Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Interpol interested in Ukraine opposition leader


RBC, 08.12.2004, Moscow 18:33:00.The Russian Chief Military Prosecutor's Office has sent additional information to Interpol regarding accusations against Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Timoshenko. Chief Military Prosecutor Alexander Savenkov told journalists that his office had responded to Interpol's inquiry about some details of a criminal case filed against Timoshenko in Russia. According to the prosecutor, Timoshenko is still on the wanted list.

http://www.rbcnews.com/free/20041208183300.shtml

No wonder they are so desperate to get Yushchenko elected the oligarchs require state support to realize future profits from their criminal activities. Yushchenko as part of the scandal had to have benefited personally or was somehow compensated. Who are they kidding? This is why they picked him, their old friend and business associate, to back for office.

Surprising Timoshenko and Yushchenko are still alive, everyone must be after them. It's not nice to fool the IMF.

-Am

Yushchenko is a creature of this system, and his tenure at the National Bank of the Ukraine was marked by the corruption so characteristic of the political culture: a scandal involving falsification of the country's credit ledger – essentially lying to the International Monetary Fund about the quantity of Ukrainian cash reserves. As the Financial Times reports:

"Under his control, the bank was involved in a damaging row with the International Monetary Fund over the use of IMF loans to falsify the country's credit position - allowing some politicians, but not Mr Yushchenko, to benefit personally. He survived the ensuing scandal."

A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) audit confirmed the suspicions of IMF officials that Western lenders have been systematically deceived by Yushchenko's NBU:

"By giving a misleading impression of the size of Ukraine's reserves, the NBU's reserve management practices may have allowed Ukraine to receive as many as three disbursements under the stand-by arrangement in effect at that time that it might not otherwise have been able to obtain. … The three disbursements in question that would have been affected by the transactions examined in the PwC report were based on October, November, and December 1997 figures. They total SDR 145 million (about US$200 million)."

What happened to all that money? Pavlo Lazarenko knows, and he hasn't been shy about telling us what he knows. But is anybody listening?

According to Lazarenko – formerly prime minister, and a key figure in the oligarchy – $613 million of the IMF's money was embezzled and then laundered in December 1997. Like many other Soviet era bureaucrats, Lazarenko took advantage of the extensive network of overseas secret accounts established by the nomenklatura once the old Soviet Union started to unravel. With state funds secreted abroad, the oligarchs bought up the remnants of the old state industries, and divided the economic assets among themselves. Lazarenko was the chief patron of one of Yushchenko's biggest supporters, Yuliya Timoshenko of the United Energy Systems of the Ukraine (UESU), who made fantastic profits at a time of economic recession. However, Ms. Timoshenko, and her fellow oligarchs, as Alexander's Gas & Oil Connections explains,

"Could realize these profits only with the help of state support. … The amount of money involved has been highlighted by the Lazarenko affair. According to a report by the Financial Times, Pavlo Lazarenko, who was Ukraine's prime minister in 1996-97, received at least $ 72 mm in bribe money from gas importer UESU. In return, Lazarenko helped UESU to become one of Ukraine's leading companies with an annual turnover of $ 10 billion."

"When Lazarenko was sacked as prime minister, his successor Valery Pustovoitenko started a comprehensive investigation into the business of UESU, which led to the first accusations. In December of 1998, Lazarenko was arrested in Switzerland on charges of money laundering. He fled to the United States, where he was again arrested and charged with the laundering of $ 114 mm received as bribe money during his time in office.

"This June, while still being held in the United States, Lazarenko was sentenced for money laundering in Switzerland. Yuliya Tymoshenko, who was president of UESU when Lazarenko was prime minister, has so far avoided criminal prosecution. In 1997, she left the company and went into politics."

Ms. Timoshenko went on to become a deputy prime minister, in 1999, with special authority over energy matters. Her husband, still is a member of the board of UESU, was arrested on charges of embezzlement of state property. Ms. Timoshenko, too, was arrested, and – after much posing and posturing as a "political prisoner" – was freed.

It is entirely appropriate that the "gas princess," as Ms. Timoshenko is known, should become the La Passionaria of Ukraine's phony "velvet revolution." As she leaps atop the stage at the massive rallies taking place in the middle of Kiev, she speaks with Amazonian forcefulness and the authority of someone used to being obeyed, as The Australian reports:

"'Form a column and come with us to the presidency,' she shouted to a crowd on Wednesday. 'Once we arrive at the presidency, we won't leave until Yushchenko enters it as the new Ukrainian president and occupies his post.'"

The Lazarenko-Timoshenko wing of the oligarchy is naturally grateful to Yushie – after all, he fronted for them in bilking the IMF. Now they are paying him back with their fulsome support. This isn't the struggle of valiant pro-Western "democrats" versus sinister pro-Russian neo-communists: Timoshenko's histrionics represent a falling out among thieves.

In any case, from the Gas Princess to the Boadicea of the "democracy" movement in Ukraine is a fanciful transformation, at best, but Western propagandists are counting on the American public's ignorance of the Ukrainian scene to pull off one of the biggest frauds since the selling of convicted embezzler Ahmed Chalabi as the Iraqi George Washington.

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