Citing a bomb threat, a special police squad raided the offices of one of Kyiv’s most prominent American investors on Feb. 25, keeping dozens of employees working overtime but finding no explosives to defuse.
Representatives of advertising and media company Atlantic Group described the raid, which was carried out by more than 20 armed officers from the Interior Ministry’s Organized Crime Department, as ‘a show’ that had nothing to do with a bomb threat.
Interior Ministry agents defended the action, saying police followed routine procedure for dealing with bomb threats.
The drama began at around 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 25 when the police squad with a sniffer dog barreled past security at the entrance to the four-story office complex on Ploshcha Lva Tolstoho and began to search the Atlantic Group office for incendiary devices.
Agents did not ask company employees to evacuate the premises but ordered them to stay put, Atlantic Group employees said.
Agents also denied access to journalists who were waiting to interview employees during the ensuing five-hour standoff. U.S. Embassy officials monitored the event from their car parked in front of the building.
Atlantic Group is known for its core company, Perekhid Media Enterprises, Ltd., which has been involved in a dispute with the investors and owners of Ukraine’s Studio 1+1 television company for several years.
Perekhid said the Ukrainian government unlawfully deprived it of airtime on a state television channel in favor of Studio 1+1 back in 1996. The U.S. government got involved, and the as-yet-unsolved incident – one of several high-profile U.S. investor disputes to emerge around that time – went on to do considerable harm to Ukraine’s reputation among foreign investors.
Oleksandr Ivashyn of the Interior Ministry’s Organized Crime Department, who led the operation, refused to discuss the motives behind the raid and prevented reporters from speaking with Atlantic Group employees.
‘How can you talk about interviewing anyone? There is a specially trained dog in the building. Who will take responsibility if he bites a you?’ Ivashyn told journalists.
Following the arrival of two television crews after 6 p.m., Atlantic Group officials were allowed to make a statement to journalists gathered in the foyer.
‘Police are milling around Atlantic Group’s offices asking to speak with the company management. They have been unable to tell us with whom specifically, or about what,’ said one of Perehkid’s lawyers, who requested that her name be withheld after being warned by police not to speak with the press about the incident.
‘This is a show. If it were a legitimate search-and-seizure operation, they certainly would behave differently. Instead, what we have here is an orchestrated exercise in harassment. It is patently obvious that the bomb scare is a ruse,’ the lawyer said.
Police left Atlantic Group’s office after 8 p.m., telling employees to sign written affidavits about the bomb scare before leaving the premises.
Officials at the Interior Ministry’s Organized Crime Department refused to comment on the raid in the following days.
‘Only in Kyiv could it happen that 20 militiamen could insist on remaining on the top floor of our office building – with approximately 120 persons working throughout the building – for five hours because there was a reported bomb in the building,’ said Atlantic Group chairman of the board David Stewart.
‘It would be funny if it weren’t rather sad,’ said Stewart in comments sent to the Post by e-mail.
Atlantic Group, set up in 1992, has several television interests, including an advertising sales house, a small outdoor-advertising operation, an advertising agency and a media-buying company.
In 1997, the company filed a lawsuit in New York against former U.S. Ambassador to Austria Ronald Lauder and his Central Media Enterprises Ltd. (CME), alleging ‘tortuous interference’ in connection with the Studio 1+1 dispute.
Perekhid said that CME colluded with a Ukrainian group suspected of ‘criminal connections’ and ‘corrupt methods’ in 1996 to take away Perekhid’s 10-year contract to provide 12 hours of prime-time foreign programming for the state nationwide TV channel UT-2.
‘It is widely believed in Ukraine that, in return for their ouster of Perekhid and their award of the UT-2 contract to Studio 1+1, senior government officials have been given a significant share of the ownership in Studio 1+1,’ the lawsuit read.
A New York judge ultimately dismissed Perekhid’s lawsuit in April 1998, ruling that the company’s dispute should be heard in Ukrainian courts.
Atlantic Group President Andy Bain told the Post on Feb. 28 that talks with CME and Studio 1+1 owners aimed at settling the dispute broke down in the morning of Feb. 25, hours before police searched Atlantic Group’s offices.
He declined to discuss whether the police raid might have been linked to Perekhid’s television dispute.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv confirmed that officials from the embassy’s regional security office had monitored the raid of Atlantic Group’s office. He said the incident was a matter of concern to the embassy. 500
