Sitting behind his desk, Volodymyr Zelensky looks you straight in the eye and asks for your wallet. The Ukrainian president on Thursday launched a crowdfunding campaign through which anyone, anywhere in the world, can participate in the war effort against Russia.
“Here, in one click, you can donate funds to protect our defenders, to save our civilians and to rebuild Ukraine. All funds will be transferred to the National Bank of Ukraine and allocated to the relevant ministry,” President Zelensky himself says on his Twitter page.
Custom-created by the government of Ukraine, the United24 website encourages people to send a few US dollars, or their equivalent in cryptocurrency. It offers the choice of directly financing the army, the Ukrainian health system or even the reconstruction of the country. Weekly reports are promised on the progress made thanks to the money of the donors who wish to take this parallel route to the official aid, organized by the States.
“If ever the funds are not allocated as announced by the site, as if I chose to donate for medical aid, I will have no way of knowing if my money will be used in this way” , warns Michelle Cumyn, professor at the Faculty of Law of Laval University and expert in crowdfunding.
As the campaign collects payments on its own site, without going through known international crowdfunding platforms, such as GoFundMe, the donor can therefore say goodbye to his recourse in the event of a problem.
Government crowdfunding
This Ukrainian campaign is also unusual in that it is the equivalent of a direct delivery of donations to a government, analyzes Mme Cumyn. Usually, crowdfunding is a private initiative that serves precisely to compensate for the shortcomings of government action. The best-known platforms also prohibit the payment of funds to foreign government entities, in accordance with US laws.
“What is unusual is to carry out a crowdfunding campaign that involves arming the military,” adds Dominique Arel, professor at the University of Ottawa and holder of the Chair in Ukrainian Studies.
He specifies that crowdfunding initiatives had already emerged locally to finance the purchase of non-lethal equipment and clothing for soldiers fighting in eastern Ukraine from 2014. “There is this tradition in Ukraine,” he said, not least because the country’s institutions, like the army, were plagued by corruption.
“The control mechanisms are not specified for this socio-financing”, specifies Mr. Arel, who adds however that the army has been deeply reformed since that time. He believes that the new portal, which takes advantage of “the main asset of Ukraine, the image of President Zelensky”, will be especially useful for reconstruction, since many countries already offer Ukraine significant military aid.
Questioned on the subject, the Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, did not discourage the sending of private donations to the government of Mr. Zelensky. “It’s always a choice [de donner ou non à cette campagne] which is everyone’s responsibility, but at the same time, Quebecers and Canadians can be [sûrs] that the Government of Canada, which represents them, [agit en ce qui concerne] the current conflict,” she said on the sidelines of a meeting with her Swedish counterpart in Ottawa on Thursday.
Minister Joly recalled that her government sent an additional $500 million in military aid, provided $150 million in humanitarian aid and pledged to lend Ukraine up to $1 billion through of the International Monetary Fund.
Under the microscope in Canada
Ukraine’s appeal for public donations comes barely a week after Canada became the first country in the world to tighten restrictions on crowdfunding platforms to prevent them from financing illegal activities, including including through cryptocurrencies.
The federal government has been concerned by the astonishing success of two crowdfunding campaigns for Freedom Convoy, a massive anti-government protest against health measures that disrupted downtown Ottawa for three weeks this winter. A total of more than $20 million has been raised, first on the GoFundMe platform, then on its competitor GiveSendGo. Only one of these millions could finally be paid to the organizers.
Some provisions of the emergency measures invoked by the government to remove the occupiers forced crowdfunding platforms to report transactions suspected of financing illegal activities. This obligation was previously only incumbent on financial institutions and payment service providers. A regulation published on April 27 extended it for good to crowdfunding.
“With regard to crowdfunding sites, we are the first government to have put these provisions in place,” confirmed the head of the financial crimes and security division at the Department of Finance of Canada, Julien Brazeau, during a meeting. a parliamentary committee on Tuesday.
Ukraine’s United24 campaign, however, appears to be excluded from the new federal rules, which only affect platforms “that direct these services to Canadians,” the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Canada (FINTRAC) says in an email. sent to To have to.
On the other hand, FINTRAC could have in its sights hypothetical similar initiatives on the Russian side, since its mission is also to prevent the laundering of money resulting from the avoidance of sanctions against Russia.