Workers Resistance

Workers Resistance was a Trotskyist political party in Ukraine. It was a member of the Committee for a Workers' International. The party was founded in 1994.

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 organizations, they began discussions with them and talked about joint work. Most of the organizations 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 organizations. Some organizations 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 organizations. 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 organizations as the complex fraud proved difficult to maintain. The Coordination Council of the Workers Movement 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.

CWI response

The seven individuals involved in the fraud were expelled from the CWI in September 2003 following an investigation by the CWI's International Secretariat which first learned of the allegations against the Ukrainian section earlier in the summer.
On August 29, 2003, the CWI issued a statement on the affair which said, in part:
The statement concluded with the decisions to:
Since then, Workers Resistance in Ukraine has been reorganized and there has been an attempt to rebuild the party around its remaining members.

Organisations affected

Organisations which were affected by the fraud include:

The International Bolshevik Tendency lobbied events organised by CWI member groups asking for a refund of the money they had donated, but the CWI did not return the money, as they claimed they did not have it.