The U.S.-Ukraine Foundation’s appeal for decisive action in Ukraine’s fight against corruption makes many good points which should be endorsed by all supporters of reform and Ukraine’s movement to a European rule of law-based state. At the same time, it falls into the very common trap of ignoring Western complicity and hypocrisy.
This hypocrisy is evident in some Western commentators on corruption in Ukraine who, on the one hand, criticise it and, the other hand, work as consultants to oligarchs.
Ukraine is criticized for not putting corrupt officials on trial, which is the reason why it needs an anti-corruption court. At the same time, European countries give refuge to Ukrainian oligarchs and officials fleeing justice from Ukraine. The U.S. and Spain are both seeking Dmytro Firtash’s extradition from Vienna. The Austrian judicial system is resisting. Igor Kolomoisky, whose PrivatBank laundered $5.5 billion over a decade, is living at Lake Geneva in Switzerland.
The U.S. and Europe connive in Ukraine’s corruption. Offshore tax havens provide demand for corruption which is supplied from Ukraine. Kolomoisky’s PrivatBank could not have laundered $5.5 billion without the help of Western banks.
U.S. political consultants continue to accept dirty money from offshore tax havens not accounted for under Ukraine’s e-declaration system where Ukrainian officials have to declare their income assets. A recent scandal in Ukraine surrounds Yulia Tymoshenko’s contract with U.S. political consultants for an annual cost of $720,000, which is many times higher than her declared combined income of $27,000.
As pointed out in my 2017 extensive history of Ukrainian buying of U.S. political consultants (“Ukrainian kleptocrats and America’s real-life House of Cards: Corruption, lobbyism and the rule of law,” published in the academic journal Communist and Post-Communist Studies, ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and his criminal team bought Democrats, Republicans, U.S. lawyers, U.S.-Ukrainian diaspora groups and European politicians.
Pertinent to the “Decisive Action” appeal is the taking of Yanukovych money by the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States.
Adrian Karatnycky wrote many commentaries which were complimentary of Yanukovych and he gave many talks praising him but denies taking money from him. Maybe this work was undertaken pro bono by Karatnycky who, as an expert on Ukraine, did this from pure conviction in Yanukovych as a “committed European reformer.”
Oligarch Victor Pinchuk, who donated to U.S. President Bill Clinton and presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, also provided funding for the Peterson Institute of International Economics and Brookings Institution, two very well-known Washington think tanks. Foreign donations to U.S. think tanks are not required to be registered with FARA (Foreign Agent Registration Act) administered by the Department of Justice.
Two U.S.-Ukrainian groups accepted funds from the Yanukovych kleptocratic regime after Yuriy Lutsenko, now the prosecutor general, and Yulia Tymoshenko, a member of parliament, were imprisoned.
The first was the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, the home of the Friends of Ukraine Network, which took money from Yanukovych and the Party of Regions when Lutsenko and Tymoshenko were in jail. The U.S.-Ukraine Foundation received donations from billionaire oligarch Rinat Akhmetov and the Andriy and Serhiy Klyuyev foundations for its Ukraine in Washington gala in December 2013, ironically during the EuroMaidan Revolution that drove Yanukovych from power on Feb. 22, 2014. Andriy Klyuyev was a speaker at the annual Ukraine in Washington gala event throughout Yanukoych’s presidency. In effect, the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation provided Yanukovych’s cronies with a platform to lobby the U.S. government to moderate its criticism of their patron, Yanukovych.
Ukrainians in the United States also accepted $2 million from gas tycoon Dmytro Firtash ,who is wanted by the U.S. government for corruption and by the Spanish government for money laundering in cahoots with Russian organized crime. Knowledge about Firtash’s corruption and intimate ties with Ukrainian and Russian politicians did not suddenly emerge in 2014. Six years prior to the U.S. attempt to have him extradited, Firtash told U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor that he had cooperated with organized crime mafia don Semyon Mogilevich, who has been on the FBI wanted list since the 1990s.
The U.S. and Europe need to close their numerous avenues for accepting dirty money from Ukraine (and Russia and other former Soviet countries). The closing of “swamps” in Brussels and Washington, D.C., will assist in the closing of the “swamp” in Kyiv. Until that happens we have no right to wag our fingers and pontificate about corruption in Ukraine.
