[HN Gopher] Accused money launderers left a path of bankrupt fac...
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Accused money launderers left a path of bankrupt factories
Author : valkrieco
Score : 204 points
Date : 2021-04-24 11:45 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsinteractive.post-gazette.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsinteractive.post-gazette.com)
| type0 wrote:
| > After the evidence surfaced, lawyers for Mr. Kolomoisky pushed
| to seal the information, which included 3,103 transactions by
| Deutsche Bank ...
|
| Somehow it wasn't surprising to see Deutsche being involved.
| raincom wrote:
| The scheme Ihor Kolomoisky perpetrated is very popular in the
| third world countries. In India, for instance, many politicians
| and industrialists take loans worth hundreds of millions of
| dollars from the public banks for their supposed projects, then
| funnel the loan funds to their personal coffers. Years down the
| line, these public banks add these unpaid loans as "non
| performing assets". The same public banks are very reluctant to
| lend money to the average guy.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Those probably aren't loans, they're semi-hidden bribes.
| skybrian wrote:
| It sounds more like a scheme to defraud banks.
|
| An actual business with a factory is going to look like
| pretty good collateral to a bank making a loan, but the bank
| loses money on the loan when the company goes bankrupt. It's
| not in the bank's interest to do this. But bank employees
| could've been bribed, sure.
|
| So this sounds like a form of "long firm fraud" or maybe
| "control fraud." For more about it, I recommend reading
| _Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of
| Our World_.
|
| (Not that I'm an expert; I just read a book.)
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| In case of Kolomoyski, he owned the bank he defrauded.
| gruez wrote:
| I think gp's saying that the banks are in on it. ie. they
| knew in advance that the loan was going to go bad, but that
| was fine to them because they saw as a price of gaining
| favor (bribe).
| skybrian wrote:
| If the money comes from the bank, it's hard to see how
| the bank (as a company) benefits from it. Maybe by
| selling the loan?
| gruez wrote:
| It could be some sort of scheme where the politicians
| does some sort of favor for the bank, eg. expediting
| their paperwork, awarding them contracts. However, as the
| sibling commenter mentioned, it could also be that the
| bank executives are abusing their position and taking all
| the gains.
| raincom wrote:
| Banks don't benefit from these schemes. Nor do they sell
| these loans to third parties either in bulk or in
| tranches. In India, major banks are partly owned by the
| government, even though these banks are listed on their
| stock exchanges.
|
| So, it is a form of collusion between bank executives and
| powerful loanees. Who holds the bag? Usually the
| government in the Indian case: for instance, Indian govt
| has 61.23% ownership in State Bank of India, a large bank
| in India. In India, many politicians are also businessmen
| --real or fake; these people with dual masks (politician
| and businessman) are so good at scamming the govt, banks,
| public works contracts.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| It's essentially embezzlement with complicity.
| pupdogg wrote:
| Great read! Aside from software development, I run a metal
| fabrication shop where we purchase and process approx. 20k lbs of
| steel and aluminum (monthly). Having been in the industry for the
| past 10 years, I've always referred to all metal suppliers as
| folks that deal with "funny money". There's no transparency in
| pricing whatsoever. You can't easily lookup or guesstimate metals
| prices without having core subject matter expertise that come
| with experience. It might as well be called an undercover hedge
| fund market with killer profits!
| robk wrote:
| Metalshub is working on this
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Matt Levine's jokes about the aluminum merry-go-round suddenly
| acquire another dimension.
| 55555 wrote:
| Isn't the markup for a certain product basically it's weight
| times the spot market price of the metal with an added constant
| markup depending on how much more complex it is than a lump of
| ore? I have no idea what I'm talking about but am interested..
| Please elaborate!
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Could you elaborate a bit more? I've always been interested in
| the buying/selling of metal.
| zafka wrote:
| Are you getting better prices on feedstock as automobile
| production slows?
| crusty wrote:
| I wish there were more details on the kind of money they were
| able to pull out of this scheme. All of the dollar values in the
| article refer to the amounts stolen in Ukraine, moved through
| she'll companies, and used to purchase properties and businesses.
|
| Traditionally, we hear about money laundering involving low-
| overhead, cash-oriented businesses where money can be injected
| and extracted by falsifying volume.
|
| But these were large capital purchases into an industry in
| destress with numerous facets of regulatory exposure, from the
| industry's risk to the environment and the high potential safety
| risks for workers to the special status of the industry to
| national security - it invites scrutiny of lots of alphabet
| agencies, especially if your scheme involves ignoring all of
| their requirements to juice profits.
|
| This leads me to believe the "masterminds" only ever saw it as a
| short-term play, so back to my original bewilderment, how much
| were they able to extract in just several years compared to the
| large upfront costs? And were they skimming so much from neglect
| that it wouldn't have been worth it just to run these as
| legitimate, sustainable businesses?
|
| I wonder if the had just maintained these steel facilities and
| avoided the safety and environmental problems, and made it into
| Trump's presidency intact, would they have just been able to sell
| them off high on the back of Trump's protectionist, domestic
| steel revival rhetoric and made a killing and be sitting pretty
| today, given that all the legal pressure on them for this is from
| the US and they seem to have already been given a pass for
| stealing $5.5 billion in Ukraine from Ukraine.
| crusty wrote:
| Other comments point to the scheme using the asset purchased
| with stolen money as collateral for a loan that the bank is
| left with in a much depreciated state. That would make the
| ongoing extraction of profits is irrelevant. My alternate set
| of questions about this loan fraud scheme are in a different
| comment. Ha.
|
| And I don't really get how that "launders" the money trail. The
| only point at which the transfers of funds seem murky is when
| they go through the she'll companies in the BVI.
|
| This feels like the makings of a great article that some editor
| said, "write up what you have, we're just going to publish it
| and move you onto something else." There are just so many
| things unexplained or unexplored.
| alfl wrote:
| Canada has a huge money laundering problem (source: my company
| makes anti money laundering tech).
|
| Interesting how the article shows how this translates to
| destruction of capital assets and, eventually, people. That's not
| necessarily clear otherwise.
| motohagiography wrote:
| The missing simple description in the article is:
|
| Launderers with tainted money buy struggling businesses that
| have large assets as collateral for loans, and then walk away
| with the loan. It leaves the bank holding the asset to be sold
| off.
|
| From the launderer's value at risk perspective, $10m in dirty
| money is worth probably $5m or less clean, because if you taxed
| that $10m and did all the fees, and then there is the risk of
| being caught for the crime that generated it, 50% free and
| clear seems pretty good.
|
| The more I learn about the investment business, the more I
| think it's like crime without the violence. The money
| laundering problem in Canada is most obvious by the oversupply
| of certain retail businesses, but there are other scams I see
| on investment prospectuses more often than seems normal. The
| two problems I think is a lot of the launderers are politically
| connected, so there is no scrutiny, and even if leadership did
| something, it would only be to put even more of a burden on law
| abiding businesses.
|
| Imo, complex laws and regulations only affect the people who
| follow them, and they reward corruption.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I don't know about Canadian laws, but in the United States we
| let foreigners buy real estate with a phone call, or email.
|
| So basically we let foreigners buy our land.
|
| They can't live in the house/building, but they control the
| people whom do.
|
| We make it difficult for hard working Americans to buy a home,
| but let foreigners scoop it up with funny money?
|
| This has bothered me for years. Especially when it's not easy
| for Americans to buy foreign land.
|
| (Supposedly the government asks about the origin of the wealth
| before the sale now, but in my county (Marin County) it looks
| fishy. I have neighbors who don't speak a lick of english, but
| are living in mansions. My gripe isn't cultural. I just have
| doubts on the origin of the cash they buy houses/land/buildings
| with.)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If you're buying land in the US with a phone call or email,
| you are probably dealing with sufficient money to acquire an
| EB-5 Visa, so they can live in the US.
|
| Although, they did just increase investment amounts to $1.8M
| (and $900k for economically disadvantaged areas) from
| $1M/$500k, so the bar did get higher.
|
| https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-
| states/permanent...
| hippich wrote:
| Isn't there like 30% immediate tax that is required to be
| withheld by the agent and then later buyer is responsible to
| file a return to attempt to get that money back? I am sure
| some do, but for the rest - it looks like it is a price paid
| to the USA for the privilege of owning real estate there.
| spurdoman77 wrote:
| Probably all wealthy countries are big destinations for dirty
| money. Wouldnt make sense to bring dirty money to poor country
| because there it would attract more attention.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| This is not an isolated case in the post-soviet space. The
| general pattern is - squeeze lots of money domestically via your
| privileged position of operating whole key sectors of the
| national economy and spend them comfortably abroad. Everything
| from banks through insurance companies through delivery companies
| to media groups is owned by people formerly involved with state
| security. It's an exclusive social network in which political
| decisions and private economic interests are tightly coordinated.
|
| The worrying thing is that the West gave international legitimacy
| to these wealthy elites, while only pointing fingers at the
| endemic corruption in their countries.
| nradov wrote:
| That's not so different from how the European noble families
| established their privileged positions centuries ago. It's just
| that they were military leaders rather than state security
| officers.
| dv_dt wrote:
| The West gave legitimacy to this because it's own elites do the
| same thing with monopoly enterprises. Microsoft did it with
| OSs, Google with search, Telecoms expanding from wired phones,
| to wireless, now to entertainment media ownership, etc...
| Though perhaps the private equity companies come closest to the
| methods of operation described in the article.
| jollybean wrote:
| It's not just 'post Soviet' it's also 'current Rest of World'.
|
| Business outside of 'established rich places' may often include
| huge sums for bribery and that money comes back in many ways,
| including 'very expensive real estate in NY / London' etc. and
| Dubai is becoming a major centre of such activity. [1]
|
| The question is, how long can Dubai balance it's claims to
| legitimacy and integrity, while at the same time looking the
| other way? Will nascent powers like India and China even care?
| It's going to be an interesting next 50 years.
|
| [1] https://www.transparency.org/en/news/the-united-arab-
| emirate...
| baybal2 wrote:
| > The worrying thing is that the West gave international
| legitimacy to these wealthy elites, while only pointing fingers
| at the endemic corruption in their countries.
|
| The whole Western commitment to anticorruption is on display on
| Mayfair street in London.
| ttul wrote:
| Oh, you mean the part of town where an apartment is so
| expensive that it is out of reach even to London bankers?
| nick_kline wrote:
| Can give some more context about this situation? A web
| search didn't find the obvious answer, other than it was an
| expensive area.
| baybal2 wrote:
| It's like a half of Russian mafia owns mansions there,
| right in the open, laughing in the face of UK courts, and
| its money laundering laws.
| [deleted]
| pinkybanana wrote:
| > The worrying thing is that the West gave international
| legitimacy to these wealthy elites, while only pointing fingers
| at the endemic corruption in their countries.
|
| Wouldn't it be quite difficult to prevent foreign money being
| laundered in some other country? I would guess verifying
| whether the money is legit coming from some weird foreign
| jurisdictions is probably quite difficult. The only way to work
| around that would probably reject all customers who are sending
| money from there.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| Those oligarchs are a tiny minority of the country population
| and their international financial endeavours are almost
| always tracked by Western intelligence agencies, but the
| pragmatic interest of the West is to welcome that money. They
| buy the most expensive real estate in London without even
| negotiating, send their kids to elite schools, buy their
| wifes jewellery at outrageous prices.
| kjrose wrote:
| This. And the problem I've found is whenever anyone gets to a
| position that could legitimately deal with this issue, they
| become either compromised or they become involved themselves in
| the situation.
|
| Basically there's another very rich black market that won't be
| stopped easily.
| hourislate wrote:
| >And the problem I've found is whenever anyone gets to a
| position that could legitimately deal with this issue, they
| become either compromised or they become involved themselves
|
| In Post Soviet Countries challenging the Oligarchs is like
| asking for a death sentence. What is required is a Western
| effort to go after these Crooks helping the elected
| Government to implement a system that can be trusted.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| No western country would do anything that helps solving the
| problem because they benefit from the situation.
| imagica wrote:
| All what it takes is to digitize the whole infrastructure
| and make transparent all the public spending with details
| of details of the details all the way down to where the
| money currently is, all that is including large loans.
| Public spending? No privacy whatsoever, no hidden
| transactions nor business trading behind curtains.
| Oligarchs buy popular support as well, they own televisions
| themselves to manipulate local politics, but with detailed
| accounting all that could potentially be stopped. Of course
| the efforts to implement these would be gargantuan because
| they would fight back.
| seer wrote:
| As a software dev in one of the Ex soviet block
| countries, I've heard several tales of accounting
| software projects being canceled because they would
| reveal inconvenient truths.
|
| A good friend of mine once worked for a small software
| shop that was building some accounting software for power
| plants. When the project was almost done, the mafia guys
| in charge were reviewing it. The realized that if it was
| actually used, it would be waaay to revealing. The
| project got canceled immediately. With a clause to "stay
| quiet or else"...
|
| And a couple of years back the government was trying to
| "crack down" on the gray economy. They released an app,
| that you could scan a receipt (from grocery shops,
| restaurants, everywhere really) and verify that the
| establishment has indeed paid its tax and has registered
| the transaction with the tax office.
|
| However people "in the know" got access to a special api.
| When the verification is taking place there is actually a
| web hook being sent, which you can register for. And pay
| your tax "on demand" only when someone actually wants to
| verify it.
|
| As far as I am aware this system is still in place
| today... Though its too esoteric to explain to the public
| so nobody really cares it seams. The public is like "sure
| government is crooked, like what else is new" :(
| jonhohle wrote:
| > digitize the whole infrastructure and make transparent
| all the public spending with details of details of the
| details all the way down to where the money currently is,
| all that is including large loans.
|
| This is a use case for Bitcoin/crypto I hadn't previously
| thought of. The public auditability is exactly the reason
| I don't think it's good for citizen use cases, but it
| seems perfect for government use cases. There's an issue
| of how revenues get accurately added to the ledger, but
| tying a transaction to say an ID generated when a return
| is submitted would make it possible to track one's own
| payment.
| jszymborski wrote:
| I don't think the problem is that people don't know _who_
| the problem is.
| vkou wrote:
| People know who the problem is.
|
| The thing is, if you want to do something about them,
| you're going to need to use a lot of violence - because
| those people will happily use violence against you.
|
| Most people aren't interested in a starting a war, and
| would rather keep their heads down, and mind their own
| business.
| tartoran wrote:
| You'd be surprised how much manipulation is taking place
| through local television and even social media. Local
| support is needed for elections, different politicians
| threat their existence..
| murkt wrote:
| > Everything from banks through insurance companies through
| delivery companies to media groups is owned by people formerly
| involved with state security.
|
| Not the case with Kolomoisky, who was not involved with state
| security. Generally, Ukrainian oligarchs do not come from state
| security background.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| From a Bulgarian perspective what I've said holds true. The
| oligarchs themselves were often picked from prominent
| nomenklatura families and in spite of not having a background
| as state security officers, were largely kept responsible for
| their actions by them. The state security officers had all
| the information about trade routes, information about all
| state enterprises and their financial status, etc.
| mobilio wrote:
| or having relatives to BKP
| bitL wrote:
| Wasn't Kolomoisky one of the oligarchs that backed the
| overthrow of the previous pro-Russian government as well as
| financed the current president of Ukraine? I am wondering
| what went wrong for him with the US, was it just Trump in
| power instead of a more friendly politician?
| crusty wrote:
| It seems like this scheme was unraveling before Trump came
| into office. If it hadn't been, Trump may have proved to be
| good for him, in driving renewed optimism for domestic
| steel production and simultaneously stripping regulatory
| bodies like the EPA of oversight and enforcement capacity.
|
| That this scheme was even considered seems like a more
| general enddictment of the history of US corporate and
| industrial regulatory oversight... Just put it on the wall
| next to the SEC and Wall Street, with highlights on Bernie
| Madoff and the subprime mortgage crisis.
| helge9210 wrote:
| > Generally, Ukrainian oligarchs do not come from state
| security background.
|
| Kolomoyskyi is just a smart shark without security or
| criminal background, Akhmetov has criminal background
| (Donetsk region), Pinchuk is related to former President
| Kuchma (indirect Communist party background), Poroshenko has
| Communist party background, Firtash is a frontman for
| criminal organization (mastermind fled from Hungary to
| Moscow).
| kgeist wrote:
| Russian oligarchs generally don't come from state security
| background either. I don't where the OP got that from.
| avrionov wrote:
| It seems that he was referring to the Bulgarian oligarchs.
| Some of the early ones were part of the security services
| or were married to a family members who were involved in
| security.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilia_Pavlov
| bullen wrote:
| Is it only me or is Cyprus and Ukraine in the wrong spot on the
| map about a quarter down? Nitpicking but Cyprus is not in China
| and Ukraine is not Mongolia.
| atdrummond wrote:
| Can you share a picture? The map is fine on mine.
| bullen wrote:
| Ok, that explains it... I'm on 5:4 screen... they made it for
| widescreen! :D
| rory wrote:
| I see an animation where they start in the right place, but
| then the focus countries zoom in, while the world map remains
| the same, putting them in Asia. The should probably have faded
| out the world map when zooming in.
| exogeny wrote:
| This is somewhat unrelated to the story, but I am happy and proud
| of the Post-Gazette for digging into this. The PG is my hometown
| newspaper -- although I haven't lived in Pittsburgh for fifteen
| years, it's still home -- and they like most newspapers have been
| absolutely gutted by layoffs and piss-poor management. You might
| recall a controversy a few years ago about their firing of the
| political cartoonist because he refused to be pro-Trump as the
| owners wished.
|
| Local news is critical for reasons I hope I don't need to explain
| here, as are investigative departments that dig in deep and
| uncover things like this. The PG (IIRC) got a Pulitzer for their
| work on the Penn State/Jerry Sandusky scandal some years back and
| it makes me proud to see them still doings like this, the Block
| family be damned.
| jtsuken wrote:
| This specific article is terribly written, however. I've spend
| over 5min trying to get the gist of the story. Which seems to
| be: A business owner with a background in oil and metals asked
| the bank he owned to fund levereged-buy-outs of rundown US
| steel factories, some of which had accidents, some of which
| later shut down. DOJ and the prosecutors in Ukraine investigate
| if the schemes used in the process of take-over could be
| fraudulent.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| This story has been covered many times, the unique bit is
| interviewing the steelworkers.
| jtsuken wrote:
| Which is exactly my point, the article and the clickbaity
| headline sound like a detailed report about a newly
| uncovered scheme, but there is actually very little
| information about what happened.
| cs702 wrote:
| Greatly informative piece about shady characters laundering money
| in the US at a pretty large scale by investing in, or outright
| buying, struggling US businesses such as steel mills.
|
| Managers and employees think they're getting a lifeline. In
| reality they're getting a new owner who cares very little about
| the long-term health of the operation and the safety and well-
| being of its employees.
|
| The new owner will use financial engineering to extract as much
| cash as possible while cutting capital expenditures as much as
| possible. Eventually, the business will have no choice but to
| file for bankruptcy. Along the way, all cash paid out of the
| business will have been legitimized.
|
| Employees and towns suffer the consequences. Ugly and sad.
| toast0 wrote:
| So, if they're from a former soviet republic, we call they
| shady characters and the process money laundering; if they're
| from the US, we call them private capital and the process
| leveraged buyout.
| vmception wrote:
| That's why they set up the British Virgin Islands private
| equity fund
|
| Because it is indistinguishable
|
| UK territories (or whatever you want to call them) don't have
| the geopolitical baggage that larger economic unions do, so
| they are good intermediaries with laws that are more relevant
| for business in the 21st century
| tehodler wrote:
| Hostile takeover > leveraged buyout > private equity. They
| keep changing the name once people catch on to what a dirty
| business it is.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Yes and Russian billionaires are "oligarchs" while American
| billionaires are "businessmen".
|
| https://fair.org/home/russia-has-oligarchs-the-us-has-
| busine...
| pinkybanana wrote:
| I would guess that if you are laundering money, launderer would
| happily spend extra money on safety and other issues to prevent
| getting too much attention. Here the case sounds like if the
| laundering oligarch hadn't been stingy on those things he
| wouldn't have gotten caught.
| dazc wrote:
| Maybe this is happening already and we don't know because
| some other oligarch is not being stingy?
|
| Welcome to London.
| vmception wrote:
| of course it is happening
|
| people think "money laundering" is hard or impossible and
| will point to articles like this one as "see they got
| caught"
|
| it is completely unfalsifiable when the reality is that
| money is fungible and it is a complete waste of resources
| to try to enforce a whitelist
|
| it isn't necessary to have no evidence of the money, but
| that is also possible too but wasnt necessary here or in
| most areas of reintegration
|
| the whole economy has practically no separation from licit
| and illicit sources and they routinely traverse back and
| forth
| intricatedetail wrote:
| That's why central banks start working on crypto and
| China even plans to introduce money with expiry date.
| extropy wrote:
| Or the money was spent in buying the factory and what happens
| after is just extraction.
|
| Speculation being that investments in economy are perceived
| as a very good thing and the origin of the money is not
| checked that tightly.
| seibelj wrote:
| This is another reason why I like cryptocurrency, specifically
| bitcoin. These shenanigans are enabled at the core through the
| ability to print money via a central bank. The central bank is
| corrupt, they give money effectively straight to those connected,
| who use the new money to buy foreign assets as well as extremely
| complex schemes to loot their country. With a universal money
| unit that cannot be corrupted, you eliminate a lot of this
| nonsense.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| I don't think BTC doesn't make the messy people problems any
| easier. That doesn't mean it's without value -- I do think
| there is some incompressible utility to having a globally
| decentralized "universal money unit" as you say. But that's no
| shortcut to curing socioeconomic corruption.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| This is hard to follow.
|
| Were the factories profitable? If not seems like the money
| benifited the employees. Looks like the front line employees got
| hurt and the community but every other employee made off with
| dirty money.
| skybrian wrote:
| The factories (and businesses) are used as collateral to get
| loans from banks. The banks are getting defrauded when the
| company goes bankrupt and the loan isn't repaid. The injured
| workers are collateral damage.
|
| If they got away with it then it would just look like a normal
| bankruptcy. Extracting the money already happened with more or
| less legitimate-looking business expenses.
| crusty wrote:
| I would love to see dollar values or ratios and the timing on
| this type of scheme.
|
| If they pay $80 million in "cash" for a steel plant and then
| turn around and ask a legitimate bank for a loan with the
| plant as collateral, how much can they realistically get for
| the loan? Any amount is going to be a lot and the lender is
| assuming that risk, so one would think that due diligence
| would consider the unique depreciation that could occur in an
| asset that requires massive maintenance inputs to maintain
| sustainable operability and hold it's capital value, and that
| they would build in some contractual mechanism to monitor the
| value of the asset and enforce it's upkeep.
|
| Even a car dealerships does this with leased vehicles to
| ensure that the value of the car they get back at the end of
| the lease matches their projections closely enough that they
| can sell it off again.
| skybrian wrote:
| When laundering money, "clean" money is worth more to them
| than "dirty" money, so substantial losses would be part of
| the plan.
|
| And yes, banks try not to be defrauded. "Due diligence" is
| about catching problems like this or at least reducing them
| to manageable levels.
|
| But I don't know the details; I just read a book about
| fraud.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The factories (and businesses) are used as collateral to
| get loans from banks. The banks are getting defrauded when
| the company goes bankrupt and the loan isn't repaid.
|
| Defrauded? This is the entire concept of collateral.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Not when the book value of the collateral bears as much
| resemblance to reality as that Spanish old lady's shoddy
| restoration job of that Jesus fresco.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It's the bank's job to do proper due diligence and
| perform a good appraisal.
| skybrian wrote:
| Yes, and preventing fraud is why they do that, and
| sometimes, the due diligence isn't good enough.
|
| In this case, though, apparently the bank was in on it.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| So is Ukraine basically the playground where all of the worlds
| corrupt elite steal millions?
|
| I recall a certain person being hesitant to send US tax dollars
| there because of corruption concerns.
| crusty wrote:
| > "I recall a certain person being hesitant to send US tax
| dollars there because of corruption concerns."
|
| I think you meant IIRC, but the C is the problem. That certain
| person had no problem with corruption in Ukraine, it was just
| that he needed some of it's corruption to act in his favor
| first.
|
| And the jump from the article to "So is Ukraine basically the
| playground where all of the worlds corrupt elite steal
| millions?" Is a little (not a little) broad. It's a former
| Soviet bloc state and this is pretty much table-stakes
| corruption for those.
| bumbada wrote:
| I had a girlfriend that was from Ukraine and visited the
| country in summer.
|
| Ukraine has probably the most fertile soil in the world. Like
| Egypt it has fed Europe and then Russia for a long time.
|
| It is also one of the most corrupt countries in the world, like
| Russia and China.
|
| Most Westerners just can not imagine what corruption is at
| those levels. For decades the grain was put into trains and
| half the grain had "disappeared" in destiny. This happens at
| all levels.
|
| Nobody goes there to help the country. Like lots of countries
| in Africa the big guys (Russia or EU, or USA) go there to
| plunder the country. It is too rich and too strategic.
|
| It is also the playground for big countries to fight. Instead
| of fighting WWIII and fucking the entire world with radioactive
| waste, the big guys play on playgrounds like Ukraine their
| power games.
|
| The US does not want Europe to dismantle NATO after it is not
| necessary anymore where Europe can arm itself. It also does not
| want Europe and Asia to integrate further because that means
| the end of USA hegemony in the world.
|
| Also the military industrial complex in the US needs a reason
| to exist. If threats do not exist, they will create them in
| order to survive or "their money" will be redirected to things
| like social welfare. Americans need to feel unsafe all the time
| so they agree to pay for new weapons in new taxes.
|
| UE wants to expand to get the wealth of Ukraine resources and
| Russia does not want to lose them.
|
| That is very bad for Ukraine. The people that can, like my ex
| girlfriend, just leave the country.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/Iq3zy
| [deleted]
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