Viktor Pinchuk, Ukraine’s second richest person, with a fortune exceeding $3.7 billion, has been no exception. We didn’t have many positive things to say when in 2004 Pinchuk, as the son-in-law of then-President Leonid Kuchma, alongside Rinat Akhmetov, the richest Ukrainian, infamously privatized the nation’s largest and best steel mill in Kryvorizhstal. Later the mill was resold to Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal for more than fivefold the price Pinchuk and Akhmetov had paid.
So it’s all the more admirable that on Feb. 14, Pinchuk made a decision that just a couple of years ago would have seemed totally alien to his system of values. He announced that at least a half of his enormous wealth would be given to charity.
Pinchuk pledged to invest into “education, healthcare, access to contemporary art and (Ukraine’s) promotion.” By doing so, Pinchuk became the first Ukrainian to join the Giving Pledge initiative, started a few years ago by billionaires Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, where the world’s wealthiest individuals are making public pledges of their fortunes to charity.
“In our part of the world the legacy of communism has made many people more skeptical of the wealthy than in Western countries,” Pinchuk wrote in his pledge. “I want to convince some of them that successful entrepreneurs and business leaders can be constructive, inventive and active contributors to making everyone’s life better.”
So far, Pinchuk is the only one of Ukraine’s rich to give his pledge. Akhmetov, Petro Poroshenko, Ihor Kolomoysky and many other billionaires should follow suit. So far, they have shown no inclination to redistribute their wealth on such a scale.
Moreover, the very system they used, and in part created, for acquiring their fortunes is still well in place. The proof of it is the growing wealth of President Viktor Yanukovych’s son Oleksandr. Just days apart from Pinchuk’s pledge, his MAKO Group released its 2011 financial results audited by PwC, attesting to his rising fortune.
Perhaps he, too, will one day pledge part of a vast fortune to charity. But it would be better to give people a fair chance now than a pittance latter.
