Clean Getaway

KIEV, Ukraine -- Victor Lozinsky, stripped of his parliament seat after becoming a suspect in a June 16 murder, is on the run. Troubling as it is, no one should be surprised at how events are transpiring. This pathetic case is the rule, not a shocking exception. It’s just another sign that lawlessness rules in the young and fragile democracy.
The elite and influential are free to pillage the country’s population and riches and do as they wish, even going so far as murder.In the 2004 Orange Revolution, millions of citizens cried out for justice and a better life. Nearly five years later, the escape of yet another high-profile murder suspect is treated as everyday news. Disturbingly, Ukraine’s 46 million citizens are becoming accustomed to this lawlessness.Has anyone been brought to justice for the unsolved murders committed since Ukraine became independent, or the sham privatizations of former Soviet assets, or all the election frauds? No. Everyone gets away scot-free because the privileged political and business leaders turn a blind eye.Impunity leaves the possibility for crimes to happen time and time again. If Lozinsky calculated that he could escape the short arm of Ukrainian law, he was correct. His deputy’s seat was lifted on July 3, when even his alleged behavior went beyond the tolerance of a very crooked Verkhovna Rada.Lozinsky went missing the day he stopped being a member of parliament. Nobody, certainly not fellow lawmakers whose closets are full of skeletons, noticed or helped catch him.Speculation on his whereabouts range from Moldova’s breakaway enclave of Transdniester, to homes of legislators immune from searches by law enforcers.It all smacks of a cover-up by fellow deputies, prosecutors and others in authority who are supposed to prevent the alleged criminal from disappearing. We imagine someone close to Lozinsky giving him a phone call and a warning: “Nothing will happen to you, but you’ve got to find a new place to live.”Lozinsky was a member of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s bloc, but still kept influential friends with allies in his former Regions Party, led by ex-premier Victor Yanukovych.Tymoshenko’s camp has shown little interest in finding him. A prosecutor’s office reportedly friendly to the Regions Party opened a criminal case against him on July 1, two weeks after the murder of Valery Oliynyk in Kirovohrad Oblast.The vote to terminate Lozinsky’s parliamentary mandate was also slow. Just like previous suspects, such as former Interior Ministry official Oleksiy Pukach, a key figure in the 2000 murder of Georgiy Gongadziy, Lozinsky was given ample time to disappear and cover his tracks.President Victor Yushchenko has urged law enforcement to punish those to blame. But not even the State Security Service (SBU) law enforcement agency controlled by the president was able to track Lozinsky. Ukraine’s leaders once again are incapable or have no nterest in bringing their criminal friends to justice and establishing rule of law. This makes them accessories to the crime. The weight of the evidence leads us to pronounce a verdict of guilty.