UZHHOROD, Ukraine – Hennadiy Moskal is ready to quit.
Moskal took over as governor of Zakarpattia Oblast in July, after spending 10 months as governor of war-torn Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine.
His mission was to crack down on the region’s rampant smuggling, which erupted into violence in Mukacheve in June, when members of the ultra-nationalist Right Sector organization were involved in a gunfight allegedly connected to a conflict between smuggling gangs. Two people were killed in the shooting.
“We don’t read English newspapers here – we should better know what our neighbors are writing about us,” Moskal told the Kyiv Post, referring to the four European Union member states that border Zakarpattia Oblast.
Those neighbors – Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Poland – send investment and tourists. But there are also big problems with the smuggling of tobacco, amber and illegal migrants out of Ukraine into the EU.
And now Moskal wants out.
On May 6, he appealed to Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, seeking to resign because he said state officials were blocking his efforts to stop illegal smuggling to EU countries.
His main conflict is with State Fiscal Service head Roman Nasirov, who hired Andriy Krymskiy as deputy head of Zakarpattia Customs Service.
“This isn’t an appointment, this is complete piggery,” Moskal told the Kyiv Post. He described Krymskiy’s appointment as a “raider attack” on Zakarpattia Oblast. The provincial capital of Uzhhorod, with 115,000 people, is 800 kilometers southwest of Kyiv.
Hennadiy Moskal
According to Moskal, Krymskiy is incapable of leading the customs service. Moskal is also irked that Krymskiy and other deputies were appointed just before the new civil service law came into force on May 1, meaning they didn’t have to undergo the now-mandatory competitive selection process for state positions.
At a meeting among Groysman, Nasirov, and Moskal, the prime minister promised to remove Krymskiy from his position, Moskal said.
“I think professional bodies should be led by professionals… while we’re being headed by a businessman,” he said of Nasirov and his management decisions. “It should be an ordinary employee who rises to become the head of the Customs Service.”
Moskal said Groysman, who took power on April 14, showed promise. At a meeting with Moskal, Groysman demonstrated full knowledge the customs situation, Moskal said.
Smuggling battles
Ukraine’s Zakarpattia Oblast is close to tobacco consumers in Italy, France, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom, where excise duty on tobacco is the highest among the 28 EU countries.
The cheap price of tobacco in Ukraine thus encourages the smuggling of cigarettes to these nations in particular. However, Zakarpattia’s governor claims that his arrival had put the brakes on this illegal and lucrative business.
According to Moskal, smugglers were earlier earning Hr 1 million from each truck sent to the EU, and Hr 1.5 million on one to Britain. Up to 12 trucks would cross the border every week, bringing in up to Hr 72 million in net profit in a month.
“Now we have a stable system – you can try to bribe customs officers, but they all know that … if they let through a truck, we might not see this man for 20 years,” Moskal said, referring to a possible prison term for smuggling.
He wouldn’t say how many officers he had fired, but said there were a lot of them.
“Tobacco smuggling is a transnational organized criminal activity, and Ukraine is just part of it,” Moskal said. “I can’t even tell you who’s the boss of it all, as it’s an international syndicate.”
Cigarettes produced in Belarus, the United Arab Emirates, Russia and even the Hamadei factory in the Russian-occupied part of Donetsk Oblast have been seized by law enforcement in Zakarpattia. That means Ukraine’s borders are weak, Moskal said.
But to smuggle goods across Ukraine’s border with the EU, there must be a similarly corrupt customs officer on the EU side.
“This is completely obvious, so stop shouting about Ukraine being the most corrupt country,” Moskal said. “Over there in the EU they’re in the same situation.”
Besides tobacco, amber illegally mined in Rivne and Zhytomyr oblasts and illegal migrants from Africa and Asia also cross the border in Zakarpattia Oblast.
Taking control of border
“What did customs officers get over 25 years of independence – a uniform and a stamp – that’s all of the technical equipment they got,” Moskal said. The governor has proposed to bring in from Europe X-ray scanners for vehicles, so that customs officers don’t have to stop and examine every car that passes through their checkpoints. Moskal even visited the Romanian company that produces scanners for the EU, and agreed for one to be sent to Ukraine, “but Nasirov refused and said that we don’t need it,” Moskal said.
He said tobacco companies were ready to invest in upgrading the country’s border equipment, so Ukraine didn’t need to rely on international aid to improve its customs service.
Pacifying Right Sector
Before Moskal arrived, members of the nationalist Right Sector openly carried weapons. Moskal persuaded them to stop. “Today, they behave more modestly,” he said.
Coming from war-torn Luhansk Oblast, Moskal had rapport with soldiers. “There are those who are fighting, but there are those who steal,” he said of Right Sector members.
Luhansk vs. Zakarpattia
“I was given the task of stabilizing the situation and returning control of the oblast back to the president, not to some clans,” Moskal said of his appointment as Zakarpattia governor. “All has been returned, the oblast is under control.”
Moskal said it was “much simpler” to work in Luhansk Oblast, despite its proximity to Russia. In Zakarpattia, in contrast, everything is confusing and shady, he said. “All these problems – they’re invisible,” he said.
In Zakarpattia, local authorities often opposed the de-communization process, even taking cases to court. Moskal eventually won, and 76 soldiers who were killed in the Donbas war zone had streets named after them in their hometowns.
Reviving Zakarpattia
Stopping smuggling in the oblast is one thing, Moskal said, but Zakarpattia needs a stable political and economic situation to develop its industries, such as tourism and wine making. And development is sorely needed – according to Moskal, 76 percent of the oblast’s budget comes from government subsidies.
Tourism is important for economic growth. The collapse of the hryvnia reduced the flow of Ukrainians traveling to Europe, but there has been an increase Europeans tourists.
“At Easter there were no rooms available in hotels in Uzhhorod, because it was busy with tourists,” Moskal said. “You can have a very good week’s holiday for Hr 3,000 in Zakarpattia.
