American political advisor, Manafort, consulted the Party of Regions that evaded taxes to pay for his services with illegally obtained funds. To hide this connection the party created a scheme, founded an NGO and involved a number of high ranking officials from different countries.
Kyiv, August 19, 2016. “Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s campaign chief and Viktor Yanukovych’s former lobbyist, received illicit cash disbursements from the Party of Regions for 12 million 774 thousand 869 US dollars over the period from November 20 , 2007 to October 5, 2012. This cash was replenished in a corruptive, non-transparent way, and was not taxed. Its primary source was corrupt streams,” said Sergiy Leschenko, MP (“Petro Poroshenko Block” faction), at a briefing held at Ukraine Crisis Media Center. He explained that he has available documents proving the involvement of the Party of Regions in financing Paul Manafort. The money – allotted to “costly payment to Manafort,” “Paul Manafort”, “payment for Manafort’s services” and so on – was received by a third party, most often by Vitaliy Kalyuzhnyi, chairman of the then parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, the current deputy Yevhen Heller and other technical staff of the Party of Regions. It was cash money, so it is almost impossible to track the transactions. Now it is law enforcement’s turn to investigate the necessary connections.
According to Mr. Leshchenko, the money was used for conducting exit polls during elections, financing of international observers and so on. Paul Manafort was involved in the preparation of the report of the company “Skadden” on Yulia Tymoshenko’s case, which was prepared in response to a request of the previous government. “There is evidence that Mr. Manafort personally revised the report, edited it and gave recommendations on its content,” said the MP.
According to the chief editor of “Ukrayinska Pravda” Sevgil Musaieva-Borovyk, after the fall of Yanukovych regime Manafort did not stop his contacts with representatives of the former government. “He kept in touch with the Opposition Bloc. His last visit to Ukraine was in October 2015. He consulted the party during the early parliamentary elections in 2014,” said Ms. Sevgil.
The paper also features a payment of $ 225,000 which was allegedly received by American TV journalist, who worked with CNN and RT, Larry King, for arranging the interview with former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov in 2011. In addition, the “shadow” accounting indicates the amount of $ 35,000 which was allegedly received by head of the so-called “European office of the Party of Regions” – Ina Kirsch (full name is Ina Kirsch-Van de Water and she served as a head of the organization ‘European Centre for a Modern Ukraine’ in Brussels). “All this time she claimed that they operated independently. For a payment of $ 35,000 this lady hired American lobbyists for Yanukovych. They received $ 2 million in transit through Kirsch’s organisation,” said Mr. Leshchenko.
Full content of the papers is not available yet because they are investigatory privilege.
