Bate C. Toms started practicing law in Ukraine in 1991 and has seen Ukraine make progress in many areas since then. But now the nation is facing the greatest crisis in his 24 years here, largely because of Russia's war against Ukraine and the West's tepid response.
Bate C. Toms started practicing law in Ukraine in 1991 and has seen Ukraine make progress in many areas since then. But now the nation is facing the greatest crisis in his 24 years here, largely because of Russia’s war against Ukraine and the West’s tepid response.
“This is the hardest situation that I have ever seen in the country,” Toms said. But Toms, an American lawyer who is also the chairman of the
But Toms, an American lawyer who is also the chairman of the British-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce, is promoting a four-point plan for Ukraine’s recovery. He even believes in it so much that he is launching an advertising campaign to publicize the plan. His ideas include:
Political risk insurance
“Investment has steeply fallen off,” Toms said. “We have seen billions of dollars in potential foreign investment frozen because of fear of conflict… Most companies cannot get insurance today at reasonable prices.” He thinks that the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, the political risk arm of the World Bank, should provide insurance of at least $2 billion. “Even if the military aggression is contained, the consequences for the economy will be adverse” without insurance, Toms said.
Toms believes that the signatories to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity and national sovereignty in exchange for the surrender of its nuclear weapons, are morally obligated to help with risk insurance. Those countries include Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Budapest Memorandum
The Budapest Memorandum needs to be respected, Toms said, meaning Russia must return Crimea and stop its war in eastern Ukraine. “The Budapest Memorandum represents the world’s first great success in nuclear disarmament,” Toms said. “If it fails, one can expect the beginning of the end of nuclear non-proliferation. The message to the world would be that nuclear weapons are necessary for defense.”
Fighting corruption
One answer to the lack of independence for Ukraine’s judges is the creation of a legal ombudsman with the powers to hear cases and issue enforceable rulings to settle disputes, Toms said.
“The solution is not more laws or more speeches, the solution is to address the consequences of corruption by creating an independent legal authority,” Toms says. He says that the adjudication of cases needs to be speeded up and notes that even arbitration hearings abroad can take years to settle. By that time, Toms said, even a victory “rarely comes in time to save the business that is affected.”
Additionally, Toms said, Ukraine is paying a heavy price for not paying judges properly. “You cannot expect judges and officials to render proper decisions when their salaries are too small to reasonably live on and so small that they encourage corruption.”
‘Marshall Plan’ for Ukraine
Named after U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall, the massive aid program helped rebuild Europe from the devastation of World War II. Ukraine needs a Western-administered aid program of at least $40 billion to help improve its infrastructure, Toms said. He said that Ukraine’s economy needs stimulus public spending on the scale of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program during the Great Depression.
“To begin with, if you can spend $5 billion, it would be a massive boost,” Toms said, citing the multilateral donors conference tentatively scheduled for Kyiv in April. “The main thing is speed. Investment in Ukraine has stopped. The infrastructure is withering away.”
Other interests
Toms, as the head of the British Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce since 2008, puts on 30 or events per year and helps to sponsor others, such as the Lviv Jazz Festival and the Odesa Film Festival. He was called on to help fill seats in the National Opera of Ukraine for the Feb. 24 free performance by French writer Bernard-Henri Levy of his “Hotel Europe” play. The house was packed; guests included President Petro Poroshenko and his family.
“Bernard-Henri Levy should be admired as a man who, despite all of the pressure in the West from Russian-financed lobyists, has stood up for what is right — the territorial integrity of Ukraine,
as guaranteed by the Budapest Memorandum,” Toms said.
In other projects, he wants to find sponsors to restart the annual Black Sea Economic Forum and relocated it to Odesa. It was typically held in Crimea. Because of the devaluation of the hryvnia, Toms also wants to create new studies in Ukrainian law schools as a cheaper alternative to studies abroad. He is, moreover, involved in the BrainBasket Foundation, a project to increase training for programmers.
Whatever the future holds, Toms says he plans to stay in Ukraine, which he says is getting a bad rap in the West. “Ukraine is not a beggar nation,” he said. “Ukraine relied on security assurances that have been breached.”
Bate C. Toms
Year of birth: 1949.
First arrived in Ukraine: 1991.
Nationality: American native of state of Virginia.
Position: Manager of B.C. Toms & Co. law firm, chairman of British-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce.
How to succeed in Ukraine: “I have found that hard work and keeping one’s word have been the most important factors for success.”
Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected].
