Ukrainian politics have long been riddled with corruption.
But the May 31 release of documents, purportedly from ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s now-defunct Party of Regions, shows the massive scale of bribery – all detailed to the last dollar.
That is, if the documents are authentic.
Those named insist they aren’t and the allegations are false, but few people familiar with the depth of corruption in Ukraine were surprised at Ukrainska Pravda news website’s exposure of an extensive graft network.
The documents show several political parties received funds from Yanukovych’s party, meaning that many in the nation’s political structure were involved in the bribery schemes.
On the take
Many other parties, not just the Party of Regions, evidently use off-the-book accounting to evade taxes and hide what they are doing. But just as it governed, Yanukovych’s Party of Regions was brazen about everything — including its corruption.
“The Party of Regions thought that it would have everything under control for ages to come,” Taras Chornovil, an ex-member of the party, told the Kyiv Post, contrasting it with other parties. “That’s why they included their corrupt schemes in their general spreadsheets.”
The spreadsheets expose the Party of Regions’ efforts to bribe election commissions, lawmakers, judges, and police, as well as to buy favorable media coverage.
The revelations should serve as a wake-up call that forces elected officials to pass laws making political party financing transparent and restricting political advertising on television before the next elections, Sergii Leshchenko, a lawmaker from the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko Bloc and an investigative journalist, said.
Yevheny Geller (C), a lawmaker from the Vidrodzhennya Party, is accused of running financing schemes for ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. He denies the accusations. (Volodymyr Petrov)
$2 billion in bribes
The scandal came to light when Viktor Trepak, an ex-deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine, sent to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau 841 Party of Regions accounting documents from 2008 to 2012. The documents show that the party paid bribes and under-the-table handouts worth $2 billion, Trepak said in a May 28 interview.
The Ukrainska Pravda news site on May 31 published some of the spreadsheets, according to which the Party of Regions paid more than $66 million to officials, politicians and public relations specialists from June 2012 to December 2012.
Artem Sytnyk, the head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, said on June 1 that the bureau was trying to prevent some of those mentioned in the documents from leaving Ukraine. Sytnyk also said that the lives of some suspects could be in danger.
Chornovil confirmed the authenticity of the documents and said he had received money from the party for business trips. But he denied participating in any corrupt schemes.
He said the accounting documents were kept on the fourth floor of the Party of Regions office on Lypska Street in Kyiv. Zakarpattia Oblast Governor Hennady Moskal said on June 1 that the documents had likely been obtained when the office was burned by protesters during the EuroMaidan Revolution on Feb. 18, 2014, four days before Yanukovych and his top cronies fled the nation. Many, including Yanukovych, are fugitives living in Russia.
Chornovil said that, apart from the party’s accounting system, Party of Regions heavyweights Andriy Klyuyev and Serhiy Lyovochkin also distributed money through other channels.
Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko (R) and Party of Regions lawmaker Nestor Shufrich in the Verkhovna Rada on July 22, 2014. (UNIAN)
Yushchenko’s role
According to the documents leaked by Ukrainska Pravda, the Party of Regions paid $2.32 million to former President Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party in 2012. Yushchenko’s spokeswoman Iryna Vannikova told the Kyiv Post she believes those documents are fake.
The Party of Regions bought quotas of members of election commissions from Our Ukraine in 2012, while in 2009-2010 Yushchenko was believed to have been financed by Yanukovych in the run-up to the 2010 presidential election, Chornovil said.
“Yushchenko’s role (in Yanukovych’s rise to power) was colossal,” he added. “He was supposed to take votes away from (former Prime Minister) Yulia (Tymoshenko).” Yanukovych ended up defeating Tymoshenko in the February 2010 runoff by less than 3.5 percentage points.
In 2013, Serhiy Bondarchuk, the leader of Our Ukraine, said that his party had been funded by the Party of Regions and had acted in its interests in the 2012 parliamentary election.
Meanwhile, Zakarpattia Oblast Governor Hennadiy Moskal said on May 31 that Yushchenko and his chiefs of staff, Viktor Baloga and Vera Ulyanchenko, had gotten $1 billion to “yield power” to Yanukovych.
Mykhailo Okhendovsky, chairman of the Central Election Commission, attends President Petro Poroshenko’s inaguration on June 7, 2014. (UNIAN)
Tymoshenko role
Another party, Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna, could also be implicated, although she has denied having any corrupt dealings with the Party of Regions.
The spreadsheets show that $1.4 million was allocated to a certain “Apostol for the coalition.” Mikhailo Apostol was a Batkivshchyna lawmaker and now serves as an advisor to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
According to the spreadsheets, $160,000 was also paid to persuade lawmakers to join the Party of Regions in July 2012, when several parliamentarians from Batkivshchyna and Our Ukraine did indeed join Yanukovych’s party.
Chornovil claimed that Batkivshchyna had repeatedly received funding from the Party of Regions and that he had seen Tymoshenko at the Party of Regions office on Lypska Street.
Batkivshchyna received money for including Party of Regions loyalists in its party lists in the 2006 election, while in 2007 Klyuyev bribed Batkivshchyna lawmakers to join a constitutional majority being formed by the Party of Regions in the Verkhovna Rada, Chornovil said.
In 2007, Batkivshchyna lawmakers released video footage of Party of Regions representatives offering bribes for them to join the party.
Meanwhile, in 2008, Batkivshchyna was given money from the Party of Regions during talks on the forming a coalition with them, Chornovil added. He said Klyuyev had told him at the time: “If only you knew how much this is costing us, do you understand that Yulia is a very expensive lady?”
Other parties
Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko wrote on Facebook on May 30 that future leaks of Party of Regions documents could contain his party’s name and would be an attempt by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to discredit him. However, some critics saw his nervousness as self-incriminating evidence.
Chornovil said that Lyashko had been “completely controlled” by the Party of Regions and had been used by the party to attack Tymoshenko. Chornovil added that he had also seen Lyashko at the party office on Lypska Street. Lyashko has denied all of the accusations.
And in what some saw as another example of guilt, Oles Pobel, an activist of the nationalist Svoboda Party, wrote on Facebook on May 31 that the party’s enemies could have included it in the spreadsheets in an effort to discredit it.
Chornovil claimed that Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok had been controlled by the Party of Regions and used to attack its opponents, although Svoboda has denied the accusations.
The Radical Party and Svoboda did not feature in the Ukrainska Pravda leak.
The names of current members of the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko faction in parliament who used to be members of the Party of Regions are also likely to be in the spreadsheets, as they “could not help” but get funds for party operations, Chornovil said.
Ex-members of the UDAR party like Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, who is currently leader of the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko Solidarity Party, were believed to be getting funds from Lyovochkin and could also have received money from the Party of Regions, he added. UDAR has denied having any links to Lyovochkin. The spreadsheets also reveal that $32,300 was allocated for television projects linked to the Communist Party of Ukraine.
A Party of Regions spreadsheet leaked by Ukrainska Pravda on May 31. It shows dates, names, monetary amounts and signatures and mentions Mykhailo Okhendovsky, chairman of the Central Election Commission. (Courtesy)
Elections
The documents also allegedly expose the Party of Regions’ efforts to buy the loyalty of election commissions in the run-up to the Oct. 28, 2012 parliamentary vote.
Specifically, the Party of Regions allocated $2.93 million for the Central Election Commission, while another $1.3 million was disbursed for other election commissions.
According to the spreadsheets, Mykhailo Okhendovsky, who is currently the chairman of the Central Election Commission, received $1,525 for a business trip.
Courts
Trepak said that judges of the Constitutional Court also featured in the spreadsheets. He also said that the documents may breathe new life into the investigations into Yanukovych’s usurpation of power, which he achieved after his election as president in 2010 by altering the Ukrainian Constitution to grant the presidency increased powers.
The Prosecutor General’s Office is investigating six judges of the Constitutional Court on suspicion of their complicity in the usurpation of power by Yanukovych.
Chornovil said that the Party of Regions likely bribed the Constitutional Court in 2010 when it increased the president’s constitutional powers. The court’s press office declined to comment.
Yury Kostenko, then leader of Our Ukraine party (R), stands in front of the Verkhovna Rada on Sept. 23, 2010. Leaked documents show he got money from the Party of Regions but he denies it. (Ukrafoto)
