You're reading: Whistleblower fired after accusing Poroshenko’s ally of corruption

Ukraine’s customs offices, long a cash cow for corrupt officials, have come under attack from two directions – Konstyantyn Likarchuk, deputy head of the State Fiscal Service, and Mikheil Saakashvili, the ex-Georgian president and reformist governor of Odesa Oblast.

The fallout from the affair has already cost Likarchuk his job. He was fired on Sept. 7 after accusing his boss, Roman Nasirov, of theft and restoring ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s corrupt customs schemes.

Meanwhile, Saakashvili accused Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and his Cabinet of allegedly sabotaging measures designed to make customs in Odesa Oblast transparent and corruption-free.
Nasirov, who was a lawmaker in the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction before being appointed to head the State Fiscal Service, denied Likarchuk’s accusations. In turn, he accused the would-be whistleblower of incompetence and corruption.

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To support his claims, Likarchuk published on Sept. 8 what appears to be a scanned copy of a property title to an apartment owned by Nasirov in London. Since Nasirov did not include this in his property declaration, he should be fired under Ukraine’s lustration law, Likarchuk wrote.

Likarchuk also said in August that Nasirov was re-introducing Yanukovych-era schemes by appointing allies of the ex-president and his former customs agency head, Ihor Kaletnik.

“These people are allies of each other for a very simple reason – they want to earn money by exploiting the state fiscal system of Ukraine,” Likarchuk said in an interview with the Kyiv Post. “All of them have a common goal – to steal from the state budget.”

On Sept. 5, Likarchuk published a graph showing that customs payments for container shipments had decreased under Nasirov, attributing this to the reinstatement of Yanukovych associates.
One of the alleged Yanukovych allies is Hennady Romanenko, an advisor to Nasirov who wields enormous power at the agency, according to Likarchuk. Romanenko held several top customs positions under Yanukovych and cannot hold any official government jobs under the lustration law, according to the Civic Lustration Committee.

“Several days after I was appointed, I was introduced by Nasirov to his advisor Romanenko,” Likarchuk told the Kyiv Post. “Nasirov told me that I should discuss all issues regarding human resources with him.”

On Sept. 5, Likarchuk published what he says is a document by the State Fiscal Service’s internal security department according to which in 2014 the Interior Ministry opened a criminal case against Romanenko, accusing him of extorting bribes from importers. However, the case was halted after top officials intervened, the supposed official document reads.

According to the document, Romanenko owns a luxury house and five high-end cars.

Nasirov said on Sept. 7 that Romanenko had been working as his advisor for two months, but did not work at the State Fiscal Service anymore. He added that he was not aware of any allegations of corruption against Romanenko.

“All the allegations should be properly investigated,” Finance Minister
Natalie Jaresko told the Kyiv Post.

She also said that the Finance Ministry had “zero tolerance” for those
who should be lustrated. “I personally would not bring a person to my team that I thought needed
to be lustrated but my understanding is that (Romanenko) no longer works at the State
Fiscal Service,” Jaresko said.

She said, however, that firing Likarchuk was a good sign because
she wanted “a team that works together.” “I believe that you either come in and
work on the team or you stay out and criticize, and that’s your choice,” she
said.

Saakashvili supported Likarchuk’s accusations on Sept. 3 by saying that customs offices are de facto controlled by lawmaker Vitaly Khomutynnik – an ex-Yanukovych ally.

Likarchuk told the Kyiv Post that he had been stripped of about 25 percent of his authority in August due to his conflict with Nasirov, and of the rest during the first week of September.

Last week he was deprived of his remaining powers and given powers to run only a spa resort in Russian-annexed Crimea that Ukraine no longer controls. “That was an attempt to humiliate me,” Likarchuk said.

Earlier this month Nasirov accused Likarchuk of corruption, without providing any details or evidence, and also claimed that he was unprofessional. “Instead of working and implementing reforms every day, he decided he should occupy himself with some special type of public relations and spend time on Facebook,” Nasirov said on Sept. 7. “With his behavior he was undermining all of the efforts we were investing in reforming the service.”

Likarchuk said, however, that he had made improvements while in office, specifically by cracking down on smuggling in Zakarpattya Oblast.

“We managed to increase revenues,” he said. “During these four months we added approximately Hr 2.5 billion to the state budget.”

Likarchuk believes that one of the reasons for his dismissal was his stance on customs reform – he thinks that the State Fiscal Service should be split into separate tax and customs agencies.

“Customs are viewed only in the context of tax reform, which is completely wrong, because customs and taxes have different purposes and tasks,” Likarchuk said.

He said that the current system of merged tax and customs functions encourages corruption. “At a certain point in time you can’t see where each flow is, and it becomes much easier to fish something out of this very murky and non-transparent water,” he said.

To reduce corruption, Likarchuk has suggested increasing salaries, introducing incentives for fighting smuggling and raising revenues, hiring young, new people, computerizing the process to the fullest extent possible, and standardizing customs tariffs across the country’s regions.

Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov and Ilya Timtchenko can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected]. Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Gordiienko contributed to this report.