The Virginia-born lawyer has been practicising in Ukraine for 24 years and now proposes a four-point economic rescue plan for the country which he is promoting with an advertising campaign. One proposal is to find a way of making up for the lack of independent judges in the country. He said: 'The solution is not more laws or more speeches, the solution is to address the consequences of corruption by creating an independent legal authority.' A legal ombudsman service would be a way round this - and would speed up decisions and make sure they were enforced. At the moment, he says that even if a business wins a decision, the ruling 'rarely comes in time to save the business that is affected'. 

Small salaries

A fundamental problem regarding judges is, he said: 'You cannot expect judges and officials to render proper decisions when their salaries are too small to reasonably live on and so small that they encourage corruption.' Mr Toms is manager of the law firm B C Toms & Co. Source: Kviv Post