Danilov states Ukraine has 13 oligarchs, promises special law

Oleksiy Danilov,
Secretary of the Security and Defense Council, stated on May 11 that there are
13 persons in Ukraine that can be considered as oligarchs. He confirmed that
the Council, together with the presidential office and the parliament is
working on a special law to define the status of oligarchs in Ukraine, aiming
at diminishing their power in the country. According to Danilov’s May 12
comments, Ukraine has been locked in vicious circle “Oligarchs – Monopolies –
Corruption”, which should be broken.

According comments
to pravda.com.ua by Ruslan Stefanchuk, deputy parliamentary speaker, the new
anti-oligarchic legislation will provide a list of about seven formal criteria
for oligarchs (e.g. market monopolies, own media, loyal members of parliament),
and someone meeting a certain number of criteria (e.g. three) will be declared
as an oligarch. In such case, the mechanism will be applied with the aim of
that person no longer meeting some of the criteria. Stefanchuk provided few
details on this mechanism.

Alexander
Paraschiy: The new
law is another populist idea which is very unlikely to work. The vicious circle
described by Danilov can be easily broken without such law – for as long as the
antimonopoly and anti-corruption bodies work efficiently. And Ukraine has all
the legal ground for that. However, the antimonopoly committee has been
inefficient for decades (even entities widely believed to be monopolies have
failed to be recognized so), while the anticorruption infrastructure (including
the investigative NABU, prosecutive SAP and the special court) stopped working
efficiently after the resignation of the SAP head in August 2020.

Therefore, we believe the government should concentrate in its
anti-oligarchic efforts on strengthening the independence and intellectual
power of the Antimonopoly Committee, as well as the prompt appointment of an
independent head of SAP. Such measures will be way much more efficient than a
new law. Ukraine’s western partners, including the IMF, are well aware of this
– this is why they demand the rebuilding of the anti-corruption infrastructure
in the near future.