Awwal 01, 1432, Feb 04, 2011, SPA -- Ukraine's government, in an unusual response to complaints by shipping companies, announced Friday it would investigate alleged corruption at a pair of Black Sea ports, according to dpa. The Ukrainian shipping industry has complained privately of alleged corruption in the country's Black Sea ports for years. A formal attempt by private industry to change the situation by telling the government about it is almost unprecedented. Ukraine's central government will conduct an investigation into the allegations, Ministry of Infrastructure officials told the Unian news agency. A statement written by an unnamed freight forwarder in the port city Odessa and posted to the Ministry of Infrastructure citizen hotline complained of "total corruption by port service companies...who have become open racketeers and unmasked bandits." The complaint was published on regional websites, including a local anti-corruption server, in late January. The investigation would mark a rare case of Ukrainian law enforcement agencies responding in a timely fashion to the complaint of a private company or citizen. It would support claims by President Victor Yanukovych that his administration is serious about cracking down on official corruption. The complaint by the freight forwarder described a meeting with senior officials of the Odessa and Ilychevsk port administrations, at which transport company executives were allegedly told they had to pay bribes of 200 to 500 dollars per shipping container to get containers released. Various government officials and employees were said to be a part of the scheme: police, customs officials, stevedores, crane operators and agents of Ukraine's national intelligence agency. Odessa and the adjacent port Ilychevsk together are the Black Sea's largest transit hub for shipping containers, handling some 11 million containers a year.
