Yanukovych

MOJO

...Pinchuk appears to have long-standing ties to Yanukovych. According to emails released by the State Department, Pinchuk, a major donor to the Clinton Foundation, met in 2011 with an aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to convey a message that Yanukovych, whose growing Kremlin ties worried US officials, remained committed to Ukraine’s integration with Europe.

In 2012, Pinchuk allegedly secretly bankrolled a report by Skadden, Arps, a prominent law firm, that defended the legal basis of Yanukoych’s imprisonment of his predecessor, Yulia Tymoshenko. Skadden revealed Pinchuk’s role in January when the firm agreed to pay $4.6 million to settle a Justice Department case that grew out of Mueller’s investigation into Manafort, who helped arrange for the firm’s report. Pinchuk has denied funding the report.

https://www.newsweek.com/giuliani-mysterious-ties-russia-former-soviet-union-decades-1215349

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Trump Lawyer Rudy Giuliani's Mysterious Ties to Russia and Former Soviet Union Go Back Decades, Experts Argue

BY CRISTINA MAZA ON 11/16/18

02:21Who is Rudy Giuliani?

WORLD

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

DONALD TRUMP

RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

GIULIANI

While lawyer and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani represents President Donald Trump on matters related to the special counsel's investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia, Giuliani has maintained his own ties to the Kremlin and its allies.

In the month of October, Giuliani traveled to Armenia at the invitation of a Kremlin-linked businessman to participate in a forum for a Russia-led economic union. That same month, the former New York mayor was also named in a criminal complaint because his former law firm allegedly helped Kazakh fugitives launder stolen money. Both Armenia and Kazakhstan were once part of the Soviet Union, and today their governments, security services and intelligence organizations maintain close ties to Moscow.

But experts say Giuliani's ties to individuals from the former Soviet Union go back decades—and his lucrative connections to the region have occasionally been intertwined with Trump's.

"One of Giuliani's earliest associations was with Semyon 'Sam' Kislin, who donated money to both his 1993 and 1997 campaigns [for mayor] and was appointed by Giuliani to serve on the New York City Mayor's Council of Economic Advisors," Olga Lautman, an investigative reporter who spent three years tracking ties between the Russian mafia and Trump's associates, told Newsweek.

Kislin's website details that the Russian was an active member of the mayor's council until Giuliani left office in 2001.

"According to FBI and Interpol reports, Kislin, a wealthy commodities trader, was using his company to launder money from Russia to the U.S.," Lautman added.

Giuliani and his representatives did not respond to numerous requests for comment from Newsweek.

Giuliani's former law firm also has longstanding ties to a couple from Kazakhstan who fled their country after being accused of stealing millions.

On October 8, Viktor Khrapunov, the former mayor of the Kazakh city of Almaty, and his wife, Leila Khrapunova, were found guilty of financial fraud, taking bribes and running a criminal organization. They were sentenced to 17 and 14 years in jail respectively. Law enforcement officials say the couple helped launder around $10 billion stolen from their country.

It is unlikely, however, that the Khrapunovs will go to prison anytime soon. The couple is avoiding jail time in Switzerland, where it is exceptionally difficult to get an extradition request approved. Lawyers representing the city of Almaty argue that the couple successfully laundered billions of dollars stolen from Kazakhstan in jurisdictions across the U.S. and the world. There are currently court cases pending against them in California and New York.

Court documents allege that the Khrapunovs have deep ties to Trump's former adviser Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman with a criminal history who claims to have been a CIA informant. In 2013, Sater's development company Bayrock helped the Khrapunovs purchase three condos in Trump Tower Soho and quickly resell the properties.

Financial analysts say it's likely the purchases were used to launder money.

It is unclear whether Trump was aware of the purchase or of the origin of the funds used to buy the condos. But Giuliani, Trump's longtime friend and associate, must have been aware that the Khrapunov's money had a dubious provenance. Years earlier, Giuliani's law firm helped establish a company in the Netherlands through which some of the couple's money was funneled.

On October 22, the New York City-based human rights organization Avaazfiled a complaint asking Dutch courts to investigate two companies that were set up in the Netherlands to launder some of the Khrapunovs' stolen funds.

The companies are Bayrock B.V., the Dutch subsidiary of Sater's former employer Bayrock Group LLC, and KazBay B.V., another company Bayrock Group opened for the Khrapunovs.

KazBay B.V. was registered in 2007 with the assistance of Giuliani's then-law firm Bracewell & Giuliani LLP.

"Rudy Giuliani's law firm was involved in setting up one of the companies, and there are a bunch of overlapping connections between that company and the other companies connected to the Khrapunovs, like the Switzerland-based company Helvetica Capital S.A.," Emma Ruby-Sachs, deputy director of Avaaz, told Newsweek.

"One of the concrete connections is that $1.5 million went into KazBay from Bayrock and Helvetica. We also know that the biggest overlap is in the stakeholders and individuals used to set up these companies, and we know there is a connection between this fraud and Felix Sater," Ruby-Sachs added.

Sater, a longtime adviser of President Trump who attempted to help him set up a Trump Tower in Moscow, is named as a beneficiary in the complaint. Giuliani is personally named over a dozen times in the complaint's footnotes.

It was not the first time Giuliani and his firm had dealt with Kazakhstan. Bracewell & Giuliani LLP had an office in the country as early as 1997, the same year Khrapunov became mayor of Almaty. Giuliani's firm used its office in Kazakhstan to collect donations from U.S. expats for the former mayor's failed presidential bid in 2008. During the campaign in 2007, Giuliani threw a fundraising event in Almaty. It's unclear if he ever traveled to the country personally.

Ten years later, Giuliani has been working for Trump, but he has refused to give up his lucrative contracts with foreigners. In June, he traveled to Paris to speak at the annual conference of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), an Iranian opposition group that the U.S. government previously listed as a foreign terrorist organization. People familiar with the matter told Newsweek that the MeK often pays speakers five-figure sums.

But experts say the former mayor has placed a specific emphasis on cultivating ties with the former Soviet Union, and that he has made numerous trips to the region, including some since Trump took office.

"In 2004, Giuliani took a trip to Russia and met with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Moscow's then-Mayor Yury Luzhkov, known for his corruption and dealings with Russian organized crime officials, and he unexpectedly made his way to a steel plant near the Kazakh border. Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works was flush with cash and looking for acquisitions in the U.S., and some speculated that Giuliani was eyeing a role as the middleman," Lautman explained to Newsweek.

[Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani speaks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during their meeting in Moscow, on September 9, 2004.

ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/GETTY IMAGES]

Many of Giuliani's trips to the region were organized with the assistance of a murky consulting firm called Tri Global Strategic Ventures. According to the company's website, several people on the company's board have links to the Russian government, including Ara Abramyan, the Armenian businessman who invited Giuliani to Armenia last month.

Tri Global Strategic Ventures did not return requests for comment from Newsweek. A phone number for the company's alleged spokesman Vitaly Pruss led to the voice mailbox of an employee who identified herself as Veronica, but neither Abramyan nor Veronica returned Newsweek's calls.

Last year, Tri Global Strategic Ventures organized a trip for Giuliani to the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, where he met with Kharkiv Mayor Hennadiy Kernes and the oligarch Pavel Fuchs, both of whom were loyal to the Pro-Putin regime of former Ukrainian PresidentViktor Yanukovych.

Fuchs, who made his fortune in Moscow's real estate industry, allegedly played a role in the failed attempts to establish a Trump Tower in Moscow around 2008. He is also reportedly under investigation in Ukraine for allegedlyattempting to purchase $160 million of the frozen assets of Yanukovych, who fled Ukraine for Russia in 2014 after being ousted by a pro-Western social movement.

[RELATED STORIES

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Giuliani Retweets 'Anti-Christ' Soros Attack

Rudy Giuliani Says US Will Overthrow Iranian Regime]

The website for Tri Global Strategic Ventures is peppered with pictures of Moscow's St. Basil's Cathedral and of Giuliani attending various meetings. Following Giuliani's 2017 trip to Ukraine, which was one of a handful of meetings with Ukrainians that Giuliani and his representatives held in the last year, the company published a press release claiming that "the meeting between the official delegation from the City of Kharkiv, Ukraine and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and John Huvane, CEO of Giuliani Security & Safety, was a success."

The president's lawyer's company will allegedly help the city of Kharkiv establish a new office for emergency management.

"The most controversial recent event was Giuliani's trip to Armenia last month at the invitation of Ara Abramyan, an oligarch closely linked to Putin.Giuliani spoke on a panel at the event alongside Sergei Glazyev, an official sanctioned by the U.S. who is an extremist and is viewed as a possible eventual successor to Putin,"Lautman added.

In an interview with the local press, Giuliani said he was visiting Yerevan, Armenia, as a private citizen and was not representing the U.S. president. Nevertheless, he failed to respond to questions about whether he was paid to appear on the panel with Glazyev, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin who was one of the first people sanctioned by former President Barack Obama for Russia's illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.

"Giuliani also met with Armenia's Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan. But overall, the visit itself seemed to be more about Guiliani's dealings with Russia and Mr. Abramyan than Armenia itself," Grigor Atanesian, an investigative reporter in Armenia, told Newsweek.

During his panel in Armenia last month, Giuliani lectured the audience about Armenia's ability to protect itself from cyberattacks. The event was part of the annual business forum of the Eurasian Economic Union, a Moscow-led economic bloc that includes Armenia, Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

lobbyist Pleads Guilty to Failing to Register as a Foreign Agent for Ukraine

September 5, 2018

Following closely behind a string of recent enforcement actions under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), on August 31, 2018, Samuel Patten, a former associate of Paul Manafort and prominent Washington, DC lobbyist, pleaded guilty for failing to register as a foreign agent under FARA and other counts, including causing and concealing foreign payments.

Mr. Patten’s plea and cooperation agreement stipulates that starting around 2014, he formed a lobbying and political consulting services company in the United States, which was retained to advise the Opposition Bloc (a Ukrainian political party) and members of that party, including a prominent Ukraine oligarch who had funded the party. Among other activities, the company performed political consulting services in the United States on behalf of its Ukrainian clients, including contacting members of the U.S. Legislative and Executive branches, as well as the media. The lobbying activity was undertaken to promote the interests of the Ukrainian oligarch and to influence U.S. public opinion. Mr. Patten also assisted the Ukrainian oligarch in drafting op-eds targeting the U.S. press, without disclosing that he was acting as an agent of the Opposition Bloc.

Notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Patten acknowledged engaging in one or more FARA registerable activities, including political activities, within the United States, and although aware that these activities triggered a registration obligation under FARA, Mr. Patten chose not to register under the statute. In addition to FARA violations, Mr. Patten also pleaded guilty to assisting the Ukrainian oligarch with illegally purchasing tickets to President Trump’s inauguration. Mr. Patten now faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. A sentencing date has yet to be set.

Mr. Patten’s prosecution is yet another example of the U.S. Department of Justice’s increasing focus on FARA enforcement. In 2017, Paul Manafort and Richard Gates were charged with knowingly and willfully violating FARA by failing to register as foreign agents of the government of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Party of Regions, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, and the Opposition Bloc. Shortly thereafter, in May 2018, Nisar Ahmed Chaudhry, a U.S. permanent resident and Pakistani national, pleaded guilty to charges that he failed to register as a foreign agent in connection with lobbying work he did for the Pakistani government to shape U.S. foreign policy from 2012 through 2018.

These recent prosecutions reinforce the importance of ensuring compliance with the statute – from registering as a foreign agent within the 10-day window for doing so to timely filing and labeling all informational materials that are disseminated to two or more persons. Indeed, foreign agents who intentionally and willfully violate any provision of the statute may be subject to significant criminal and/or civil penalties, including fines up to $10,000 and imprisonment for up to five years. Foreign agents who willfully make false statements or intentionally fail to provide material information in support of their registration or supplemental statements are also subject to these penalties.

https://pando.com/2014/02/28/pierre-omidyar-co-funded-ukraine-revolution-groups-with-us-government-documents-show/

war is boring 2017

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/trump-aides-and-russian-mobsters-pulled-strings-in-putins-massive-ukraine-gas-scheme-2ec3e6cef803

Trump Aides and Russian Mobsters Pulled Strings in Putin’s Massive Ukraine Gas Scheme

Follow the money

by BRIAN E. FRYDENBORG

Before Donald Trump was president or a candidate, and when he was hurting for investors as Wall Street had all but shut down loaning operations to him, his businesses established extensive ties to Russian oligarchs, including some allegedly affiliated with organized crime.

At the same time, associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russian government and future associates of Trump — most notably Paul Manafort, his future campaign chairman — were allegedly involved in a massive Eurasian natural gas and money laundering scheme worth billions of dollars, and part of Putin’s grand plan to control Ukraine.

At best, Trump may have had no knowledge of this scheme and these ties, but even this scenario highlights serious deficiencies in Trump’s judgment in terms of who he did business and politics with — and it is of urgent interest to the American people as Trump manages the nation as president.

While there is no direct proof of Trump’s knowing involvement or collusion in any single aspect of these dealings, the sheer number of them over a period of years and his close association with a number of key players, combined with his public statements as a presidential candidate, create a picture that stinks to high heaven and makes it more likely — not less — that something nefarious is going on between Team Trump and Team Putin.

We may never know exactly what happened or exactly who is responsible or exactlywhat Trump was and wasn’t aware of, but, despite ludicrous claims to the contrary, this has nothing to do with the media or with irresponsible speculation.

With so many questionable people, actions and circumstances, the only sane and responsible course forward is to continue to vigorously demand more answers to the questions Trump and his associates have raised because of their actions, especially since their accounts of these events and people keep shifting as more and more evidence comes to light.

After all, contrary to American civil criminal law, in the court of public opinion, the burden on a sitting president with so many questionable connections is for him to shed light on his dealings and to clear any hint of suspicion if he wants to earn the benefit of the doubt.

Time to go over what we do know, and what that information — when put together and given proper context — makes clear and what it suggests.

To begin to understand the big picture, let’s go back to 2004.

In 2004, Carter Page — later a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser — moved to Moscow to set up a branch for the New York investment firm Merrill Lynch. His bio on the website of Global Energy Capital LLC, which Page founded and where he is currently a managing partner, states that “[h]e spent 3 years in Moscow where he was responsible for the opening of the Merrill office and was an advisor on key transactions for Gazprom, RAO UES and others.”

As Page was setting up shop in Moscow, future Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort began running Victor Yanukovych’s political life.

Yanukovych is a notorious, scandal-ridden Ukrainian politician who first attracted global attention during the 2004 Ukrainian elections. Leonid Kuchma, the outgoing president during these elections, had appointed Yanukovych as his prime minister in 2002 and had backed him as a pro-Russian — and pro-Putin — candidate to succeed him in 2004.

Kuchna’s support extended to trying to rig the election for Yanukovych, which sparked the Orange Revolution that, in turn, led to victory for the more pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko, who had almost been killed by a mysterious poisoning incident.

Yanukovych had already developed a reputation for extreme corruptionby this time, but that did not stop Manafort from running Yanukovych’s 2004 campaign. Despite the loss, Manafort stuck around and was hired to take charge of both rehabilitating the disgraced Yanukovych and strategizing for his political party, the Party of Regions.

This type of work was hardly out of the ordinary for Manafort, and his client list over the years has included dictators such as Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos, Somalia’s Siad Barre, Sani Abacha of Nigeria and Kenya’s Daniel arap Moi. Other clients included Jonas Savimbi of the Angolan guerrilla group UNITA, and the Kashmiri American Council, a front group for Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.

Interestingly enough, the Associated Press recently published a bombshell of a story in which it was revealed that Manafort proposed in 2005 — through a formal memo, no less — a massive lobbying effort designed to discreetly promote Putin, the Russian government and their agenda while undermining their critics, with efforts concentrated in the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics.

Manafort sent the proposal to Oleg Deripaska, a fabulously wealthy Russian oligarch with ties to Russian organized crime who has a very close, generally good — — relationship with Putin and who was then working with Manafort to promote Russian interests in Montenegro.

Under the terms Manafort proposed, a contract was agreed upon in 2006 and lasted until at least 2009, one in which Manafort was paid $10 million a year and used a Delaware shell company — LOAV Ltd.— to conduct official business and transactions. AP obtained numerous documents, memos, and wire transfer records to corroborate its story.

In 2014, Deripaska and Manafort had a dramatic falling out, resulting in a $19 million Cayman Islands court battle related to their alleged efforts to launder money for Yanukovych and his allies, but not before the aforementioned working relationship was well established.

The AP story broke just hours before CNN would report that FBI officials have information describing how “associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”

The AP soon after reported that U.S. Treasury officials are investigating Manafort’s offshore financial dealings. If these interactions seem dramatic, Manafort’s machinations involving Ukraine are even more so

...

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Dirty gas money

Court documents allege that Manafort first became acquainted with Yanukovych in 2003, a time when he also began cozying up to Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs allied with Yanukovych and Putin.

Throughout the rest of the decade, Manafort entered into a variety of shady business deals with some of these oligarchs and others, deals that generally seemed to have some ulterior motive in advancing Putin’s agenda in the background.

In particular, around the same time he began interacting with Yanukovych, Manafort befriended Dmitry Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch, natural gas businessman and Putin ally, according to court documents.

Firtash, featured in the Panama Papers revelations, had been the main middleman bringing in both Russian and Central Asian natural gas to Ukraine since 2002 and was linked to Semion Mogilevich, the essential head, or “boss of bosses” of the Russian mafia. Mogilevich is also a friend of Putin’s and was one of the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted fugitives from 2009–2015.

In mid-2004, Putin and outgoing Ukrainian president Kuchma created a Swiss-registered company called RosUkrEnergo [RUE] to replace the company represented by Firtash that handled Ukraine’s Russian-related natural gas imports.

The imports ostensibly came from Turkmenistan, but also involved shady deals that seemed mostly orchestrated and subsidized by Gazprom dominated by Putin allies. Additionally, the gas traveled through pipes wholly owned by Gazprom that went mostly through Russian territory.

But not much changed with RUE in that Firtash ended up owning 45 percent of the new company, a stake that is partially a front for Mogilevich to control the company. Gazprom owned 50 percent of RUE, making clear the incestuous nature of the entire arrangement.

But there was a bigger picture, a greater purpose, to all these machinations than just Gazprom dominance of the region’s gas industry, and the specifics of the deal make the following scheme quite easy to understand.

Gazprom would basically sell billions of dollars of gas to Firtash through RUE at a steal of a price. Next, Firtash would sell billions of dollars of gas at hiked-up prices to Ukraine, with the profits directed to funding pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. Finally, Putin’s allies in the financial industry would open up lines of credit for Firtash in the billions of dollars so he could buy key Ukrainian assets and multiply his influence further.

It’s no coincidence that this scam came into being not long after Yanukovych’s defeat at the hands of a more pro-Western candidate. Unsurprisingly, some of the disputes between Ukraine and Russia involved fighting over gas deals. This all culminated in January 2006 when Russia shut its gas flow into Ukraine and therefore into much of Europe as well, which received the vast majority of its gas from pipes passing through Ukrainian territory.

After the shutoff, Firtash and his allies rearranged their business.

First, RUE became the exclusive and direct supplier of all natural gas coming from Central Asia and Russia, and, along with Gazprom and Gazexport?—?a subsidiary?—?it would sell to Ukrainian industrial customers via a joint venture with Naftogaz Ukrainy, Ukraine’s state-owned energy company.

The new joint venture was called UkrGazEnergo, and would sell gas to Naftogaz to distribute among Ukrainian households and municipalities.

But there was another key factor in the deal: RAO UES?—?Russia’s state-owned power company?—?would buy and import Ukrainian-generated electricity into European Russia, with the Ukrainian government providing that energy from the gas that RUE was being paid by Ukraine to import from Turkmenistan. And again, RUE would act as the intermediary.

One of the reasons for this confusing complexity is that at each stage along the way there was the possibility of marking up or down the price when it suited the purposes of those who set up the system in the first place.

Naturally, this overall deal was so unpopular with Ukrainians?—?who felt cheated at getting sold gas at hiked-up prices by entities with little supervision and with opportunities for massive corruption?—?that Ukraine’s parliament voted against the deal, albeit it ended up being a nonbinding vote and the agreement went ahead anyway.

This arrangement would last from 2006 through early 2009, when another dispute derailed it.

Carter Page in February 2017. PBS NewsHour screen capture

Page-Manafort connection

Which brings us back to Carter Page. It is important here to note that Page’s tenure at Merrill Lynch was from 2004–2007, and the only two companies his aforementioned current bio mentions in relation to this tenure are Gazprom and RAO EUS, claiming that he was an adviser on “key transactions” of theirs.

It is hard to imagine transactions more “key” than those involving natural gas being transported from Central Asia and Russia to Ukraine and Europe, the creation of RUE, and RAO’s subsequent deal with Ukraine.

If Page is telling the truth about his role, then it is virtually inconceivable?—?considering that he advised both Gazprom and RAO and the way they would be tied together starting in 2006?—?that he would not be aware of what was going on.

And after all, as someone with a Ph.D. and an MBA and a graduate the U.S. Naval Academy, Page would certainly have been aware of the geopolitics of these deals, and that they went against American interests at a time when Ukraine was trying to escape the stranglehold of the Kremlin.

However, Julia Ioffe’s profile of Page raises important questions about whether Page is exaggerating his role, and her story is filled with anecdotes from people knowledgeable about these types of deals who had never heard of Page?—?and people who did know of him suggested he was a nobody.

Read ‘Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism’]

Maybe Page deliberately kept a low profile. Without a more formal investigation, it is impossible to know what the full picture is. Even if Page exaggerated his role, if he was still talking to people at both Gazprom and RAO at this time?—?even if his discussions interactions may have been more informal than formal?—?it is certainly a realistic possibility that he still knew a lot and performed an advisory role, one that was perhaps unknown by his colleagues at Merrill.

Finally, if he knew what was going on and was involved, there is certainly a possibility of interest being piqued if he came to know that Manafort?—?another American?—?was involved on the other side of these deals, with the same being the case with Manafort. Interest on either side could have led to either one making contact with the other, which may have led to some sort of coordination.

This is admittedly speculative, but a real possibility nonetheless, and is certainly not one bit less speculative than an enormous portion of the mainstream media discussion and reporting on both the e-mail/server situation with Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.

The question of a possible Manafort and Page link, and the fact that they were involved on one level or another in the massive Eurasian gas scheme, deserve more official scrutiny and need to be answered through a formal investigation, because it is clear that those in question have no intention of sharing the truth.

Yulia Tymoshenko in June 2008. European People’s Party photo

Manafort and Putin’s allies prep Yanukovych’s comeback

As for the dispute that derailed the 2006 gas deal, the foundations were laid with the unpopular deal itself.

In 2007, Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and gas tycoon in her own right and a co-leader of the Orange Revolution, rose to become prime minister again. It was clear that she was on a mission to drive out Russian domination of the whole gas system and push against Russian influence in Ukraine overall.

This meant taking on Firtash, Mogilevich and the Russian mafia, and RUE.

Tymoshenko’s first step was to get rid of UkrGazEnergo, run by RUE and Naftogaz, but then Tymoshenko set her sights on taking RUE and Firtash?—?and thus Mogilevich and the Russian mobsters?—?out of the loop, which lead to a series of hostile exchanges between Russia and Ukraine.

In October 2008, Tymoshenko finally worked out a deal with Putin to remove RUE from Ukrainian gas deals, but they were subsequently unable to agree on pricing, leading to Russia to again shut off gas going into Ukraine, and by extension, most of Europe, for almost three weeks in January.

But on Jan. 19, 2009, a long-term, 10-year agreement was reached, and only a few days later normal flows were restored, much to the relief of not only Ukraine, but also Europe, as it was the middle of winter. Additionally, the parties agreed to take future disputes to arbitration in an international commercial dispute court in Stockholm, Sweden.

If it seemed the players of Team Putin gave up too easily on having RUE taken out of the game, they had other plans in motion to counter Tymoshenko’s effort to limit Russian influence in Ukrainian politics.

Manafort linked to possible money laundering during crackdown

Even before Putin agreed to let Tymoshenko shut down RUE, his agents?—?including Firtash, Mogilevich and Yanukovych (the latter with Manafort acting as his right-hand man)?—?were already putting in place plans to go around and escape her efforts.

Some of these involved setting up a U.S. investment fund initially capitalized with $100 million. Firtash paid Manafort and Rick Gates?—?who had joined Manafort’s efforts as part of his consulting firm in 2006?—?$1.5 million to handle the money. The main purpose of the fund was to allegedly act as a conduit to launder money from the Firtash gas dealings that were being scrutinized by the Tymoshenko government.

Among the various deals Firtash and Manafort went into was one in 2008 for $895 million for the site of the famous Drake Hotel on Park Avenue in New York, with Firtash wiring $25 million toward the project to make it look legitimate, and a further $25 million was later launderedthrough the project, according to a U.S. court indictment.

But rather than move forward and apply the money to the project, the Drake property was never actually purchased.

The deal, like their other deals, never closed and eventually fell through after many third parties had spent a lot of time and money trying to close it out and after many employees were not paid, but not before Manafort, Firtash, Mogilevich, Yanukovych and their allies were able to keep substantial funds away from the prying eyes of Tymoshenko and Ukrainian authorities during crucial periods of her time as prime minister.

Unfortunately for Firtash, Mogilevich and their backers, natural gas is not something that can be laundered. In early 2009, Tymoshenko orchestrated a seizure by Ukraine’s own state-run Naftogaz —allowed under the agreement she made with Putin?—?of 11 billion cubic meters of gas from RUE’s gas stockpiles, a quantity worth billions of dollars at the time.

Tymoshenko had effectively cut out the middlemen who had been hiking up prices and using those profits to poison and pollute Ukrainian politics.

Playing a longer-term game, Firtash initiated a lengthy arbitration process through Stockholm.

Other planted crops were already bearing fruit. Unfortunately for Tymoshenko, though she had risen to be prime minister late in 2007, in that election and even in the prior 2006 parliamentary elections, Manafort had built Yanukovych’s Party of Regions into a political force that campaigned with modern, highly effective techniques and tactics.

In both elections, the Party of Regions ended up having the most seats in parliament of any single party by significant margins, but ended up being in the opposition because of alliances made between Tymoshenko’s bloc and other parties.

Of course, Manafort and the Party of Regions were operating with a gigantic advantage?—?the enormous amount of money flowing from the massive Eurasian gas scam.

All this meant that Yanukovych’s opposition was certainly within striking distance of taking over the government, and that even by 2006 Manafort and the gas scheme had already achieved great success in rehabilitating Yanukovych and his party.

The distance would close in 2010.

Russia’s then-president Dmitry Medvedev, left, and Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2011. Kremlin photo

The downfall of Tymoshenko

Early in 2010, Yanukovych won the presidential race, defeating Tymoshenko in a runoff election, the culmination of over five years of work with Manafort and the whole gas scheme crew. Not long after, Tymoshenko lost her position as prime minister in a vote of no-confidence.

Meanwhile, in the wake of his victory, Yanukovych worked to undo many of the Orange Revolution reforms, curbing democratic freedoms in areas ranging from the courts to the press. Most notably, in December 2010, Tymoshenko was retroactively charged with abusing her power during her stint as prime minister, and, after a widely condemned politically-motivated show trial, was sentenced to prison in October 2011.

Paul Manafort and Rick Gates actually lobbied American lawmakers on behalf of Yanukovych’s government from 2012–2014,defending the imprisonment of Tymoshenko and trying to discredit her, as well as trying to improve the image of their client and his government. They did this without disclosing their lobbying activities as required by U.S. law.

Incidentally, these efforts were paid in part by Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s wealthiest man for the last eight years, a client of Manafort’s since his earliest days in Ukraine, and for whom Manafort helped arrange a meeting with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.

Manafort and Akhmetov utilized the services of two Washington, D.C. lobbying firms, including Podesta Group Inc., run by the brother of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman and later victim of Russian-government hacking and WikiLeaks disclosures.

The day after this information was made public in mid-August 2016, Manafort resigned from his role as the chairman of the Trump campaign. As for Gates, it was unclear at the time if he had stayed on board or left and the Trump campaign refused to clarify the matter.

Lobbying efforts throughout the Yanukovych period were also hardly limited to Manafort and Gates, with those efforts having for years been tied to prominent Republicans in the United States.

Perhaps most prominent among the lobbyists, former Kansas senator and 1996 Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole?—?for whom Manafort had been a strategist?—?was paid more than half a million to lobby for Deripaska, who was then, and is still, denied a U.S. visa for his links to the Russian mafia.

Yuri Bokyo, a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician and a close Yanukovych ally, and a former minister of several energy-related sections of Ukraine’s government?—?and was heavily involved in setting up the Eurasian gas scheme?—?paid nearly $100,000 to a Washington lobbyist to meet with top Republicans.

Barbour Griffith & Rogers,co-founded by the former Republican governor of Mississippi and influential GOP insider Haley Barbour, was also paid more than $800,000 for lobbying efforts by a lawyer who “structured” the legal aspects of the Eurasian gas deal.

Though Mogilevich had been on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List, he strangely enough has been able to retain the lawyerly services of William Sessions, a Republican who was the FBI director from 1987–1993, to lobby on Mogilevich’s behalf for deals with the U.S. government to clear his charges.

Those talks, which failed, were arranged by Neil Livingston, a prominent consultant whose firm, GlobalOptions, serviced many Russian and former-Soviet-republic-businessmen. GlobalOptions was introduced by Barbour Griffith & Rogers to a shell company called Highrock Holdings used by none other than Firtash as a prominent vehicle for money laundering in the Eurasian gas scheme.

Highrock paid GlobalOptions for at least two projects, one a mysterious “special operation” as named in a subsequent lawsuit for an unnamed member of the Ukrainian government. And just to give one example of Firtash’s European outreach, his relationship with several Conservative MPs in the United Kingdom may prompt an official investigation.

For his part in engineering Yanukovych’s comeback and Tymoshenko’s downfall, Firtash also got some $3 billion in gas assets returned to him that had been seized by Tymoshenko’s government as a result of proceedings at the arbitration court in Sweden.

Which was a logical move. Once Yanukovych was in power, Ukraine and Firtash essentially became the same party in the case, with Ukraine’s lawyers dropping opposition to Firtash’s attempts to recover the seized gas?—?and now quite happy to see $3 billion in gas go from the ownership of the Ukrainian people back to Firtash.

It was clear that Yanukovych’s government was willing to fight for the interests of Putin and Firtash, but not its own people. Without Ukraine’s representatives making any case whatsoever, the court simply sided with Firtash in June 2010.

Firtash also got his aforementioned credit lines from Putin’s bankers not long after Yanukovych’s victory, specifically some $11 billion in credit from a consortium of banks arranged by Gazprombank, the flagship banking arm of Gazprom.

Gazprombank would not disclose which other banks were part of this arrangement, but by itself it lent him $2.2 billion, the largest possible amount under Russian law and almost one-quarter of the bank’s total capital, making him Gazprombank’s single largest individual borrower.

Firtash used this cash to expand his holdings?—?especially in the chemical and fertilizer industries?—?and power in Ukraine, all while staying close to Yanukovych. These moves actually made him the fifth-biggest fertilizer maker in Europe and helped him establish relationships with politicians throughout the continent.

When reporters asked him where all the money came from to enable him to do all this, he coyly replied: “It’s a secret.”

From January 2011 on, Firtash was again buying Gazprom gas at a discount through shady international front companies, then selling that gas back at a far higher price to his new assets, to the tune of billions in questionable profits to his shell companies, in something of a return to the old system before Tymoshenko had rocked the boat.

But the spirited Tymoshenko was not content to only be on defense during this period. During her trial and from prison, she filed a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in Manhattan in April 2011. In it she named Firtash, Manafort, Mogilevich, Yanukovych and their front companies as defendants, including initially RUE?—?although RUE was switched out to name the front companies that controlled it for Firtash and Mogilevich in later amended complaints.

The suit accused them of setting up a series of racketeering, fraud and money laundering enterprises in the United States designed to keep dirty gas money away from Ukrainian authorities when she was prime minister, and that such activities resulted in material harm for her since they contributed to the downfall of her government and her unjust trial and imprisonment.

After being rejected several times, a fourth and final version of the suit was rejected in September 2015. While not ruling out criminal wrongdoing on the part of the defendants, the judge ruled that the higher-than-average standards for convictions under the RICO statute were not met.

Still, in the longer ruling rejecting the third complaint, it was noted that “the Court accepts as true the allegation that some of the money that passed through the U.S. Enterprise was ‘funneled back to Ukraine’?—?albeit by unidentified actors?—?and somehow used as ‘financing’ for Tymoshenko’s ‘persecution.’”

Berkut riot police in Kiev during Euromaidan. Ivan Bandura photo via Flickr

Putin allies expelled from Ukraine

Yes, after the 2010 election, everything was going perfectly in regards to Ukraine for Putin, Yanukovych, Manafort, Gates, Firtash, Mogilevich and their teams. But, as in 2004, there was one thing that they did not plan well for, and it was the same thing that confounded Soviet leaders for decades and led to the downfall of the USSR.

The people had other ideas.

Many Ukrainians?—?especially younger ones?—?realized what was happening to their country, and were hopeful of better opportunities and a better future by having Ukraine orient itself more to the West, toward Europe and the United States. Yanukovych sought to placate these desires by courting a major trade deal with the European Union.

But in November 2013, protests erupted over Yanukovych’s about-face backing out of this long-desired E.U. trade deal in the face of a Russian counteroffer.

Protests erupted in a main square in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, which became known as the Euromaidan protests. After months of a tense situation, security forces shot and killed dozens of protesters on Feb. 20, 2014. In response to state violence, the protests swelled exponentially, fueled by mass public outrage at the bloodshed. By Feb. 22, the Ukrainian parliament had voted Yanukovych out of office.

Tymoshenko was freed from prison?—?in a wheelchair, recovering from what she said was physical abuse and ill-treatment at the hands of her guards and authorities?—?and Yanukovych fled the city. Soon, he would flee the country to Russia with the help of none other than Putin. Today, he is still wanted by Ukrainian authorities for the deaths of the protesters, but he hopes to one day return to Ukraine again as president, which he still contends he is legally.

Putin had overplayed his hand. His royal straight flush of an ace of natural gas, a king in Yanukovych, a queen in Firtash, a jack in Mogilevich, and a 10 in Manafort did not anticipate a wild-card joker in the form of Yanukovych’s allies fleeing him.

But Putin had invested a lot into Ukraine over many years?—?and into controlling its politics and energy sector through gas. Faced with his whole house of cards collapsing in on itself in the face of popular resistance, and with a government hostile to him, Putin went to Plan B?—?the dismemberment of Ukraine and war.

Firtash has fled Ukraine as well, and is also wanted by U.S. authorities for a separate racketeering and bribery scheme. He was living in a sort of exile in Austria, but just late last month, a U.S. extradition request based on bribery and corruption charges in a Chicago-based case was approved in Austrian court, though in a bizarre twist he was arrested mere minutes after the ruling by Austrian authorities on a Spanish warrant related to charges of money laundering and organized crime.

In light of ties to Manafort and the related implications for Trump’s presidency, the scandals and ensuing war in Ukraine, the connections to the Russian organized crime, and importance to Putin, this could be one of the most sensational and important internationally focused trials in many years.

And, not to be macabre, but it is highly doubtful that either Putin or the Russian mobsters will give Firtash the chance to prove his loyalty or show his disloyalty, as powerful men willing to orchestrate murder for far less have little reason to allow him to be tried and risk so much.

Meanwhile, Manafort and Gates made millions.

Hand-written records from the office of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions show the party had set aside payments totaling $12.7 million specifically for Manafort from 2007–2012 alone. Gates was also involved with Manafort in the $19 million Cayman Islands fiasco with Deripaska, who accused both of the other two of illegally bailing out on him.

The fate of that $19 million is still unknown. All of this is totally apart from the newly-revealed annual $10 million Manafort got from his Deripaska-brokered deal.

...

s team said that Friday’s news does not show any wrongdoing.

“As the congressman has acknowledged before, the meeting was a dinner with two longtime acquaintances ― Manafort and Weber ― from back in his White House and early congressional days. The three reminisced and talked mostly about politics. The subject of Ukraine came up in passing,” Ken Grubbs, Rohrabacher’s spokesman, told HuffPost in an email. “It is no secret that Manafort represented [pro-Putin Ukrainian President] Viktor Yanukovych’s interests,but as chairman of the relevant European subcommittee, the congressman has listened to all points of view on Ukraine. We may only speculate that Manafort needed to report back to his client that Ukraine was discussed.”

Still, Rohrabacher has emerged as an important figure in the investigations into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian efforts to help President Donald Trump and hurt his rival Hillary Clinton.

One of a mere handful of well-known GOP figures in Washington who were enthusiastic about Trump before his election victory, Rohrabacher was once under consideration to be the new administration’s secretary of state. He has cast doubt on the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community about the election and said voters benefited from the hacksof Clinton campaign messages. Last year, he met with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, the group that released the stolen Clinton materials, and said he wanted to give Trump information proving the hack was not committed by Russia. Soon afterward, top Republicans curtailed his powers on his influential subcommittee. And in 2016, Rohrabacher had meetings with Trump adviser Michael Flynn ― who is now cooperating with Mueller ― and with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya ― who is known for a Trump Tower meeting she had with Donald Trump Jr., Manafort and others hoping that Russia would share information damaging to Clinton.

The 15-term congressman is courting controversy even as he faces what observers describe as his toughest re-election race yet in a California district that seems to be turning more liberal. He appears unfazed.

“My constituents couldn’t care less about this,” Rohrabacher told The New York Times last year. “They are not concerned about Russia.”

Associated Press is also reporting that financial records show another Trump associate, former campaign manager Paul Manafort, received at least $1.2 million in payments for doing political consulting work for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. It’s the first evidence that Manafort actually received some of the $12.7 million in cash payments detailed on handwritten ledgers unearthed in Ukraine.

Paul Manafort, Trump's one-time campaign manager who served as a top adviser to a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine from 2004 to 2012, emerged as a central figure in both the dossier and the intelligence community's early inquiries into Trump's ties to Russia.

Secret ledgers uncovered by an anticorruption center in Kiev and obtained by The New York Times revealed that former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych's political party, the pro-Russia Party of Regions, earmarked $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments to Manafort for his work from 2007 to 2012.

Manafort has denied ever having collected the earmarked payments. But the unverified dossier on which top US leaders have been briefed alleges that Yanukovych "confided directly to Putin that he authorized kickback payments to Manafort," who "had been commercially active in Ukraine right up to the time (in March 2016) when he joined campaign team."

The dossier also alleged that Manafort, who resigned as Trump's campaign manager on August 19, served as a liaison between Trump's campaign team and Russian government officials. The FBI looked into Manafort last year for ties to Russian officials and business interests that Manafort has said do not exist.

"I have never had any relationship with the Russian [government] or any Russian officials," Manafort told The Wall Street Journal. "I was never in contact with anyone, or directed anyone to be in contact with anyone."

Two other Trump allies, Carter Page and Roger Stone, have also been scrutinized by the intelligence community for their relationships with Moscow. Page served as an early foreign-policy adviser to Trump, and Stone advised Trump's campaign until August 2015.

Page's extensive business ties to state-owned Russian companies, stemming from his time as an investment banker in Moscow in the early 2000s, were investigated by the FBI last summer. The bureau also looked into Stone's ties to WikiLeaks, which published the hacked Podesta emails last year.

On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was being investigated by counterintelligence agents over his phone calls to Russia's ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, on December 29. That was the day that President Barack Obama sanctioned Russia over its election-related hacking and expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the US.

Sean Spicer, the new White House press secretary, said at the time that Flynn's calls to Kislyak "centered around the logistics of setting up a call with the president of Russia and the president-elect after he was sworn in."

But CNN reported on Monday that the calls, "captured by routine US eavesdropping targeting the Russian diplomats," raised "enough potential concerns that investigators are still looking into the discussions amid a broader concern about Russian intelligence-gathering activities in the United States."

Flynn's ties to Russia were scrutinized after he attended a gala in Moscow in 2015 celebrating the 10th anniversary of the state-sponsored news agency Russia Today. Flynn was photographed sitting next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the gala's dinner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych

Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych (Ukrainian: Ві́ктор Фе́дорович Януко́вич, listen (:{help:(style="cursor:help"):}:·:{info:(style="cursor:help"):}:); born 9 July 1950) is a Ukrainian politician who served as the fourth President of Ukraine from February 2010 until his removal from power in February 2014. He is currently in exile in Russia and wanted by Ukraine for high treason.^[4]

Yanukovych served as the governor of Donetsk Oblast, a province in eastern Ukraine, from 1997 to 2002. He was Prime Minister of Ukraine from 21 November 2002 to 31 December 2004, under President Leonid Kuchma. Yanukovych first ran for president in 2004: he advanced to the runoff election, and initially defeated his opponent. However, the election was fraught with allegations of fraud and voter intimidation. This caused widespread citizen protests and Kiev's Independence Square was occupied in what became known as the Orange Revolution. The Ukrainian Supreme Court nullified the runoff election, and ordered a second runoff. Yanukovych lost this second runoff election to Viktor Yushchenko. Yanukovych served as Prime Minister for a second time from 4 August 2006 to 18 December 2007, under President Yushchenko.

Yanukovych was elected President in 2010, defeating Yulia Tymoshenko. November 2013 saw the beginning of a series of events that led to his ousting as President.^[5][6][7] Yanukovych rejected a pending EU association agreement, choosing instead to pursue a Russian loan bailout and closer ties with Russia. This led to popular protests and the occupation of Kiev's Independence Square, a series of events dubbed the "Euromaidan" by young pro-European Union Ukrainians. In January 2014, this developed into deadly clashes in Independence Square and in other areas across Ukraine, as Ukrainian citizens confronted the Berkut and other special police units.^[8] In February 2014, Ukraine appeared to be on the brink of civil war, as violent clashes between protesters and special police forces led to many deaths and injuries.^[9][10][11]On 21 February 2014, Yanukovych claimed that, after lengthy discussions, he had reached an agreement with the opposition.^[12] Later that day, however, he fled the capital for Kharkiv, travelling next to Crimea, and eventually to exile in southern Russia.^[13]

On 22 February, the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove him from his post, on the grounds that he was unable to fulfill his duties.^[14] Although the legislative removal by an impeachment procedure would have lacked the number of votes required by Ukraine's constitution,^[15] the resolution did not follow the impeachment procedure but instead established that Yanukovych "withdrew from his duties in an unconstitutional manner" and citing "circumstances of extreme urgency",^[16][17] a situation for which there was no stipulation in the then-current Ukrainian constitution.^[18] Parliament set 25 May as the date for the special election to select his replacement,^{[14][19][20][21]} and, two days later, issued a warrant for his arrest, accusing him of "mass killing of civilians."^[22]

After his departure, Yanukovych conducted several press conferences. In one of these, he declared himself to remain "the legitimate head of the Ukrainian state elected in a free vote by Ukrainian citizens".^[23] On 3 October 2014, several news agencies reported that according to a Facebook post made by the aide to the Ukrainian Interior Minister, Anton Gerashchenko, Viktor Yanukovych had been granted Russian citizenship by a "secret decree" of Vladimir Putin.^[24] On the same day, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that he didn't know anything about this.^[25]

On 18 June 2015, Yanukovych was officially deprived of the title of President of Ukraine by the Supreme Rada of Ukraine.^[26]

[hide]

Early life and career

Viktor Yanukovych was born in the village of Zhukovka near Yenakiieve in Donetsk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. He endured a very hard childhood about which he has stated, "My childhood was difficult and hungry. I grew up without my mother who died when I was two. I went around bare-footed on the streets. I had to fight for myself every day."^[27] Yanukovych is of Russian, Polish,^[28][29] and Belarusian descent. Yanukovych is a surname of Belarusian origin;^[30] Yanuk^[31][32] being a derivative of the Catholic name Yan ("John").^[30][33][34] His mother was a Russian nurse and his father was a Polish-Belarusian locomotive-driver, originally from Yanuki, in the Dokshytsy Raion of the Vitsebsk Voblast in present-day Belarus.^[35][36] By the time he was a teenager, Yanukovych had lost both his parents and was brought up by his Polish paternal grandmother, originally from Warsaw. His grandfather and great-grandparents were Lithuanian-Poles. Yanukovych has half-sisters from his father's remarriage, but has no contact with them.^[37]

Rumors suggest that Yanukovych could be an illegitimate son of Georgiy Beregovoy.^[38][39] Those rumors became more realistic after some documents showed that Fedir (Fyodor) Yanukovych until 1944 lived in Belarus.^[38]

On 15 December 1967, at the age of 17, Yanukovych was sentenced to three years incarceration for participating in a robbery and assault.^[40] On 8 June 1970 he was convicted for a second time on charges of assault. He was sentenced to two years of imprisonment and did not appeal against the verdict. Decades later, Yanukovych characterized his arrests and incarceration as "mistakes of youth".^[41]

In 1971 Yanukovych married Lyudmyla^[42] (née Nastenko), a niece of Yenakiyeve city judge Oleksandr Sazhyn.^[43]

In July 1974 Yanukovych enrolled at the Donetsk Polytechnic Institute. In 1976, as a second-year student, he was promoted to director of a small trucking division within the Ordzhonikidzeugol coal-mining company.^[44] In 1980, immediately upon graduating as an automobile mechanical-engineer, Yanukovych was appointed chief manager of a transportation company in Yenakiieve and admitted to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.^[45] His appointment as the chief manager marked the start of his managerial career as a regional transport executive, a position in which he served for two decades.^[27]...

^...^

Reports of corruption and cronyism

Yanukovych has been widely criticized for "massive" corruption and cronyism.^{[172][173][174][175][176]}

By January 2013, more than half of the ministers appointed by Yanukovych were either born in the Donbas region or made some crucial part of their careers there, and Yanukovych has been accused of "regional cronyism" for his staffing of police, judiciary, and tax services "all over Ukraine" with "Donbas people".^[177] Over 46% of the budget subventions for social and economic development was allotted to the Donbas region's Donetsk Oblast and Luhansk Oblast administrations – 0.62 billion UAH ($76.2 million) versus 0.71 billion UAH ($87.5 million) for the rest of the country.^[178]

Anders Åslund, a Swedish economist and Ukraine analyst, described the consolidation of Ukrainian economic power in the hands of a few "elite industrial tycoons", one of the richest and most influential of whom has become President Yanukovych's own son Oleksandr Yanukovych. The exact distribution of wealth and precise weight of influence are difficult to gauge, but most of the country's richest men were afraid to cross the Yanukovich family, even in cases where their own economic interests favored an economically pro-EU Ukraine.^[173] Young "robber capitalis[ts] have been buying up both public and private businesses at "rock bottom" prices available in the stagnating economic conditions brought on by Yanukovych's economic policies."^[179] According to Åslund, one notable exception to the Yanukovych family's influence was Petro Poroshenko, who is described as "uncommonly courageous", although his confectionery empire is less susceptible to ruin by the substantial power the Yanukovych family wielded in the heavy industry sectors located in Yanukovych's geographic power base of Donetsk.^[173]

Yanukovych had an estimated net worth of $12 billion,^[citation ^needed] and has been accused by Ukrainian officials of misappropriating funds from Ukraine's treasury. Arseniy Yatsenyuk has claimed that treasury funds of up to $70 billion were transferred to foreign accounts during Yanukovych's presidency. ^[180] Authorities in Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein froze the assets of Yanukovych and his son Oleksander on 28 February 2014 pending a money laundering investigation. Yanukovych has denied that he embezzled funds and has said that his alleged foreign accounts do not exist.

On 12 January 2015, Interpol issued a Red Notice for him, making him a wanted person, on charges of 'Misappropriation, embezzlement or conversion of property by malversation, if committed in respect of an especially gross amount, or by an organized group.'^[181]

Accusations of police abuse and vote rigging

Yanukovych has been accused, by Amnesty International among others, of using the Berkut to threaten, attack, and torture Ukrainian protesters. The Berkut, recently disbanded, were a controversial national police force under his personal command. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe confirmed witness accounts of voters being blocked from access to polls and being attacked along with local election officials who tried to frustrate the Berkut's practice of falsifying voters' ballots in favor of Yanukovych's Party of Regions candidates. Individual cases have been reported of citizens grouping together and fighting back against the Berkut in order to preserve election integrity and results.^[8] Upon coming to power Yanukovych had reversed oversight measures established during the Yushchenko administration to restrain the Berkut's abuse of citizens whereupon the special force "upped its brutality."^[182]

Yanukovych

Follow the money

Contents

Early life and career

Reports of corruption and cronyism

Accusations of police abuse and vote rigging