Day 773
The forces of bigness
“And such a person still writes laws for Ukraine and regulates virtually the entire Ukrainian economy. It is [MP Danilo] Hetmantsev who drafted the bill, because of which the budget may lose twelve billion hryvnias, but which gives huge advantages to lottery operators, with one of whom the politician had close ties.”
That’s the last paragraph of an article, titled “State lotteries or casinos: How to ‘kill’ the legal gambling market, deprive the budget of billions of hryvnias, and lobby "their own" with one bill - the experience of Danilo Hetmantsev,” appearing on April 5 in Azart.comments.ua1.
In unrelated news, here’s a map of Russia’s morning missile attack.
Kharkiv and Zaporizhia were hit hard. People died and were injured.
Isabelle, the hockey specialist heading the bureau of The Washington Post in Ukraine, writes a zillion-word article about Ukraine’s military mess2.
Lots of unnamed Ukrainian lawmakers and western diplomats are quoted. The article ends with questions from Timofiy.
Never end an article with a quote. When writing about Ukraine, never cite Timofiy. Isabelle also ignores results of a recent survey sponsored by USAID showing that public confidence in Z is falling fast.
Instead, Isabelle writes this:
We should point out here that western diplomats in Kyiv are, as a rule, clueless.
I am not a gamer, however, back in the day, I made a habit of unloading the equivalent of $100 in every city and town I traveled to in the former Soviet Union. Usually, I played Blackjack at the tables. There was something sad about most of the venues, especially those in Irkutsk and Minsk. Slotmachine parlours in Kyiv during the late 1990s were equally depressing, although some made good coffee.
A quick boo at Hetmantsev’s Wikipedia page tells us that he is not the guy on whom Ukraine should be relying to regulate Ukraine’s online gaming industry or, er, anything involving public funds.
Which brings me back to miscoding, and this guy, the (now former) Cybersecurity Chief at Ukraine’s State Security Service.
Ilia is a miscoding expert and my nextdoor neighbor. His wife is a real estate tycoon.
Ilia reminds me of Artem Shilo, a former advisor to the President’s Office and SBU officer detained last week and served a suspicion notice for a scheme to embezzle $2.48 million from Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukraine's state railway company.
Turns out he also specializes in miscoding.