An unnamed Ukrainian oligarch contributed most of the “over $5 million” paid for a report by law firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom whitewashing the illegal prosecution of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, U.S. federal prosecutors say.
The new information comes in legal documents filed in advance of the sentencing of Alex van der Zwaan, a former Skadden associate who pleaded guilty to lying to U.S. investigators over his role in the Tymoshenko report.
The sentencing documents offer new details on the report, including confirmation that former Party of Regions consultant and Paul Manafort associate Rick Gates knew a local employee of theirs was a former Russian military intelligence officer.
In the court filings, federal prosecutors working under Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election don’t demand a particular sentence for Van der Zwaan, but highlight details of why he lied to the investigation.
“Van der Zwaan, in short, is a person to whom every advantage in life has been given, and from whom the government and the professional bar rightly expected candor and uprightness,” prosecutors wrote.
Who’s the oligarch?
Skadden was hired by the government of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2011 to prepare a report investigating whether the Tymoshenko prosecution met European standards of due process, and whether it was politically motivated. The firm concluded that the prosecution was not politically motivated, but the report failed to achieve its desired effect of convincing western policymakers that Tymoshenko was not a political prisoner.
Former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig oversaw the report, while Manafort played a role in editing it before release.
The documents state that Skadden received more than $5 million for the Tymoshenko job, but not from the government. The Ministry of Justice officially paid Skadden $12,000 for the report officially, an absurdly low number that led to allegations of fraud over the firm’s hiring. The Justice Ministry later transferred $1.085 million to Skadden, leading to an investigation into whether the transfer was legal and whether the firm was hired according to proper tender procedures.
At the same time, an unnamed “Ukrainian oligarch” paid a majority of more than $5 million for the report, a larger sum than the $4 million prosecutors have previously indicated.
Van der Zwaan’s sentencing docs do not name the oligarch who financed the report. Whoever it was, however, would have been likely to be associated with the Yanukovych regime, and also would have had a reason to whitewash Tymoshenko’s prosecution.
“It’s possible that they added to the $1.085 million that the Justice Ministry officially paid Skadden,” said Serhiy Gorbatyuk, a prosecutor overseeing the Ukrainian investigation into the case. “But the four million, we don’t know where it came from, who is the oligarch, and how and when it was transferred.”
U.S. prosecutors write that the payment occurred “largely through third-party payments…funnelled through a Manafort and Gates Cypriot account.”
Gorbayuk added that the U.S. “still hasn’t presented us documents on our international mutual legal assistance request.”
Skadden paid Ukraine $567,000 in June 2017 after the country sent the U.S. Justice Department a letter over the issue, in what General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko described as “close cooperation” with the U.S. Justice Department over the return of the funds.
‘Part of the iceberg’
At the center of the discussions is an unidentified “Person A,” who worked with Manafort and Rick Gates in Ukraine, and is a former military intelligence officer with Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency.
“Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agents assisting the Special Counsel’s Office assess that Person A has ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016,” the document states.
News reports from summer 2016 tied Manafort associate Konstantin Kilimnik to the GRU. Kilimnik did not reply to a request for comment.
The sentencing memorandum cites Person A as telling Van der Zwaan that “there were additional payments,” and that “the official contract [between Skadden and the Justice Ministry] was only a part of the iceberg.”
Van der Zwaan admitted to destroying correspondence with Person A and not presenting it to federal investigations, as well as about lying about his contacts with the former spook.
He also admitted to lying about additional communications which would have revealed that he had “leaked an advance copy of the report” to a PR firm, despite his bosses at Skadden “not wanting to be perceived as ‘whitewashing’ or as doing public relations work on behalf of Ukraine.”
