The story surrounding the “nationalization” of Privatbank was in fact a raider seizure of the property of oligarch Igor Kolomoisky by a rival oligarchic group. A similar “squeeze” of business was once practiced by the “Family” of Viktor Yanukovych, which ended in the overthrow of the ex-president. Now his experience is being repeated by Petro Poroshenko, but at a much faster pace. Ruslan Bortnik, director of the Ukrainian Institute of Policy Analysis and Management, stated this at a press conference in Kyiv.
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“We are not dealing with nationalization, but with what is called “mergers and acquisitions,” raiding. In fact, control over the Privat group (because we are talking about other assets) passes into the hands of another financial and political group. At the same time, this is slightly decorated by the state, by officials who, in fact, represent the interests of another political group,” he said.
According to the expert, the story around Privatbank will further “exacerbate the political confrontation – both in society and in parliament.”
“The nationalization of Privat is one of the most dangerous actions for the political system. From the point of view of the elites, this means that the president’s team today can take away any property, the main thing is that they like it. This will create even greater fear of the president’s team and a desire to remove him. At one time, Yanukovych’s young team followed such a path, and it acted much more softly than the current president’s team.
From a social point of view, this is also an absolutely disastrous decision. No rhetoric about saving the integrity of the financial system can justify in the eyes of society 150 billion hryvnia to save this bank against the background of the fact that tens of millions of hryvnia are not enough to purchase vaccines, one hundred million is not enough for the National Academy of Sciences, ten billion is not enough to increase pensions. Society will not accept all this.
And the current allocation of 15 billion for this bank is the best anti-campaign for the authorities. The Rating group has already published the results of a social survey - the level of distrust in the president was 82%. So many Ukrainians consider his work unsatisfactory. The situation around Privatbank will only intensify the crisis of mistrust in the authorities,” says Bortnik.