Zelensky not interfering with business, Fuks says

A positive attribute of the Zelensky administration is
it isn’t intimidating business, natural gas magnate Pavlo Fuks told the
pravda.com.ua news site in an interview published on Jan. 21. “The single thing
I can say about what I like is the new government isn’t bothering business.
Currently, the government isn’t creating nightmares for business. These don’t
climb into business, and that’s cool. They have issues in management,
administration,” Fuks said. In comparison, the Poroshenko administration
pursued “some kinds of criminal cases constantly, was constantly ‘resolving’
something.”

Oleh Bakhmatyuk, the owner of the Ukrlandfarming
agricultural holding, said on his company website on Jan. 21 that he had fully
halted production at 37 enterprises owing to what he described as National
Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine Head Artem Sytnyk’s personal war against
agrarian business.

Zenon Zawada: The
Zelensky’s laissez-faire approach to business has its positives in a struggling
economy, but it also allows for corruption to thrive, which is a major
criticism it has faced. We don’t see Fuks’s assessment of the business climate
in Ukraine conflicting with Bakhmatyuk’s view because the Zelensky administration
has demonstrated its distaste for Sytnyk
and its passivity to court rulings attempting to remove him. Moreover, Zelensky
has been eager to remove all holdovers from the Poroshenko administration, and
he would have likely allowed for his ouster had Western authorities not gotten involved to protect
him.

With this statement, Bakhmatyuk is putting pressure
on the government to override the IMF, which is unrealistic. At the same time,
Bakhmatyuk raised a valid point that anti-corruption campaigns should be
targeting government bodies, particularly top officials. Such anti-corruption
institutions, sponsored by the IMF, stand to be discredited if they excessively
target businesses rather than government bodies, an approach that
disproportionately affects average Ukrainian workers. We don’t expect
Bakhmatyuk will improve his situation, that is, unless he directs his lobbying
efforts towards convincing the Western authorities that he’s being unfairly
targeted. Conducting a clean business would help in that cause, as we don’t see
Sytnyk’s campaign as being baseless.