At the height of the EuroMaidan Revolution on Jan. 13, 2014, the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, knowingly or not, appointed a new president whose political views supported the Kremlin and the pro-Russian leadership of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych.
rved as president of the 600-member chamber from Jan. 31, 2014, to the end of the year, also espoused antagonistic views about American corporations as far back as 2009, according to his Facebook posts examined by the Kyiv Post.
Casey’s controversial views became more prominent when the Kyiv Post published an op-ed by him online on March 22 in which he described Yanukovych’s flight from power last year as a Western-backed coup d’etat. He also supported Russia’s annexation of Crimea and described the conflict in Ukraine as a civil war rather than a Russian-orchestrated invasion.
AmCham promptly issued a statement on March 23 disavowing Casey’s views.
But the chamber and 11 of 16 of the business association’s 2014 board members either declined to comment or didn’t respond to Kyiv Post inquiries seeking explanations for why Casey was hired, how much was known about his views and why he got fired.
Casey’s predecessor, American Jorge Zukoski, “led the search for his successor,” according to a Jan. 13, 2014, chamber statement. Zukoski, who returned to America after a 15-year tenure, didn’t respond to an emailed message and voicemail left on his mobile phone.
It’s not clear how much due diligence, if any, that the chamber’s search committee did in investigating Casey’s views or taking them into acccount in hiring him.
Casey listed “multinational corporate fascism, anti-Christian notions of human rights and gay rights, consumerism and materialism” among American exports to “Orthodox Christian nations,” according to an Oct. 21, 2009 Facebook post.
In response to an invitation to a Kyiv Post conference on Ukraine’s food supply, Casey on May 14, 2013 urged on social media that the seed company Monsanto, a chamber member, should be kicked out of Ukraine and the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council, another business advocacy group, for “their deadly poisons.”
Casey didn’t reply to an emailed message asking about the reasons for his firing, announced on Oct. 23 by the chamber, or whether his iews affected his work performance.
“I wish the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine and all its employees continued success,” he said in a separate email. “I pray that God will grant Ukraine’s leaders wisdom to chart a path to peace, healing and prosperity. And I ask that everyone pray that God will likewise grant me wisdom to be a help and not a hindrance in this process.”
As early as 2011, the American entrepreneur had advocated for Ukraine to join a common economic space with Russia and establish a free trade agreement with Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, according to a report titled “Economic Integration of Russia and Ukraine,” that he says he submitted to the governments of Russia and Ukraine.
In the report, he warns against Ukraine entering into an association agreement and free trade deal with the European Union and advises Ukraine to “move to federalism and subsidiarity – the principle that decisions should be made by the least centralized competent authority, which surprisingly is a principle of the administrative models in both the Orthodox Church and in the EU.”
Citing Russian nationalist blogger Stanislav Mishin, Casey on Sept. 29, 2009 blames the West for “tearing away Ukraine from Russia, at any cost…They have tried to force Russian, the native tongue of half the population, out of the country, to replace it with ‘proper’ western Ukrainian, little more than debased Polish. They have created their own, non-recognized ‘patriarch,’ stealing Russian Orthodox Church lands from the Moscow Patriarchy.”
This month on Facebook, Casey criticized the West for recognizing a “regime in Kyiv that came to power through an unconstitutional, violent, foreign-orchestrated coup d’état with only about 30 percent popular support, and yet fail to recognize the right of self-determination of the peoples of Crimea to reunify with their fatherland Russia, to whom they belonged before the United States came into existence, with close to 90 percent popular support.”
Casey denied working for the Kremlin in a separate message emailed to the Kyiv Post.
The chamber is expected to announce the appointment of a new president in the upcoming week. Its current acting president is Taras Kachka, who was a member of the Ukrainian team that negotiated the EU-Ukraine association and free trade agreement. He was appointed on Nov. 12.
