Missourian Michael Vanderpool says it was a set-up when police found a small amount of pot in his bag
U.S. citizen Michael Vanderpool came to Ukraine hoping to meet a good woman. A year later he found himself rejected by his wife-to-be, ousted from their rented flat, and without a passport. Worst of all, he d also been accused of possessing drugs.
“It’s like a nightmare or a bad movie. I could never think something like that could happen to me,” confesses Missouri native Vanderpool, 35.
Welcome to the potential dark side of the ex-pat experience.
No woman, no cry
The trouble started where inter-cultural trouble sometimes does: at the marriage agency.
Some 10 years ago Vanderpool, who suffers from a nervous system malady and supports himself on his family business and on a disability pension, saw a TV documentary about American men marrying Ukrainian women.
“It said Ukraine had the most beautiful, intelligent and traditional-minded women. This had always been on the back of my mind,” he says.
So when Vanderpool got divorced, he came to Kyiv on a trip organized by a marriage agency. It was June, 2004. He soon met a young Ukrainian woman who did freelance translating work and was involved in Web commerce. She became his interpreter and personal assistant, and when Vanderpool encountered problems with his rent, she suggested that he share her apartment.
After just a few weeks together, the pair decided to get married. In June, 2004 they signed an unofficial pre-nuptial agreement. The most important point for Vanderpool was that Yudenkova would assist him with his daily medical treatment and contact his doctor should complications rise. In turn, he would pay her a weekly stipend.
They were waiting for Vanderpool’s American divorce certificate to arrive and apply to get married when what was supposed to be a romance turned into a crime story.
Killer weed
On July 28, two militia officers stopped the couple in the street in Kyiv, not far from their home on Tuluzy, and asked Vanderpool to show them his registration. Then they searched him and found a package of marijuana in the side pocket of his camera bag.
Vanderpool claims he’s never been so surprised in his life.
“I have no idea where it came from or who it belongs to, but it’s surely not mine,” claims Vanderpool. “I’m not that stupid. Even if I owned some marijuana I wouldn’t carry it around with me.”
On the contrary, Vanderpool is certain that somebody set him up. He is sure it was not his fiancee, he says. The young woman, he says, “was desperate to leave Ukraine. One day she was crying so badly, saying ‘America is like heaven. You are free, you can go wherever you want, and we are stuck here.’ When I asked her what was wrong, she said ‘Just look out the window.’”
In the local Interior Ministry office the militiamen interrogated Vanderpool as his fiancee translated. But something made Vanderpool suspicious.
“They never asked me who sold it to me or how much I paid for it – all these questions a good cop asks if he wants to find out where the hell it came from. Just whether it was mine and whether I had more at home.”
Vanderpool says the militiamen had him sign the protocol and kept his passport, telling him to come back tomorrow.
“The militiamen didn’t have the right to confiscate his passport,” says attorney Oleksandr Plakhotnyuk, who consulted with Vanderpool, “but unfortunately he has no document testifying that they took away his passport, just his own words. So it is practically impossible to prove in court that the passport has been confiscated and not lost, for instance.”
Get a lawyer
The couple didn’t go to the militia the next day. Instead they began to look for a lawyer.
“I got scared because it’s a foreign country. I don’t know the laws, and in the U.S. you never show up without a lawyer,” Vanderpool says.
They also tried to figure out who could have set the whole thing up. They suspected two of the friends Vanderpool’s fiancee who had copies of the keys to the apartment. Vanderpool says that one of them, a teenage male, even had a motive: he was in love with the fiancee, Vanderpool claims.
But such suspicions led to fights between the couple. On July 29 while the couple was walking outside, Vanderpool’s offended girlfriend ran away with the key to the apartment, leaving Vanderpool on the street with just the clothes he was wearing and a little bit of money. Some $6,000 worth of Vanderpool’s property, including medical gear, his computer, a digital camera, books and compact discs was locked away in the apartment, which by then was off-limits to him.
From July 30 until recently Vanderpool was essentially homeless, spending the night at friends’ houses or staying up in pubs. He says he left his girlfriend a note of apology, and that in a telephone conversation she seemed to have forgiven him. But the next day she stopped answering the phone and wouldn’t open the door. The last time Vanderpool talked with her was Aug. 1.
Vanderpool’s girlfriend could not be reached for comment.
Vanderpool’s father back in Missouri, who Vanderpool says came close to having a stroke at his son’s news, sent him some money.
Vanderpool was in Amsterdam at press time, on his way home to the States.
Passport to nowhere
After going through half a dozen lawyers, one of whom requested $3,000 with which to bribe officials, Vanderpool finally found someone reliable. Together they went to the district interior ministry office, but the officers wouldn’t give definite answers.
“They were making jokes, asking me if I liked smoking pot,” recalls Vanderpool. “At one moment, when my lawyer stepped out with one officer, the other one pulled out a long knife and started contemplating it. He asked me if I had dollars and how much. Then the other officer came in, and my lawyer told me [the officer] was suggesting I buy a game from him [as a bribe] for $250. I refused.”
Vanderpool says he did not memorize the officers’ names.
Nor did the officers return Vanderpool’s passport. They said they gave it to his fiancee when she came to pick it up on Aug. 1.
The only information Vanderpool was given was that they were waiting for test results about the exact amount of the illegal substance he had allegedly possessed.
According to Ukrainian law, anyone caught with an amount below five grams is subject to a fine of Hr 300. Anyone, even a foreigner, caught with more than five grams can face one to three years in a Ukrainian jail. “In Ukraine everyone is equal before the law,” Plakhotnyuk said.
On Aug. 8, at the Svyatoshynsky District Interior Ministry office, officers confirmed that the substance found in Vanderpool’s camera bag weighed less than five grams. A duty officer refused to comment, but when questioned about the knife he replied that Vanderpool should thank God that he didn’t have enough for a criminal case, and got away with an administrative penalty. He said that if Vanderpool had offered a bribe, another criminal case would have been opened right away.
The U.S. embassy, meanwhile, is doing what it can, he says.
“The embassy people are helping with as much as is in their authority,” Vanderpool said. “But they cannot give legal advice. They can only explore options for restituting my passport, come visit me in jail, or call my family. They are there behind the glass. They’ve never really met me in person,” he said.
Vanderpool is currently trying to initiate a criminal case against his fiancee to restore the property locked in the apartment.
The worst thing for Vanderpool has been the loss of his medical equipment. For more than a week he was without the treatment he needs to undergo for two hours daily. He claims this represents a breach on his girlfriend’s part of the couple’s pre-nuptial agreement.
Nonetheless, he still hopes to reconcile with his girlfriend.
“I am not giving [her] up,” he says. “I wrote her in a letter that our relationship is above all, and I mean it.”
