Ukraine, four years after the EuroMaidan Revolution, is still seen as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. The efforts of the newly created National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to investigate cases of official graft are being thwarted by the authorities. And even officials from the regime of runaway former President Viktor Yanukovych have so far escaped responsibility for their three-year looting spree of the Ukrainian state, which pushed Ukraine to the brink of economic collapse.
Ukrainians themselves, of course, are primarily to blame for corruption in their own country, though some are more to blame than others – politicians, officials and businesspeople; we’re looking at you.
But the problem isn’t helped by the attitude of the West, which for too long has acted as an enabler of Ukrainian corruption, providing safe havens for cash looted from the state budget, and even fast-tracked citizenship programs so that wealthy Ukrainian “investors” can park their ill-gotten gains in London or Vienna with greater convenience.
And as the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers leaks of details about offshore companies have revealed, it is all too easy for Ukrainians – even the country’s president – to set up companies with secret beneficiaries in offshore tax havens, which could be used to avoid or evade Ukrainian taxes.
Hence the absurd statistic of tiny Cyprus being one of the biggest “investors” in Ukraine – this is not Cypriot money, it is Ukrainian money that has been funneled from Ukraine to Cyprus and then back again.
This has to stop. Ukrainians have enough problems with corruption – they don’t need them to be exacerbated by the West’s dubious practices.
