Reformer of the week: Oleksandr Danyliuk
Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk on Jan. 11 backed the liquidation of Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt and repressive tax police.
The tax police, which had routinely cracked down on and blocked the operations of businesses, was liquidated on Jan. 1 due to a mistake in the text of a law passed last year. Danyliuk said that the mistake should not be corrected and that he would submit legislation to replace the Soviet-style tax police with a financial police force modeled on Western agencies.
Danlyliuk was also one of the few members of the government to oppose the sabotage of electronic asset declarations for officials last year.
He has advocated reducing the size of government and is a co-founder of the Kakha Bendukidze Center, a free-market think tank.
Danyliuk has also promoted a reform that seeks to introduce tax breaks for businesses and reduce corruption in tax collection, including value added tax refunds.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities have also introduced an anti-reformist taxation measure on Jan. 1, when a new tax was imposed for unprofitable sole proprietorships. As a result, more than 100,000 sole proprietorships have already been closed.
Anti-reformer of the week: Maxim Stepanov
President Petro Poroshenko on Jan. 12 appointed Maxim Stepanov as governor of Odesa Oblast to replace ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Stepanov is an ex-deputy of Yuriy Kravchenko, a suspect in the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze. Kravchenko was a former interior minister and former tax chief who died from two gunshot wounds to the head in 2005, the same day he was supposed to give testimony in the 2000 murder of Gongadze. Four police officials under Kravchenko’s command are serving prison sentences for the assassination that ex-President Leonid Kuchma is suspected of ordering.
Under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, Stepanov was appointed as CEO of a state firm that prints official documents.
Stepanov’s father Volodymyr features on the anti-separatist Mirotvorets site as a pro-Russian separatist. Volodymyr Stepanov, a member of Slovyansk’s city council, voted for holding a referendum on seceding from Ukraine in April 2014, according to the site.
The competition for the governor’s job took place with numerous procedural violations and is being disputed in court, Pavlo Polamarchuk, a leader of the regional branch of the Democratic Alliance party, told the Kyiv Post. The Presidential Administration could not comment immediately.
Odesa-based media have reported that Maxim Stepanov was set to win because he is a protégé of Poroshenko and his top allies and lawmakers Ihor Kononenko and Serhiy Berezenko, and is also close to tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky. Critics, including Health Minister Ulana Suprun and Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan, have dismissed ongoing competitions for state jobs under the new civil service law as rigged procedures used by corrupt vested interests to promote government loyalists. For example, Oleksiy Takhtai, an official who features in video footage where a corrupt deal is discussed, became the Interior Ministry’s state secretary in November.
Odesa activists, including Polamarchuk, argue that corrupt and pro-Russian officials are making a comeback in Odesa Oblast, while corruption schemes are being restored at the police, prosecution service and customs after the resignation of Saakashvili and his team in November.
