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People always talk about corruption in the third world. It’s real, but I always point out that it is nowhere near as extreme, destructive or exploitative as the American system of campaign contributions, revolving door, gifts, book deals, and speaking engagements (insider trading is another big one, though that is technically illegal, unlike all the items on that list – it’s just impossible to even prove, let alone enforce).
The Ukraine has third world style basic corruption, rather than institutionalized American-style corruption, but they take it into a whole other realm.
In the third world, corruption is like “ah, you know – we take a little bit off the top, we keep the gears greased.”
In the Ukraine it’s more like “I will obtain all the money on earth for my own purposes.”
RT:
A former Ukrainian lawmaker – the subject of multiple corruption allegations – had made millions of dollars from arms sales since the Russia-Ukraine conflict erupted in February 2022, the New York Times reported, on Saturday.
A company allegedly affiliated with Sergey Pashinsky, whom President Vladimir Zelensky once called ‘a criminal’, has become one of the main arms suppliers for Kiev’s military, the paper claims.
It reported that the Ukrainian Defense Ministry contacted the politically isolated Pashinsky shortly after Moscow launched its military offensive.
According to the report, military officials were desperate to procure as much Soviet-type ammunition as possible, and were hoping that the former MP could help by using his informal connections in the arms business.
Pashinsky had previously spent years overseeing military spending, the newspaper noted. It went on to add that Ukrainian Armored Technology, a company understood to be linked to Pashinsky, has since become the “biggest private arms supplier in Ukraine.”
The firm reportedly buys and resells grenades, artillery shells and rockets to the Ukrainian military, employing a trans-European network of middlemen. In 2022, Ukrainian Armored Technology reported sales totaling more than $350 million, having risen from just $2.8 million the year before.
The paper, citing anonymous Ukrainian officials, alleged that authorities are looking into the company’s pricing as well as Pashinsky’s supposed financial relationships with procurement officials and companies abroad.
The media outlet described one of Pashinsky’s alleged schemes involving Bulgaria – a major manufacturer of Soviet-type ammunition that has refused to supply it directly to Ukraine.
The former Ukrainian MP has reportedly asked his local connection to place orders and make sure Bulgarian arms factories prioritize them. The shipments were falsely listed as destined for Poland with the help of middleman Andrzej Kowalczyk, the NYT claimed.
According to the article, prices increase at each step as the intermediaries take their cuts, with the Ukrainian military picking up the tab.
Haha.
Who’s picking up the tab for the Ukrainian military??
However, the cost is largely covered by European aid, the paper reported. While Western officials are privately unhappy about the resurgence of such shady figures as Pashinsky, they remain silent for fear of playing into Russia’s narratives about Ukrainian corruption, according to the NYT.
The former MP has denied negotiating such deals, describing himself as a “responsible citizen of my country.”
Vicious.
This middle man contractor stuff is something that was going on in China and Xi just had everybody executed. That was actually more based. Authoritarianism trumps criminality on the coolness scale.
But doing organized criminality, which is so bold as to all be on paper, and available for audit, is pretty cool.
I respect the Ukrainian leadership for not even pretending their country is a real country and just using as it as means to funnel money into offshore accounts.
As Arestovich recently noted – and as I’ve been pointing out for years – the Ukraine is the only country in the former USSR where the GDP is lower now than it was in 1992. I mean, it’s obviously lower now-now, but this was the case in 2014. Like, it’s just a bunch of irate, moronic, drunk peasants ruled over by extremely ruthless and very obviously corrupt businessmen and politicians.
The idea of taking the country into the EU is just totally insane. It’s honestly like in Baldur’s Gate 3, where my Jewish serial killer and charlatan con artist character (advocate for refugees and also genocide) keeps purposefully putting alien worms into his brain.
It’s just the funniest thing in the world that America is aware that probably 70% of the cash they send – and apparently a significant amount of the money they spend on weapons – is just being sucked into a black hole in the Caribbean, and that they don’t report on it because it would feed into Russian lies that the Ukraine is a corrupt country.
It’s the old “we don’t report on black crime because we don’t want people to believe that blacks commit crimes.”
It’s a reverse tautology.
