The Batkivschyna, a political party having 20 seats in the Verkhovna Rada and headed by presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko, has received millions of hryvnyas of donations from people who appear to be fake donors, according to the investigations by two anti-graft journalism projects published on Feb. 28.
As journalists showed, many of the party’s lavishest individual sponsors appeared to be ordinary people living in sleepy towns and having low-paid jobs, or even pensioners, or the unemployed.
Some of them were not even aware that large amounts of money were regularly donated to the Batkivschyna on their behalf.
Tymoshenko denied accusations of fraud. She said on March 1 that those were business people contributing through their relatives and friends out of fear of persecution by authorities for supporting an opposition candidate.
Tymoshenko, who runs for the presidency in the election scheduled for March 31, used to lead the polls in autumn 2018, but lately has been taking second and third place in the polls. Ahead of her are actor-turned-politician Volodymyr Zelenskiy and, in some polls, also the incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, who seeks re-election.
Following the publications, the National Police initiated a criminal case into alleged campaign financing fraud on March 1.
Tymoshenko has been leading an expensive campaign, with plenty of outdoor advertising and campaign events.
The Nashi Groshi program reported that between January and June 2018, Tymoshenko’s party had received Hr 23 million ($860,000), while by the end of the year, with Tymoshenko’s presidential campaign launched, the individual sponsors donated over Hr 130 million ($4.8 million).
Interestingly, the party’s publicized financial reports show that the party’s budget had skyrocketed then thanks to sponsors living in villages and donating as much as Hr 148,000-149,000 ($5,500) at a time. Some of them donated many times, the journalists said.
For ordinary countryside dwellers, given that the official average monthly wage in Ukraine is around $400, those contributions do stand out.
One of the most lavish sponsors was Natalia Zubar, a woman living in the village of Zavallya in the Kirovohrad Oblast. According to the report, she had sent as much as Hr 149,000 ($5,500) each day on Oct, 3, 4, 5, 16, in 2018, and then sent Hr 130,000 again in a week. In general, she had donated almost Hr 1.5 million to Tymoshenko’s party over six months of 2018, — all despite working as a checkout cashier at a supermarket.
Nashi Groshi confronted the woman who was surprised to learn about her supposed donations but told the journalists she gave her bank card to her niece who supposedly works for the Batkivshyna Party. Zubar’s sister Valentyna Korechna and her unemployed son Vladyslav also donated nearly 2.7 million to the party, all in several equal transactions.
Another major investigative journalism project Schemes, which published its own investigation and came to the same results, also noted that in 2018 the party received nearly Hr 158 million of donations, the majority of which, worth of Hr 144.6 million, were sent by individuals. The Schemes pointed out that the suspicious donations were contributed synchronically and massively, starting from May 22, 2018.
Before that date, the party didn’t receive a single donation from an individual that year.
Nashi Groshi also noted that there had been an obvious reason for making donations worth no more than Hr 150,000 at a time.
“Because this is the limit beyond which special financial inspections start,” the journalists explained.
Among other sponsors regularly donating millions to the party were a kindergarten educator, a Jehovah Witness, a car washer, and a self-employed nail artist who fundraised money on TV for her daughter’s medical treatment.
While commenting on the revealed manipulations with party budget donations, Tymoshenko said that it could be a “provocation” staged by the Security Service of Ukraine against her.
