Corruption scandals of 2011

For those who understand Ukrainian I recommend last Monday's TVi 'Znak Oklyku' round-up-of-the-year programme. Watch it here

Topics include the following resonant scandals, most of which I've written about in my blogs -

The purchase of two deep-sea drilling platforms at twice their proper price via shade offshore companies linked to companies that also provide drug money laundering services...

Yanukovych's opaquely acquired 27,000 hectare Dniprovsko-Teterivske state forestry hunting grounds - now surrounded by high fences, deep moat, control posts complete with hundreds of armed guards..

The never-ending purchase of expensive automobiles, helicopters, luxury train carriages etc. to supplement the president's motor pool..

The construction of expensive and unnecessary helicopter pads up and down the country for the president's use..

The promotion of an allegedly highly corrupt judge, Oleksandr Paseniuk, to the post of Constitutional Court judge - achieved by blatantly corrupt voting of deputies in the Verkhovna Rada. [Paseniuk was the boss of judge Ihor Zvarych who was recently sentenced to many years in prison. Head of the Ivano-Frankivsk Arbitration Court Petro Cherpy admitted he had given Zvarych $150,000, of which $140,000 Zvarych had to pass to Paseniuk, the- then head of the Supreme Administrative Court. .. a good example "Blackmail State", where blackmail is used as an instrument of state control]

And how shady offshore companies who currently rent large tracts of land are using hundreds of students and pensioners as 'pawn's. These are 'bussed' into the countryside in a corrupt 'carousel scheme' to gain options to purchase the much smaller plots into which the land is being divided up, in readiness for yet-to-be-announced privatisation.