Ukrainian Scorpions: A Tale of Larceny and Greed
Westbank Grand Chief Ron Derrickson published Ukrainian Scorpions: A Tale of Larceny and Greed today. This book, published by ECW Press is a cautionary tale and chronicles a personal and business nightmare in Ukraine.
If you want to live an impactful, prosperous life, learn from someone who has done what you want to do. For less than $30, you can know what Grand Chief Derrickson knows. Derrickson is one of Canada’s most successful Indigenous entrepreneurs, was Chief of the Westbank First Nation twice, and was made Grand Chief by the Union of BC Indian Chiefs in 2012. He rose from poverty to command a huge agriculture, entertainment, resort and real estate business today that spans Canada and the U.S.
In this book, Derrickson takes you on an entrepreneur’s tour of Ukraine from the post-Soviet days up to the 2022 Russian invasion. You are going to tap into an uncommon blend of business and political wisdom.
Ukrainian Scorpions is an engrossing and fascinating book that is part spy novel, part gangster novel, part international financial crime novel, and all of it is nonfiction.
Could this happen to you?
Imagine visiting an Eastern European country and witnessing poverty, despair…and potential. You would meet friendly, hardworking people trying to work and survive. At the same time, you see vast fertile fields with great potential for feeding Ukraine and selling to the world via easy access to ports at the Black Sea.
You are moved to invest in Ukraine and meet local partners who, by all appearances and due diligence are trustworthy, competent, and eager to work with you. You have the experience and capital to provide state-of-the-art equipment, facilities and methods to improve farming. By doing so, you can feed more people and export food, benefitting investors, consumers, and even foreign customers, all while providing well-paying jobs for Ukrainians.
The local mayor and governor welcome you with smiles, open arms, a banquet, and public pledges to provide assistance. You sign the papers, establish legal protections, make some purchases, provide operating funds, and board your flight home, confident in this new enterprise.
Months later, the property and equipment are seized. You are accused of failing to pay employees and taxes, even though you provided plenty of money to do that. Your partner siphoned off that money. Worse, you find out that your equipment is now personally owned by corrupt members of parliament. The same mayor and governor who promised assistance got their cut and aren’t helpful. Neither are the courts because you didn’t bribe the judges.
“In a mafia state, the criminals don’t break the laws, they make them.“
Derrickson isn’t alone. Businesspeople from Germany, France, UK, Estonia, Canada, the U.S., and countless others tried to do the right thing in Ukraine and met a similar fate. Official corruption in Ukraine is the primary reason for widespread opposition to Ukraine joining the EU.
“These were threats that you could not call the police on, because they controlled the police; threats that you could not take to court because they controlled the courts; and threats you could not counter by pleading for support from the government too because they were, in fact, the government. They were not threats that I could call on Canada to help me with because in Ukraine, Canada was, objectively speaking, in bed with the crooks.”
How to Fight Back Against the Gangsters In Their Home Country
This is where the book gets intense. You will read of Derrickson adapting to the Ukrainian game using Ukrainian rules, since the Canadian rules weren’t getting results. To recover his investment, he navigated corrupt prosecutors, corrupt courts, corrupt police, and of course corruption at the highest levels. From time to time it involved violence and guns.
Derrickson walks you through, in simple but stark terms how the fraud happens. He names names.
A corrupt notary certifies documents forged by Victor Fesun, Derrickson’s trusted director, who loots the accounts of the business. Fesun gives a cut to Ukrainian-American engineer and Prestone employee Aleksei Gershun. Fesun, using forged documents to give him powers that Derrickson did not agree to, arranges to transfer the assets to People’s Deputy Oleg Kryshin. Kryshin transfers the assets to People’s Deputy and former governor of Dnipropetrovsk (Dnipropetrovsk is an oblast, or local government in Ukraine) Sergey Kasyanov, who played the major role in the theft. Everyone in the supply chain of theft is paid, including the courts in Ukraine who rule in favor of the thieves.
Kasyanov it would turn out, was also a near perfect representative of the businessman/politician class of gangster (sometimes referred to as a “mini-oligarch”) that ruined Ukraine and finally gave it the pariah status that kept it out of the EU and NATO.
Kasyanov used Derrickson’s stolen equipment and assets in 2008 and 2009 to build KSG Agro, a vegetable and livestock operation. He then cashed out with $40 million via an IPO on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in 2011. The Warsaw Stock Exchange provided the advantage of distance from the oversight of American and Canadian regulators. The share price of KSG Agro dropped precipitously after the IPO, never recovered, and today trades at a small fraction of its IPO value.
Does the Government of Canada Offer Support In Such Cases?
In short, no. Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is Canada’s point person for relations with Ukraine. Her grandfather fled Ukraine after WW2 because he served in one of the special Ukrainian SS units on the side of the Nazis. Freeland denied reports of this as “Russian disinformation”.
Indeed, she did facilitate a generous government-to-government package of financial aid from Canada to Ukraine. She issued a statement about working with partners to “…further assist Ukraine in implementing reforms, including by allocating funds”. However, there was no mention of consequences for failing to implement reforms that would break the stranglehold of oligarchs or gangsters like Kasyanov. She offered no assurance or safeguards that the funds from the Canadian government would not enrich the ruling gangster class in Ukraine while the mass of Ukrainians fall further into poverty and despair.
A 1994 Canadian government treaty promising to indemnify Canadian businesses against loss to corrupt practices in Ukraine provided some confidence. Article IX of the Canada-Ukraine treaty promised Canadians a guarantee for their investments in Ukraine, by promising any investor “repayment of loans related to an investment; the proceeds of the total or partial liquidation of any investment” as well as “any compensation owed to an investor.”
Neither the Canadian Embassy in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Embassy in Canada, nor Freeland’s office was responsive.
Ukrainians Fighting Both Corruption at the Top AND Russians
If you have an opinion about the United States, Canada, or other nations funding Ukraine in its war with Russia, you don’t want to miss this book. If you are considering investing in a business in Ukraine, you don’t want to miss this book. If you are considering doing business in any developing country that “looks promising”, you don’t want to miss this book.
The book ends with the failure of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to solve the corruption problem. Indeed, there are instances in the book of Zelenskyy practicing privately what he condemned publicly. Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and Derrickson tells what happened to the characters who were part of his Ukrainian journey.
“Ukraine had the sympathy of the Western world as long as it was sacrificing thousands of its sons in the war with Russia, but the Europeans still feared that if they brought the country into their fold, the Ukrainian gangsters and pickpockets would steal their wallets.”
Who is Grand Chief Ron Derrickson?
Grand Chief Ronald Derrickson is the owner and President of RMD Group and one of the most successful Indigenous entrepreneurs in Canada. After first being elected Chief of Westbank First Nation in 1976, he began to use his business experience to lift his community out of poverty, eventually making it one of the wealthiest bands in the country.
He served as Chief of the Westbank First Nation from 1976 to 1986 and from 1996 to 1998. He was made Grand Chief by the Union of BC Indian Chiefs in 2012. In 2015, he became an award-winning author when Unsettling Canada A National Wake-up Call, a book he co-authored with Arthur Manuel, won the Canadian History Association Literary Award. His second book co-authored with Manuel, Reconciliation Manifesto, went on to win the BC Book Prize for Nonfiction and appeared on the best books of 2017 lists of the Globe and Mail, Quill and Quire and the Writer’s Trust. Derrickson released his personal memoir Fight or Submit on October 27, 2020.
How to Order
Order online through Amazon: https://amzn.to/3WVvjhL
Indigo: https: //www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/ukrainian-scorpions-a-tale-of/9781770415676-item.html
Books-A-Million: https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Ukrainian-Scorpions/Ronald-M-Derrickson/9781770415676
Additional Information
Ron Derrickson Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Derrickson
Publisher Site: https://ecwpress.com/products/ukrainian-scorpions
Media Contact:
James Chittenden
Email: jchittenden@publictriumph.com
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