Law Enforcement

The corruption that exists in the Ukraine law enforcement is one of the major factors that hold Ukraine back from competing with the rest of the world. One reason for the extreme corruption is because almost all crime in Ukraine combines the use of government officials’ access to information or goods with the use of organized criminals. Almost all crime is organized crime. The corruption in Ukraine’s law enforcement sector is seen as one of the worst in the world.

Drug traffickers, as well as other domestic and foreign crime groups, launder money through casinos, exchange bureaus, and the banks. The banks provide groups with businesses’ profitability and asset information to help the criminal groups extort money from them. Criminals and public officials often collude in this effort. Criminals, for example, extort money from businesses by threatening to sell the information they illegally obtain from banks to the tax police. Tax officials are sometimes willing to share their information about businesses with crime groups in return for a share of the money they extort from businesses. These are only some examples of organized crime in Ukraine.

The organized criminals are not shy when doing their “jobs.” Unlike in most countries, where criminals try to hide their acts, in Ukraine they do it out and in the open. Citizens witness acts of crime everyday. Oksana remembers witnessing many different trafficking crimes in act. One of her scariest experiences she said was when her mom and her were on vacation.

“My mom and I were in our hotel room when all of a sudden someone bangs on the door. My mom answered the door and a man was there. He told us we must leave our room now. My mom realized what was going on and told them that she refused to leave. So we stayed in the room and watched them do their business. They came and started removing all of the tiles from the ceiling, pulling all of the pictures off of the walls, tearing the bed frames apart, and cutting holes in the wall. Then they started pulling large amount of cigarettes out from all of those places. They just pulled hundreds and hundreds of cartons out of the room and moved them outside. We stepped outside and realized that they were doing this in every single room of the hotel. There were tons of families waiting outside for their rooms to be emptied. What made the event more odd was that there were police officers outside supervising the event. It almost seemed as if they were making sure nothing got out of control and no one tried to fight the men. After, everyone went back to his or her lives, just like nothing had happened. This was one of the largest crimes I have ever witnessed”

Oksana told me the only reason her mom understood what was going on was because she had seen it happen before. It was nothing that they had never experienced before. One reason why public officials have the incentive to resort to partaking in criminal activities is because they face such a low income and there is very little opportunity for advancement. They feel the only way to support themselves is to be paid off by the criminals. Unless the Ukrainian government accepts adequate laws and procedures nothing will be fixed.