A Legal Aid Charity

The prominent US financier and philanthropist George Soros and People’s Deputy of Ukraine Viktor Pinchuk, are going to establish a joint legal aid foundation in Ukraine. This was announced by Mr. Soros himself last Wednesday at a ceremonial reception in Kyiv. “This is a practical and constructive result of my visit,” Mr. Soros said, thanking Mr. Pinchuk for his readiness to be a partner in setting up this kind of foundation. Mr. Soros also expressed a hope that something “of even a more large-scale nature” might be established in Ukraine. He also said reaching a cooperation agreement with Mr. Pinchuk was “the first major contribution to the establishment of a legal aid foundation by a local philanthropist.”

As Mr. Pinchuk explained to the journalists, it is planned that the foundation will employ student lawyers who will be giving free legal advice, thus upgrading their professional skills. There are about 200 higher educational institutions in this country that train lawyers, Mr. Pinchuk pointed out. He recalled that foundations of this kind had already been functioning in seventeen Ukrainian regions and said he was sure they could be set up in every administrative center.

Also on the program of Mr. Soros’s four-day visit to Ukraine, which ended on April 2, were meetings with Anti-AIDS Foundation president Olena Franchuk (wife of Viktor Pinchuk and daughter of President Leonid Kuchma), Public Health Minister Andriy Pidayev, and representatives of various non-governmental organizations, during which the two sides discussed the prospects of cooperation in implementing anti- AIDS programs.