Manafort and a ‘Marshall Plan’
In February 2007, the strategy plan described as “Microeconomic Development and Social Enterprise — A ‘Marshall Plan’ for Ukraine” was in the hands of Ukraine’s government but there were those far less interested in creating social benefit. We took the radical step of publishing the full plan in FOR-UA to deter IP theft.
Writing later in 2007, it was former Ukraine PM Yulia Tymoshenko who sounded the alarm, when she read about another ‘Marshall Plan’ for Ukraine:
Not so a long ago Rinat Akhmetov threatened to hire the clever American experts and write for Ukraine the plan of development on the nearest 20–30 years in a prospect, Yulia Tymoshenko press service reported.
According to plan (read by myself in the internet), it must have been, at least, “Marshall plan for Ukraine”. However nobody knows either Marshalls are finished there, behind the ocean or something worse has happened. But as a result instead of Marshall plan we received the “proFFesor’s plan” as usual.
I analyze stage-by-stage implementation of “Marshall plan” from Akhmetov and become convinced that it was written, probably, by domestic specialists (“marshalls” or generals from SCM-group), because it will never occur to any average manafort to put a first issue of such plan a task to “steal “Dniproenergo” at a state”.
(N.B. ‘proFFesor’ is her tag for Yanukovitch)
Manafort was campaign manager for the Party of Regions and sat on the board of the US-Ukraine Business Council
It wasn’t the ‘Marshall Plan’ my colleague Terry had delivered to Ukraine’s government in February that same year. The primary focus of his plan was Ukraine’s childcare system, as he described in his reports on ‘Death Camps, For Children’.
He and I discussed the threat. With the resources available to these people, our efforts would be invisible. We decided to make our work fully transparent. In his notes, Terry Hallman wrote:
‘As the 60th anniversary of the Marshall Plan came around in June 2007, noise was emerging within Ukraine of a certain political boss preparing a Marshall Plan for Ukraine. This person was a reputed mob boss — exactly the sort of entity that the original Marshall Plan meant to oppose. It seemed most likely that whatever he came up with would be self-serving, hijacking the label ‘Marshall Plan’ and turning the whole notion on its head. I reviewed the original Marshall Plan and realized that what I had written was, in fact, the definition and spirit of the original Marshall Plan. Thus, in June 2007, I appended the original title with “A Marshall Plan for Ukraine.” After some discussion among trusted colleagues over timing, I published an abbreviated version of the paper in two parts in August 2007 in the ‘analytics’ section of the Ukrainian news journal for-ua.com. The abbreviated version removed the rollout sequence over five years, which was more a technical matter and probably of little interest to general readership. It also removed the names of the organizations I had strongly recommended to manage various components, insofar as there was any organization to recommend. There were two, one for childcare reform for children in orphanages, one for childcare reform of children in Ukraine’s theretofore invisible gulag archipelago for disabled children. Both of those organizations had already been approved by ‘others’ by August 2007. Bringing them to light at that juncture might have been counterproductive to their efforts, particularly because of the extreme sensitivity surrounding the matter of disabled children. I opted to just let things proceed quietly, and was convinced beyond doubt for once that sincere and committed efforts to help these children were finally underway. There remain approximately 90,000 children in orphanages, 10,000 in the ‘gulags’. Another 200,000 children live on the streets because state-care options have been less tolerable than street life. Because street children are most visible and therefore obvious, other organizations notice them and are making at least token efforts to help them. Nevertheless, the overall problems are systemic. It is not enough to help these kids without dealing with the causes — primarily corruption and displacement of Ukraine’s cash and resources — that put children in such conditions to begin with. This systemic recognition is at least beginning to be understood. The ‘Marshall Plan’ details it, and provides comprehensive solutions with a financial net-cost to government over seven years of: zero.’
Among those I’d approached for support at the time was The British Ukrainian Society, headed by Lord Risby.
Another threat came in 2015, when Huffington Post published another ‘Marshall Plan’ for Ukraine. It was inspired by oligarch Dmitri Firtash, then under arrest in Vienna pending extradition to the US. This yet to be written plan had a price tag of 300 billion dollars. Who would be paying for that?
Anti-corruption politician Sergii Leschenko was less enthusiastic, describing the Firtash Octopus.
‘Dirty money from the East has become a resource for dozens of European structures and politicians. Sergii Leshchenko reports on some of those that are only too happy to open their doors to a Ukrainian oligarch willing to invest millions in cleaning up his image.’
That Lord Mandelson and Lord Risby are anong those named, is no surprise.
Today he revealed how Yanukovitch concealed payment to Manafort.
I took the trouble to tell Lord Risby what I think of a man who would line his own pockets in preference to helping the vulnerable and voiceless.
Such were the obstacles in our efforts in business for social purpose. Could it be worse? Indeed it could.
It was a spleen bursting moment to read last month of PwC and their efforts to promote purpose driven business. Not long before his death, our founder had appealed to them on ethical grounds , to respect the IPR of our work. In Ukraine, IP theft is a national sport he told them and can’t be the basis for ethical business..
