings shudder and shed rivets. Much of the government itself actually does not realize just how bad it is, because its clown-car membership is too busy throwing haymakers at one another in the legislature and squabbling over who is (a) the most Ukrainian, and (b) the biggest crook. Mistrust among the factions also contributes to a degree of compartmentalization which prevents more than the broad outlines of the catastrophe from being seen.

We could feel a lot of things, dependent on our position and our sympathies. We could feel vindicated, if we were among those who foretold disaster from the hurried rounding-up of thieves, rabid nationalists, opportunist criminals and sycophants and labeling the result “the government”. We could feel stunned and disillusioned, if we were among the formerly-giddy dissident morons jumping up and down on the Maidan, who expected to be opening their Christmas presents in the European Union this year. And if we were among the poor sods who live there, who trudge to work every day from Monday to Friday, pick up a paycheck that buys less every month, and try to support a family on it… we could feel bewilderment, gnawing fear and a gathering apprehension that the world is spiraling down and down to a sunless pit of misery where no light reaches.

For how much longer can the happy talk of visa-free travel and someday-prosperity hold the stink of failure at bay?

“Everyone thought Ukraine would suddenly turn into Poland,” said mechanic Taras Yakubovsky, sitting by a cast-iron woodburner in his small garage, where work has dried up because customers can no longer afford car repairs. “But we’ve become more like Europe’s Somalia.”

What’s really going on in Ukraine? A good deal of what we get is from nationalist expats who don’t live there, and for whom it is easy to exhort their hereditary countrymen to redouble their efforts, to hold out bravely against the slavering Russian invader, to let faith carry them onward when hope is gone – expats like bad-tempered fathead Taras Kuzio in Alberta, and bitter, thwarted Political-Science professor Alexander Motyl at Rutgers in New Jersey. This smokescreen is complicated by deliberate duplicity and sleight-of-hand by the Ukrainian government, enabled by an English-speaking media which uncritically repeats whatever it is told by Kiev, without investigating, thereby giving it the weight of fact. Data on the economy is frequently sourced from the State Statistics Service of Ukraine. I don’t want to say they’re simply pulling figures from their ass, because it always infuriates me when people suggest Russia simply makes up its statistics. But a lot of the Ukrainian numbers just do not add up.


-----> https://marknesop.wordpress.com/2015/12/23/sundown-in-the-somalia-of-europe/

[stevenleser]

6. Why is it that folks who are pro-Russia, attack Ukraine with stuff that Russia is also guilty of

and do so shamelessly.

Anti-Semitism, Corruption, etc. These are not things that Russia/Russians and those who are pro-Russia can attack Ukraine about without being complete hypocrites.