Manafort is the immoral political operative who cleaned up Yanukovych, transforming him from dictator to democrat, long enough to get the fugitive leader elected as Ukraine’s president in 2010. Now Manafort is trying to work his magic on Donald Trump, one of the most dangerous and despicable characters nominated for the U.S. presidency. Their mutual admiration appears to include love of money, love of dictators, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and winning at all costs.
While Manafort’s work for Yanukovych is well-known, his inclusion in the handwritten ledger of recorded payments cover his association with a fitting coat of sleaze. We are certainly glad that the story became public, on Aug. 14, in The New York Times, because such revelations will only help bury the Trump candidacy well before the Nov. 8 vote.
But for Ukraine, the issue is not so much Manafort as it is exposing, investigating and prosecuting, where credible evidence is found, the other people named in the records seized from Yanukovych’s defunct Party of Regions. Why is the General Prosecutor’s Office, Interior Ministry and Security Service of Ukraine not diving into these cases? It’s a flimsy excuse that, because a weakly staffed but apparently earnest National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine is operational, that its employees should be responsible for investigating wrongdoing.
Ukraine has much to do to get its house in order. It has many cases of unsolved corruption, including the Yanukovych. So Ukraine’s major institutions – prosecutors, police and judges – need to get moving.
