WASHINGTON - Foreign Agent Registration Act (Department of Justice) reporting shows that authoritarian Ukrainian Presidents Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovych have poured far more millions of U.S. dollars into Washington political consultants, lobbyists and lawyers than pro-Western opposition and ruling "orange" forces.
In addition to the on-going contract with Davis Manafort International since 2005, the Yanukovych administration and Party of Regions, Arnall Golden Gregory LLP and Tauzin Consultants LLC provide consultancy services to Party of Regions parliamentary deputy Petro Shpenov for the sum of $40,000 per month.
In 2010, the government of Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov paid $3 million for an international audit of the 2007-10 Tymoshenko government. The contract was given to Trout Cacheris, a law and lobbying firm, Akim Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld, an international law firm whose client list includes Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, and Kroll investigative agency. None of the three companies is professional auditors.
Vin Weber was awarded the endowment’s Democracy Service Medal in recognition of his service as National Endowment for Democracy chairman (2001-09). Weber, one of U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney‘s top foreign-policy advisers, is a registered lobbyist for the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine.
