Page 54 - Buy Russia - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine April 2017

54 Opinion bne April 2017
Court proceedings with Roman Mykhailovych Nasirov. Photo: Sharomka
KRUK REPORT: Justice is on trial in Ukraine Kateryna Kruk in Kyiv
Do Ukrainians believe in fair courts? They never did. Do Ukrainians believe in anti-corruption bodies? Their belief is growing stronger day by day.
And this where the problem starts, because without fair courts all the investigations launched by the new anti-corruption bodies will be just another show for the media. We have already seen it so many times: crooked politicians were detained, brought to court and after a long string of hearings, during which they ‘almost died’, the poor creatures, they were eventually set free. Ukraine has seen high-profile deten-
tions and investigations, but we have never seen a really big fish actually get put in prison for corruption.
Now there is a chance this vicious circle will be broken. Ukrainians are hoping the case of suspended tax service chief Roman Nasirov will mark a new era of real justice.
Who is Nasirov? He is the man from a system. In fact, it is thanks to people like him that the “system” exists in the first place and is doing very nicely, thank you.
Nasirov never was a very well-known public figure or a politician. The first appointment that brought him to media attention was as the deputy chairman of the board of the State
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Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine. Not a very good start, taking into account the very bad reputation of the corporation. In Ukraine it was known for a big scandal with a credit deal with China, which was one of the biggest corruption deals of the era of the former president Viktor Yanukovych.
Yet it didn’t prevent Nasirov from successfully becoming an MP and even getting appointed as the head of the Verkhovna Rada’s Committee on Tax and Customs Policy – a notoriously corrupt body. One could assume Nasirov was put in this posi- tion for his ‘talents’: talent for being Poroshenko’s obedient man. Nasirov then fully explored his talent as head of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine. Ever since that appointment, he became one of the most hated public figures in Ukraine, as well as an uneasy reminder that the new post-Maidan authori- ties are very keen to use old pre-Maidan practices.
For almost two years Nasirov was a presidential administration bulldog doing the very ignoble and dirty work of keeping the president’s opponents on a short leash. In Ukraine, politics are business, so having your man running the State Fiscal Service helps a lot in case some opponent starts to undermine your authority. This became very clear with Nasirov’s public con- flict with Yulia Marushevska, the head of the Odesa customs service and the surrogate of then Odesa governor Mikheil