A questionnaire for potential jurors in the upcoming second trial of former Party of Regions adviser and ex-Donald Trump 2016 Campaign Manager Paul Manafort reveals dozens of powerful Ukrainians could make cameos in the U.S. proceedings.
Made public on Sept. 5, the questionnaire names dozens of likely witnesses in the case, as well as many figures crucial to the illegal lobbying and money laundering schemes that Manafort is alleged to have masterminded on behalf of the administration of the disgraced and ousted former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
The most likely potential witnesses at the trial include Rick Gates, who took a plea deal to testify against Manafort, and Sam Patten, the political consultant who pleaded guilty to failing to register as a lobbyist on behalf of Opposition Bloc last week.
But at the bottom of the list is a collection of 27 Ukrainian names, which, while riddled with spelling mistakes, is a rollcall of top Yanukovych-era officials who financed, cooperated with, and in some cases opposed Manafort’s work in Ukraine. Others on the list include former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and other people incidental to Manafort’s work.
The list illustrates how many former Yanukovych officials remained in key positions in the Ukrainian government even after the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution – dozens of Yanukovych-era diplomats remained at their posts or were promoted, helping to finalize the association agreement with the European Union under President Petro Poroshenko.
The Yanukovych administration’s refusal to go ahead with the association agreement with the EU led to his ouster in the EuroMaidan Revolution of 2014.
The list also highlights the Poroshenko administration’s failure to prosecute anyone for crimes committed under the Yanukovych regime. Many of the ousted president’s backers and allies remain extremely influential in Ukraine, with little attention paid by law enforcement to the $40 billion stolen and more than 100 protestors murdered during the revolution.
Manafort is set to go to trial on Sept. 24 in Washington D.C. on charges that he failed to register as a foreign agent and on money laundering allegations.
Black ledger?
Much of Manafort’s Ukraine-related troubles began in May 2016, when Bloc Petro Poroshenko MP Serhiy Leshchenko and Ukrainska Pravda Editor Sevgil Musaieva announced that they had uncovered a so-called handwritten “black ledger” of the Party of Regions, allegedly reflecting illegal payments the party made during its election campaigns.
Two months later, the New York Times published a story saying that the ledger showed $12.7 million destined for Manafort. He left his position as campaign manager the next day.
The ledger allegedly showed other Ukrainian officials, including Election Commission Chief Mykhaylo Okhendovsky, Former Party of Regions MP Yevgeny Geller, former Party of Regions MP Vitaliy Kalyuzhnyy, and former Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara receiving payments.
All of those names appear on the juror questionnaire list.
‘Symbiosis’
So does that of Serhiy Lovochkin, the current Opposition Bloc MP who, according to former Opposition Bloc MP Vadim Rabinovich, worked closest with Manafort while the U.S. political consultant was in Ukraine.
“Lovochkin led him around on a leash,” Rabinovich said in a TV interview.
Manafort’s first trial revealed evidence that Lovochkin funneled $40 million to the now-convicted felon.
According to Sergey Vysotsky, an MP from Narodnyi Front and a former journalist, Manafort’s pay came in part from a “political-economic symbiosis” between Lovochkin and oligarch Dmytro Firtash.
“They were partners,” Vysotsky said. “Lovochkin guaranteed entrance to the necessary offices… under Yanukovych or (Viktor) Yushchenko, and Firtash worked out the business schemes. And through the business schemes he bought influence, through (TV station) Inter, the Party of Regions, and later the Opposition Bloc.”
Part of the influence campaign extended into Europe, where Manafort allegedly hired a group of European politicians to lobby on the Yanukovych Administration’s behalf, specifically as part of a bid to convince Western officials to ignore accusations that the prosecution and imprisonment of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was politically motivated.
These politicians were allegedly managed through a Brussels-registered NGO called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, run by a Russian-speaking German woman named Ina Kirsch.
A document filed with the U.S. Justice Department claims that former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, and former Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer were hired to do the work.
The lobbying push also involved a number of ritzy D.C. entities, ranging from commissioning law firm Skadden Arps Slater Meagher & Flom LLP to write a report whitewashing the Tymoshenko prosecution to hiring lobbying firms Podesta Group and Mercury Public Affairs to act as the Yanukovych regime’s representatives in Washington.
Part of that representation centered on the 2012 parliamentary elections. CNN reported that Podesta Group contacted the State Department in a bid to burnish the Yanukovych government’s handling of the elections.
Also during the parliamentary elections, conservative U.S. websites were publishing pro-Yanukovych pieces defending the jailing of Tymoshenko and praising how the elections were being run.
A Buzzfeed report later accused Central Election Commission Chief Mykhaylo Okhendovsky (also on the list) of involvement in a scheme to pay off the journalists to write the stories – exporting to the United States the Ukrainian concept of “dzhynsa,” or paying journalists to produce public relations content disguised as newspaper articles or internviews.
Andrii Smyrnov, a lawyer for Okhendovsky, declined to comment on the U.S. proceedings, adding that “the criminal case against (the commission head) in Ukraine has been closed for more than a year.”
Smyrnov also represents four other Ukrainians on the questionnaire list: Former Party of Regions MP Yevgeny Geller, Former Party of Regions faction chief Oleksandr Yefremov, and Former Chairman of the Rada foreign relations committee Vitaly Kaluzhnyy.
Below is a list of the Ukrainians who could figure in the course of Manafort’s second trial:
Ukrainians to appear in the upcoming trial of former Party of Regions adviser Viktor Yanukovych.
