As impeachment proceedings against U. S. President Donald Trump move forward, the fate of Ukrainian criminal cases against his former campaign manager Paul Manafort has returned to the spotlight.
Some U. S. media have suggested that the cases may have been buried as a result of a quid pro quo between Trump and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2017.
The Kyiv Post has researched the evolution of the Manafort cases since 2014.
There have been difficulties investigating Manafort in Ukraine, mostly because the U.S. does not extradite its citizens. Also, the Manafort cases have been transferred to different investigation units several times for unclear reasons.
However, the Kyiv Post has found no evidence that Ukrainian authorities slowed down the investigations in exchange for favors from the U.S.
So far, the main outcome of the Ukrainian cases is that they triggered an investigation by special prosecutor Robert Mueller against Manafort in the U.S.
Manafort was arrested in the U.S. in October 2017, and in August 2018 he was found guilty of filing false tax returns, bank fraud and failing to disclose a foreign bank account. Later Manafort pled guilty to conspiring to defraud the U.S. and witness tampering.
He was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in jail in March 2019.
Below is a chronology of the Manafort investigations in Ukraine.
Black ledger
The story started on Feb. 18, 2014, when protesters burned an office of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions on Lypska Street in Kyiv during the EuroMaidan Revolution. The party’s alleged “black ledger” was found there, according to retired police general Hennady Moskal and Sergii Gorbatuk, the former top investigator in charge of EuroMaidan cases and the black ledger case.
The documents show that the party paid bribes and under-the-table handouts worth $2 billion between 2008 and 2012.
According to the ledger, Manafort, who had worked as a political consultant for Yanukovych and his party since 2004, received $12.7 million from the Party of Regions from 2007 to 2012.
Viktor Trepak, then a deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine, submitted the ledger to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau in May 2016. It is not clear where he received it.
There is no signature by Manafort in the ledger, and Manafort’s supporters claim that references to him in the ledger are forged.
But Gorbatuk told the Kyiv Post that other people who received money from the Party of Regions confirmed the authenticity of the spreadsheets that mention Manafort.
Transfer to Gorbatuk
In June 2017, the black ledger case was transferred from the NABU to Gorbatuk’s EuroMaidan investigation unit; however NABU investigators continued working on the case with Gorbatuk’s team.
At that time, Trepak said the transfer of the case to the Prosecutor General’s Office could bring it under political influence and sabotage. The NABU was perceived as more independent, while the Prosecutor General’s Office was headed by Yuriy Lutsenko, a political protégé of Poroshenko.
Several U. S. media outlets have recently reported that the transfer could have been a result of a meeting between Trump’s lawyer Rudolph Giuliani, Poroshenko and Lutsenko in Kyiv on June 7, 2017.
On June 20, 2017, Trump and Poroshenko met for the first time in Washington D.C.
U.S. media speculate that Trump and Poroshenko could have agreed to freeze the Ukrainian cases against Manafort in exchange for Javelin anti-tank weapons from the U.S.
However the transfer of the cases to Gorbatuk, who has been openly critical of Lutsenko and Poroshenko and accused them of blocking numerous cases, could hardly be considered evidence of a freeze on the Manafort investigations.
Gorbatuk, who has gained a reputation as an independent and outspoken investigator, was fired by Lutsenko’s successor Ruslan Riaboshapka in October.
Gorbatuk told the Kyiv Post that Lutsenko had not pressured him in any way to halt or freeze the Manafort investigations.
“Nobody has slowed down the case,” he said. “The investigation continues.”
Other cases
There is evidence, however, that other black ledger cases unrelated to Manafort may have been sabotaged.
So far, three people have been charged in the black ledger investigation.
One of them, the former Central Election Commission Chairman Mykhailo Okhendovsky, was charged by NABU in 2016 with receiving bribes worth $100,000 in 2010 and $61,000 in 2012 from the Party of Regions. The bribes were allegedly spent on foreign trips.
In June 2017, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office suspended the case, claiming it was waiting for documents from abroad. NABU then accused the anti-corruption prosecutors of sabotaging the case, arguing that the Okhendovsky case should have been sent to trial.
In April 2018, a court canceled the decision to suspend the case, but regardless it has still not resumed.
In another episode, Gorbatuk’s unit also charged ex-Party of Regions lawmaker Vitaly Kalyuzhny and his brother Yevheny Kalyuzhny with organized crime, illicit enrichment and bribery in September 2017. According to the black ledger, the Kalyuzhny brothers supervised the whole financing scheme.
The case was later suspended because they were put on a wanted list, Gorbatuk said.
Skadden case
Manafort is also linked to one of the most infamous episodes of Yanukovych’s presidency — the prosecution of his political enemy, the former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
Tymoshenko was jailed in 2011 in an abuse of power case that Ukrainian and Western governments have since recognized as politically motivated.
In May 2014, prosecutors opened an investigation into alleged embezzlement of more than $1 million in state funds through a report prepared by the U.S. law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom to whitewash the prosecution of Tymoshenko. The report was commissioned by Manafort and Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice.
In March 2015, prosecutors sent a request to the U.S. to question Manafort regarding the Skadden case, Gorbatuk said. It did not receive a response, he added.
In July 2015, Yanukovych’s Justice Minister Oleksandr Lavrynovych was charged in the case along with his deputy and accountant. The Lavrynovych case was sent to a court in October 2016.
According to Gorbatuk, in March 2018 the Prosecutor General’s office sent a request to Mueller’s office for information on alleged payments by
Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk for the Skadden report. Mueller’s office did not respond, according to Gorbatuk.
Participants of the EuroMaidan Revolution, which ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, break into the office of Yanukovych’s party in Kyiv on Feb. 18, 2014. The party’s black ledger, which reportedly was found in this office, includes evidence of bribes and secret handouts worth at least $2 billion. Paul Manafort, who consulted Yanykovych’s party, received $12.7 million from the party, according to the ledger. (UNIAN)
Kyrgyzstan case
The third Ukrainian case against Manafort involves an alleged shady scheme in Kyrgyzstan.
In March 2017, then lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko, who is currently a Kyiv Post columnist, published documents he received from new tenants in Manafort’s former office in Kyiv that show Manafort allegedly laundered at least $750,000 in payments from Yanukovych through a Kyrgyz firm. He transferred the documents to the U. S. Federal Bureau of Investigations.
Leshchenko said the payment corresponds to one of 22 entries in the Party of Regions’ black ledger.
In August 2017, the Prosecutor General’s office opened an embezzlement case into the Kyrgyz scheme.
Transfer to NABU
In December 2017, Lutsenko took dozens of cases from Gorbatuk’s unit, including the Skadden and Kyrgyzstan cases against Manafort. The Skadden and Kyrgyzstan investigations were transferred to NABU.
Gorbatuk then accused Lutsenko of trying to sabotage the cases by taking them from his unit, which Lutsenko denied.
Gorbatuk told the Kyiv Post that the Skadden and Kyrgyzstan cases were transferred back to his unit in May 2018 after a media backlash.
Lutsenko’s spokeswoman Larysa Sargan denied the accusations of sabotage and said the Skadden and Kyrgyzstan cases were given to NABU because they were within its jurisdiction and transferred back to Gorbatuk because NABU was reluctant to investigate them.
Interference narrative
Gorbatuk said Lutsenko expressed no interest in the Manafort cases until February 2019, when he started efforts to curry favor with Trump by investigating his potential rival in the 2020 presidential election, ex-Vice President Joe Biden, and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
In December 2017, lawmaker Andriy Derkach, a long-term acquaintance of Lutsenko, initiated a criminal case at the Prosecutor General’s Office into the alleged interference. Derkach claimed that NABU had interfered in the U.S. election by leaking information on Manafort.
The case was closed in January 2019, but a court ordered prosecutors to resume it in October.
In December 2018, the Kyiv Administrative District Court also upheld a civil lawsuit by Poroshenko Bloc lawmaker Boryslav Rozenblat against Artem Sytnyk, head of NABU, and Leshchenko as part of the interference narrative. The court claimed that Leshchenko and Sytnyk had illegally interfered in Ukraine’s foreign policy when they revealed the surname and signature of Manafort in the black ledger.
However, in July 2019 an appeal court canceled that ruling.
Current status
The future of the Manafort cases in Ukraine is unclear.
Gorbatuk said it was unrealistic to convict Manafort in Ukraine given the U.S. did not respond to Ukraine’s requests to interrogate him and because America does not extradite its citizens.
Meanwhile, the investigator who was working on the Manafort case refused to undergo vetting under a procedure introduced by Riaboshapka, and he is expected to be fired, Gorbatuk said.
Gorbatuk and other investigators argue that the procedure violates the law, while Riaboshapka denied the accusations.
Timeline of Ukraine’s Manafort investigations
May 2014: Prosecutors open an embezzlement case with Paul Manafort named as the person who contracted Skadden law firm in the U.S. on behalf of then-President Viktor Yanukovych to discredit former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Yanukovych’s political rival. Skadden published a report concluding there was no political motivation in Tymoshenko’s 2011 imprisonment.
March 2015: The Prosecutor General’s Office contacts U.S. prosecutors, requesting to question Manafort regarding the Skadden report. There was no response, according to the Ukrainian side.
May 2016: Viktor Trepak, then the deputy head of SBU state security service, hands over hundreds of papers from the black ledger book, allegedly found in the office of Yanukovych’s party, to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU).
August 2016: NABU reports that the black ledger mentioned Manafort received $12.7 million from Yanukovych’s party in 2007 through 2012 and publishes photocopies to prove it.
Meanwhile in U.S., in August 2016: Manafort denies receiving illegal payments from Yanukovych’s party, but soon after he resigns from his position as Trump’s campaign chief.
February 2017: Then-lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko delivers documents showing that in 2009 Manafort received $750,000 from Yanukovych through an account offshore in Kyrgyzstan, allegedly for selling computers through his company Davis Manafort, to the U. S. Federal Bureau of Investigators (FBI). Leshchenko, who is now a Kyiv Post columnist, explained he cooperated with the FBI due to a lack of trust in Ukrainian law enforcement.
August 2017: The Prosecutor General’s Office opens an embezzlement investigation about the transfers of $750,000 to Manafort’s firm.
June 2017: The head of Special Anti-Corruption Prosecution, Nazar Kholodnytsky, submits the investigation of the black ledger cases from NABU to the special department of the Prosecutor General’s Office that investigates cases related to the EuroMaidan Revolution, then headed by Sergii Gorbatuk.
December 2017: Lutsenko transfers dozens of cases into Yanukovych-era corruption, including the Skadden and Kyrgyz cases against Manafort, from Gorbatuk’s department to the NABU.
December 2017: At the request of pro-Russian lawmaker Andriy Derkach, the Prosecutor General’s Office opens an investigation into Ukraine’s alleged meddling into the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Derkach claimed that NABU’s revelation of Manafort’s involvement in secret dealings with Yanukovych’s party hurt Trump and subsequently hurt Ukraine-U.S. relations. This case was closed in January 2019.
March 2018: Gorbatuk’s department sends a letter to the office of special investigator Robert Mueller, asking for Manafort’s testimony in the Skadden case. There was no reply, Gorbatuk said.
May 2018: Lutsenko returns the Skadden and Kyrgyz cases against Manafort to Gorbatuk’s unit after a media backlash.
February 2019: Lutsenko first expresses interest in the Manafort cases. He asks Gorbatuk’s detectives to show him findings and testimony.
March 2019: Manafort is sentenced by an American court to 7.5 years in prison for tax and bank fraud.
October 2019: Kyiv’s Pechersk Court demands that prosecutors resume their investigation into Ukraine’s alleged intervention in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
November 2019: The Prosecutor General’s Office continues to investigate three cases involving Manafort. The investigator in charge of the case may be dismissed over ongoing conflicts surrounding the vetting process for prosecutors and investigators.
