Brian Bonner: Bandits of Ukraine, keep stealing with impunity
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/bandits-of-ukraine-keep-stealing-with-impunity-398150.html
Bandits of Ukraine, keep stealing with impunity. Nobody in authority is going to stop you – especially if you’re rich, powerful or able to pay hefty bribes to the right person.
That’s my conclusion after listening to panel discussions at the 12th annual Yalta European Strategy from Sept. 10-12, taking place for the second year in Kyiv since Crimea’s Yalta remains under Russian occupation.
I have been in Ukraine for a long time. But I can still appreciate the sad irony of a conference run by a billionaire oligarch, Victor Pinchuk, with another billionaire oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov’s DTEK, as a special partner, organizing a round-table talk called: “Rule of Law, De-Oligarchization, Fighting Corruption: Any News?”
Let me answer the question: No. There is no news. There is no de-oligarchization campaign and there is no fight against corruption under way – at least not one from people in the institutions that should be waging it: judges, prosecutors and police.
Brian Bonner has served as the chief editor of the Kyiv Post since 2008.[…] He also worked as a member of the core teams with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe during six election observation missions in Ukraine, Belarus, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.