The National Police said on March 29 it had uncovered a vote-buying scheme by President Petro Poroshenko’s campaign in Cherkasy, a city of 277,044 people located 191 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
The Cherkasy Oblast branch of Poroshenko’s Solidarity Party said that the incident was a provocation by Cherkasy Mayor Anatoly Bondarenko, who represents ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party. Tymoshenko is one of Poroshenko’s major competitors in the March 31 presidential election.
The police published photos of boxes with cash, documents with citizens’ personal data and lists of people and sums of money allocated to them ranging from Hr 2,000 to Hr 4,500.
The police also said it had confiscated Hr 1.6 million and $12,000 in cash.
In February the police searched an office of Poroshenko’s party in Sumy and arrested two of its employees suspected of vote buying.
Nationwide scheme?
In February Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who reportedly has a conflict with Poroshenko, exposed the Poroshenko campaign’s alleged nationwide vote-buying scheme. Avakov said it involved 200,000 paid campaign workers, was expected to cover from 700,000 to 6 million voters and would cost some $56 million. He added that Serhiy Berezenko, a deputy head of Poroshenko’s faction in parliament, was under investigation. Berezenko denied the accusations, saying they are linked to a “dirty election campaign.”
Oleh Medvedev, the spokesman of Poroshenko’s campaign, called these accusations “groundless.”
Avakov said that Poroshenko’s campaign workers were identifying the president’s supporters in order to give them financial benefits from the state budget as a form of vote buying. Voters identified as loyal were asked by campaign workers to fill in applications for such state subsidies, he said.
Meanwhile, in February the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said it was investigating jointly with the Prosecutor General’s Office and the State Investigation Bureau an alleged attempt by one presidential candidate to buy votes all over Ukraine. Though they didn’t name the candidate, the searches were conducted in the offices of Tymoshenko’s party. These three agencies are subordinate to Poroshenko.
Journalist investigation
The Bihus.info journalism project on March 25 released an investigation into Poroshenko’s alleged vote-buying scheme.
According to Bihus.info, the scheme involves the Institute for Developing and Facilitating Democracy, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Kateryna Pop, head of the institute, used to be an aide to Dmytro Kasyanov, a political consultant for the Poroshenko Bloc, Bihus.info reported.
Pop and Berezenko also announced a forum at which Poroshenko formally announced his candidacy in January.
The institute was co-founded by Ivan Dobrovolsky, an aide to Poroshenko Bloc lawmaker Serhiy Alekseyev, and Yury Hoida, an aide to People’s Front party lawmaker Mykhailo Khmel.
Hoida co-owns a business with Mark Adamovsky, a nephew of businessman Andriy Adamovsky. In turn, Andriy Adamovsky used to be a business partner of Poroshenko’s top ally and lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky.
