Published: November 30 2004 19:57 | Last updated: November 30 2004 19:57
Viktor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma and head of a metals-to-media business group, knows the way the political winds are blowing. Before the country's disputed presidential elections, ICTV, his main television channel, backed prime minister Viktor Yanukovich, Mr Kuchma's candidate for the post.
Now ICTV is broadcasting more objective coverage of the political crisis with reports of Mr Kuchma and Mr Yanukovich's comings and goings balanced with the latest news from opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko.
Mr Pinchuk has not changed sides. But he is hedging his bets and, like many business people, he wants stability - both for the country and for a business empire critics say was built in murky circumstances. Until the election, he believed Mr Yanukovich offered the best prospect of a stable future in the form of a de facto extension of Mr Kuchma's rule. But since the disputed polls the situation has changed - and so have Mr Pinchuk's views.
"Yanukovich and Yushchenko must compromise. For example, one can be president and the other prime minister," says the 43-year-old Mr Pinchuk, in an interview in his elaborately furnished office on the top floor of a modern steel-and-glass block.
"It's a tragedy that there's no culture of compromise. It's like a football match. It's the championship. The winner takes it all. If there's no winner at full-time, the game goes into penalties. Well, we are in the penalties right now."
Besides stability, Mr Pinchuk warns the opposition against seeking to expropriate him and others associated with Mr Kuchma.
Mr Pinchuk's comments indicate that the Kuchma camp wants to negotiate ways of sharing power with Mr Yushchenko and his supporters. Mr Kuchma has already conceded the country might need new elections. The issue now is to establish the conditions on which such elections would take place; including the amount of power the new president would have. Business oligarchs such as Mr Pinchuk are particularly concerned to ensure that a Yushchenko victory would not be followed by large-scale expropriation of those who profited from acquiring state assets at low cost during Mr Kuchma's rule.
However, not all oligarchs have backed away from Mr Yanukovich.
Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in Mr Yanukovich's home territory of Donetsk, told the FT this week that he stood behind his man. Yesterday in parliament, Grigory Surkis, a logging baron and an MP, conspicuously sat on the ministerial bench instead of his normal seat with his faction.
Mr Pinchuk, a Russian-speaker of Jewish origin, made his fortune by linking up in the late 1980s with the managers of Ukraine's largest steel-pipe plant which he bought and turned into the cornerstone of a diversified group. His business interests developed in parallel with a relationship with Mr Kuchma's only daughter, whom he later married.
Mr Pinchuk was not alone in acquiring wealth with the help of political connections in the 1990s. Others include Yulia Tymoshenko, now one of Mr Yushchenko's most vocal and visible aides, who made a fortune from gas trading. Mr Pinchuk says: "The Yushchenko circle should say: 'We were all robber barons. And now we should all co-operate.' "
Mr Pinchuk, a member of parliament, argues that the best way forward now would be to implement constitutional reforms that would transfer considerable powers from the president to parliament. He and other allies of Mr Kuchma have proposed such reforms in the past, when they were seen as a method for Mr Kuchma to stay in power.
Unable to stand for a third term as president, he could have moved to parliament and become prime minister.
George Soros: I would like to say one thing that makes me anxious. I am hopeful that everything will be fine with the elections and that there will not be any problems with exit polls and all will be free and fair. However, will these elections have vital importance? From the standpoint of the constitutional reform, it becomes more complicated as a subject for understanding. And I can see one specific proposal that concerns the transition from presidential to parliamentary democracy. This kind of transition as such is worth supporting in all possible ways because democracy ripens and there are numerous factors that prove the necessity of implementing parliamentary democracy in Ukraine instead of the presidential kind.
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George Soros: Formation of open society does not depend completely on the outcome of elections. These results will not play an important role if amendments to the Constitution are adopted.
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Q: "Do you expect any surprises from the presidential election in Ukraine?"
George Soros: "The situation is too intricate, and I can't claim that I grasp it well. What I can say is that in case the constitutional reform succeeds, the presidential election won't matter much. - LINK
Pinchuk (Kuchma's son in law), Soros and
Olena Franchuk (Kuchma's daughter)
Soros, Pinchuk to create legal aid foundation in Ukraine - Kyiv, April 1 (Interfax - Ukraine) - Prominent American businessman George Soros and MP of Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada Viktor Pinchuk are planning to set up a joint fund rendering legal aid to citizens in Ukraine, Soros said at a solemn reception in Kyiv on Wednesday evening.He said that this is practical and constructive result of his visit and thanked Pinchuk for agreement to become his partner in such fund creation.
"Mr Yushchenko has pledged to review the controversial privatisation of Kryvorizhstal, Ukraine's biggest steel mill, which was sold to Mr Pinchuk and Mr Akhmetov earlier this year for $800m (€604m, £424m), far less than foreign bidders were prepared to offer." - LINK