Documents exposing the enormous web of corruption involving Victor Yanukovych were in the spotlight at Mezhyhirya Fest, an international conference on investigative journalism held at the fugitive ex-president’s opulent country estate outside Kyiv.
The three-day festival at the sprawling 140-hectare estate, some 10
kilometers north of the capital, featured more than 30 events and brought together
more than 300 leading Ukrainian and international experts and activists.
Debates
and workshops on subjects ranging from social media use in an age of digital
activism and legal aspects of investigative journalism were held at “Putin’s
House,” the guest house in which Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly stayed on his visits to
Mezhyhirya. Putin is now harboring Yanukovych, who is wanted for mass murder and corruption charges, in Russia.
The venue represented a symbolic victory, said Anna Babinets of
YanukovychLeaks, the team of Ukrainian journalists who first gained access to
the compound following Yanukovych’s hasty flight from Ukraine on Feb. 22 as the EuroMaidan Revolution succeeded in ousting him from power.
“This festival is
a step towards strengthening the victory of democracy in Ukraine, and the venue
is a reminder of the fact that things have changed. It’s great to be able to
hold the event here,” Babinets said.
Attracting international media attention, the team discovered some 200
folders containing more than 25,000 records documenting the politician’s activities.
The majority were retrieved from the estate’s swimming pool and the Dnipro River which skirts its perimeter, into which Yanukovych and his team presumably threw
the stash in the hopes of preventing details of his illicit finances from ever emerging.
They were not so lucky. With the help of 17 scanners and more than 60 volunteers,
including experts in the preservation of documents, the team dried out and scanned
each sheet of paper before uploading the incriminating evidence onto “yanukovychleaks.org,” a website created for this purpose. On the first day the site attracted
almost two million visitors, and now hosts 23,456 records in Ukrainian, Russian
and English. A half-hour documentary about the team’s efforts premiered at the
event.
Among the documents uncovered is a $12 million hand-written check to an undisclosed
beneficiary, a €39 million chandelier supply contract for the ex-president’s
mansion and details of how his security entourage followed the movements of
EuroMaidan activists. One notebook found, which belonged to Konstyantyn Kobzar,
head of Yanukovych’s personal security detail, revealed how the team closely
monitored Tetyana Chornovol, a Ukrainian journalist known for her
investigations into corruption, in the days leading up to her brutal beating by several men on Dec 25.
In cooperation with Ukraine’s General Prosecution Service, dozens of
court cases have been opened against the ex-head of state and members of the
so-called “family,” Yanukovych’s close circle of advisers, who continue to evade law enforcement agencies.
According to First Deputy General Prosecutor Mykola Holomsha, some 400
business entities were involved in money laundering under Yanukovych’s rule,
many of them state-owned. More than $32 billion was exported when corrupt officials
fled the country in February, while only $187 million has been seized since the
investigation began, Holomsha said.
“I
have never seen stealing on such a scale. All government agencies were corrupt
from the bottom up. The state suffered total losses of around $38 billion,” he
said at a press conference on the first day of the festival. “People
ask us why we these people were able to escape. My answer is simple: people who
controlled the borders were themselves appointed by the former regime. They
refused to prevent them from leaving.”
Holomsha
also spoke of crimes committed against journalists, which have increased in
frequency since the armed conflict in the east began. “Over 90 acts of
aggression have been recorded against journalists in Ukraine since the start of
the crisis. We will put all our efforts into getting these crimes
investigated,” he said, adding that the prosecution service is currently
looking into 210 cases of interference in journalists’ work.
However,
Holomsha did not disclose preliminary results of the prosecution service’s
investigations, a fact which provoked skepticism among some of those present.
“Real
cooperation between journalists and law enforcement is impossible. In past
years neither journalists nor the general public have had any access to these agencies.
We wrote letters and articles to which they paid no attention and we have never
received any responses from them,” said Denis Bigus, a member of the
YanukovychLeaks team.
“Mr.
Holomsha has spoken honestly today and I’m grateful to him for this. But this is
nothing more than adequate cooperation – it’s certainly not a partnership,”
he said.
Babinets
was more optimistic. “I believe the way Mr. Holomsha spoke gives hope of a new
start. He may not have announced any real results but phrases such ‘I am
accountable to you’ suggest a new relationship between state organs and civil
society and a new system of transparency are emerging,” she said.
Among
the most interesting details disclosed was the degree of international
cooperation involved in the agency’s criminal investigation. Bank accounts belonging
to members of the so-called “family” in the United States and the United Kingdom have been frozen and 66 percent of foreign-based assets connected to Yanukovych have been inspected, according
to Holomsha.
While
Mezhyhirya served as a symbolic venue for the proceedings, a performance on June 6 by Dakh Daughters, an art-rock outfit, provided a fitting
soundtrack. The group played an active role in the EuroMaidan Revolution events, and
sang on Independence Square in December in front of the thousands who had
braved the bitter cold to stand together and fight for a democratic future for
Ukraine.
The
festival culminated in the presentation of Ukraine’s first ever investigative
journalism award. It went to Lyubomyr Ferens of TVi, an independent Ukrainian
TV channel, for his investigation into government involvement in the killing of
Serhiy Nigoyan, a 20-year-old Armenian EuroMaidan activist shot during the
Hrushevskoho Street clashes in January. He is one of more than 100 protesters killed allegedly on orders of Yanukovych and his former top advisers.
The event received funding from several sources, including the U.S. government’s Media Development Fund, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Share Foundation, Yanukovych Leaks and Scoop. The event was organized by the Media Development Foundation, a non-profit organization formed by Kyiv Post journalists to support investigative journalism, student journalism exchanges and professional development.
