Comedic actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the leader in the race to be president of Ukraine, might lack political experience, but his meeting with representatives of business sector on March 18 demonstrated that he is first and foremost a businessman.
Having skipped investor conferences and public talks because of his concert tour and filming, he sat down for a one-and-a-half-hour-long discussion with members of the European Business Association, the American Chamber of Commerce, and the Union of Ukrainian Entrepreneurs in the comfort of his campaign office in Kyiv.
He has hosted regular meetings in that same room with various experts, learning from them about anti-corruption efforts, judicial reform, communal tariffs and other aspects of governance.
This time, however, Zelenskiy was on more even terms. Wearing a plain gray t-shirt, he told a group of men and women dressed in suits: “I know what a struggle it is doing business in Ukraine,” and promised to make it easier if he becomes the president.
He is being advised by two reformist former members of the Ukrainian government: ex-finance minister Oleksandr Danylyuk and ex-economy and trade minister Aivaras Abromavicius.
Protecting business
Zelenskiy, 41, co-owns a network of companies that produce comedy shows, television series, movies and animation films, arrange concerts, and sell content and TV formats to 21 countries. The annual turnover of his business empire, dubbed “The Factory of Laughter” for its main comedy component, is estimated at tens of millions of dollars, according to the Ukrainian website Liga.net.
A declaration of assets filed to the Central Election Commission reveals that Zelenskiy and his wife Yelena, the co-owner of some of his companies, hold monetary and property assets worth over $6 million, and in 2017 alone Zelenskiy earned over $281,000.
But the actor said at the March 18 meeting that he felt his money and intellectual property were unprotected – a sentiment shared by many business owners working in Ukraine.
“There’s no security, no faith in the development… These days law enforcement agencies, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Interior Ministry, the SBU security service, even the Presidential Administration try to pressure business,” he said, drawing on his own bad experience with the authorities.
In November 2017, the state cinema agency revoked a broadcasting license from the television series “Svaty” (“In-laws”), produced by Zelenskiy’s studio Kvartal 95, after the SBU and the State Border Guard Service banned three Russian actors in its cast from entering Ukraine because they had visited the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory of Crimea.
Back then, Kvartal 95 called the decision absurd, and pointed to the fact that the series had been filmed between 2008 and 2013, before Russia’s aggression against Ukraine began.
At the March 18 meeting, Zelenskiy said that his company had lost $1.8 million in investment due to the ban.
“We will establish a special agency to work with the business sector. They (law enforcement and government bodies) have to stay away,” he said.
He said insecurity is the main reason why people hide their money in offshores and homes. He suggested introducing a tax amnesty, but didn’t go into detail.
An existing draft bill on so-called “zero declarations” proposes citizens declare their assets at a low fixed tax rate and on condition of the non-disclosure of the origins of their wealth. However, this has raised worries that it could be misused for legalizing ill-gotten wealth under the unreformed fiscal system.
“The government has to guarantee the protection of assets. It has to do anything to keep money in Ukraine. We’re ready for anything. We are for good investment climate,” Zelenskiy said.
Zelenskiy also supports lifting the moratorium on farmland sales, a move that is pushed by Ukraine’s international financial backers as a measure to attract investment into Ukraine’s capital-hungry agricultural sector, but which is extremely unpopular among Ukrainian farmers. The ban has been in place since 2001 and was recently prolonged for another year.
Zelenskiy, however, believes that it should be a matter for public discussion.
Many have worried how a President Zelenskiy would handle the International Monetary Fund, which granted $8.7 billion in loans to Ukraine in 2015-2018 and approved a new stand-by arrangement of $3.9 billion last December.
In one of the episodes of the hit TV series Servant of the People, Zelenskiy’s character, President Vasyl Holoborodko, tells the IMF to get lost, using the crudest of expressions.
But the actor ensured the business community that under his leadership, Ukraine will continue working with the IMF for as long as necessary, although his priority as president would be paying off the debt.
He pledged to fight corruption with all possible means. This includes developing e-government and restarting judicial reform. Judiciary and anti-corruption watchdogs have accused the High Qualification Commission, the body that selects judges for top court positions, of nominating candidates who have displayed low integrity and who have violated the judicial ethics code for posts on the Supreme Court and the new Anti-corruption Court.
As for his candidates for key public offices, he promised to reveal their names after the first round of vote, provided that he makes it to the runoff. This is highly probable as he had held a strong lead in polls for weeks.
In Ukraine, the president nominates the general prosecutor, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine, the defense and foreign affairs ministers, and the chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine, the country’s central bank.
Zelenskiy also announced that he was crowdsourcing the team: Anyone can recommend a professional using a form on his campaign website.
Relations with oligarchs
Zelenskiy’s election campaign has been dogged by his alleged affiliation with self-exiled oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. Opponents have called him a proxy for the oligarch, who holds a grudge against the incumbent President Petro Poroshenko for the loss of PrivatBank, nationalized in 2016 at a cost of $5.5 billion to taxpayers, and Bukovel ski resort.
The actor, however, maintains that his connection to Kolomoisky is limited to the contract with the oligarch’s television channel 1+1, for which Kvartal 95 has produced exclusive content since 2012.
Apart from selling shows to 1+1, he said, Kvartal 95 sells content to billionaire Viktor Pinchuk’s television channel Novy, and to television channel Ukraina, which belongs to Ukraine’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov.
Before 1+1, Zelenskiy managed the Inter TV channel of gas magnate Dmytro Firtash, but he says he left due to the owner’s interference in editorial policy.
“From a business standpoint, the conditions at 1+1 were better. A lot of production has been financed by the channel. We share the profits and rights on produced content 50-50,” Zelenskiy said on March 18. “At Inter we didn’t have rights to our products. So we bought them out later.”
Such is the media market in Ukraine, he said, that five oligarchs control four major media groups.
“I don’t have any agreements with Kolomoisky. I will not return PrivatBank to him. I’m not going to help oligarchs. I’m not going into politics to besmear my name,” Zelenskiy said.
“My motivation (for running for president) is driven by my moral values and patriotism. And by patriotism, I mean that I work, develop my business, and pay taxes, and I’m one of those people who shape the positive image of Ukraine abroad.”
Meanwhile, Kvartal 95 faces losing its main actor and creative director. The ensemble has just presented the new season of its satirical show, Vecherniy Kvartal, and starts a concert tour to eastern Ukraine this week.
“We won’t break up and will continue the show,” said Yevhen Koshovyi, a writer and actor for Kvartal 95, in a documentary aired on March 16 marking the 15th anniversary of the production studio.
He jokingly added: “Our friend is going into politics. Maybe we’ll make fun of him.”
