Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Dmitry Shymkiv: Soros’s money plus Microsoftization of the entire country. PART 1
Who is destroying Bill Gates’ competitors in Ukraine? From autumn 2015 to summer 2016, Ukrainian IT companies were hit by a wave of complex inspections and “mask show” raids, paralyzing their work. According to some victims, the person behind all this was the Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration for Administrative and Economic Reforms Dmytro Shymkiv. The most interesting thing is that he already had similar experience of “harassing business” back during the reign of Yanukovych, when Shymkiv headed the Ukrainian branch of “Microsoft”.
At the same time, Shymkiv, who captivates ordinary people with his soft voice and invariable friendly smile, constantly promotes himself as the most advanced member of the presidential “reform team”. In publications and press releases, in the style of which the pen of BTL advertising professionals can be discerned, he appears to Ukrainians as a liberal European economist and advanced IT manager, with extensive experience in international IT companies, a patron of high technology and modern innovations. But what is this multifaceted person, who loves the word “responsibility” very much, but at the same time usually uses it in relation to others, really like? Will tell Skeleton.Info.
Dmitry Shimkiv. “Horns and Hooves Software”
The first suspicions of the “inflated” biography of the Deputy Head of the Administration for Reforms arise when trying to get to know the international IT companies that he headed. So, let’s start from the very beginning: Dmytro Anatolyevich Shymkiv was born on September 28, 1975 in Lviv, where at the age of 13 he transferred to Secondary School No. 52 with in-depth study of mathematics and English. After graduating, he studied at the Lviv Polytechnic University, where he received a diploma in “engineer of information technology, electronics and telecommunications”. All that was in store for a young graduate in Ukraine at that time was to get a job as a system administrator in some company and enjoy a salary of 200-300 dollars. Therefore, it is quite understandable why Dmytro Shymkiv went to Europe to earn money.
According to his biography, in 1998 he arrived in Denmark, where he began working for the company “ALTA Copenhagen”. But here’s the problem: today, all attempts to search both Google and Yandex, which is now banned in Ukraine, find mentions of this company exclusively in short biographies of Dmitry Shimkiv, and nowhere else. The only similar phrase is the air route “Copenhagen – Alta”, and the city of Alta is located in Norway. And there is also a Czech-Russian company “ALTA”, which is not engaged in software, but in mechanical engineering and metalworking. How can this be understood, since the company has since closed or changed its name? Or maybe it “went into the shadows”? Or did it never exist?
But then we read in Shymkiv’s biography that in 2000 he allegedly (now allegedly!) returned to Ukraine, where he used the money he earned to create his own company, “Alfa Team”, which he sold in 2002 to a certain Danish corporation, “ALTA A/S”, which renamed it “ALTA Eastern Europe”. Thanks to this, Shymkiv was highly valued, accepted into “ALTA A/S” as the head of the R&D department “to manage an international team of developers”, and was also left to manage his sold “ALTA Eastern Europe”. Very beautifully written, impressive! But once again “Google” and “Yandex” shrug their shoulders, finding “ALTA A/S” and “ALTA Eastern Europe” only in Shymkiv’s biography! But this was already the period of 2002-2006, a time of rapid development of the Internet, and information about these companies should certainly have been preserved! Why does this story remind one of some company called “Horns and Hooves Software”?
Finally, in 2006, a note appeared in his biography as “CEO of RedPrairie Eastern Europe”, declared as “an international developer of productivity solutions”. And here again some “misunderstandings” arise! Search engines provide information about the American company “RedPrairie Corporation”, which is indeed a developer of programs for managing and optimizing cargo transportation, warehouses, trading companies, etc. But looking for any mention of “RedPrairie Eastern Europe” is simply useless – unless it was some secret representative office of “RedPrairie” in Eastern Europe! All this raises a very big question: where and who did Dmitry Shimkiv actually work for in 1998-2007, and why are companies that mysteriously disappeared or did not exist at all listed in his official biography?
But everything is in order with his records of “social activities”. Since 2003, Dmytro Shymkiv has been a member of the board of the Ukrainian branch of AIESEC – a real international youth organization of “students and graduates”, which declares itself as “non-profit, non-political and independent” (standard “grant-eaters”). True, for a graduate he was already a bit old, but in Ukraine it is not uncommon for youth organizations and student unions to be led by people even “nearly fifty”. Especially if this is related to receiving grants from Western funds or their Ukrainian branches.
And right after the first Maidan, Shymkiv joined the Working Group on Foreign Investments under President Yushchenko as an expert. Not bad for a person whose work biography consisted of work in “ghost” companies! Therefore Skeleton.Info knows the opinion that Dmytro Shymkiv got into this council not because he had “experience in managing international companies”, but thanks to the patronage of some forces to whom Viktor Yushchenko owed his victory. There are only rumors about this: in particular, they claim that in the past Shymkiv was not engaged in software development at all, but in its sales and the fight against competitors, and also that the companies Shymkiv worked for were associated with the US government. However, this is not really a secret. Firstly, the American government does not hide the fact that it protects and lobbies the interests of the same “Microsoft” all over the world. And secondly, in March 2007 Dmytro Shymkiv got a job at “Microsoft Ukraine” as a sales director – which means that he already had both the relevant work experience and a good reputation in this company, which, pursuing an aggressive competitive policy, does not put unverified people at the head of its departments.
Dmitry Shimkiv
Shimkiwa method
Dmytro Shymkiv received his new position immediately after the meeting of the Vice President of Microsoft International Jean-Philippe Courtois with the President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko. Moreover, the main topic of this meeting was the fight against computer piracy, or more precisely, the use of unlicensed Microsoft software in Ukraine. At that time, the figure was 85%, and the conversation was primarily about “business software”, that is, programs for computers of private companies and government agencies. The second point was “household piracy”, for which Ukraine had been paying the price since 2003, when Washington gave Kyiv a serious ultimatum for “illegal copying” of films and music. At that time, the talk was mainly about selling “pirated disks,” which were sold everywhere, but in 2007, the first Ukrainian and Russian file-sharing sites (torrent trackers) appeared, which, with the beginning of an increase in Internet speeds (and a decrease in prices for it), began to gain wild popularity.
All of this was interconnected: piracy was reducing Microsoft sales, and successful combating it automatically meant increased sales. And Shymkiv enthusiastically took up his job: it was with his arrival at the helm of Microsoft Ukraine that the company’s policy in the country changed. Previously, licensed Microsoft products were promoted by advertising them as more reliable, higher quality, convincing Ukrainians to make a voluntary, reasonable choice. Since 2007, the company’s sales policy began to be built exclusively on combating unlicensed software and imposing its products on government agencies and private companies. The latter was generally Shymkiv’s “thing”, who used all his connections in the Ukrainian government for this (as well as the influence of Microsoft and the State Department on it).
Dmitry Shymkiv’s opportunities became even greater when he became the CEO of Microsoft Ukraine in May 2009, and a year later joined the board of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine. The company’s head office decided that Shymkiv’s “aggressive sales” method would be most effective in crisis-ridden Ukraine, where purchasing power had fallen sharply and it was not worth counting on a “voluntary choice”. In addition, Shymkiv’s candidacy was again supported by Jean-Philippe Courtois. Considering that in the late 90s and early 2000s Courtois headed the marketing and sales department of Microsoft in Europe, it is possible that even then he could have been not only an acquaintance, but also Shymkiv’s boss.
Dmytro Shymkiv headed Microsoft Ukraine from 2009 to the end of 2013, and during this period the Ukrainian branch of the corporation set two priorities for itself. The first: software sales through the fight against piracy, based on the principle of replacing unlicensed Microsoft programs with licensed ones. Moreover, users were often offered only to buy an activation code or just a branded sticker-stamp, without the need to reinstall the programs. Many still remember that most of the inspections of the authorities “for the presence of unlicensed software” boiled down to the fact that the police (or other inspectors) simply briefly examined the system units – whether the “stamp” was stuck on them. First of all, private firms were “harassed” in this way, then budgetary organizations, state enterprises, but in the offices of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service of Ukraine, the Ministry of Defense and the prosecutor’s office, branded “Microsoft” stickers were on only 30% of computers – and this was in the summer of 2013.
Shimkiv’s successful marketing move was to impose Microsoft products through sales of “factory” (already assembled and tested) PC system units, as well as laptops that were rapidly gaining popularity. At first, all large electronics stores were prohibited from selling computers with unlicensed programs already installed (it was very difficult to prohibit this for small ones). But since computers with only a BIOS attracted few buyers, Microsoft persuaded sellers to install their Windows on them and include its cost in the price of the product. And in 2012-2013, batches of laptops with Windows installed by wholesalers were already being brought to stores. Thus, Windows effectively imposed its product, depriving buyers of the opportunity to choose. But each licensed operating system for a home computer then cost about 100 dollars.
Here is the other side of Dmitry Shymkiv’s marketing policy: in December 2010, Microsoft Ukraine demanded that electronics chain stores remove from sale all… licensed Xbox 360 game discs. This utter stupidity was explained by the fact that Microsoft had not given permission to sell licensed Xbox 360 consoles in Ukraine. According to Shymkiv’s logic, if licensed game consoles are not sold in Ukraine, then licensed discs for them should not be sold either (and unlicensed ones should be destroyed). He did not even consider the option of Ukrainians buying licensed consoles in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) or Europe! The most curious thing is that the decision not to sell licensed Xbox 360 in Ukraine was made earlier (by the same Shymkiv) due to the lack of licensed games for sale. It turns out to be a vicious circle of stupidity! But Ukrainians still bought both Xbox 360 consoles (22% of gaming console sales in 2011) and game discs for them – but only unlicensed ones. In fact, due to Shymkiv’s fault, Microsoft suffered considerable losses by not putting its gaming products on sale. Nevertheless, in 2011 Shymkiv was recognized as the best top manager at Microsoft and one of the best company managers in Ukraine!
The second priority of Microsoft Ukraine was personnel policy: small investments in support of talented young Ukrainian programmers, the best of whom were selected to work first for companies associated with Microsoft, and then the best were promised direct contracts with Microsoft. This was often done in cooperation with Soros structures, which was not surprising: in 2010, Dmytro Shymkiv joined the board of the Bohdan Hawrylyshyn Foundation (the founder of the Renaissance Foundation, a direct Ukrainian branch of the Soros Foundation). Thus, Soros’s “charitable” support of talented Ukrainians helped in the search for personnel for Microsoft – but Ukraine itself did not gain anything from this. At the same time, in the period from 2005 (when Shymkiv loomed behind Viktor Yushchenko) to the present day (when he has been behind Poroshenko for three years), Ukraine has not created a real, functioning program to support its own IT industry at the state level. But all these years, successive authorities have essentially protected the interests of the American “Microsoft” in Ukraine.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info
CONTINUATION: Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Dmitry Shymkiv: Soros’s money plus Microsoftization of the entire country. PART 2
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