You're reading: WikiLeaks: Nation’s businessmen tell tales on each other in chats with US ambassadors

They accuse each other of corruption.

A candid three-hour conversation between Ukraine’s erstwhile business partners Serhiy Taruta and Vitaliy Haiduk with a U.S. ambassador describes a “very dangerous merger” among business and politics in the nation.

Part of a fresh batch of 1,850 cables involving Ukraine and released on Aug. 30 by the whistleblower WikiLeaks website, the Sept. 13, 2007 cable quotes Taruta as calling the metals and mining Donetsk- [Party of] Regions group “all looters’.”

According to the leaked cables, Taruta allegedly told William Taylor, then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, that longtime Party of Regions billionaire financier Rinat Akhmetov had in 1997 personally convinced then-President Leonid Kuchma to appoint current President Viktor Yanukovych governor of Donetsk.

Yanukovych then made Haiduk as well as Andriy Klyuyev, the current minister of economic development and trade, his deputies.
“In those days, Akhmetov was very different – he was totally private with no public persona, and was trying to find ways to deal with his ‘difficult past’,” noted Taylor, citing Taruta.

In a separate cable dated Feb. 3, 2006, then U.S. Ambassador John Herbst referred to the pro-presidential Party of Regions as “long a haven for Donetsk-based mobsters and oligarchs” and called Akhmetov the “godfather” of the Donetsk clan.

A spokesperson for Akhmetov on Feb. 9 addressed this cable in e-mailed message to the Kyiv Post: “We don’t know whether this phrase is authentic and what it actually means. Although, any accusations of Mr Akhmetov’s involvement in criminal structures is slander.”

Taruta did not responded to Kyiv Post inquiries and Akhmetov’s spokesperson didn’t respond to a Kyiv Post inquiry regarding the cable mentioning the conversation with Taruta.

Haiduk said: “I don’t recall ever talking to the U.S. ambassador, moreover, together with Taruta.”
Kuchma could not be reached.

Taruta, in addition, cautioned how Ukraine’s parliamentary law increased the mix of business and politics and characterized the influence of money on changes in the country as substantial, the cable read.


Serhiy Taruta

The current parliamentary election law is based on a proportional system in which political parties divide 450 legislature seats among themselves.

“Some members of parliament in the (Verkhovna) Rada were of such low quality, he (Taruta) said, that if they were in another parliament, their parties would be discredited by now,” wrote Taylor.

In the cable, Taruta claimed that while Klyuyev was Yanukovych’s subordinate in the Donetsk oblast administration, he made him his business partner so “he would get preferences.” Taruta observed how Klyuyev “learned early that he could make money from holding a senior position, now he was abusing his office for self-enrichment.”

Taruta alleged Klyuyev was smuggling chicken through a special economic zone and that Yanukovych may have been getting a piece of the profits.

Taruta admitted not knowing in the 2007 conversation whether Yanukovych was still a business partner of Klyuyev’s, but said the two had a “special relationship.”

Cables: Taruta calls 2006 gas deal ‘criminal’

Taruta, the cable read, believed Akhmetov and current Infrastructure Minister Borys Kolesnikov had a different mindset than the older, former communists and so called “red” directors.

“Regardless of whether they are interested in EU accession, in Taruta’s view, both want liberal economic policies…they can’t operate in today’s Russia, so they have no interest in a pro-Russian policy,” Taylor said.

Taruta furthermore described people like Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, Kuchma and Yanukovych as communist-era apparatchiks who “don’t know how to formulate economic policies that are different from what they grew up with.”

He continued: “They want to concentrate resources and divide them among themselves.”

Taruta and Haiduk felt the 2006 natural gas deal brokered by former President Viktor Yushchenko with Russia, an agreement that made RosUkrEnergo the monopoly supplier to Ukraine, was “absolutely contrary to Ukraine’s interests and (was) criminal in nature,” Taylor wrote.

That year, Ukrainian billionaire Dmytro Firtash, then and now close to Yanukovych’s inner circle, admitted what many journalists had long suspected: that he was a major shareholder in RosUkrEnergo along with Russia’s Gazprom.

“Taruta said Ukraine was losing $3 billion per year from the 2006 gas deal,” the cable noted.

According to the cable, the tycoon said that Yushchenko had helped RosUkrEnergo in the gas deal but wasn’t corrupt, although he added that the former president’s brother, Petro, and former presidential adviser Oleksandr Tretyakov were corrupt.

While Petro Yushchenko couldn’t be reached, Tretyakov said “this isn’t credible information and isn’t true. Taruta is a dilettante in politics, although he is a good businessman. But I had nothing to do with the 2006 gas deal with Russia.”

Viktor Yushchenko had for many years denied knowing who was behind RosUkrEnergo, but denied that his family was involved.
But Haiduk and Taruta told the ambassador they heard Firtash was meeting regularly with Yushchenko.


Vitaliy Haiduk

Haiduk added that he was present at two meetings between Yushchenko and former Russian President Vladimir Putin and that Yushchenko never raised the issue of RosUkrEnergo’s lucrative position in gas agreements.

Haiduk told Taylor, according to the cable, he believed that then-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was the only person in power who could “tackle RosUkrEnergo.”

Tymoshenko is currently facing abuse of office charges for removing RosUkrEnergo from the gas agreement between Ukraine and Russia in 2009.

Kyiv Post staff writer Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].