Surkis company among Zelenskiy campaign donors

A company belonging to the Surkis brothers was
revealed to be among the campaign donors in Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s improbable
election run, the slidstvo.info news site reported on May 29 as part of a
report examining his sponsors. Mtir Asset Amangement has offered his political
party, The People’s Servant, an office with 390 sq. m. in Kyiv, the report said.
The Surkis brothers own several electricity distribution companies as part of
their business empire, valued at USD 250 mln, according to the focus.ua news
site. Other campaign sponsors include Serhiy Nyzhniy, the head of the
campaign’s legal team, and Svitlana Pishchanska of the Kachura Lawyers legal
firm, which offered the Zelenskiy campaign accounting services and its Kyiv
offices.

The slidstvo.info report questioned the legitimacy of
certain individuals and civic organizations that donated, implying they may
have merely served as intermediaries for illicit funds. It cited Zelenskiy
campaign manager Oleksandr Korniyenko saying the party has large support among
average people who donated relatively small sums. At the same time, its
first-quarter report listed only 30 such average donors. “it’s a question
whether this can be considered large support,” the report said. “Also strange
is the general tendency – those same people made 2-3 payments one day, and then
repeated the donations after a certain time.”

Zenon Zawada: Such suspicions of campaign-related corruption are small beans in the
bigger picture of Ukraine’s economy. So Zelenskiy will be successful if his
campaign-related corruption remains minor, and his reform efforts target
large-scale corruption. We expect a slew of new business and political
interests to emerge as campaign donors to The People’s Servant party by the
time the parliamentary elections roll around in July.