Vladimir Razumovsky A Donetsk businessman is caught on tape flaunting his ties with President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions in an attempt to forcibly shut down a rival’s business.

In a vivid reminder that business practices in Ukraine have still not evolved much from the lawless gangster era of the 1990s, a Donetsk businessman has been caught on tape flaunting his ties with President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions in an attempt to forcibly shut down a rival’s business.

“We are not going to talk, we are going to hit, you son of a bitch,” Oleksandr Grupsky threatens Vladimir Razumovsky, who owns the Decorative Plant Factory in Donetsk.

The threat, caught on hidden camera, shows Grupsky touting his association with the president’s ruling party.

“I have been a member of the Party of Regions for the last nine years. They want me to become a deputy … So what do you think now, Vladimir? Have you enjoyed being harassed and all these inspections…Until you ‘get it,’ these checks will continue forever,” Grupsky says.

Razumovsky, the target of the harassment, calmly laid out his case – as well as Grupsky’s surreptitiously recorded threats – in a videotape.

The 9-minute, 40-second clip has become a mini-YouTube sensation (at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgPpUDv-fmA), with more than 50,000 hits and generating lots of news coverage since it was posted on Aug. 2. Razumovsky is seated, in shirt and tie, behind his work desk as he speaks, accusing Grupsky of escalating harassment and sabotage that pose threats to his livelihood.

In an interview with the Kyiv Post, however, Grupsky denied all allegations of impropriety. He said on Aug. 10 that his comments on the YouTube appeal were “manipulated” to make him look bad. He also said that, for health reasons, he would be unable to attend a press conference in Kyiv about the conflict scheduled for Aug. 13.

“I recently suffered a mini-heart attack,” Grupsky said.

Grupsky’s TEK, which grows vegetables in greenhouses, and Razumovsky’s Decorative Plant Factory, are located in the same Flora settlement of Donetsk’s Kyubyshevsky district. Both companies are dependent on reliable irrigation and land rental agreements with municipal authorities.

The incident highlights the growing use of the Internet and YouTube to draw attention to alleged crimes and injustices. The episode may prove to be an embarrassment to the president’s Party of Regions and Ukraine’s law enforcers, notoriously corrupt and politically subservient, as well as reinforce complaints from the business community that investments are unprotected in this nation.

Yevhen Mudzhyri, a 28-year old business journalist with the weekly newspaper Argumenty i Fakty v Ukraine, who was born and raised in Donetsk, said that he was familiar with the conflict and had viewed the YouTube video.

“It’s impossible for me to come to an unequivocal conclusion about Razumovsky’s complaint based solely on his appeal,” Mudzhyri said. “Land rental arrangements and legal agreements between commercial entities and municipal authorities are often complicated, muddled or completely opaque throughout Donbas. It’s very difficult for any businessman to be completely above board.”

Razumovsky appeals directly to the president for help.

“Viktor Fyodorovych [Yanukovych], having sought the protection of law-enforcement agencies in vain, it has become necessary to appeal directly to you,” Razumovsky said.

“[Grupsky’s] criminal group began their assault on my company about a year ago by appropriating a portion of land rented by my company and turning it into a garbage dump. Donetsk’s Kyubyshevsky district council ignored our complaints about the incursion, even after I presented contracts proving our rights to use the land. Grupsky’s group next sabotaged our company’s water storage facilities [in February 2010]. I arrived on the scene and took photographs of the perpetrators before they could flee. They were employees of Grupsky’s TEK company,” Razumovsky continued.

“As a result of the sabotage, our company incurred Hr 1,620,988 in losses. It will take years for our company to make up the loss. I filed an official complaint with Donetsk’s Kyubyshevsky district police, but they have not brought anyone to justice, despite the fact that the men who carried out the vandalism made no attempt to conceal their identities. Our company subsequently was inspected by every municipal authority imaginable: the sanitary service, tax administration, prosecutor’s office, etc. All the checks were carried out in gross violation of existing legislation. […],” Razumovsky said.

Oleksandr Lukyanenko, Donetsk City Administration head and chairman of the city’s Party of Regions branch, on Aug. 3 told local journalists that Razumovsky had not asked him personally for assistance. “The police have been tasked with looking into the relationship between these two commercial entities, which are both located where a vegetable farm used to be in Donetsk. The land is currently being inventoried and, unfortunately, violations have been found,” he said.

Razumovsky told the Kyiv Post that he has received hundreds of letters of support from well-wishers over the Internet since posting his YouTube appeal but no response from the president, the Presidential Administration or local authorities.

“This is purely a criminal matter,” Razumovsky said. “If the authorities can’t deal with a case as black and white as this one, I don’t think this Ukraine has much of a future.”

Read the article in Russian.

Kyiv Post staff writer Peter Byrne can be reached at byrne@kyivpost.com