“Ukrainian trace” in US elections

From day to day, press in the United States writes about new scandals involving the presidential candidates from Republican and Democratic parties. As usual, some of the scandals concern the matters of financing, but in this case there is a “Ukrainian trace” and Ukrainian money in American election campaigns.

Recently, US presidential candidate from the Republican Party, Donald Trump accepted the resignation of Paul Manafort, who recently has become the subject of sharp criticism in international media. In particular, this happened when the 67-year-old spin doctor, who once helped Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych to become president, was confirmed by the Ukrainian police to be present in documents related to illegal payments within the Party of Regions in 2007-12, amounting to millions of dollars.

Manafort denied the accusations. But it turned out that his name appears in the list of Party of Regions’ “black accounting.” In particular the so-called “ledger” allegedly contains the documents proving the illegal payments up to a total of around 2 billion dollars, which this party used to bribe several former and current officials and politicians. In late May, Viktor Trepak, former first deputy director of SBU, gave them to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.

As reported by New York Times, referring to the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Bureau, the still undisclosed part of the “ledger” mentions Paul Manafort’s name 22 times. In total, it refers to payments amounting to 12.7 million dollars between 2007 and 2012.

Meanwhile, AP agency is referring to emails they have obtained to claim that Manafort and his colleagues conducted a hidden propaganda campaign in the US in favor of the Government of Ukraine during the reign of former president Viktor Yanukovych. According to the agency, Paul Manafort, former adviser to Yanukovych, and his first deputy Rick Gates had actually been working as agents within the United States lobbying the interests of foreign political leaders or parties. Moreover, allegedly in violation of the law they did not submit a report on such activities to the US Department of Justice. Such a violation is a criminal offense and is punishable by up to five years in prison and a 250,000-dollar fine.

Paul Manafort was very closely familiar to Ukrainian politics from the time of the first Maidan. After the defeat of Viktor Yanukovych in the presidential election of 2004, Manafort became a spin doctor to him and to his Party of Regions. Working with Manafort, the Party of Regions managed to win the parliamentary elections of 2006 and 2007. Besides, Manafort was a victorious political technologist for Viktor Yanukovych in the presidential campaign of 2010. In 2014, Paul Manafort participated in the parliamentary election campaign for the Opposition Bloc – the party, which was formed at the ruins of the Party of Regions after Euromaidan.

It may be a coincidence, but almost immediately after Manafort resigned, a new scandal erupted in the US connected with Hillary Clinton, in particular the Clinton family charitable foundation, which also has a “Ukrainian trace.” New York Times describes it in an article entitled “Foundation Ties Bedevil Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign.” According to the newspaper, Clintons’ family charitable foundation has received tens of millions of dollars in donations from countries which the US State Department has criticized on cases of gender discrimination and other human rights violations – Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Brunei, and Algeria. And the contributions Clinton family were made at the time when Hillary occupied the post of secretary of state, alleges the newspaper.

REUTERS photo

The publication reports that Ukrainian businessman Viktor Pinchuk, son-in-law of the former president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, whose presidency was subjected to wide criticism because of corruption and restriction of freedom of speech, had sent from 10 to 25 million dollars to the Clinton Foundation. He even lent his private plane to Clintons and traveled to Los Angeles to take part in the celebration of Bill Clinton’s 65th birthday.

New York Times reported that between September 2011 and November 2012, Douglas E. Schoen, a former political consultant of Bill Clinton, arranged about a dozen meetings with State Department officials on behalf of or with Mr. Pinchuk to discuss the continuing political crisis in Ukraine.

In addition, as noted in previously undisclosed email obtained by the organization Citizens United, public court records mention Pinchuk’s name as one of the “successful businessmen” in the eight-pages-long list of most influential people invited by Clintons for a dinner.

The publication also mentions that in 2012, the oligarch Pinchuk invited Chelsea Clinton with her husband Mark Mezvinski to Ukraine.

Although Pinchuk insists that his meetings with Clintons were dedicated solely to democracy in Ukraine. But how can one explain the fact that anti-dumping investigation against Pinchuk’s “Intertype,” which was opened by the Department of Trade in July 2013, has begun only after Clinton left the post of Secretary of State in July 2014.

New York Times also mentions another agreement in which Clinton was involved, namely the connection between the sale of a US uranium holding to a Russian state company Rosatom, and further donations to the fund. Although there is no evidence that Clinton has had any influence on the signing, but the coincidence between this transaction and the donations raises many questions regarding this deal.

Last week, Bill Clinton has made an announcement to the staff of the family fund, in which he stated that the organization is going to stop accepting foreign investment if his wife wins the presidential election.

But now, after the publication of the Clinton Foundation deals, including the funds raised from the Kuchma family, which has tarnished the reputation across the world, there are many questions to Hillary Clinton as a possible future president. Would she uphold the values declared by the United States, or would she meet the oligarchs from countries that have problems with democracy in exchange for the donations to the fund, as she used to do as secretary of state.