The EuroMaidan Revolution was supposed to change Ukraine for the better, cutting corruption and bringing the country into line with standards in the rest of Europe.
But if any such changes have been made, U.S. businessman Bruce Crowe hasn’t noticed them. Indeed, Crowe said for him things have only gotten worse since the new government came to power.
“I think it would make a very good case study on all that is still wrong with the bureaucratic beast, specifically those killing the private sector – small businesses like ours,” Crowe says. “After EuroMaidan they’ve tried to cling to their chairs even harder. This needs to be exposed if Ukraine is going to seek more outside investment, especially those who don’t want to operate under old Soviet principles.”
Crowe, a father of eight children who moved to Ukraine seven years ago, opened a café called The Lighthouse in 2013 in Rzhyshchiv, a town located about an hour’s drive south of Kyiv on the banks of the Dnipro River.
The family-friendly café was to serve pizza, coffee, and non-alcoholic drinks, but bureaucracy and corruption virtually delayed the project.
Having bought a two-story residential building to live in and house the business, Crowe noticed the odor of gas and called the gas company to come and check for leaks. But as soon as the gas men arrived, they shut the gas off. The reason? Gas can’t be supplied to a residential building for the purposes of running a business, unless you have a package of permits, which Crowe didn’t.
The gas has now been disconnected for two years. That took the pizza off the café’s menu, as the expensive ovens Crowe had bought to prepare them in were left without any fuel to run them with. Now they’re gathering dust on the second floor of his building.
Crowe can’t make a profit from a café by selling only coffee. After paying bills and wages, the business loses $700 a month. It’s too expensive to re-equip the business with electric ovens to cook pizza, Crowe says.
On top of the regular monthly loss, Crowe has spent $6,000 collecting the documents he needs to get the gas hooked up again – so far to no effect.
“It’s OK, every businessman does it, so I started gathering signatures,” Crowe said. “Eventually, it appeared to be impossible to get all of them legally in Ukraine. As you go to the local authorities, you find out that more and more documents are required.”
Crowe holds out a huge folder stuffed with documents – the results of his two-year bureaucratic paper chase. “It seems they keep remembering missing (documents) all the time, and don’t have a real list of requirements,” he laughs.
After fighting the system for some time, and unwilling to bribe the bureaucrats, Crowe hired two full-time employees, Nataliya and Olexiy Kurylko, to do the paperwork for him.
They haven’t had much luck either.
“An inspector came to examine the premises last month,” Kurylko says. “He asked that we provide him with yet another batch of documents, and send one more inquiry to the Kyiv Oblast authorities, but he promised it would be the last stage.”
Volodymyr Evlakh is an engineer at regional gas supply company Kyivoblgaz. He is in charge of hooking up businesses to the gas supply network in Rzhyshchiv.
Evlakh blames the delay on Crowe, not the bureaucrats.
“The reason the project has taken so much time is the owner’s irresponsibility – once they disappeared for almost six months, when there were (just) a couple of documents to sign,” Evlakh told the Kyiv Post. “There was a clear algorithm to go through: First, rebuild the house according to safety requirements for cafés. Second, as they had bought foreign equipment, it had to be double-checked. Third, draw up a new plan of the building to be examined by (the planning) commission.”
Kyivoblgaz’s press center told the Kyiv Post that there was a list of documents required for cases such as Crowe’s, but one of the company’s public relations specialists, Anna Glyatsevych, said the list might change depending on the circumstances.
“The actions that need to be taken could be varied – there should be a list of requirements, but it could change. It depends on the type of private business,” Glyatsevych said.
Money has to be paid to check building plans, the building itself, pipes and equipment, she said. But she couldn’t say how much, as experts have to work that out on a case-by-case basis.
Meanwhile, Crowe hopes that his battle with the bureaucrats is coming to an end. But he says the attitudes of local officials in Ukraine are going to have to change if not just his business, but the country itself is to have a chance of succeeding.
“The future of democratic Ukraine is with honest small business,” said Crowe. “Until folks like those in charge of gas get a clue that their job should be to help (business) and not hurt it, the economy will continue to spiral downward and the little guys will just give up. That means no new business, no new jobs, and no economic engine.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Denys Krasnikovcan be reached at [email protected]
