Ukraine’s New Prime Minister Yekhanurov Says No More Re-Privatizations

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine’s new Prime Minister Yuri Yekhanurov said on Thursday, Sept. 29, that re-privatization processes launched by his predecessor Yulia Tymoshenko, are now officially over and that the authorities will conduct their relations with business in a new way, Interfax-Ukraine reported.


PM Yuri Yekhanurov (L) and President Viktor Yushchenko (R)
Speaking in Ukraine’s Dnepropetrovsk region, Yekhanurov said that it is necessary to guarantee the inviolability of private property. “That which had to be returned to the custody of the state, has already been returned.

All of the controversial issues which exist today will be solved only by negotiations and amicable agreements,” the prime minister said. The head of the Ukrainian government also added that the main task of his new cabinet is to stabilize the country’s economy.

As MosNews reported in February, then-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said that as many as 3,000 privatization deals may be reconsidered and overturned by the new government, prompting her boss, President Viktor Yushchenko to refute the statement. Yushchenko said then that “re-privatization is the politics of exception”.

The best known re-privatization action taken by the Ukrainian government after the Orange Revolution involved Krivorozhstal, Ukraine’s largest steel producer. The company was privatized in June 2004 and 93.02 percent of its shares were sold to Ukrainian consortium Investment Metallurgy Union which united the companies of Donetsk-based businessman Rinat Akhmetov and of then-President Leonid Kuchma’s son-in-law Viktor Pinchuk.

The consortium acquired the stake for $800 million, while Russia’s Severstal offered to pay $1.2 billion and LNM-US Steel — $1.5 billion for the same shares. After Kuchma lost his post, the new Ukrainian government ruled that the privatization was illegal and took the shares back into state custody. Now Ukraine plans to hold another tender for Krivorozhstal.

Source: MosNews