Multiple-Choice Quiz: Why does Yushchenko want Lazarenko back in Ukraine? A. To put the ex-premier on trial B. To smear Yulia C. To see a bandit who actually was sent to prison
The case of Pavlo Lazarenko, one of the most corrupt politicians in the lawless 1990s and former patron of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, came roaring back into the public spotlight with developments in two nations.
In Ukraine, President Victor Yushchenko’s administration on Sept. 25 said it intends to seek extradition from the United States of Lazarenko, presumably to stand trial for corruption charges from his notorious tenure as former President Leonid Kuchma’s prime minister from 1996-1997.
Stepan Havrysh, deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, said Ukraine has a strong chance of bringing Lazarenko back to Ukraine. He said talks are under way with U.S. authorities and that the likelihood of success “is sufficiently high,” even though the two nations do not have a formal extradition treaty.
Meanwhile, in the United States one day later, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld eight of 14 counts in Lazarenko’s convictions for laundering money, part of the ill-gotten fortune he amassed during his brief reign. The three-member appellate court ordered his resentencing, setting aside Lazarenko’s previous 9-year prison term and $10 million fine.
Lazarenko has spent the last five years in house detention somewhere in the U.S., presumably near the San Francisco area, after having served a little more than four years in prison from 1999 to 2003. On Oct. 1, Lazarenko faced a judge in California for a hearing into whether his $86 million bail should be revoked.
How to interpret the events – and what they might mean for Ukraine’s roiled political waters – is now the subject of intense speculation.
The return of Lazarenko could spell political, or even legal, trouble for Tymoshenko. She is alleged to have profited obscenely from her association with him. In the 1990s, Tymoshenko led the now-defunct United Energy Systems of Ukraine, which – with Lazarenko’s patronage – won lucrative agreements to import Russian natural gas cheaply and re-sell it on the domestic market for an exorbitant mark-up.
Tymoshenko has always denied any wrongdoing in her relationship with Lazarenko or any association with his alleged crimes, calling such charges politically motivated. The accusations of Ukrainian prosecutors against Lazarenko, spelled out in 2000, are extensive: involvement in the 1996 murder of parliamentarian Yevhen Shcherban and the 1998 slaying of parliamentarian Vadym Hetman, abuse of office, extortion, fraud, embezzlement, and theft of state property.
Anders Aslund, a former Ukrainian economic adviser, estimated that Lazarenko siphoned off as much as $1 billion, according to media reports in March 2004. To date, Lazarenko is the only high-level Ukrainian politician tried and convicted for financial crimes – even though many believe the scale of his crimes is surpassed by those of others.
However, many consider the Yushchenko administration’s threat to extradite Lazarenko to be hollow and that it has more to do with his ongoing political feud with Tymoshenko. The president and prime minister, former Orange Revolution allies, have severed their ruling coalition in parliament.
“This is a political move to discredit the prime minister,” said Taras Berezovets, a political analyst in Polittech, who has consulted Tymoshenko’s camp. “Lazarenko will probably offer testimony and evidence in exchange for freedom. The president’s moves don’t look clean here.”
However, Tymoshenko’s opponents insist that she has never fully explained her relationship with Lazarenko. And one U.S. prosecutor has suggested the fiery female politician was not cooperative in the investigation into Lazarenko.
Yushchenko’s deputy chief of staff, Andriy Kislinsky, has recently cited Tymoshenko’s alleged involvement in Lazarenko’s wrongdoings.
“According to Lazarenko’s lawyers, the imprisonment term assigned by the American court to the former prime minister… will end this year. Perhaps someone wants the ‘Lazarenko case’ to be left without a legal verdict in Ukraine and Pavlo Ivanovych [Lazarenko] himself to not return to his homeland at all,” Kislinsky said.
“Such a ‘silent’ scenario would ensure that Lazarenko’s former associates and partners avoid nervous stress and sleepless nights,” Kislinsky added, referring on Sept. 30 to Tymoshenko as Lazarenko’s former “political associate and business partner.”
Meanwhile, U.S. lawyers who prosecuted and defended Lazarenko said that it is unlikely he would be extradited or return to Ukraine anytime soon. Lazarenko’s defense attorney, Dennis Riordan, called the suggestion that Lazarenko will be back in Ukraine any time soon “preposterous.”
“There is no legal way that Lazarenko can be returned to Ukraine within the calendar year of 2008… even if there was a treaty in place. Extradition proceedings can last up to one year,” Riordan said.
Lazarenko’s defense team, meanwhile, plans continuing appeals of his conviction.
The prospect of Lazarenko’s return to Ukraine “is a mystery to me” said Martha Boersch, who prosecuted Lazarenko when she worked for the U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco.
Boersch also noted that the most serious charges against Lazarenko were upheld on appeal.
“The wire fraud counts may have been dropped, but not the money laundering convictions,” Boersch said. “I do not believe the nine-year sentence will be reduced significantly, if at all. But that decision will be up to the district court judge.”
While Lazarenko has spent a little more than four years in prison, his last five years in house detention are not credited to his nine-year sentence, his defense lawyer explained.
In 2003, a team of U.S. prosecutors and Lazarenko’s defense lawyers traveled to Ukraine to gather testimony from dozens of witnesses, including Tymoshenko. The delegation was led by Boersch, then-chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force for the San Francisco federal prosecutor.
“Tymoshenko appeared with her lawyer, but she declined to answer questions citing the Ukrainian Constitution’s equivalent of the Fifth Amendment…Tymoshenko did not come to the United States to testify, and she did not otherwise cooperate with the United States’ investigation,” Boersch said.
The investigation was eyeing alleged payments made by gas trading companies linked with Tymoshenko to offshore accounts that then-Prime Minister Lazarenko controlled.
Tymoshenko’s testimony might have strengthened the case against Lazarenko, Boersch said, adding that the Russian Federation also declined to cooperate with the investigation.
Concerning his relationship with Tymoshenko, Lazarenko has sent mixed messages over the years. In a widely-published interview immediately following the 2004 Orange Revolution, when Yushchenko and Tymoshenko were still allies, Lazarenko heaped praise on Tymoshenko for helping reduce Ukraine’s gas debt to Russia when he was prime minister.
“My attitude towards Yulia Tymoshenko has remained exclusively positive. I knew Yulia Volodymyrivna back in Dnipropetrovsk as an excellent professional capable of completing the most complex tasks,” he said in December 2004.
Lazarenko’s tone was less positive after Yushchenko and Tymoshenko split in the autumn of 2005. Speaking live on Ukraine’s Inter TV channel in November 2005, Lazarenko said: “To absolutely honestly answer the question on relations, I need to meet with her and discuss a lot of different nuances. I will answer about the relations after [our] meeting. There will be a lot of interesting things, so interesting that they can turn much in the arrangement of political forces in Ukraine upside down.”
Lazarenko added: “I do no think that she is burning with a desire to meet.”
Most recently, Tymoshenko has kept her distance from Lazarenko. Responding to the possibility of his return to Ukraine, Tymoshenko dismissed them as politically-motivated actions by Yushchenko ahead of the presidential elections.
“In the name of doing battle with Tymoshenko, parliaments are being dismissed, democratic coalitions are being ruined, Lazarenko is being imported… decrees are being prepared on the dismissal of parliament and appointment of a new prime minister. I think that instead of ruining the country, the president should issue a decree banning Tymoshenko,” she said on Sept. 29.
Lazarenko, for his part, wants to return to Ukraine, according to his brother Ivan, who is deputy head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast council, where Pavlo also won, in absentia, a seat during the 2006 general elections.
“Of course he wants to come back to Ukraine. This is his native land. His parents are here. He was born here,” said Ivan Lazarenko.
The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv said that it is not aware of any possibility of Lazarenko’s imminent return.
“There were no discussions to our knowledge regarding Lazarenko’s possible return,” said Nancy Pettit, the embassy’s press attaché.
Kyiv Post staff writer Mark Rachkevych contributed to this report.
