The dismissal of the finance minister, she added, was “a step backwards,” but it was the “the bribe paid to members of Parliament to get their vote on a more or less good anticorruption court.”
The finance minister, Mr. Danylyuk, an independent-minded reformer backed by the I.M.F., was fired on the recommendation of Ukraine’s prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, who had accused Mr. Danylyuk of spreading “distorted information among our international partners.”
This accusation related to a letter Mr. Danylyuk wrote to Ukraine’s Western backers that accused President Poroshenko of trying to get one of his allies put in charge of tax policy and of blocking candidates put forward by the minister. Mr. Danylyuk complained in his letter that “corruption and vested interests are increasing” in the State Fiscal Service, Ukraine’s equivalent of the Internal Revenue Service.
The United States had no immediate response to Thursday’s votes in the Ukrainian Parliament. In response to a request for comment, the American Embassy in Kiev reissued an earlier statement that said the “establishment of a genuinely independent anti-corruption court is the most important, immediate step the government can take to meet the demands the Ukrainian people made” during the 2013-14 protests.
The I.M.F. had no immediate comment on whether the court legislation would free funding for Ukraine. A spokesman for the I.M.F. in Washington, Gerry Rice, said the fund was reviewing the new law to see whether “it ensures the establishment of an independent and trustworthy anti-corruption court that meets the expectations of the Ukrainian people.”
Mr. Rice declined to comment on the dismissal of the finance minister but said “our staff had expressed a concern about possible changes in the institutional role of the Finance Ministry” relating to tax collection.
Source : Nytimes
