Immigration: The Shakedown

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Pavlo Zhuk born and raised in the United States in 1973 was the son of Ukrainian immigrants. His mother and father fled Kiev during World War II and by 1951 ended up settling in the Cleveland and then later moved to California in 1973 when his father accept a job there. Pavlo was the last of six children and grew up speaking English and Ukrainian at home. Upon graduating with top honors from an engineering school he worked for three years in Silicon Valley as a system analyst and then entered an MBA program. Before graduation he decided to set up his own company which developed software for order-fulfillment systems. He named his company Customer Strategy Solutions and it proved to be successful. Five years later he employed 35 people and generated annual revenues of $40 million with reported profits.
Zhuk did a summer internship in UK as an exchange student and while he was there met and became friends with another Ukrainian from Britain, Kostya Hnatyuk. The two became friends due to their common heritage and mutual love of soccer, and continued to stay friends. Hnatyuk was electronic engineer and worked in Kiev as the vise president of a German company that sold seeds, pesticides and fertilizers in the Commonwealth of Independent States. When Zhuk asked Hnatyuk about starting up a software development center in Kiev, Hnatyuk immediately volunteered to quit his job and help set it up. Both driven by a desire to help create opportunities and bring hope to fellow Ukrainian in Kiev they began their adventure in setting up the company.
In the process of getting the development center up and running a state owned telecommunications utility, Dnipro Telecom, had made it difficult for Zhuk to get the phone lines his comp...

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...wer was. If he pulled out of Ukraine then he would be deserting his partner and the employees that he has grown to know over time, Could he do that to them? Also should he give in and bargain with Simonenko and her boss opening up the door for others to try and blackmail them also. What if the UTA was on the up and up? Then all they would have to do is prove that all the paperwork had been filed and all the taxes were paid.
The way governments control issues are so different from country to country. I think it would be hard to try and conform one to be more like the other which is what Zhuk I believe was hoping to do. Personally I would have like to have read more on this case; I wanted to know how it ended. (The Shakedown by Phil Bodrock , 2005)

Works Cited

The Shakedown by Phil Bodrock , Harvard Business School Pulishing Corporation, 8 (March 2005).

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