An attorney for international law firm Skadden, Arps, Meagher, & Flom who helped whitewash the prosecution and imprisonment of Batkivshchyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko was charged with perjury in U.S. federal court today.
Alex van der Zwaan, an attorney for the firm’s London office and son-in-law of Russian oligarch German Khan, allegedly lied to investigators with the FBI and the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.
A legal document filed in Washington D.C. federal court on Feb. 20 says that Van der Zwaan destroyed and failed to provide emails that U.S. investigators had sought. The document also says that the attorney lied to prosecutors about his last contact with Richard Gates.
Gates is a close associate of Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager to U.S. President Donald J. Trump and former adviser to ex-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Gates and Manafort were indicted in October for massive financial wrongdoing.
The document says that Van der Zwaan stated his last communication with Gates was an “innocuous text message” in August 2016. But investigators determined that he had recorded phone calls with the political consultant and an unnamed associate in September 2016.
Skadden said in a statement that it “terminated its employment of Alex van der Zwaan in 2017 and has been cooperating with authorities in connection with this matter.”
Ukrainian prosecutors investigating the case told the Kyiv Post in November 2017 that as a fluent Russian speaker, Van der Zwaan acted as an intermediary for the Skadden team during the compilation of the report.
The Yanukovych government hired Skadden partner and former Obama Administration White House Counsel Gregory Craig to write a report on the prosecution of Tymoshenko, assessing whether or not her imprisonment adhered to international legal standards.
The Skadden report found that Yanukovych-era legal officials did not deprive Tymoshenko of her right to due process during the trial, in a report that State Department official Victoria Nuland criticized at the time as “incomplete.”
“Our concern is that Skadden Arps lawyers were obviously not going to find political motivation if they weren’t looking for it,” Nuland said at a press conference following the report’s publication in December 2012.
Skadden returned $567,000 to the Ukrainian government in June 2017, amid allegations that the firm received $1.1 million in money laundered out of the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice as payment for the investigation.
Manafort was indicted in October over allegations that he laundered tens of millions of dollars earned from his work in Ukraine into the United States. A report from the Los Angeles Times this week suggests that Gates may be preparing to cooperate with prosecutors to testify against Manafort.
Update: A Skadden spokeswoman initially issued a statement to the Kyiv Post saying that Van der Zwaan would plead guilty, and then requested that that portion of the statement be removed.
