Ukraine’s borders have now become the frontier where Vladimir Putin is trying to demonstrate his ambitions to restore the geopolitical order that existed in Cold War times. Meanwhile, a high-profile probe is under way inside Ukraine into the circumstances of allegedly secret collaborations intertwining the interests of the country’s fifth president Petro Poroshenko, Ukrainian MP and Putin crony Viktor Medvedchuk, and the “LPR”/”DPR” terrorist organizations that manage Russia-occupied Ukrainian territories.
Untangling all this can throw light on the causes behind the current crisis. Why did Ukraine fall into the trap of the Minsk peace agreements on Donbas? What was the role behind Viktor Medvedchuk’s policy? Who got rich on the schemes that the probe is now looking into as part of the treason case against Poroshenko? Are there any signs of this serious crime, or is it simply Ukrainian-style corruption? Were President Poroshenko’s actions justified in conditions of extreme necessity?
We now have an interim result in the case of Petro Poroshenko and Viktor Medvedchuk.
Although the charges were recognized as legitimate and well-founded the court chose a milder precautionary measure for the fifth president – his personal recognizance.
This case concerns the procurement of coal during 2014 and 2015 from the occupied territories controlled by the “LPR”/”DPR” terrorist organizations. At that time, Ukraine had a contract to buy coal from South Africa. Due to the efforts of the then president, it was terminated, and instead, coal was bought through the allegedly re-registered Kyiv offices of coal mines chosen by the terrorists. But in reality, these were bogus offices, because the mines themselves were, in fact, inactive. In particular, one person was registered at the time as an employee of the K.I. Kiselyov Coal Mine.
Those firms received money after which the trail goes cold; it came to Hr 205 million in total. Also, Hr 30 million in cash was simply smuggled in bags to the “LPR”/”DPR” territory through the contact line via a corridor that could only be provided by the then Supreme Commander-in-Chief, who was Poroshenko at the time.
Ex-PM Yatsenyuk, ex-prosecutor Lutsenko defending Poroshenko
This crime must go to court so we can get answers as it was sponsorship of terrorism or money paid to miners against acknowledgement of receipt from them, as is claimed by Poroshenko’s public lawyer, Yuriy Lutsenko, the former prosecutor-general, who is internationally known as an accomplice to Rudy Giuliani’s conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden.
Interestingly, at the time when the events around the coal purchases were unfolding, the then Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, called them a crime! But Yatsenyuk is now trying to clear Poroshenko’s name and attack President Volodymyr Zelensky, saying the charges are political persecution.
When the court was choosing Poroshenko’s bail terms, it found the charges to be well-founded. However, he was not placed under house arrest, as was the case with the second defendant in the case, Viktor Medvedchuk.
My personal opinion is that when the court released Poroshenko on personal recognizance, the judges played along with Medvedchuk. And the latter has every chance of getting his house arrest cancelled soon.
Medvedchuk used judges to attack Leshchenko
There have been many attempts by various politicians to sue me in my work as a journalist spanning over 20 years. So, my experience is considerable and I want to expose how this system works on the example of how a restraint measure was chosen for Poroshenko. After all, the investigating judge, Oleksiy Sokolov, who delivered that verdict, was also a judge in a case where I had to be a defendant. And my experience in that trial revealed a lot about how the judicial system in Ukraine has deteriorated into serving oligarchs and politicians instead of serving justice.
So, I have every reason to say that judge Sokolov has a long history of close ties with Medvedchuk. After all, Putin’s crony was once a member of the High Council of Justice and influenced the appointment of judges across the country. One of the judges was Sokolov, who in 2009 was appointed to one of Ukraine’s most corrupt courts, the Pechersky District Court in Kyiv.
I began to probe ties between Sokolov and Medvedchuk after the latter filed a lawsuit against me and Channel 24 at the Pechersky District Court five years ago.
Authorities helped Medvedchuk grab vehicle fuel market My statement related to other schemes that brought Poroshenko and Medvedchuk together. It was about Ukraine’s diesel pipeline that was taken from state ownership and registered as the property of a Swiss firm belonging to Medvedchuk’s friends. Poroshenko’s antitrust authorities cleared the deal. After that, it began to control 40 percent of diesel imports coming into Ukraine. I also produced a series of materials exposing how the autogas market had been purged in favor of Rosneft-related importers linked to Medvedchuk. The Poroshenko-controlled Security Service of Ukraine and the Economy Ministry, which imposed sanctions on Medvedchuk’s rivals and created favorable conditions for his firms.
Exposé of Medvedchuk led to avalanche of cases
Medvedchuk then sued me. And it wasn’t a single suit, but … 10 lawsuits at once. This is a personal record.
He lodged those 10 lawsuits with the Pechersky District Court, one after another. When the automatic case distribution system determined a judge-rapporteur, Medvedchuk would file an application seeking that his original claim should be left without consideration. And so it went on until the “e-distribution” of cases chose the judge that Medvedchuk wanted as rapporteur, namely Oleksiy Sokolov.
This fraudulent technique used in the judicial system is called “roulette,” when lawsuits are filed and withdrawn until a puppet judge is selected for a particular case.
Further developments were getting even more interesting. It turned out that Medvedchuk simultaneously sued Member of Parliament Volodymyr Ariev in the same court. And, by a strange coincidence, his case was also assigned to… judge Sokolov.
What was more, the lawsuits against me and Ariev were filed within a few minutes of each other. That is, the probability for the case being assigned to the same judge under normal circumstances is minimal.
Notably, judge Sokolov upheld Medvedchuk’s lawsuit in the case against Ariev. Judge Sokolov also ruled in Medvedchuk’s favor when he ordered the National Police to open criminal proceedings … against journalist Mykhailo Tkach on charges of invasion of privacy. Medvedchuk did not like his charter flights being filmed when he was the only person in Ukraine who was allowed to travel to Moscow by air after Ukraine banned regular flights to Russia. Those rulings were made during Poroshenko’s presidency.
By the way, judge Sokolov was left in the judiciary system thanks to a decree issued by President Poroshenko despite concerns voiced by the Public Integrity Council, as a presidential decree dated Nov. 2, 2017 appointed him as a lifetime judge.
Poroshenko is entrenched part of establishment
Therefore, it was an example of explicit manipulation when Poroshenko made accusations against the authorities last month, claiming to be a “Ukrainian Navalny”. Unlike Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Poroshenko has been part of the government and political establishment since 1998. When he was first elected to Parliament …together with Medvedchuk. They were in one parliamentary faction, that of the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (United). So Poroshenko is an architect of the system he is now accusing of persecuting him.
In fact, both Poroshenko and Medvedchuk, as well as judge Sokolov belong to the same system, namely ‘I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. So I fully uphold calls for full transparency in the coal purchases case. After all, manipulations can be on both sides. I agree in full that this is not the place for seeking revenge, political persecution, and selective justice. And I advocate the completion of the investigation as soon as possible and so the case be transferred to a court to be heard on its merits, so that Ukrainians can know the truth.
As for Medvedchuk’s lawsuit against me, there is no decision in that case yet. A few years later, I managed to get the case to be moved from Sokolov to another judge, who is also in no hurry to make any decisions while closely monitoring the political battle in Ukraine.
Writing in an exclusive op-ed for the Kyiv Post, Sergii Leshchenko says that the purchase of coal in 2014-2015 from occupied territories controlled by the ‘separatist’ “LPR”/”DPR” organizations in Donbas were murky and questions about coal remain unanswered.
Op-ed disclaimer: The Kyiv Post is not responsible or liable for any content in this article, which expresses the personal viewpoint of the author only.
