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all revenue of the budget and double the sum that Ukraine expects to receive in 2018 from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the World Bank,” according to an investigation by the Süddeutsche Zeitung that it published on August 6. Based on customs and transport consignment notes, Süddeutsche Zeitung described the fraud schemes used to avoid duties. Goods are often marked with a different country of origin during customs registration or mislabled in order to reduce the payable duties. The paper claims that the police, prosecutors and Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) are all involved in the schemes. According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) study in 2018, 73% of Ukrainian companies faced corruption charges compared with 56% in 2016. The world average is only 25%. PwC stated that misappropriation of assets was at 62% in 2016 but at 46% this year; procurement fraud was at 25% two years ago and at 33% today. PwC asserts that those remain the most common of such crimes in Ukraine together with corruption and bribes.
A civil rights activist was shot and killed in a Ukraine regional city on July 31 in a killing police think is related to his anti-corruption work in the region. Vitaliy Oleshko, a Donbas war veteran and civic activist in the Azov port city of Berdiansk, shot to death this week. Police have arrested several suspects but have not established a motive, though it’s widely believed to be related to his anti-corruption efforts against the city council leadership. The same day, an activist and employee of the Kherson City Council, Kateryna Handziuk, was attacked with acid thrown at her head, resulting in her hospitalization. Police reported her attacker inflicted severe injuries with the goal of intimidation. Recall on July 17, Vitaliy Shabunin, the head of the Anticorruption Action Centre in Kyiv, was attacked with antiseptic liquid thrown at his face for attempting to confront a politician.
Ukrainian Petro Poroshenko has dismissed reformer Dmytro Shymkiv from the post of deputy head of the presidential administration of Ukraine and appointed Serhiy Marchenko to the post. Poroshenko's appropriate decree was published on August 31. Shymkiv, ex-CEO of Ukraine's operations of Microsoft, was appointed to the post of deputy head of the presidential administration in July, 2014. He was responsible for reforms coordination, innovations and change management in the administration. Currently, Shymkiv also co-chairs the nation's Executive Reforms Committee. The committee’s main function is to prepare proposals for reforms strategic planning, coordination of reforms implementation and monitoring. According to Shymkiv's official biography, among his achievements are drafting president’s strategy for sustainable development of Ukraine until 2020, establishing National Reform Council and Project Management Office for reforms, creation of the National Reform Monitoring framework, enabling possibility to launch third generation mobile technology (3G) through competition, evangelising electronic public procurement system ProZorro, creation of electronic petitions service to the president.
2.3 Polls & Sociology
Economic sentiment in Ukraine improved in the third quarter of 2018, up to 109.6% compared with 104% and 108.8% respectively in the second and first quarters of this year, the State Statistics Service said on August 15.
Three out of the five indicators of business confidence improved: in retail trade (from 5.3% in the second quarter to 10.7%), in services (from minus 5% to 0.3%), and in construction (from minus 21.5% to minus 18.7%), according to
11 UKRAINE Country Report September 2018 www.intellinews.com