The Ukrainska Pravda news site on May 31 published spreadsheets according to which ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions paid more than $66 million in bribes to officials, politicians and public relations specialists in June to December 2012. The spreadsheets do not include the Party of Regions’ expenses during the parliamentary election campaign in October and expenses made from Nov. 1 to Nov. 23.
The Party of Regions was not available by phone, while its main successor, the Opposition Bloc, declined to comment.
The leak is part of a massive package of documents recently submitted by Viktor Trepak, an ex-deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine, to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
The documents show that the Party of Regions paid about $2 billion in cash in bribes during the terms of several presidents, prime ministers and parliaments, Trepak said in a May 28 interview.
The spreadsheets concern hundreds of people, including dozens of top officials, he said.
Another batch of documentary evidence of the Yanukovych regime’s massive corruption was released as part of the YanukovychLeaks after the ex-president’s Mezhihirya residence was seized by EuroMaidan protesters in February 2014.
Elections and parliament
According to the documents published by Ukrainska Pravda, ex-Party of Regions lawmakers Yevgeny Geller and Vitaly Kalyuzhny supervised the financing scheme.
Specifically, the Party of Regions allocated $2.93 million for the Central Election Commission in 2012.
This includes a $1,525 payment received by Mykhailo Okhendovsky, who is currently chairman of the commission, for a business trip in June 2012, the documents read.
President Petro Poroshenko has been criticized for refusing to replace Okhendovsky, whose powers expired in 2014. Critics argue that the commission is illegitimate.
Okhendovsky denied the accusations in a statement on May 31.
Andriy Mahera, a deputy head of the commission, told the Kyiv Post that it is up to law enforcement agencies to comment on the spreadsheets.
“The Party of Regions and I are different planets,” he said, adding that he had been persecuted by Yanukovych’s regime during the period involved.
Some of the payments intended for the Central Election Commission were received by ex-Justice Minister Olena Lukash, whose sister Tetiana was a member of the commission, according to the spreadsheets. Lukash also got $3,500 to translate the Party of Regions’ site, the documents read.
Lukash’s lawyer Yury Ivashchenko dismissed the accusations.
“I could comment on facts, not on nonsense,” he told the Kyiv Post.
Some payments were intended for the Verkhovna Rada.
Specifically, $160,000 was paid in July 2012 to persuade lawmakers to join the Party of Regions.
Meanwhile, ex-Verkhovna Rada member Ihor Rybakov received $50,000 to buy votes in November 2012, while former Party of Regions lawmaker Vitaly Kalyuzhny got $1.2 million for a budget vote in December 2012.
Other people who allegedly received funding from the party include ex-Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodymyr Rybak, ex-Party of Regions lawmakers Olena Bondarenko and Serhiy Lyovochkin, ex-Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Sivkovich and ex-Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara, the spreadsheets read.
Rybak and Lyovochkin are more difficult to identify because there are no clear patronymic initials for Rybak and no initials for Lyovochkin.
The Party of Regions also paid $2.95 million to promote its agenda on television channel ICTV and disbursed $3.5 million to another channel, Inter.
Inter declined to comment, while Orest Rebman, chief editor of the Fakty show on ICTV, told the Kyiv Post he could neither confirm nor deny the accusations.
Rival parties
Additionally, Yanukovych’s party paid $2.32 million to former President Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party, including payments allocated to Our Ukraine lawmakers Andriy Davydenko and Yury Kostenko, according to the leak.
Kostenko denied the accusations on May 31, while Davydenko was not available for comment.
The Party of Regions documents prove that Yushchenko helped Yanukovych come to power, Trepak claimed in the May 28 interview.
Zakarpattia Oblast Governor Gennady Moskal said on May 31 that Yushchenko and his chiefs of staff Viktor Baloga and Vera Ulyanchenko had gotten $1 billion to “yield power” to Yanukovych.
Baloga wrote on Facebook on May 31 that he “cannot take seriously the words of a person” who allied himself with the Opposition Bloc and Vidrodzhennya – two offshoots of the Party of Regions. He urged the National Anti-Corruption Bureau to investigate Moskal’s statement.
Ulyanenko was not available for comment.
Yushchenko’s spokeswoman Iryna Vannikova told the Kyiv Post she had not yet talked to Yushchenko about the Party of Regions documents. She said, however, that she believed them to be fake.
Another rival of the Party of Regions, the Communist Party of Ukraine, also features in the documents.
The spreadsheets reveal that $32,300 was allocated for television projects linked to the Communist Party of Ukraine in September 2012.
The party’s spokeswoman Viktoria Gergiyevskaya denied the accusations, telling the Kyiv Post that KPU (the Cyrillic abbreviation used in the documents that usually stands for the Communist Party of Ukraine) “could mean anything.”
Meanwhile, Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko wrote on Facebook on May 30 that future leaks of Party of Regions documents could contain the Radical Party’s name and would be an attempt by Poroshenko to discredit him.
Lyashko’s critics argue that he thus exposed his own links to the Party of Regions, though the documents released by Ukrainska Pravda do not contain the names of any Radical Party lawmakers.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected]
