Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has appointed Oleksiy Perevezentsev as his new representative in the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.
The appointment, which follows the earlier dismissal of Andriy Gerus, took place early on Nov. 11, 2019, according to information published on the president’s official website.
From Dec. 7, 2016 until Sept. 25, 2019, Perevezentsev was the state secretary for Ukraine’s ministry of economic development and trade. Before that, Perevezentsev was the head of the ministry’s legal department in the cabinet of Mykola Azarov, which was ousted by the EuroMaidan Revolution of 2014.
In 2013, Perevezentsev was appointed to the supervisory board of Naftogaz, the national oil and gas company of Ukraine.
Perevezentsev’s appointment was immediately criticized by some civil society representatives, who allege that Perevezentsev lacks motivation to reform the country’s economy towards a free market.
Hlib Vyshlynsky, of the Centre for Economic Strategy NGO, commented that the he knew the presidential appointee as being “a key person in sabotaging reforms in the Ministry of Economy in 2016-2017.”
Vyshlynsky also said that Perevezentsev “was instrumental in trying to undermine corporate governance reform in Naftogaz. He also advocated to maintain corrupt scheme of sanctions to companies that have not received payments from foreign customers in time.”
Certain media outlets also accused Pereverzentsev of corporate raiding, including the regional news outlet Reporter from Kirivograd Oblast in central Ukraine, which published an article claiming that Pereverzentsev and his father-in-law raided the state-owned Elektronmash enterprise in July 2018.
Perevezentsev takes the position of the president’s representative in the cabinet after Andriy Gerus, was dismissed from position.
Gerus was fired four days after a viral video showed the lawmaker being physically confronted by Oleh Lyashko, the leader of the Radical Party, at Kyiv’s main airport Boryspil over Gerus’s decision to open Ukraine’s energy market to Russian imports. Gerus remains the head of the parliamentary energy and utilities committee.
Gerus denies any connection between his dismissal and confrontation with Lyashko and wrote in a Nov. 11 Facebook post: “De facto, I have not been performing the functions of the president’s representative in the Cabinet for more than two months (because I perform the functions of a member of parliament and committee chair).”
Pereverzentsev’s education history and places of birth and childhood years are not available in the public domain.
