It’s been a tough couple of months for former President Petro Poroshenko.
First, he lost his bid for reelection in April. Then, his newly rebranded political party, European Solidarity, suffered a crushing defeat in the July 21 parliamentary elections, coming in fourth place and receiving only 25 seats in the Verkhovna Rada.
Now, Poroshenko is facing scrutiny from Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies, with new investigations against the former president opening weekly. The situation is complicated: While Poroshenko is not officially a suspect in any of the cases; the probes in question investigate his alleged involvement in crimes.
Poroshenko has denied all wrongdoing. He says the investigations are politically motivated.
On July 30, State Investigation Bureau Chief Roman Truba said that the agency has 11 ongoing investigations involving Poroshenko. Another investigation was registered the next day, increasing that number to 12.
The investigations focus on allegations of tax evasion and money laundering during both the sell-off of Poroshenko’s Kuznya shipyard in Kyiv, and on his role in the acquisition of the Pryamyi television channel.
Additionally, the former president is also being investigated for an allegation of treason, in relation to the Kerch Strait incident in November 2018, during which Russia illegally seized 24 Ukrainian sailors near Russian-occupied Crimea. The State Investigation Bureau is also looking into allegations that Poroshenko influenced judges and meddled in court rulings.
The National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) has also opened a number of probes against Poroshenko’s business partners, most notably concerning corruption allegations in the defense sector.
NABU searched Bogdan Motors, a company formerly co-owned by Poroshenko. It is now owned by Oleh Hladkovsky, Poroshenko’s business partner and the former deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. Hladkovsky himself is under investigation after journalists uncovered large-scale corruption in state defense corporation UkrOboronProm, where his son was implicated.
Most of the State Investigation Bureau’s cases against Poroshenko were opened following claims filed by Andriy Portnov, a lawyer and former deputy chief of staff under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, who left the country in 2014 after his boss was ousted by the EuroMaidan Revolution.
Portnov has openly stated that his goal is to see Poroshenko behind bars.
Even Poroshenko’s critics agree that several of the State Investigation Bureau’s cases look like attempts at political persecution and likely won’t see their day in court.
But the cases under investigation by NABU are widely seen to have more credibility. They could soon place the ex-president and his partners in legal jeopardy.
Key cases
During the parliamentary election, Poroshenko was summoned for questioning by the State Investigation Bureau. He asked to postpone it and came to the bureau on July 25, after the election was over.
The interrogation centered on allegations of tax evasion and money laundering during the 2018 sale of the Kuznya on Rybalsky shipyard, Portnov wrote in his Telegram channel, a place where he frequently discloses information about the investigation.
Kuznya on Rybalsky previously belonged to Poroshenko and Ihor Kononenko, the deputy head of Poroshenko’s party in the outgoing parliament and his long-time business partner.
In 2018, the two men sold the factory for approximately $300 million to tycoon Serhiy Tigipko, owner of the TAS banking group and ex-politician. Portnov claims that Tigipko paid only a fraction of this sum and the rest was money that Poroshenko received from other sources and laundered under the cover of this deal. Poroshenko denied all accusations. Tigipko was questioned in relation to the case on July 9.
Portnov makes a similar claim about the acquisition of the Pryamyi television channel.
The channel was bought in 2017 by Volodymyr Makeyenko, a former lawmaker from Yanukovych’s party. Media experts believe that the channel is unofficially owned by Poroshenko because Pryamyi heavily backed him during both the presidential and parliamentary campaigns. Poroshenko and Makeyenko deny it.
Portnov claims Poroshenko is the real owner of the TV channel, and bought it with undeclared cash.
Other investigations opened by the State Investigation Bureau include accusations of treason, forgery of documents and abuse of power.
Anton Chernushenko, a former head of the Kyiv Court of Appeals who is himself under investigation for corruption, accused Poroshenko of ordering him to issue decisions favorable to the president. Portnov said he met with Chernushenko and the two consulted.
Additionally, the Investigation Bureau is looking into whether documents were forged during the formation of the parliamentary coalition during Poroshenko’s presidency. The investigation is centered on the fact that after the 25-member Samopomich faction left the governing coalition in February 2016, there were not enough coalition members to run the parliament, however the pro-presidential coalition remained in power for three more years.
The investigation is looking into whether lawmakers’ signatures were falsified to keep the coalition running, because there were not enough lawmakers to form one.
The treason accusation focuses on the Kerch Strait incident, when Russia captured Ukrainian sailors in 2018. The bureau is investigating whether Poroshenko intended for the sailors to be captured to gain political points. Like in other cases, the investigation started after a claim by Portnov.
In a recent interview with the Ukrainska Pravda news site, Poroshenko said that all the investigations against him are politically motivated.
“Everything that Portnov says is nonsense,” said Poroshenko, pointing out that Portnov was close to pro-Russian and corrupt ex-President Yanukovych. He says Portnov is looking for revenge.
Portnov declined to comment.
Man behind it
Portnov, the instigator behind most State Investigation Bureau cases involving Poroshenko, is a capable lawyer. He was one of the authors of Ukraine’s current criminal code, which was adopted under Yanukovych in 2012.
After the pro-Western EuroMaidan Revolution, which ousted Yanukovych in February 2014, Portnov left Ukraine and moved first to Moscow and then, several years later, to Vienna.
In 2019, Portnov returned to Ukraine and went on the offensive against Poroshenko.
Portnov flooded the State Investigation Bureau with claims against the former president. However, some prominent anti-corruption activists have little confidence in the integrity of both Portnov and the bureau.
Launched in 2017 to mirror the U.S. FBI and take over investigations of major crimes, the State Investigation Bureau has been subject to criticism since the day it was created.
Activists criticized the process of choosing the head of the new law investigative agency, alleging that the candidates had been chosen based upon patronage rather than professional qualities. Among those chosen to serve as the bureau’s top officials, legal experts accused half of having questionable reputations.
Vitaliy Tytych, the former coordinator of the Public Integrity Council judiciary watchdog, and Oleksandr Lemenov, an anti-corruption expert at the Reanimation Package of Reforms, were two of the key critics.
“The bureau isn’t a body from which you expect a fair and transparent investigation,” Tytych says.
He also says that the bureau’s chief Truba was allowed to share information about the ongoing investigations. Truba has been actively posting about Poroshenko’s cases on his Telegram channel.
Lemenov agrees with Tytych. He adds that it is unclear how Portnov — who also writes online about every minor aspect of the cases — knows so much about the investigations.
In a July 1 interview with the RBC news site, Andriy Bohdan, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, said that Portnov is his close friend. That gave Poroshenko grounds to accuse the president’s chief of staff of colluding with Portnov.
Former President Petro Poroshenko talks to journalists, after being questioned by the State Investigation Bureau, on July 25, 2019. (UNIAN)
Bohdan did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
Activists say that the NABU investigations are more promising, as the agency has greater credibility in the eyes of the civil society.
Other cases
The State Investigation Bureau is not the only agency investigating Poroshenko and his close allies.
On Feb. 25, the investigative journalism site Bihus.info revealed a scheme in which the son of Poroshenko’s business partner Hladkovsky, who then served as deputy secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, allegedly smuggled parts for military equipment from Russia and sold them at inflated prices to Ukraine’s state-owned defense company UkrObronProm.
The journalists also alleged that Hladkovsky took part in the scheme himself. He was soon fired.
In March, Schemes, an investigative team of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, revealed a corruption scheme allegedly involving Poroshenko’s business partner Kononenko.
The report alleged that Kononenko oversaw a scheme by which energy was sold through proxies to state-owned companies at inflated prices. The report featured recordings of telephone conversations that suggested Poroshenko knew about the plot.
NABU opened probes into the schemes revealed in both investigations. The agency has also been investigating a potential embezzlement scheme involving Kuznya on Rybalsky, mirroring the probe of the State Investigation Bureau.
In late July, NABU also searched Bogdan Motors, which Poroshenko sold to Hladkovsky in 2009, and the Fifth Element high-end gym in Kyiv, owned by Poroshenko and Kononenko.
According to NABU, the searches were conducted as part of an ongoing investigation concerning corruption in the defense sector. In 2016, Bogdan Motors won the right to sell military ambulances to the Ukrainian armed forces. It had never before produced ambulances or military vehicles.
In 2017, Glib Kanevsky, an anti-corruption activist, said that Bogdan Motors received Hr 26 million ($1 million) from the state budget for 50 ambulances. According to Kanevsky, 25 ambulances broke down soon after and were eventually repaired by the state.
NABU also searched the head office of ICU, a financial group that managed Poroshenko’s assets.
In 2014, after Poroshenko became president, several ICU managers became government officials: ICU head Valeria Gontareva took charge of Ukraine’s National Bank and top manager Dmytro Vovk became chair of the National Commission for State Regulation of Energy and Public Utilities.
NABU is conducting a pre-trial investigation into allegations that former ICU employees took part in insider trading, helping ICU buy bonds whose value would be influenced by their decisions as government officials.
What’s next
The high number of cases involving Poroshenko doesn’t necessarily mean they are of high quality and will lead to charges.
Both Tytych and Lemenov are skeptical about the chances that the State Investigation Bureau cases, initiated by Poroshenko’s political opponent Portnov, will see their day in court.
Lemenov believes that the primary task of these investigations is to kill Poroshenko’s political future.
“While there is a lot Poroshenko can be prosecuted for, I want it to be done according to the law,” he says. “Here I see a lot of politics going on.”
