You're reading: Government push for Lazarenko money seen as latest shot at Tymoshenko

Ukraine's government has started legal action in the U.S. and Switzerland to recover assets obtained through fraudulent means by ex-Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, according to a statement by its representative, international law firm Lawrence Graham. 

But the government’s drive to retrieve the stolen cash is seen as the
latest new attempt to prevent ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from being
released from prison. The case ties her name to the revival of a controversy
that reminds people of her dubious business past, her fat bank accounts and the
criminal record of her former patron. 

She was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2011 on abuse-of-office
charges for brokering a gas deal with Russia two years earlier at the height of
winter. There are other pending cases against her, including accusations of her
involvement in the contract killing of member of parliament and rival
businessman Yevhen Shcherban on Nov. 3, 1996. 

On Nov. 4, Graham announced that it was instructed to recover more than $200
million, “which is believed to have been misappropriated by persons including
the two former Ukrainian prime ministers, Yulia Tymoshenko and Pavlo
Lazarenko.” 

“The unlawful actions of the individuals involved in the alleged
misappropriation have already been in the past the subject of criminal
investigations or proceedings in the USA, Switzerland and Ukraine,” Graham’s
statement says. 

Ukraine’s Ministry of Revenues and Duties initiated the recovery process.
The effort will be coordinated by the London-based team of four people led by Andrew
Witts, senior partner and head of fraud and asset recovery. 

After a lengthy trial in the U.S, Lazarenko was convicted in 2004 of laundering
through U.S. banks about $250 million of stolen money identified in bank
accounts scattered around the world, 
including Guernsey, Antigua, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Lithuania. 

The assets have been frozen by the governments, and in 2005 the U.S.
government started a civil process in a Washington, D.C. district court to
confiscate them, according to Halyna Senyk, a Ukrainian lawyer who is
investigating the stolen assets that belonged to Lazarenko. 

She said there are other contenders for the same assets, including the U.S.
Department of Justice, liquidators of the bank in Antigua, U.S. company
Universal Trading & Investment Co., Ukrainian businessman Oleksiy
Dityakovskiy, Russia’s Gazprom and Lazarenko’s family. 

Documents in Lazarenko’s case state that the money was acquired from
corrupt activities in Ukraine, in particular, through extortion, fraud and
transportation of stolen property. Tymoshenko’s companies’ names feature in those
documents, according to Serhiy Leshchenko, a Ukrainian journalist who is
writing his second book on the case in Washington, D.C. centered on Tymoshenko’s
role. 

Tymoshenko was dubbed the “Gas Queen” for her successful gas trading
business in the 1990s, which she ran under the patronage of Lazarenko.  Both of them are currently accused of
ordering a hit on a rival businessman in 1996. 

But Serhiy Vlasenko, leader of Tymoshenko’s legal defense team, insisted
that neither his client nor her companies were involved in any of Lazarenko’s
corrupt activities and that the new round of accusations are no more than an
attempt by the government to back out of their commitment to the European
integration. 

“Today’s actions of the Ukrainian government, of Viktor Yanukovych and his
comrades-in-arms in the Verkhovna Rada, are only directed at one thing: to
speculate and manipulate information with the aim of disrupting the signing of
the association agreement,” Vlasenko said, according to Interfax-Ukraine news
agency. 

Some in the pro-presidential Party of Regions are already calling to halt
the process of Tymoshenko’s release because of the new government push for
recovery of assets. 

“Right now the country is not in the kind of financial state that it could
afford stopping to fight for the money acquired by corrupt means by Yulia Tymoshenko
and Pavlo lazarenko. People will not understand us if we release her to her
assets. Then we will never see either her, or her money, the same way we will
never see Pavlo Lazarenko in Ukraine,” 
Volodymyr Oliynyk, a Party of Regions member of parliament, was quoted
by his party website as saying. 

He also said Lazarenko’s villa in California, “which was purchased using
the former prime minister’s unlawful income,” will be seized and sold. 

Senyk, the lawyer, however, says that it’s not going to be easy, and will
not make the government much money. 

“There will be about $2.5 million left after the sale of the house once all
the taxes are paid,” she said. “And it will be the decision of the U.S. Marshal’s
Service, which is the agency responsible for managing all of the seized
assets.” 

Kyiv Post deputy chief editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be
reached at [email protected].