Ukrainians have always suspected their rulers are corrupt. But the Oct. 31 emergence of e-declarations, which gave a glimpse of the wealth of nearly 100,000 public officials, dispelled doubts about how the elite live and how disconnected they are from the hardscrabble lives of most Ukrainians.
The e-declarations – a legal requirement that survived multiple attempts at sabotage – also underscored the corrupt intersection betwen private wealth and public service in the nation, as well as how little Ukraine’s elite trust the nation’s institutions, such as banks.
For one of Europe’s poorest countries, Ukraine’s upper class are astonishingly wealthy and financially liquid. Just 413 members of the Ukrainian parliament collectively hold a staggering Hr 12 billion ($480 million) in cash and bank deposits alone.
Apart from millions in hard cash, the country’s top officials own plenty of real estate, multiple luxury watches, cars, collections of valuable paintings and weapons, Fabergé eggs and even a church.
Some of the country’s richest lawmakers – former allies of fugitive former President Viktor Yanukovych – have retained their wealth, revealing in their electronic asset declarations that they own dozens of offshore firms, hoards of valuables and heaps of cash.
That such people still retain their power and influence, as well as their wealth, more than two years after the EuroMaidan Revolution, is testament to the lack of progress in achieving the goals of that revolution.
Nevertheless, the fact that Ukraine’s elite were forced to divulge their fortunes– something they fought fiercely to prevent – shows that change is still possible.
Kleptocratic legacy
Public outrage over the vast and obscene fortunes of top public servants and their families have amassed on their meager state salaries is understandable in a country where the average salary is just Hr 4,362 ($171) per month. Some public officials argued that they earned the declared money while working in the private sector, but skepticism remains.
The e-declaration law demands that officials disclose not only their own assets, but also those held by family members, eliminating the possibility of officials hiding their wealth under the names of relatives.
But while the true significance of Ukraine’s e-declarations for state officials got lost amid the scandal over bling, cars and country houses, anti-corruption activists believe the filing of the declarations is a huge step forward in tackling grand political corruption.
Daria Kaleniuk, who heads the Anti-Corruption Action Center, wrote on Oct. 31, that she could hardly imagine “a similar register working in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, or Kazakhstan – in countries with a similar post-Soviet kleptocratic legacy.”
Still, some state officials showed open contempt for the e-declaration procedure. For instance, Volodymyr Parasiuk, a EuroMaidan activist turned lawmaker, said in his e-declaration that he had been given a Samsung Gear watch as a present from Santa. He corrected his declaration two days later, removing the Santa mention.
Others entered incorrect data or made irrelevant and absurd entries, such as the pitchfork declared by Ukrainian lawmaker and Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko, or the film script declared by Interior Minister Arsen Avakov (the “joke” entry was a sarcastic attack on some of Avakov’s political enemies.)
Andriy Kruglashov, a political analyst with the Chesno anti-corruption movement, said that by joking in their e-declarations, politicians were attempting to tamp down their fears about the process. They also wanted to shift people’s attention away from their wealth and the vast economic inequality in Ukraine, he said.
Public hypocrisy?
Not all the debate about the e-declarations among Ukrainians on social media was focused on the possible wrongdoing of officials, however.
Journalist Maxim Eristavi tweeted on Oct. 31 that hoarding cash was something that all Ukrainians did, and that the law should be applied equally to everyone.
“Every family in Ukraine has (an) undeclared cash stash. So (the) ongoing shaming of public officials declaring tons of cash is bizarrely hypocritical,” Eristavi tweeted. “While Ukrainians keep playing moral relativism with breaking the law, nothing is gonna change.”
Other social media users were exasperated that the achievement of getting state officials to reveal their vast fortunes had been masked by media frenzy – especially in the Western media – over the details of the Ukrainian elite’s wealth.
“E-declarations took 100s of activists fighting for 2.5 years against enormous resistance. The Western media focuses only on how corrupt Ukraine is,” freelance TV journalist Gosha Tikhy wrote.
What comes next?
Now that the battle to implement Ukraine’s e-declarations legislation has been won, the focus will shift to following up on it, and the National Agency for Preventing Corruption will monitor this process.
Any official who missed the deadline for filing their e-declaration could face a fine of up to Hr 51,000 ($2,000), from 150 to 240 hours of community service work, or imprisonment for up to two years.
According to Sasha Drik, the head of the Declarations Under Control civic watchdog, “it will be necessary to prove first that the officially deliberately failed to meet the deadline, however.”
If that can’t be proven, the official will just pay a fine.
The next step for the National Agency for Preventing Corruption will be to conduct several types of checks on the officials’ e-declarations.
These will include an analysis of the data according to a set of specific rules. However, these have not been stipulated in the legislation and are still being drawn up by the agency.
According to Drik, this check will verify, for instance, whether the overall expenses in an official’s declaration match their declared income.
Another will be a full examination of officials’ declared property against date in Ukraine’s property registers. The declarations subjected to this type of examination will be those made by top officials, including the president, ministers and members of parliament. The National Agency for Preventing Corruption will also perform a full examination of any declarations that have been flagged as suspicious by journalists, civil society, or other concerned parties.
A person who lies in a declaration could face either disciplinary actions or criminal charges, depending on the value of the assets concealed. If this amount exceeds Hr 304,500 ($11,940), the National Anti-Corruption Bureau will take over the investigation of the case.
Drik told the Kyiv Post she hoped to “see first results” by the end of the year.
“At least (this will be) cases sent to the courts: maybe not verdicts, but at least court proceedings,” she said.
