Selective use of justice against Poroshenko shows Zelenskyy is working for oligarchs
When President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected as Ukraine’s
president there were concerns about his close ties to oligarch Ihor
Kolomoyskyi. Servant of the People began airing on Kolomoyskyi’s 1+1 television
channel in October 2015, only seven months after a near violent clash between
his paramilitaries and President Petro Poroshenko.
The timing was
probably no coincidence.Kolomoyskyi wanted revenge for being forced to resign
as governor of the strategically important Dnipropetrovsk region adjacent to
the war-torn Donbas, which led to his exile for the second time in a decade
(the first time being during Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency).
Poroshenko’s de-oligarchisation campaign targeted two
influential groups, one of which was Kolomoyskyi and the gas lobby headed by
Dmytro Firtash who is fighting extradition from Vienna to the US to stand trial
on corruption charges. Kolomoyskyi lost his two cash cows, which were Ukraine’s
biggest banking group, Privat, and the state oil refining company UkrNafta.
After Ukraine ended the direct import of gas from Russia in 2015, the gas lobby
lost its ability to make lucrative profits from opaque gas intermediaries, such
as RosUkrEnergo.
Because of this, both Kolomoyskyi and
Firtash-Lyovochkin-Boyko sought revenge against Poroshenko. Ukraine’s two
biggest television channels, 1+1 and Inter, which ares owned by Kolomoyskyi and
the gas lobby respectively, hurled insinuations, scorn, and outright
disinformation against Poroshenko for the duration of his entire presidency and
thereby helped Zelenskyy win the election.
Kolomoyskyi is currently lobbying Zelenskyy to bring
criminal charges against Poroshenko. Firtash-Lyovochkin-Boyko (through
financial support and former Party of Regions maverick deputy Andrei Derkach)
assisted Rudy Giuliani in his collection of questionable “evidence” that
assisted United States President Donald Trump in his fight against impeachment
charges and winning re-election this year.
Since returning to Ukraine, Kolomoyskyi’s priorities have
been revenge and regaining PrivatBank and UkrNafta as his personal cash cows.
In this, Kolomoyskyi is similar to other oligarchs in believing he is above the
law while denying his own involvement in corruption, which is not the case as
Kolomoyskyi has long been Ukraine’s biggest corporate raider.
An investigation by Kroll Associates that was commissioned
by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) found that Kolomoyskyi and his oligarch
partners had siphoned nearly six billion dollars over the decade prior to
PrivatBank’s nationalisation in 2016. To forestall its bankruptcy and a
possible collapse of Ukraine’s financial system, another six billion dollars
were injected by the Ukrainian government. Today, PrivatBank is a profitable
financial institution. The IMF is adamant that Kolomoyskyi , and other
oligarchs at other banka that were closed down under Poroshenko, should have
been punished.
Since Kolomoyskyi’s return to Ukraine, he has initiated
numerous court cases to reverse the decision to nationalise PrivatBank and
applied incessant pressure on President Zelenskyy and Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk
to return PrivatBank to his ownership. This has been coupled with a reign of
terror against former NBU Governor Valeriya Hontareva, which included a hit and
run in London, where she is based, and the burning down of her home in Kyiv.
Zelenskyy has ignored demands for an official investigation into these attacks.
The Ukrainian government initially considered the idea of
returning PrivatBank to Kolomoyskyi. Meanwhile, the IMF and western governments
warned that this was a red line that could not be crossed. Further cooperation
with the IMF would have been curtailed if PrivatBank had been returned to
Kolomoyskyi. It is though incredulous that the Zelenskyy had initially
considered this possibility.
During a lunch at the September 2019 Yalta European Strategy
in Kyiv, then United States Ambassador William Taylor walked out in protest
after Kolomoyskyi arrived and joined oligarch Viktor Pinchuk.’s lunch table The
entire YES conference was a show of support by Pinchuk to Zelenskyy as what had
been termed the “Dnipropetrovsk mafia” in Soviet times had again returned to
power.
There are on-going criminal investigations by the FBI into
Kolomoyskyi and his associates who have undertaken, according to economist
Anders Aslund, “the biggest case of money laundering in history … perpetrated
by one single group.” The schemes bought real estate and industrial plants in
the United States.
With the IMF, European Union and western governments calling
on Zelenskyy to not return PrivatBank and to hold oligarchs involved in banking
fraud accountable for their corruption, Kolomoyskyi has switched to a
pro-Russian rhetoric. A Ukraine that has turned his back on Europe would not
have to abide by IMF and European Union demands that come with financial
assistance. This again showed how oligarchs are not pro-western or pro-Russian
but pro-themselves.
Kolomoyskyi’s desire for revenge corresponds to Russian
President Vladimir Putin’s long-time hatred for Poroshenko because of his
dogged pursuit of a pro-European foreign policy and rejection of Russian
demands for “peace” in the Donbas war. Because of this, Kolomoyskyi’s desire
for revenge works well together with the revenge sought by Putin and his
proxies in Ukraine in the “gas lobby” (Firtash, Serhiy Lyovochkin and Yuriy
Boyko) who lead Ukraine’s pro-Russian Opposition Platform party.
Zelenskyy also has not forgotten the many insults he was
subjected to by Poroshenko’s team during this year’s election campaign.
Zelenskyy suffers from the Dunning-Kruger effect of disrespect for the older
generation (in this case Poroshenko) coupled with a fervent belief that he is
far more intelligent and politically savvy.
Ukraine is again on a slippery slope. If Zelenskyy continues
to do Kolomoyskyi’s bidding, he will increasingly resemble Yanukovych whose
applied selective use of justice against political opposition leaders Yulia
Tymoshenko and Yuriy Lutsenko which undermined Ukraine’s European integration.
Zelenskyy’s team is being assisted in its pursuit of
criminal charges against Poroshenko by Andriy Portnov, who was Yanukovych’s
senior legal adviser and deputy chief of staff. Portnov returned to Ukraine at
the same time as Kolomoyskyi and is also seeking revenge against Poroshenko.
Whistleblower Judge Larysa Holnyk has revealed that Portnov
and Zelenskyy’s former chief of staff, Andriy Bohdan, pressured Roman Truba,
the head of the newly created State Bureau of Investigations, to launch a
number of criminal charges against Poroshenko. The whistleblower warned of “the
huge risk politicising this issue carries for law enforcement bodies.” Bohdan
had served in Yanukovych’s government headed by Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov
when he never protested against selective use of justice against Tymoshenko and
Lutsenko.
Serious concern over Zelenskyy’s intention to imprison
former President Poroshenko is already being expressed by western leaders.
Former President of the European Council Donald Tusk said in Zagreb after being
elected head of the European People’s Party: “My first impression is that this
is something really dangerous.” He added that he hopes “there is no room for
politically motivated persecution.”
Remembering past examples of selective use of justice in
Ukraine, Tusk warned that “any attempt to intimidate opposition leaders will be
a matter of concern in Europe … whenever the authorities or people in power use
justice against political opponents. In any form, whether in the medium or long
term, it will become a tragedy not only for victims of persecution, but for the
whole country.”
Imprisoning Poroshenko and ignoring Kolomoyskyi’s corruption
in the banking sector would severely damage Zelenskyy’s reputation at home and
abroad. Serious struggles against corruption must begin within his own team
rather than going after his political opponents.
The threat of returning PrivatBank to Kolomoyskyi and the
selective use of justice against Poroshenko, if actioned, would severely weaken
Zelenskyy’s presidency and undermine Ukraine’s European integration. If
Zelenskyy continues to play Kolomoyskyi’s fiddle he will face another Maidan, a
move that will only benefit Russia and President Putin.
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