Page 17 - bne_newspaper_July_19_2019

Eastern Europe
July 19, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 17
Ukraine president seeks lustration of Poroshenko-era officials
Newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is going to expand the lustration of the nation's officials to those who held posts following the 2014 Euromaidan, including former President Petro Poroshenko.
According to Zelenskiy, lustration should be related to the persons holding the offices of President, chairman of the nation's parliament, Prosecutor General, head of the SBU security service, chairmen of the Antimonopoly Committee and the State Property Fund, heads of the State Fiscal Service and the Customs Service, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) and heads of the defense enterprises from February 23, 2014 to May 19, 2019.
The lustration law should also cover MPs of Ukraine and government members of this period, Zelenskiy's media office said in a statement on July 11.
"I communicate with officials of different levels on a daily basis and realise: it is a hopeless diagnosis. White and blue, red and white, orange, burgundy, pink - in fact, they are all the same.
All of them do not care," the presidential media office quoted Zelenskiy as saying. "I think the least we can do now is to permanently deprive them all of the opportunities to participate in state governance."
Read the full story here
Russian banks make over RUB1 trillion profit in 1H19
The Russian banking sector made RUB1tn ($16bn) in aggregate net profit in January-June 2019 versus RUB634bn posted for the same period of 2018, accord- ing to data from the Central Bank of Russia (CBR).
According to previous reports, in January-May 2019 Russian banks increased their profits by 60% to RUB867bn, which alone makes the sector profit for June RUB140bn, well above the RUB117bn posted for May.
As reported by bne IntelliNews, the CBR has been under fire recently from the government for not doing enough to curb ballooning consumer crediting growth.
In the 1H19 report, the CBR noted that growth
of retail credit has slowed down for the second month in a row, posting 1.4% in June versus 1.6% in May and 1.9% in June 2018. Corporate lending in June grew by 0.4%, with ruble loans accounting for most of the growth, expanding by 0.5%.
Most recently the World Bank and the Finance Ministry warned of consumer loan risks in Russia. The World Bank reportedly found that almost 60% of Russian private borrowers had faced problems with servicing this debt.