Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Everyone has their price..

Last Wednesday, a VR commission investigating accusations by BYuT deputy Oleh Lyashko, that Oleksandr Moroz had been bribed by PoR with $300 million to 'switch horses' and bring down the 'Orange coalition, concluded that there was no evidence to support this and that the accusations were groundless.

[This is a matter about which I have blogged previously]

Lyashko presented the commission hearing with an audio cassette recording of what he claimed was a conversation between leading PoR man Klyuyev, and a Moscow businessman called 'Ruben', in which alleged bribes paid to the Socialists were apparently discussed.

Lyaskho was asked to play the tape in a dictaphone machine, but claimed that he was unfamiliar with the piece of equipment and didn't know how it worked. When members of the commission tried to play the cassette, they noticed that the tape was torn and unplayable - Lyashko's hearing submission turned into a farce.

Some members of the commission accused Lyashko of trying to 'set them up' using a cheap stunt, making it look as if it was they who purposely damaged the tape.

The normally pro-BYuT 'Oglyadach' has an interesting postscript to this story.

Several years ago in the days of Kuchma, once, when the then-Prosecutor-General Svyatoslav Piskun was addressing the VR, Yuliya Tymoshenko [no friend of Piskun] suddenly grabbed his arm, checked out his watch, and triumphantly declared through a microphone that the P-G, a mere humble civil servant, has a $10,000 watch on his wrist - a solid gold 'Vacheron Constantine'.

'Oglyadach' noticed that after the fiasco at the commission hearing, when Oleh Lyasko, supposedly a man of principle, was dragged in front of the press, he too was wearing a similar 'Vacheron Constantine' watch.

'Oglyadach' suggests that Lyashko may have been paid off to 'trash' the tape, and that his behaviour has now lessened the chances of any future allegations being treated seriously.

Oh how Ukrainian deputies love to wear show off swanky gold wrist watches..

1 comment:

DLW said...

I hear stories of the number of fine cars in Kyev have increased quite a bit in these past couple of years.

It sounds like the OR has helped to increase the number of snouts getting into the trough. Perhaps some of the bureaucratic reforms made have helped in this regard, as well?