Poroshenko administration swamped by corruption allegations

The Poroshenko administration was swamped with a
series of corruption allegations in just the last week. On Apr. 18, former MP
Oleksandr Onyshchenko – who currently resides in Germany after being stripped
of his political immunity by parliament in 2016 for alleged corruption –
revealed on Ukrainian television audio recordings in which he acts as an
advocate for a former ecology minister in an alleged meeting with Ukrainian
President Poroshenko, which occurred before Onyshchenko fled the country. In
exchange for dropping criminal charges filed against the former minister,
Mykola Zlochevskiy, Onyshchenko offered Poroshenko a 50% stake in at least two
of Zlochevskiy’s businesses. The voice alleged to be Poroshenko’s said he would
consider the offers. The Presidential Administration dismissed the recordings
as fake.

Members of the Ukrainian government are responsible
for the murder of Ukrainian journalist Pavlo Sheremet in 2016, which was
most likely politically motivated, according to Drew Sullivan, who leads the
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. “Regarding Poroshenko, we
don’t know whether Sheremet’s murder was ordered by him or someone in his
administration. But we think the Ukrainian government is responsible,” he said
in an interview published on Apr. 17 on the pravda.com.ua news site. “The
government is deliberately not digging for the truth nor publishing information
that should be made public.”

Oleh Hladkovskiy, the deputy secretary of the National
Security and Defense Council, allegedly arranged for the Defense Ministry to
purchase military trucks from Bogdan Corp., an automobile manufacturing company
that he controls, instead of a more established Ukrainian producer with cheaper
prices, as reported by the Novoye Vremia magazine on Apr. 5. Earlier in the
year, Hladkovskiy was also accused of arranging for the purchase of at least a
dozen faulty medical transport vehicles from Bogdan. Hladkovskiy denied any
wrongdoing or conflict of interest.

Zenon Zawada: Needless to say, these corruption allegations only further damage
Poroshenko’s reputation among Western authorities. Fortunately, they will
continue to work with him as they are more concerned with Ukraine’s
geopolitical future than the pettiness the Ukrainian president is indulging in.
However, we don’t think these scandals will have much of an impact upon
Ukrainian voters.