Ukraine’s Oligarchs Are at War (Again) - Bloomberg View
▻http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-20/ukraine-s-oligarchs-are-at-war-again-
Even before the chocolate mogul Petro Poroshenko became president last year, Igor Kolomoisky (net worth $1.3 billion) was appointed governor of his native Dnipropetrovsk region. Now, the two so-called oligarchs are locked in an open battle that augurs ill for Ukraine’s immediate future.
Kolomoisky was for many Ukrainians a hero of the post-revolutionary period. He took on the governorship as Russia was stirring up trouble throughout eastern Ukraine in the hope of producing a broad-based uprising against the pro-Western provisional government in Kiev. To keep Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine, Kolomoisky became the most generous sponsor of Ukrainian nationalist volunteer battalions. Even the fleet of armored vehicles used by his Privatbank, the biggest retail bank in Ukraine, was partially repurposed for use in the war.
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[Kolomoisky] also continued exerting power over several nominally state-controlled businesses at which he had installed his managers under the previous regime.
One of these was Ukrtransnafta, Ukraine’s state-owned oil pipeline operator, where Kolomoisky had a loyal figure, Oleksandr Lazorko, appointed as chief executive in 2009. That personnel change resulted in a redistribution of pipeline capacity in favor of an underused, Kolomoisky-owned refinery and enabled the plant to receive crude oil from Azerbaijan without incurring the substantial extra cost of carrying it by rail. The Russian oil giant Lukoil, which as a result had to shut down its refinery, complained bitterly about being squeezed out of the pipeline and was forced to look for alternative transport.
Poroshenko remains an oligarch despite a (unfulfilled) promise to sell his confectionery company as president, but he has no personal interest in the oil business. Kolomoisky’s independence and influence, however, pose a political threat. “He was too demonstrative in his puppeteering,” Mustafa Nayyem, a legislator with Poroshenko’s electoral bloc, told me of Kolomoisky. “The elite grew scared of him.”
On Thursday, the government appointed a new chief executive for Ukrtransnafta, but Lazorko didn’t want to leave. The bodyguards for the new appointee had to fight through a security cordon to get their boss into the office. Kolomoisky’s reaction was swift. He occupied Ukrtransnafta’s headquarters with a detail of camouflaged men, arriving with an entourage that included legislators.
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqL4rvxB3xQ
Suite chez RFE/RL
Ukrainian Oligarch Tears Into RFE/RL Journalist
▻http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-kolomoysky-rfe-journalist/26912164.html
One would expect Ukrainian oligarchs and politicians to be made of sterner stuff.
Billionaire oligarch and Dnipropetrovsk Governor Ihor Kolomoysky, however, lost his cool in the late-night hours of March 19-20 when a reporter from RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service — together with other journalists — asked him why he had just spent six hours with a group of armed men in the headquarters of the state-owned Ukrtransnafta oil-transit company.
The question by journalist Serhiy Andrushko sent Kolomoysky into an expletive-filled rant in which he urged RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, known locally as Radio Svoboda, to go looking for Russian saboteurs rather than tracking his movements. The profanity-laced tirade lasted more than a minute and was caught on video.
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The governor, who also provides funding for pro-Kyiv battalions, may also have been upset with Andrushko and Radio Svoboda because of a video report published on March 12 that outlines Kolomoysky’s manipulation of his political ties to benefit his business interests.
In one exchange from last year shown in that report, Andrushko asks why Kolomoysky has Ukrainian, Israeli, and Cypriot passports when Ukrainian law forbids dual citizenship.
“In the constitution it says dual citizenship is forbidden,” Kolomoysky says. “But triple citizenship is not forbidden.”
Conséquences politiques ?
Lawmakers want Kolomoisky fired after outburst involving his attempts to hold on to oil firm
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/lawmakers-want-kolomoisky-fired-after-he-snaps-at-journalist-384042.html
Neither Poroshenko nor Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk have commented on the Ukrtransnafta conflict. Meanwhile, lawmakers Mustafa Nayyem and Serhiy Leshchenko, former journalists, have called on the parliament to investigate the case.
“There’s no reaction from the president, prime minister or Verkhovna Rada speaker,” Nayyem, a lawmaker with the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, said at the Verkhovna Rada hearing on March 20. “This man (Kolomoisky) shouldn’t be a state official.”
Leshchenko, who also represents the president’s party, said at the Rada that “it may be the end of the Kolomoisky’s (political) career.”
“The takeover of a state company in downtown Kyiv by (Kolomoisky’s) armed men is a challenge for Poroshenko and his legitimacy,” he wrote on Facebook on the same day.
Pour l’instant, Kolomoïsky est toujours gouverneur de la région de Dnipropetrovsk…
