KYIV – During a mid-April phone call, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko received his latest exhortation from U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden to combat corruption in order to receive the latest U.S. financial aid.
Yet Mr. Poroshenko himself and his political associates are alleged to be involved in numerous corruption scandals that have been brewing in recent weeks. The following is a snapshot of these scandals.
• Offshore dealings as president: Mr. Poroshenko claimed in January that he placed the assets of his Roshen confectionary empire into a blind trust, managed by a foreign bank, which was beyond his influence.
Yet the Panama Papers leak in early April exposed that claim to be false, revealing that the Ukrainian president instead created offshore companies and corresponding bank accounts, illegal activity for a president. His lawyers claimed they were created to receive his Roshen assets ahead of a potential sale.
The other possible crime involved not declaring these offshore companies in his 2014 and 2015 financial disclosure statements. Although such offenses are extremely common among Ukraine’s wealthy, Mr. Poroshenko was elected to change the corrupt ways of top officials, particularly in a time of war.
Creating the offshore accounts during the Russian slaughter of more than 200 Ukrainian fighters at Ilovaisk in late August 2014 struck a particularly raw nerve among the public, which viewed that as prioritizing his personal finances above the nation’s defense.
Numerous activists and politicians, such as Olena Shcherban of the Anti-Corruption Action Center and Radical Party Head Oleh Liashko, called for Mr. Poroshenko’s resignation or impeachment.
• Poroshenko-Kononenko dealings: At the heart of the corruption allegations made by former Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius, an investment banker respected in the West, is that Ihor Kononen-ko, a deputy head of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc’s parliamentary faction, lobbied his personal business interests with the Presidential Administration’s support.
In particular, Mr. Abromavicius accused Mr. Kononenko of demanding appointments of loyal officials to state enterprises and offices. As the straw that broke the camel’s back, Mr. Abromavicius said Mr. Kononenko lobbied for a colleague to become his deputy minister, and he reported getting a call from the Presidential Administration backing the request.
During the Panama Papers scandal, theguardian.com news site reported on the alleged business ties between Messrs. Poroshenko and Kononenko, citing their shared stake in International Investment Bank in Kyiv.
The Guardian’s report also alleged the two are linked to Intraco Management Ltd., an offshore firm that was reported by the liga.net news site of being involved in buying airline fuel from a Gazprom subsidiary in October 2014, just as the Donbas war was escalating. The evidence of their ties: the firm transferred hard currency to Mr. Kononenko’s daughter and it maintained a private jet that was used by Mr. Poroshen-ko. Intraco’s Cyprus-based agent, Geoffrey Magistrate, has been linked to Mr. Poroshen-ko as well, theguardian.com reported.
Mr. Kononenko denied Mr. Abromavi-cius’s accusations and denied any links to Intraco.
• Lutsenko-Zubyk still in business: A key member of the president’s entourage, Poroshenko Bloc parliamentary faction head Yuriy Lutsenko, was exposed by Kyiv’s Novoye Vremia news magazine in March for maintaining business ties with Volodymyr Zubyk, a notoriously corrupt businessman and member of the defunct Party of Regions.
Mr. Zubyk is most famous for his alleged ownership of Livela, a Ukrainian company that allegedly imported oil products while evading hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes and fees. In 2010 Livela accounted for more than half of Ukraine’s imported gasoline and diesel fuel.
To this day, Messrs. Lutsenko and Zubyk mutually control a telecommunications provider – formed in 2005 – through surrogates that are confirmed to be trusted business partners, the report said.
The telecommunications company has its headquarters in office property owned by the Lutsenko family, the report said. The same building has an office for Iryna Lutsenko, Mr. Lutsenko’s wife and a Poroshenko Bloc deputy.
Mr. Lutsenko is currently among the top candidates being considered by the president to become Ukraine’s next procurator general. Among the leading criminal suspects who could be targeted for prosecution is Mr. Zubyk.
• Poroshenko Bloc deputies evicted: Former Poroshenko Bloc National Deputies Mykola Tomenko and Egor Firsov had their mandates confiscated by their faction leadership in late March after they protested its politics.
Mr. Tomenko protested the 2016 budget cuts in late December 2015, while Mr. Firsov protested the alleged corruption within the faction during the scandals of early February. Both deputies announced they were leaving the faction, yet they claimed to have retained the right to remain members of the Verkhovna Rada, based on the law.
The Poroshenko Bloc leadership claimed a clause in the Constitution allows for depriving deputies of their mandates when they declare their departure from a faction.
Yet the defenders of Messrs. Tomenko and Firsov argue that the law for such a procedure – as cited by the Constitution – doesn’t yet exist. So the faction’s decision was illegal and motivated by political persecution, Poroshenko Bloc National Deputy Mustafa Nayyem claimed.
The faction’s ruling was backed by the Central Election Commission and a resolution by Volodymyr Groysman, the Rada’s former chair. Both deputies filed court appeals in April against all the decisions.
• Anti-corruption leaders targeted: Reformers Vitaliy Kasko and Vitaliy Shabunin have been targeted by the Procurator General’s Office (PGO).
The PGO apparently isn’t satisfied with American-backed reformer Mr. Kasko having submitted his resignation as deputy procurator general in February, judging from the treatment he’s gotten since.
Late on the night of April 10, Mr. Kasko was approached by procuracy officials and was served a notice that he’s a suspect in a criminal investigation into alleged fraud for illegally privatizing a state-owned residence. The next day, he was issued another notice regarding an abuse of authority investigation. This came after former Procurator General Viktor Shokin managed to seize Mr. Kasko’s apartment in March as one of his last acts before he resigned.
A week after he was issued the notice, Mr. Kasko was called in for questioning as a witness in alleged interference by prosecutors with the investigations of the Euro-Maidan murders.
The prosecutor currently leading those investigations, Serhiy Horbatiuk, told the pravda.com.ua news site in an April 18 article that his superiors “are persecuting those who are investigating the Maidan cases instead of investigating available facts about such interference.”
More than two dozen civic organizations signed an appeal calling for the Procurator General’s Office to cease its political persecution of Mr. Kasko, who has since been appointed as a board member of Transparency International Ukraine. He has also been supported by National Police Chief Khatia Dekanoidze and Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov.
Another reformer alleged to have been targeted by the Procurator General is Mr. Shabunin, the board chairman of the Anti-Corruption Action Center.
In late March, a Kyiv district court gave prosecutorial investigators the authority to confiscate the center’s property and documents, including banking transactions. They claimed to be investigating stolen U.S. funds that were allocated to reform the Procurator General’s Office.
Mr. Shabunin denied receiving any U.S. funds to reform the PGO and he accused prosecutors of political persecution related to the center’s criticism of Mr. Shokin and his plans to keep his corrupt network in place by appointing Yuriy Sevruk or Yuriy Stoliarchuk as his successor.
In early April, Transparency International Ukraine called upon the president and Procurator General’s Office to cease the political pressure against the center.