The trial of U.S. political consultant Paul Manafort is throwing out lots of previously unknown details about the scale of corruption in Ukraine.
According to testimony given at the trial by FBI forensic accountant Morgan Magionos, Manafort was paid over $65 million in the four years he worked for runaway former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his political backers. Sickeningly, $15 million of that was spent on luxury purchases, including a tasteless ostrich-leather bomber jacket.
And it has emerged that Manafort’s business in Ukraine didn’t end when Yanukovych fled — according to documents presented in court, the consultant then approached the current president, Petro Poroshenko, to discuss possible cooperation, although the talks apparently led nowhere.
Manafort is on trial in the United States on a raft of charges from tax evasion to bank fraud, but the trial is mainly of interest across the Atlantic due to Manafort’s past position as head of the election campaign of U. S. President Donald J. Trump: It is widely believed that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is using the trial to pressure Manafort into giving evidence that will prove the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin to gain electoral advantage.
Back in Ukraine, there is some satisfaction that Manafort is facing justice. He masterminded the political resurrection of Yanukovych — a man who should have been jailed for election fraud, and who should be in prison for life for mass murder. And according to the “Black Ledger” of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, Manafort accepted illegal payments in Ukraine, and he should also be facing trial here.
But as in the case of the corrupt former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, it is the U.S. justice system that is now prosecuting high crimes committed in Ukraine.
One can speculate about why Manafort and others have escaped trial in Ukraine, but it cannot be argued that the Ukrainian judicial system is still failing. Not one corrupt top official has been convicted in Ukraine. Nobody has been convicted of the murders of EuroMaidan protesters.
Until such trials are held in Ukraine, and convictions obtained, Ukrainians will continue to have little faith in the country’s courts and judges. Until they gain that faith, one of the main goals of the EuroMaidan Revolution — establishment of the rule of law — will remain unachieved.
