To a large degree, Ukraine today remains an
agricultural powerhouse. This is good news for the state and its corrupt
officials that build their empires of wealth on shadowy land business and seizure
of agricultural production; the practices often sanctioned by subservient
courts. With tacit approval from top Ukrainian policymakers, state and local
bureaucrats target successful but independent entrepreneurs like Arkady Kornatsky,
the owner of a modern agribusiness in the southern Mykolayiv Oblast.
Arkady Kornatsky also happened to win a parliamentary
seat in a single-mandate election district against the local governor’s man
last fall, and now the destruction of his business is also a political strategy
to deprive Kornatsky, an anti-corruption campaigner, of a voice in Ukraine’s
parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.
Yanukovych is already the subject of much scrutiny in
the West because of the jailing of his principal opponent, former Prime Minister
Yulia Tymoshenko.
Despite having been imprisoned for more than a year on
a conviction that is at best the result of selective prosecution, Tymoshenko’s political
alliance still took a significant percentage of the Rada in last year’s
election. In order to deny them a majority, Yanukovych and his allies have
resorted to the kind of pressure exerted against Kornatsky, a member of
Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party.
He is reported to have won the parliamentary seat he
contested by as many as six percentage points, but local authorities have
cancelled the election results. Several
hundred voters came out to protest. This “local Orange Revolution” was brutally
suppressed by police special forces that came from outside the election
district. Many protesters suffered injuries.
Authorities are now calling for a re-vote, but this
time while holding Kornatsky’s business hostage.
Three months before the 2012 parliamentary election,
Kornatsky’s chief accountant, Lyudmila Nikitkina was arrested apparently on
fabricated charges and remains in prison.
Similarly, specious charges have been concocted against his general
manager, Oleh Kyrylyuk.
Situated between the capital of Kyiv and the southern
port of Odesa, Chausovo-2 and surrounding villages are farming communities
where Kornatsky’s firm is leasing 5,000 land plots, which is 16,000
hectares in total territory.
Kornatsky has introduced modern agriculture practices
to the region, leading to increased productivity. Over 15,000 people rely on his business for
their livelihoods. In spite of this, the authorities blocked the bank accounts
of Kornatsky’s firms, causing disruption of the spring planting schedule.
Authorities are also trying to organize a raider seizure of Kornatsky’s land.
Authorities in today’s Ukraine are less concerned with
the business climate, job creation or economic health than with holding onto
power and expanding their ability to steal.
The U.S.-based Heritage Foundation rates Ukraine’s economy along with
that of Belarus as being Europe’s most “repressed,” while Freedom House warns
about “authoritarian rule” in the country. Both the economic and political
climate steadily deteriorated over Yanukovych’s three years at the helm.
Kornatsky’s case would amount to that of just one more
victim in a country squandering its promise were he not committed to fighting
back.
“Come to Pervomaisk and see for yourself what is
really going on in Ukraine today,” Kornatsky says. “The crisis in my country is not just about
clashes between big politicians, but also about how ordinary people suffer when
a regime becomes corrupt to its core,” he explains, adding “unless we stand up
for our rights now, what few gains have been made since Ukraine gained independence
in 1991 will be lost forever.”
Sam Patten is a democracy and elections
specialist who has worked in Ukraine, Georgia, Russia and
Central Asia as well as Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
