State Fiscal Service head Roman Nasirov said he has launched a bribery investigation into Yulia Marushevska, the reform-minded former head of Odesa customs and EuroMaidan Revolution hero.
The reason for Nasirov’s investigation, the State Fiscal Service chief said, is a sharp drop in customs revenue during Marushevska’s tenure as head of Odesa customs. Nasirov suspects that Marushevska was skimming cash off the top; the 27-year Saakashvili appointee says that corrupt companies avoided Odesa after she came into office, lowering income.
Marushevska denies the corruption accusations, calling the probe an attempt to discredit her team’s work through “far-fetched accusations,” designed to distract people from Nasirov’s own corruption schemes.
One day after Reuters published an interview with Nasirov in which he revealed the investigation, the U.S. Agency for International Development said that it was ending its support for Odesa customs, citing “no clear way forward” for reforming the notoriously corrupt port.
Though Marushevska says that Nasirov prevented many of her planned changes from going through, she did manage to institute so-called “one-window” customs clearance, reducing the opportunity for small-time corruption by making it so that people could pass through customs in one stop with one official.
Data emailed to the Kyiv Post by the State Fiscal Service shows that customs revenue in Odesa Oblast met the expected level, so-called indicatives, for only three months out of Marushevska’s 13-month tenure.
The forecasted “indicative” figures are calculated by the Finance Ministry, and then incorporated into the state budget.
After Marushevska’s Nov. 14 resignation, Odesa Oblast increased its customs revenue by 30 percent, or Hr 411 million ($15 million), Nasirov said.
“So, after the customs chief – Marushevska – was fired and professional managers were appointed, budget revenue was raised by one third,” Nasirov said in a statement to the Kyiv Post.
Nasirov also struck out at a key Saakashvili initiative to repair the road from Odesa to the Moldovan border town of Reni. The former Odesa governor had planned to finance repairs using customs revenue, but Nasirov said that the money – more than Hr 200 million ($7.5 million) had only begun to appear after Marushevska’s departure.
“That’s more than during the entire year under the ‘less-than-leadership’ of Marushevska. The numbers speak for themselves.”
However, the State Fiscal Service chief did not specify whether there are similar investigations concerning members of Marushevska’s team, or customs officials from other oblasts. According to statistics from Nasirov’s department, customs in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast met the expected revenue level in three of 10 months in 2016, as well as Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast.
In a Facebook post, Marushevska called Nasirov “a new symbol of domestic corruption.”
“Feeling full impunity and support from the state’s leaders, Nasirov does not stop trying to discredit our work in reforming the Odesa customs through far-fetched accusations to draw attention away from his corrupt swamp and schemes by his allies and protectors,” she wrote.
She also said that corrupt officials are dismantling the anti-graft and service instruments that she and her team managed to put in place.
Marushevska, who was an activist during the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2013-2014, headed the region’s customs from October 2015 to November 2016.
She attributed her resignation to what she sees as sabotage by Ukrainian top officials of her efforts to make customs clearance in Odesa more transparent and graft-free. In her words, continuing to be the chief of Odesa Oblast’s customs “didn’t make any sense,” as the Kyiv authorities continued to block and pressure reformers.
Marushevska resigned one week after former Odesa Governor Mikheil Saakashvili quit his post.
Nasirov has repeatedly denied accusations of sabotaging the attempted Odesa reforms.
