You're reading: Economy minister Abromavicius announces resignation, blames Poroshenko ally for thwarting anti-corruption drive

Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius resigned on Feb. 3 - the third reform-minded minister to quit the Ukrainian government in less than two months.

At a
hastily arranged news conference in Kyiv, the Lithuania-born former investment
banker blamed President Petro Poroshenko’s business partner and lawmaker Ihor
Kononenko for prompting the resignation.

“These
people have names,” Abromavicius said. “I will say one of these names – Ihor
Kononenko.”

According
to the outgoing minister, Kononenko, who is deputy head of Poroshenko’s
parliamentary faction, was jostling for control over numerous state-owned
enterprises under the Economy Ministry’s purview.

“I don’t
want to go to (the World Economic Forum in) Davos and talk about our successes,
when behind my back decisions are being made for the benefit of certain
people,” Abromavicius said without giving specific examples, or evidence.

Kononenko
has come under repeated allegations of misconduct in his parliamentary role. Former
Security Service chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko accused Kononenko in October 2015
of illegally profiting from services provided to the president. Kononenko had
rejected the allegations and Nalyvaichenko was subsequently dismissed after making
the accusations.

In a
statement to Interfax-Ukraine, Kononenko disputed the allegations against him
and called Abromavicius’s statements “an emotional reaction” relating to
“statements about dissatisfaction with his work.”

But Abromavicius
repeated during the conference that his decision to quit was not “an emotional
decision.”

“I can’t be
effective under such a system,” he said. “I want my resignation to serve as a
warning call, a cold shower.”

Abromavicius,
40, did not directly reply to repeated questions from the Kyiv Post asking him
to name others who might be behind attempts to block his efforts at reform,
saying that “much has already been written about this.”

Experts greeted
his announcement with frustration.

The Kyiv-based
Dragon Capital investment firm said in an emailed note that Abromavicius was
viewed as “one of the reform-minded and independent figures in the government
of (Prime Minister) Arseniy Yatsenyuk.”

Timothy
Ash, analyst for Nomura International, called the move by Abromavicius “a blow
to reform efforts.”

“He is the
second minister of economy to resign from the Yatsenyuk administration citing
similar concerns, but his leadership at the Economy Ministry had been making
some good progress in some key areas of reform, including deregulation,
improving public procurement,” he told the Kyiv Post. “The question now is whether
we see a larger-scale set of resignations, or if this will be it for the
time-being – many reform ministers have been getting increasingly frustrated
with the slow pace of reform, particularly in rule of law related issues, and
on the structural reform front.”

Ash said
that many reformers joined Ukrainian government with big pay cuts, as they
assumed the job would last a relatively short period of time. Two other
reformers, acting Agriculture Minister Oleksiy Pasvlenko resigned on Jan. 29,
and Andriy Pyvovarsky quit as infrastructure minister on Dec. 11. Both still
serve as ministers because parliament hasn’t formally voted to accept their
resignations.

“But two
years after the EuroMaidan Revolution I think these same people are realizing
that this will be a much longer haul, due to entrenched vested interests, and I
guess they are asking themselves if they can commit/survive the pressures and
frustrations that long,” Ash said. “As I said, (Ukraine’s President Petro)
Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk will now have to move quickly to stabilize the
situation. A cabinet reshuffle was coming, but this move pre-empts that.”

Abromavicius
said that he had already called the president’s office to be let go, and that
he requested that parliament approve his resignation over the next few days.

His predecessor,
Pavlo Sheremeta, cited similar reasons for his resignation, saying in August
2014 that he could not work with “yesterday’s people.”

“Respect,”
Sheremeta said in a Feb. 3 tweet tagging Abromavicius’s account.