Ukraine business clans vying for control of Odesa Portside revenues

The business clans of President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk have spent recent months battling for control of revenue streams from the Odesa Portside Plant, reported on July 29 the LigaBiznesInform news agency. In April, Serhiy Perelom was appointed to the plant’s supervisory board. After the appointment of Perelom, the portside plant introduced intermediaries in its ammonium nitrate and natural gas sales abroad that are controlled by longtime business partners Yatsenyuk and Mykola Martynenko, the news agency reported.

As further evidence of the conflict, a Poroshenko Bloc MP tried to block Perelom’s appointment to the supervisory board. In addition, the report indicated that business partners of Poroshenko Bloc MPs have set up their own ammonium nitrate intermediaries, which are engaged in standard post-Soviet price inflation schemes.

Zenon Zawada: Such reports are disappointing to read, to say the least. The existence of such schemes – allegedly established by “reformists” and the “pro-Western camp” – is just a big a threat to Ukrainian statehood and its stability than any Russian military aggression. The existence of such schemes merely feed support for populist rhetoric of Oleh Liashko, nationalists like the Praviy Sektor and pro-Russian radicals. Obviously, the Prosecutor General needs to investigate these schemes, eliminate them and punish those involved. But the likelihood that that won’t happen will only serve to further destabilize the Ukrainian state.