Page 58 - BNE_magazine_05_2020

58 Opinion
bne May 2020
The international community should add Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky to all the international sanctions lists. KYIV BLOG:
Put Kolomoisky on all the international sanctions lists
Ben Aris in Berlin
The Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky should be put on every international sanction list as his selfish efforts to regain control of Privatbank threaten to cause a major economic meltdown for the whole country and a decade of misery for the entire population of the country.
The stakes could not be higher. The fates of 38mn Ukrainians depend on the passage of a draft banking law, which passed its first reading at a dramatic midnight vote on March 30.
Since then, seven deputies linked to Kolomoisky have introduced over 16,000 amendments to the law ahead of its second reading now slated for April 13 – a new record for the legislative body.
Analysts say that if procedure is followed then it will take
six months to plough though the paperwork. The April 13 Rada session will be a test for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and will determine the country’s direction for years to come. If it is not passed then Ukraine could default on
the circa $2bn of debt that comes due in May, plunging the country into economic chaos, similar to what Russia suffered in the 1990s after it defaulted on its debt in 1998.
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Kolomoisky has denied having anything to do with the introduction of the amendments – and no one believes him. This is a classic oligarch trick, used by the Russian oligarchs too. They can ignore the rule of law and use bribes and at times violence and murder to grab the assets they are after. But they also use the legal system to their advantage when it suits them.
Foreigners who find themselves on the receiving end stand little chance of winning, as Telenor found to its cost when it took on Alfa Group’s Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman in a shareholders dispute for control of mobile phone company Kyivstar. Telenor hired lawyers and pointed to its shareholder agreement, but every time it won a case on its merits, a court in some far flung Ukrainian region overturned the result within 24 hours and they had to go back to square one.
“There are over a thousand of these courts,” Trond Moe, the head of Telenor’s representative office in Ukraine told bne IntelliNews at the time. “This will never end.” Telenor eventually gave up and sold its stake, despite being the majority shareholder.
According to analyst speculation Kolomoisky “used his influence” to “persuade” the deputies to submit those amendments. And