Workers Resistance - Fraud

Fraud

In February 2000, leading members of Workers' Resistance began contacting various socialist political parties and internationals via the internet. They chose groupings without contacts in Ukraine, and used various invented party names. Posing as these organisations, they began discussions with them and talked about joint work. Most of the organisations were keen to develop links, and responded to requests for money to translate and print documents, purchase computer equipment or maintain an office.

As the fraud progressed, they undertook some poor quality translations, to satisfy their partner organisations. Some organisations met members of Workers Resistance in person, without suspecting that they were not who they claimed to be. With the apparent proliferation of socialist groups in Ukraine, the fraudsters began inventing polemics between their various front organisations. This complex web of activity, and the small amounts of money actually obtained, has led to suggestions that the fraud may have been intended to discredit certain groups, or may even have simply been run for entertainment value.

Suspicions grew in several organisations as the complex fraud proved difficult to maintain. The Coordination Council of the Workers Movement (a Maoist organisation in Ukraine) attempted to alert the League for the Fourth International to the fraud, but were not believed. The situation was finally exposed in 2003, when a small Group of Proletarian Revolutionaries-Collectivists informed different left-wing activists and groups about the fraud.

In an attempt to cover their tracks, the fraudsters had produced documents in the names of members of the Coordination Council of the Workers Movement, but people who had met the perpetrators were able to identify them and they soon admitted the fraud.