By Patrick Greenberg, Freelance Writer, UK
New Europe, Athens, Greece, Mon, August 1, 2005
via AUR

On May 16, 2005, during the plenary seating of the third meeting of the leaders of the Council of Europe member states, Ukrainian President ViktorYushchenko announced that Ukraine is ready to join the group of states fighting corruption. According to him, the new Ukrainian power has declared the war against corruption and wishes to make use of all instruments toovercome it, including legislative regulations created by the Council of Europe.

During his election campaign Yushchenko constantly said that "bribes, which became the system of power, don't allow Ukraine to move forward." Yushchenko opined that fighting corruption can be fostered only by "transparency of economic relations, sincerity and responsibility of the power."

After the victory at the presidential elections, the new president appointed his team-mate Yury Lutsenko to head the ministry of interior. He became the first civilian minister of interior in Ukraine and first of all he changed all the militia chiefs in Kiev and country regions. Similar changes took place in security service, prosecutor's office, tax administration and customs office of Ukraine. As a result, the detentions of the bribe takers began in the regions of Ukraine.

Recently, the ministry of interior and prosecutor's office have questioned several dozens of the highest level officials, several criminal cases were brought in action, and some suspects have been arrested. In general during the last six months 18,000 state officials were fired in Ukraine. It's worth mentioning that the opposition has condemned these prosecutions as a "witch hunt," saying that such large-scaled cleaning has a political character.

At the same time Lutsenko claims that all criminal cases that were brought in action against former state officials, deal only with theft, misuse and other crimes. Thus, a criminal case has been already brought in action against the former mayor of Odessa Ruslan Bodelan, the former head of state administration of Sumy oblast Vladimir Shcherban, the former head of the executive office of the president administration Igor Bakay - all of them were close to President Kuchma.

All of them are searched now and according to the latest data, Bodelan and Bakay are hiding in Russia. "One hundred and twelve officials of theprevious power are the subjects of criminal cases, brought in action by the prosecutor's office according to the initiative of the ministry of interior," Lutsenko said. "This is not all, the quantity rises. When a person has stolen a billion it is not an economic crime. If a person being a high-rank official organised the robbery of the country he cannot buy it off by any sum of money and he will face a trial," he added.

Kuchma was interrogated twice about the case of George Gongadze, which disappeared autumn 2000. The first son-in-law of the President Igor Franchuk (now is a chairman of state-owned enterprise Chernomorneftegaz in Crimea) was summoned to the ministry of interior for interrogation.

Ministry of interior discovered 330 oil driven wells in Crimea, though only 40 of them are licensed. According to Lutsenko, if the explanations of Franchuk turn to be not sufficient, he becomes an accused, not a witness.

The most popular case is still a case of Boris Kolesnikov, which was brought in action March 25, 2005 for "extortion of property right with the help of abuse of power and a threat of death." On March 28 this case was transmitted to the chief investigation office of the ministry of interior of Ukraine for further investigation. On April 5, Kolesnikov was detained by the militia at the exit from the prosecutor's office, after the interrogation about separatist announcements and Severodonetsk congress.

In general, it appears that the majority of Ukrainian citizens like the irreconcilable attitude of the new power. According to the polling conducted by the social service of Razumkov Centre, the question of "does the new state power take any measures fighting corruption and abuse of power?" was answered "yes, a lot of measures" by 23.1 percent of respondents, "something is done but it is not enough" by 53.8 percent of respondents and "nothing or almost nothing" by 15 percent of respondents.