It does not surprise us that Washington, D.C. law firms and private detectives will do anything for money and come to any conclusions their paymasters want from them. But ex-public officials who were elected or appointed to serve the interests of all only sully their reputations by making the wrong choice of friends.
As your mother might have said, you are judged by the company you keep. If so, the judgments are harsh for these politicians who recently made the news for their less-than-savory Ukrainian ties:
- Ex-U.S. President Bill Clinton spent four days this month in Ukraine with the Pinchuks, Victor and Olena, the son-in-law and daughter of ex-President Leonid Kuchma. The Pinchuks got fabulously wealthy under Kuchma’s authoritarian reign. It is clear what each side is getting from the deal: for Clinton, it is millions of dollars for his library and charities; for the Pinchuks, it’s legitimacy that comes from hobnobbing with a former U.S. president.
- In the American state of Rhode Island, ex-U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee’s ties to Ukrainian’s richest billionaire, Rinat Akhmetov, have become a campaign issue in this fall’s three-way race for governor in which Chafee is the independent candidate. Chafee serves on the board of Akhmetov’s Foundation for Effective Governance, for up to $100,000 a year, he told Rhode Island journalists.Akhmetov, in turn, gets the imprimatur of a high-profile U.S. politician, further helping him dim memories of his questionable past, replacing it with a new image as a philanthropic billionaire.
- Pauline Neville-Jones, the shadow security minister for David Cameron before he took over as the United Kingdom’s prime minister, was turned down for the top British intelligence post. The reason, according to a source for the Daily Mail, was her connections to two tycoons with controversial reputations. One of them was Ukrainian Dmytro Firtash, who partly owns the gas-trading RosUkrEnergo. A British national who manages Firtash’s assets provided funding for Neville-Jones’ political campaign and office.
The point? Ukrainian politicians and business elite can hire whomever they want, but oftentimes all it gets them are foreigners interested in a fast buck. To many Ukrainians, both sides in these pairings demonstrate their lack of regard for the welfare of the nation’s 46 million people.
