WASHINGTON —- A Ukrainian organization, praised for its work helping HIV sufferers, has taken legal action against U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, after he embroiled it in his attempts denigrate Trump’s rival in next week’s presidential election, Joe Biden.
Giuliani has used episodes of his podcasts to accuse the 100 Percent Life nongovernmental organization of corruption, money-laundering, and misappropriating $134 million.
The main aim of the podcasts is to recycle discredited fake narratives that Biden, as vice president from 2009 to 2016, used his clout to quash an inquiry into murky Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
Burisma employed Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, paying him $50,000 monthly for doing little else but lending the prestige the Biden name.
Joe Biden has always denied he had any contact with Burisma or acted to protect the company when he insisted on a notoriously corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, being fired.
Last week some pro-Trump media outlets in the U.S. reported a story, supplied them by Giuliani, which purported to show an email, from a computer abandoned by Hunter Biden, indicating Joe Biden had briefly met with a Burisma executive, something the Democratic Party’s presidential candidates the Nov. 3 election denies.
Because Trump and Giuliani have been caught lying so many times, the latest story has failed to gain traction in mainstream media.
In his series of Ukraine-related podcasts this year and past efforts since 2016, discredited as fakes, Giuliani attempts to connect the Bidens with corruption in Ukraine and has involved 100 Percent Life, accusing it, among other misdeeds, of money laundering.
Dmytro Sherembey, head of the NGO’s coordination council, and others believe the money-laundering allegation was a precursor to implying the NGO covertly transferred cash for the Bidens.
Giuliani has based most of his accusations on information supplied by pro-Russian Rada member, Andriy Derkach, and Andriy Telizhenko, who drove the fake narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential race.
The discredited “Ukraine, not Russia, election interference” story is Giuliani’s other favorite anti-Ukrainian theme.
It hinges on Ukrainian-American Alexandra Chalupa and Ukrainian investigative journalist, Sergii Leshchenko, “revealing” to an American audience what had been well-known in Ukraine, that Paul Manafort, an American public relations expert had worked for years for the country’s former pro-Moscow president, Viktor Yanukovych, sanitizing his image and that of the corrupt oligarchs who surrounded him.
Yanukovych was ousted in the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.
By 2016 Manafort had become Trump’s presidential campaign boss but was forced to leave after the American Press looked deeper into his past. He eventually wound up in jail for evading U.S. tax on his shady earnings from Yanukovych.
That infuriated Trump and led to his abiding conviction that Ukraine tried to wreck his 2016 presidential bid.
Neither Derkach nor Telizhenko has provided any evidence for their allegations and the U.S. government recently named both as Kremlin agents and banned them from entering America.
Formerly called “the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living With HIV,” 100 Percent Life has operated throughout Ukraine since 2001 and provides services, including supplying medicines, to some 300,000 persons.
Sherembey dismissed the accusations telling the Kyiv Post that Derkach’s allegations were part of a plan to sow distrust about Ukrainian NGOs and the country in general.
He said Russia regards NGOs, which have contributed to strengthening civil society and democracy in Ukraine, as enemies.
Sherembey said: “Everyone in Ukraine knows Derkach serves Moscow. One way to damage Ukraine is to disrupt trust in the NGOs, many of which, like 100 Percent Life, receive vital financial assistance from American and other foreign donors.
“We can account for every dollar from the moment we receive and track it to how it is spent. We are regularly monitored by some of the world’s biggest auditors. These accusations are putting the lives of thousands of patients at risk.”
Sherembey has also worked with Ukrainian anti-corruption activist, Dmytro Shabunin, to fight corruption, which has affected the shady criminal circles Derkach moves in.
Some of the biggest profits were in the health sector where corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen would hugely inflate the price of state-purchased medicines and medical equipment and pocket the difference between the true and fake prices.
Former Ukrainian acting health minister under the Petro Poroshenko administration, Ulana Suprun, called 100% Life a reputable organization that has saved thousands of patients’ lives. She said: “They have received and (after strict audits) honestly, without corruption, implemented grants in the amounts of hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars. They are truly one of the best if not the best NGO in Ukraine.”
She said the NGO was instrumental in enabling 2015 legislation which slashed corrupt procurement processes at the Ministry of Health. “They are hated by the Derkaches in Ukraine for their fight against corruption, for their outspoken support of reforms, and their excellent international reputation, “ she said.
Sherembey also believes Derkach’s is targeting 100 Percent Life because of an episode years ago involving the Russian Orthodox Church, of which Derkach is a fervent member.
He said the leader of that Church’s Moscow Patriarchate, Kirill, felt humiliated when the NGO refused to vacate a building claimed by the Church, near Kyiv’s Pecherska Lavra religious complex.
100 Percent Life was using the building for HIV patients and staged a high-profile protest campaign defying Kirill’s wishes ands according to Sherembey and others, that has rankled the Moscow Patriarchate ever since.
Earlier this month New York-based law firm Lewis, Beach, Kaufmann and Middlemiss, providing their services for free, wrote to Giuliani.
The lawyer handling the case, Jeffrey Robinson, wrote: “Without any legitimate basis in fact, you have accused 100 Percent Life and Mr Sherembey of engaging in a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy.”
Robinson referred to Giuliani’s podcasts calling them “false and defamatory” and “made with actual malice.” Disrupting international funds for the NGO could lead to “serious and life-threatening medical issues.”
The letter, sent Oct. 20, 2020, demanded that Giuliani take down the podcasts, make a public apology and”cease and desist” from further defamatory statements within five days.
The lawyer warned: “In the event you do not meet these demands, 100 Perfect Life reserves all rights to seek legal recourse.”
Robinson told the Kyiv Post that Giuliani hadn’t responded by Oct. 29.
Sherembey has also written to U.S. senators and FBI director, Christopher Wray, urging them to take legal action against Giuliani and Derkach.
Alexandra Chalupa, has been a frequent target of virulent attacks from Giuliani, pro-Trump politicians and right-wing media outlets. She has also been singled out by Russian state television and Putin’s media attack dog, Dmitry Kiselyov.
She told the Kyiv Post: “Both Derkach and Telizhenko are part of a very aggressive Kremlin disinformation campaign that has also targeted me since 2016……with the help of Rudy Giulani and was weaponized to launch at least five federal investigations against me in an attempt to financially destroy me and my family.”
She said the attacks on her had died down during most of the pandemic period but resurfaced in October with “much more radical and ridiculous disinformation narratives.”.
She became aware that Giuliani, using Derkach and Telizhenko as sources, had begun to target 100 Percent Life “in this bigger scheme that had evolved to try to hurt Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.”
Of that project, Chalupa said: “It has Derkach’s fingerprints all over it. He was trained by the former KGB Academy in Moscow and uses his personal and government platforms in Ukraine to promote the interests of the Kremlin.”
She believes Derkach weaved 100 Percent Life into the “fabricated story about Joe Biden because he and Giuliani needed an organization to falsely accuse of money laundering.”
Giuliani and Derkach did not respond to requests for comment.
