\nOn July 4, 2004, my orange began. It was a breath of air in the suffocation of the pro-Yanukovych apathy, when few believed that Yushchenko would win. Somewhere around a year ago Yushchenko was poisoned. Then my orange ignited with autumn colors because it became clear what the stakes were in those elections. After the second round my orange ripened. And last Tuesday it became covered with spots of shame. \nFor more than a year it honestly smelled of uncertainty and the fear of last year's autumn, I still with advertising stubbornness (oh, what a mighty advertisement that was! And then some!) answered my godfather into the receiver "Yes, Yushchenko!", and my son every morning begged to play with the orange ribbon. The colleague clicking on the keyboard to the left of me had long since been cursing the term "orange revolution," and the colleague on the right every Monday lamented: "something they're doing wrong." I meanwhile continued from time to time to review the video files downloaded a year ago about the highlights of those events, turned on the cassette I had filmed myself in November Lutsk and enjoyed the November special issue of "Family and Home" in orange tones. Even the outrageous-higher-pilotage of Zinchenko and Yulia did not bite into my sincere happiness. \nAnd then came a warm, maddeningly summery September Tuesday and the head of the state customs service Skomarovskyi arrived in Volyn, the very one against whom the SBU had opened a criminal case. \nNot alone. \nBut with the candidacy of Mykola Kuzmovych Holiev, which someone proposed for the post of head of the Yahodyn customs. \nAnd I thought that it was the end of my orange (it seems Yulia Volodymyrivna has already suggested a new super-color to the country – orange-blue). \n…This country suffocated from the lack of new cadres, when within a few months all officials were replaced. Here Yushchenko and company can be understood. Journalists little by little swallowed the indecently interesting personnel decisions of the new government. But this time even in the upper reaches of the Volyn White House they could not swallow the Kyiv personnel spit. \nSkomarovskyi proposed Holiev for Yahodyn. And why not: the President said that customs must be headed by people who had not previously worked there, that is, by logic, had not stolen there. So here you have Holiev: he did not work at customs, he has experience of official work, he's a lad from Volyn, meet him… \nMykola Kuzmovych indeed did not work at customs. About what Holiev did until the end of the 1990s we will keep silent – let the one who knows for certain write about it. But when he and a few companions had accumulated sufficient wealth, "Volyntorhinvestbank" was established in Lutsk. \nIt is also about Mykola Kuzmovych that TACIS experts in August 2000 in a report concerning the liquidation of CB "Volyntorhinvestbank" noted: "...our analysis of the economic activity of VTIB and some of its clients gives grounds for bringing the participants and managers of the bank to official, criminal, administrative and civil liability." Then TACIS experts demanded a criminal investigation against Holiev, in particular because he demanded compensation of personal funds by the bank being liquidated, to the detriment of other creditors. \nIf it has been forgotten – at the beginning of 1999 "Volyntorhinvestbank" stopped issuing clients their deposits. It was impossible to rehabilitate the bank and in October of that year the NBU decided to liquidate it. The long procedure dragged on for several years until brave lads from Dnipropetrovsk turned up who with one left hand bought VTB and paid all its obligations (in our country it is easier and cheaper to create a new bank in this way than to start the whole procedure from scratch). True, calculate the return on a deposit made in 1998 (dollar – 1.8 UAH) and received in the summer of 2000 (4.3 UAH)… \nYou'll say, well, who doesn't have that happen, and bigger banks have crashed. But the highlight is in the manner of crashing. If we refer to those same TACIS experts, and also to the stories told to the author by clients of the bank (among them, to my journalistic luck, there turned out to be quite a few ex-militiamen and …whatever), then the benderiada looked like this: VTB attracted funds from the population at 30-50 percent (the rates were consistently the highest in the region), actively lent to firms whose owners were, as a rule, participants of the bank. At the height of the 1998 crisis, when only fools were lending, the bank issued a credit to "its own" firm at 9% per annum – for those times not laughable, fantastic interest rates. After that, I quote the TACIS Report, "the participants of the bank tried to obtain credits issued to themselves earlier than other creditors. The participants of the bank withdrew from the bank's membership and demanded that their shares be paid out immediately." The participants of the bank – that is also Mykola Holiev, who at the beginning of 1999 exited the game and the bank began to be managed by Vadym Vitynskyi. It is interesting that such a scheme turned out to be effective, because it did not contradict the legislation. By a court decision, "Volyntorhinvestbank" and one of Holiev's firms carried out a mutual offset: the bank was now not owed Holiev his share, and Holiev could not repay the credit to the bank. And individual depositors continued to suck their paws and pound the corridors of the bank and controlling structures hoping to receive their deposits. \nAnother clever credit was issued to "Lutsksavtotrans." This credit, issued practically to himself, Holiev also did not repay, and the lads and lasses from TACIS suspected that LAT's assets had been secretly transferred to another of Holiev's firms. To protect them from the creditor. \nThe thing you have read is only a stroke from the biography of Mykola Kuzmovych. A test for honesty. \nAnd then Mykola Kuzmovych surfaced in …Kyiv. In the State Tax Administration. \nSo there. \n…The regional state administration is not the instance that influences the personnel decisions of the State Customs Service, the governor's resume is not needed for them. But in the White House sit people who, fortunately, know well the history of at least "Volyntorhinvestbank" (who knows, maybe someone among the orange ones also spent several years knocking out their money from there). In a word, first one of Volodymyr Nalkovych's deputies swore that he would resign if the head did not intervene; and Bondar himself would not have been comfortable with Holiev – head of the Yahodyn customs – perhaps a key object in the accountable region. In a word, on the Kyiv Maidan they dug in their heels (it's hard to believe that Kyiv personnel events have a Volyn root too). \nWhere did Volodymyr Bondar and Vasyl Dmytruk phone that Tuesday in order to prevent Holiev's appointment? And it was THAT Tuesday when Kyiv was shaken after Zinchenko's statement. In the end, how did they manage to convince SOMEONE in Kyiv given that Volodymyr Skomarovskyi is considered a man of Poroshenko? Perhaps they were gathering the mobiles of Volyn people's deputies, Yeremeyev and Martynenko, as powerful as never before. Or maybe channels were engaged through the Lutsk automobile plant, which is part of the veiled assets of the ex-head of the NSDC? Or maybe the chaos in the ruling circles precisely helped to "bring down" Holiev, because the hint at the dark past of the candidacy for the head of a not-insignificant customs in the state gave trump cards to Zinchenko and Tymoshenko: Viktor Andriyovych, do you want proof? Here you are – Yahodyn... \nThe presentation of Holiev did not take place. \nFor now. \nLittle is known about Skomarovskyi's visit to Volyn. Except that there was no traditional-for-such-occasions buffet reception. The most interesting thing in this story for me is to find out who lobbied for Holiev's candidacy (I suspect that today he is a fully respectable and successful Kyiv official, in the end all of us are not sinless. But such a historical "train" is hardly supposed to adorn the biography of a post-orange customs chief). If this was really decided at the level of the NSDC secretary (you haven't forgotten about the Skomarovskyi-Poroshenko tandem?), then Zinchenko and Yulia are not being coy. \nIt will ultimately depend on the name of this lobbyist whether my orange will rot. \n