Roman senator Cato the Elder kept repeating at the end of all of his speeches “Carthago delenda est” (Carthage must be destroyed).
Eventually, Carthage was destroyed by Rome in 146 BC.
Like Cato the Elder, the Kyiv Post keeps repeating the truth about Ukraine’s rampant corruption. This truth is ignored by Ukraine’s powers that be and sometimes even its Western partners, who are too soft on the nation’s kleptocracy.
But we will keep repeating it until we win.
One example at hand: Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
We keep stating the obvious: in a normal and civilized country a minister must at least resign after such vast evidence of corruption and – at best – face criminal charges.
In October Avakov’s son Oleksandr and Avakov’s ex-deputy Serhiy Chebotar were arrested and charged by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine with embezzling Hr 14 million in a case related to the supply of overpriced backpacks to the Interior Ministry.
Video footage has been published on the Internet where Oleksandr Avakov and Chebotar discuss a corrupt scheme to supply backpacks to the National Guard in Chebotar’s office.
Are we so naïve as to believe that Oleksandr Avakov’s father was not aware of the deal?
Ukraine’s corrupt establishment did its best to help Oleksandr Avakov, who was released by a kleptocratic court without bail.
In December, a court returned Oleksandr Avakov’s passport and took off his electronic bracelet and Ukrainska Pravda reported that he was allowed to spend his Christmas holidays in Italy. Moreover, the freeze on his assets was canceled by a court in the same month.
Meanwhile, in another video published on the Internet, Chebotar, the Interior Ministry’s State Secretary Oleksiy Takhtai and state firm Spetsvervis CEO Vasyl Petrivsky, an ex-aide to Avakov, negotiate a corrupt deal to sell sand at a rigged auction in Chebotar’s office.
In the video, Chebotar implicates the minister himself in the deal, saying that Avakov is also aware of the scheme and is worried that the sand has not been sold yet.
Avakov claims the video is a fake.
But here’s the problem, Mr. Avakov: one of those featured in the video, Petrivsky, has already pled guilty and has been convicted to a suspended prison term in a theft case for the sand sale scheme described in the video.
According to Ukraine’s court register, the video has been recorded by the Security Service of Ukraine and recognized as genuine.
The Takhtai-Petrivsky video appears to be part of the same series of videos from Chebotar’s office as the one that is being investigated by the NABU in the backpack supply case.
In another video being investigated by the NABU, Avakov’s deputy Vadym Troyan and Chebotar discuss corrupt revenues from the traffic police and extorting money from businesspeople.
Troyan’s house was searched in July as part of a bribery case. The Security Service of Ukraine and prosecutors said that three associates of Troyan had been arrested for extorting a Hr 1.5 million bribe, while he had nothing to do with the bribery. The statement was seen by Troyan’s critics as an effort to let him escape punishment.
Despite all of this, Avakov, Takhtai and Troyan remain on their jobs.
Even worse: Avakov on March 3 destroyed a protest tent camp in front of the Verkhovna Rada, unmasking himself and showing his true face: that of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko, who cracked down on EuroMaidan demonstrators.
As many as 112 protesters were arrested by the police, and at least 19 of them received heavy head injuries. Avakov’s re-named Berkut riot police humiliated veterans of the war with Russia by forcing them to kneel, and the police also stole or destroyed the protesters’ property.
Avakov is lying that there was a court warrant for that. No, there was only a search warrant. There was no court ban on the protest that would have given the police the authority to demolish the camp.
Worse still: Avakov has completely buried Ukraine’s fake “police reform,” with an overwhelming majority of corrupt and incompetent police officers staying in the police.
A question for Ukraine’s Western partners: do you still think you can deal with these people without tarnishing your own reputation?
We keep saying: Carthage must be destroyed.
And it will be.
