Natalie Jaresko set a very high bar for her successor as finance minister, Oleksandr Danylyuk, in the eyes of many people.
During her term,
Jaresko accomplished what many considered impossible: she reached compliance
with International Monetary Fund lending conditions in a $17.5 billion program, managed sovereign debt restructuring that
saved Ukraine $3.8 billion and reduced the budget deficit from 11 to 2 percent of gross domestic product.
After stabilizing
the economy, Jaresko said that overhauling Ukraine’s tax service would be high
on her priorities this year. She never got the chance.
Danylyuk, who most recently has been
serving as a deputy head of the Presidential Administration, seems less
promising.
He is called “old school”
and also “reformist.”
So which is he?
The Kyiv Post could not reach
Danylyuk for an interview for this story.
Parts of his CV are impressive: He worked
for seven months in 1998 at Western NIS Enterprise Fund, received a master’s in
business adminsitration from Indiana University Kelley School of Business and
was a senior consultant at McKinsey &
Company in London.
Accomplishments vs. blemishes
Danylyuk was one of
the initiators of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and is involved in
legislation that advance a visa-free regime for Ukrainians traveling to the
European Union. Together with Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili and
journalist Vladimir Fedorin, Danylyuk is the co-founder of the Bendukidze
Free-Market Center which in turn created the Odesa package of reforms.
But he also has the
dubious side: he was an adviser of former President Viktor Yanukovych and was
close to Serhiy Lyvochkin, Yanukovych’s chief of staff.
Batkivshchyna
faction member of parliament Alex Ryabchin
says that he was not able to look at Danylyuk’s biography in detail but notes
that he’s been working on reforms “for a very long time.”
Ryabchyn, as other lawmakers, has
questions regarding Danylyuk, but he prefers to keep silent for now and see how
the new ministers will act.
Yulia Kyrpa, head of the banking and
finance commission of the Ukrainian Bar Association, says that based on
Danylyuk’s professional experience he would be suitable for the ministry’s
position. “At least at this stage nothing leads us to the contrary.”
London apartments
But one of Danylyuk’s more
controversial sides has to do with him allegedly being the director of two
companies in London – Rurik Real Estate Investments Limited and CEE Investment
and Advisory LLP – according to social activist Igor Prohorenko.
“How did the deputy
head of the President’s Administration Danylyuk, considering his basically zero
declarations for the last three years, get half-a-million pounds on his British
firm’s account in 2014?” Prohorenko wrote.
Danylyuk wrote on
Facebook that he resigned as CEO and sold his stake in the Rurik Investment
Group in 2010.
“Since then, I am not
engaged in the affairs of the company and don’t receive any profit from it.”
According to Companies
in the UK, the company filed a termination of appointment of director Oleksandr
Danylyuk which was filed on April 13. It also says that Danylyuk was the
director since 2007 until May 2015.
“In regards to CEE
Investment & Advisory LLP, I am not the director but a partner,” Danylyuk
wrote.
Kyrpa says that it
is not possible for a public official to work for the state and to be a
director of any entity.
“If he was a
director (of) any of those companies… all arrangements of that sort of course
should be terminated,” Kyrpa said. “But to own some properties, it’s quite
legal… as long as they are legally obtained and as long as they are submitted
to the tax authorities.”
Don’t focus on the ‘who’
Andreas von Beckerath, Swedish
Ambassador to Ukraine, says that it is more important to focus on the work
results of the new Cabinet as a whole rather than “on the who.”
Kyrpa agrees.
Political experts sometimes overrate
the impact ministers have on implementing reforms, Kyrpa says. “They present
everything in a way like the minister is the only one responsible for the
implementation of the reforms.”
The whole team is important and,
especially, “the huge workload is usually carried out by the deputies of the
minister,” Kyrpa says.
As Ukrainians wait to hear
Danylyuk’s plan and the names of the newly appointed deputies, Kyrpa says that
there are good “rumors” regarding the new deputies.
One of the main priorities for
Danylyuk should be reforming the tax and customs services which are still
considered to be the most untouched by the government, says Kyrpa.
“If the tax and customs system works
according to international standards… that will be definitely the biggest
achievement of the ministry of finance,” she says.
In a statement to
Ukraine’s Prime Minister of Ukraine Vladimir Groisman, Odesa Oblast’s customs
chief Yulia Marushevska demanded for quick reforms in the fiscal services since
the opposition of old officials strongly persists.
“One of the first
important steps that should be done by the new government in regards to
implementing changes in the customs services needs to be the removal of the head
of the fiscal services Roman Nasirov who today is a person that protects the
old system,” Marushevksa said on April 14.
But economist Anders Aslund has his
doubts that this will happen.
“As expected, the
new Ukrainian government cannot be called reformist. Poroshenko got his desired
control and (Prime Minister Volodymyr) Groysman got his favorites,” Aslund
wrote on Twitter.
