| KIEV/ODESSA, UKRAINE
A young activist
who became prominent in Ukraine's 2014 uprising and was later appointed to work
on a major project to reform the corruption-plagued customs of Odessa is
herself being investigated for corruption.
Roman Nasirov,
the head of Ukraine's Fiscal Service, which is spearheading the probe, told
Reuters that he suspected 27-year-old Yulia Marushevska, who resigned last
month, of undervaluing cargo and other violations that he didn't specify.
He did not say
whether other people besides Marushevska were being investigated.
As evidence,
Nasirov told Reuters that, in the weeks since Marushevska stepped down on Nov
14, the Odessa region had increased its customs revenues by 30 percent, or 300
million hryvnia ($11 million).
He did not
specify whether he was personally leading the investigation into Marushevska's
actions. Reuters could not independently verify the figure and has no
independent evidence of Marushevska's wrongdoing.
Nasirov's office
did provide official data for customs revenues between January and October,
which showed that Odessa had not met its revenue target for 7 out of the 10
months in 2016.
Marushevska's
office has previously said that weaker revenues were due to the fact that some
corrupt businesses avoided Odessa because of the reforms she had brought,
thereby bringing in less revenue.
In a separate
interview with Reuters, Marushevska denied all wrongdoing and blamed Nasirov
himself for derailing her efforts to rid Odessa port and other nearby ports of
endemic corruption.
She says she
clamped down on the practice of goods being deliberately undervalued and
accused Nasirov of shielding corrupt officers.
She called
Nasirov a guard dog for a corrupt system.
"(The
investigation) doesn't make any sense," she said. "It just
demonstrates that this system isn't ready to change."
Nasirov denied
her accusations as "hollow".
Their rift is
part of a wider spat between reformers such as Marushevska who have been sacked
or quit their positions this year and factions in the Western-backed Ukrainian
authorities who took power after a pro-Kremlin president was toppled by
protests in 2014.
Both the United
States and the European Union say Ukraine must reform to honor the sacrifices
made during the Maidan protests in which around 100 demonstrators were killed
in the final days.
PUBLIC FEUD
Since Maidan
there have been no notable corruption-related convictions and the country still
ranked 130th out of 168 countries in Transparency International's corruption
perceptions index in 2015.
The
International Monetary Fund warned in October a $17.5 billion bailout program
risked getting derailed if Kiev failed to show "concrete results" in
tackling corruption. It also withheld a third tranche of the money for nearly a
year and reduced its size to $1 billion from $1.7 billion citing Ukraine's
"policy implementation".
Cleaning up
Odessa was meant to be a major step, both real and symbolic, to secure the
death of old Ukraine, which in the eyes of the reformers had been squeezed by a
rotten state in collusion with oligarchs.
Marushevska was
appointed to oversee customs clearances at several ports clustered around the
city of Odessa, including Youzhny, Ukraine's largest port by volume, and Odessa
port, the second largest.
Marushevska had
no previous relevant experience when she took on the role in late 2015. Soon
her time at the helm descended into feuding between her and Nasirov at press
conferences and on social media.
Marushevska
accused Nasirov of blocking her attempts to fire corrupt officials. A group of
regional customs officers wrote a letter calling for her resignation, saying
she had politicized the customs service.
"The main
reason for me to go was that I came to the point where the change I started
couldn't become sustainable because of the non-existent political will to do
that," she said.
She also told
Reuters that corruption had returned to Odessa customs since she resigned, an
accusation also made by some local businessmen and Odessa's acting governor
Solomiia Bobrovska.
"Today,
businesses must again pay a bribe in addition to the official price. The
businesses are talking about this publicly. This indicates that the customs are
returning to the past," Bobrovska told Reuters but did not elaborate
further.
Nasirov disputes
that corruption is on the rise, calling it a "fable".
(Editing
by Raissa Kasolowsky)
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