Category Archives: Media corruption

Obama Admin Tried to Partner with Burisma

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Where is Chairman Adam Schiff now? He brought in George Kent, the former charge d’affair at the Kiev embassy for testimony. And the whistle blew except Schiff did not run out to the hallway outside his office to the nearest microphone.
Hat tip again to John Solomon for his report and tireless investigative work.
In part from his report:

George Kent, the former charge d’affair at the Kiev embassy, said in testimony released Thursday that the State Department’s main foreign aid agency, known as USAID, planned to co-sponsor a clean energy project with Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas firm that employed Hunter Biden as a board member.

At the time of the proposed project, Burisma was under investigation in Ukraine for alleged corruption. Those cases were settled in late 2016 and early 2017. Burisma contested allegations of corruption but paid a penalty for tax issues.

Kent testified he personally intervened in mid-2016 to stop USAID’s joint project with Burisma because American officials believed the corruption allegations against the gas firm raised concern.

“There apparently was an effort for Burisma to help cosponsor, I guess, a contest that USAID was sponsoring related to clean energy. And when I heard about it I asked USAID to stop that sponsorship,” Kent told lawmakers.

When asked why he intervened, he answered: “”Because Burisma had a poor reputation in the business, and I didn’t think it was appropriate for the U.S. Government to be co-sponsoring something with a company that had a bad reputation.”

Kent’s testimony confirms earlier text messages I reported on in September. Those text messages show that Devon Archer — Hunter Biden’s business associate and fellow board member on Burisma — boasted to an American lawyer in December 2015 that the pair was seeking to do a project with USAID.

And internal State memos I obtained this week under FOIA show Hunter Biden and Archer had multiple contacts with Secretary of State John Kerry and Deputy Secretary Tony Blinken in 2015-16, and that Burisma’s own American legal team was lobbying State to help eliminate the corruption allegations against it in Ukraine.

Hunter Biden’s name was specifically invoked as a reason why State officials should assist, the memos show. A month after Burisma’s contact with State, Joe Biden leveraged the threat of withholding U.S. foreign aid to force Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who at the time was overseeing the Burisma probe.

Joe Biden says he forced the firing because he believed Shokin was ineffective, but Shokin says he was told he was fired because the American ice president was unhappy the prosecutor would not drop the Burisma probe.

Okay, so just to continue to check things out here for context and details, I trotted over to the Obama White House archives…BINGO! YIPPEE….Solomon is right on point.

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2014 and read carefully the following:

For Immediate Release
April 21, 2014

FACT SHEET: U.S. Crisis Support Package for Ukraine

President Obama and Vice President Biden have made U.S. support for Ukraine an urgent priority as the Ukrainian government works to establish security and stability, pursue democratic elections and constitutional reform, revive its economy, and ensure government institutions are transparent and accountable to the Ukrainian people.  Ukraine embarks on this reform path in the face of severe challenges to its sovereignty and territorial integrity, which we are working to address together with Ukraine and our partners in the international community.  The United States is committed to ensuring that Ukrainians alone are able to determine their country’s future without intimidation or coercion from outside forces.  To support Ukraine, we are today announcing a new package of assistance totaling $50 million to help Ukraine pursue political and economic reform and strengthen the partnership between the United States and Ukraine.

Elections and Constitutional Reform:  Constitutional reform and free and fair elections are keys to Ukraine’s democratic development.  Assistance in this area is a down payment on the country’s democratic development.  We stand ready to provide further assistance to the new government after elections.

  • The United States is contributing an $11.4 million package to support the integrity of the May 25 elections.   These funds are being used to advance democratic processes – not to support a particular candidate or electoral outcome.  These efforts include voter education programs, transparent election administration, effective oversight of the election process, election security and a redress of infractions, and a diverse, balanced and policy-focused media environment.
  • The United States is contributing support and monitors to the OSCE’s election observation mission and other monitoring groups.  U.S. funded programs will provide at least 250 long-term observers and over 1,700 short-term observers.
  • We are also sending additional experts to provide advice on issues such as constitutional checks and balances, local governance, public participation, and the establishment of an independent, transparent judicial system.

Economic Assistance:  The United States has already signed a $1 billion loan guarantee to help Ukraine meet its financial obligations and protect vulnerable citizens from the impact of economic adjustments.  We have also supported Ukraine’s work with the IMF to secure a loan program worth $14-$18 billion.   As these U.S., IMF, and European funds begin to flow, we will have technical experts from the U.S. Treasury Department on the ground to help the Ukrainian government allocate them effectively to stabilize the economy and ensure all the regions benefit.  Currently, there are three banking advisors in Kyiv and we will be deploying public debt management and macroeconomic advisors in the coming week.  We are also committed to providing additional technical assistance in the areas of budget and tax administration.

Energy Security:  Over the coming weeks, expert teams from several U.S. government agencies will travel to the region to help Ukraine meet immediate and longer term energy needs.

  • Today, a U.S. interagency expert team arrived in Kyiv to help Ukraine secure reverse flows of natural gas from its European neighbors.  The team will continue on to Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia in the coming days to work on the details of these arrangements.  Reverse flows of natural gas will provide Ukraine with additional immediate sources of energy.
  • U.S. technical experts will join with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and others in May to help Ukraine develop a public-private investment initiative to increase conventional gas production from existing fields to boost domestic energy supply.  A technical team will also engage the government on measures that will help the Ukrainian government ensure swift and environmentally sustainable implementation of contracts signed in 2013 for shale gas development.
  • Department of Energy and USAID specialists will travel to Ukraine next month to provide advice on how to maximize energy efficiency, which could deliver potentially huge cost savings to Ukraine and rationalize energy consumption.

Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption:  The United States is committed to helping Ukraine break the cycle of corruption that acts as a tax on business, an impediment to economic growth, and a drain on public trust in government.  Technical advisors from the Departments of State and Justice have already been advising the government on anti-corruption measures.  Today we are expanding this assistance program with additional commitments.

  • Attorney General Holder will co-host an international conference in London April 29-30 to help identify, trace, and recover proceeds of corruption stolen by the former regime.  This is part of an ongoing effort, including work by an FBI investigative team on the ground in Kyiv to help the government of Ukraine recover assets stolen from the Ukrainian people.
  • The United States will provide advice and assistance to help modernize Ukraine’s government procurement in accordance with international standards, including the creation of a vetted anti-corruption unit.   We will offer technical assistance to that vetted unit to help build a sustainable anti-corruption regime within Ukraine, as we have done with substantial results in other parts of the world.
  • Specialized teams of prosecutors and investigators will help the Ukrainian government with other forms of technical assistance to put in place the proper legal and regulatory framework to fight corruption.  The teams will also serve as a resource to ensure follow-through and effective implementation.

People-to-People Ties:  To further strengthen ties between the people of Ukraine and the United States, we are announcing our intent to establish a new bilateral visa regime that will extend the standard validity of visas for businesspeople and tourists from 5 years to 10 years on a negotiated reciprocal basis.

Security Assistance:  In addition to the $50 million package, today we are announcing the provision of $8 million of non-lethal military assistance to allow the Ukrainian armed forces and State Border Guard Service to fulfill their core security missions.  The additional supplies include:

  • Explosive Ordnance Disposal equipment and handheld radios for Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
  • Engineering equipment, communications equipment, vehicles, and non-lethal individual tactical gear for Ukraine’s Border Guard Service.

This is in addition to the $3 million of Meals Ready to Eat and nearly $7 million of health and welfare assistance the United States is already providing to Ukraine.  The United States will continue to actively review requests for additional support as Ukraine’s government further modernizes its armed forces and deals with evolving threats.

The Lawyer’s Plot for the Coup Against Trump

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Have you met Edward Luttwak? You can be sure the lawyer for the Whistleblower has. Luttwak published a book titled Coup D’ Etat, the practical handbook.

Coup d’État astonished readers when it first appeared in 1968 because it showed, step by step, how governments could be overthrown. Translated into sixteen languages, it has inspired anti-coup precautions by regimes around the world. In addition to these detailed instructions, Edward Luttwak’s revised handbook offers an altogether new way of looking at political power—one that considers, for example, the vulnerability to coups of even the most stable democracies in the event of prolonged economic distress.

So we have this cat, Mark Zaid. Within minutes of the inaugural event for President Trump, Zaid’s tweets began stating the coup has begun. Now the question is who in Washington DC was watching, considering and conspiring to join the coup army…plenty.

Mark Zaid: It’s troubling that Trump gave Jared Kushner security clearance

Zaid is a known quantity inside the Beltway.

Zaid is a recognized expert in Federal court especially in whistle-blower cases. These cases almost always include leaking or publishing classified material as such is/was the case of Edward Snowden. The Zaid law firm, where he is the managing partner includes at least 5 other lawyers handling cases of national security, diplomatic immunity, defamation cases and international transactions. Zaid is the founder of the James Madison Project, a non-profit organization that takes on government agencies for alleged wrong-doing, coverups and secrecy policies. Note however he never took on Hillary and Libya…or the email server scandal….

Mr. Zaid has testified before several committees in the House and the Senate all with the twist of meeting the ‘curiosity of this town’ as noted on the law firms website. With his early launch of the coup has started, you can bet some of this friendlies on The Hill followed his legal handbook and we are now enduring what Congressman Nunes calls a paper coup. Zaid has TS/SCI clearance and that add more bona fides to his power within the offices of the Democrats that include for sure Speaker Pelosi that is often providing all the permissions needed to Congressman Adam Schiff leading the impeachment inquiries.

Does anyone wonder how come Mr. Zaid never took any whistle-blower cases as they related to the Obama administration or even John Kerry with regard to the Iran deal? How about the IRS targeting operation or any of the other scandals in recent years….just sayin…

Okay, then there is also the other lawyer and law firm that has Andrew Bakaj with Compass Rose Legal Group.

 

 

An attorney who left the CIA in 2014 after facing professional retaliation for trying to work with intelligence community whistleblowers is now representing the U.S. official who reportedly filed a complaint alleging wrongdoing by President Trump.

Attorney Profiles – Compass Rose Legal Group, PLLC

Andrew Bakaj, a national security attorney working for Compass Rose Legal Group, a Washington national security law firm, has taken on the still unidentified whistleblower as his newest client, according to information first reported by the New York Times and confirmed by Yahoo News.

According to his Linkedin profile, Bakaj was an intern at the U.S. State Department from June 2002 to August 2002 at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine. He, “Created the Embassy’s fraud database, performed various counter-fraud duties, interviewed visa candidates, translated official Ukrainian/Russian documents into English, and represented official U.S. interests at various events throughout Ukraine.

On September 24, Bakaj sent a ‘Notice of Intent to Contact Congressional Intelligence Committees’ letter to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, who took over for Dan Coats directly with the complaint. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff, who was copied on Bakaj’s letter, responded the same day. Schiff, who represented California’s 28th congressional district, asked for the whistleblower to come in for “voluntary interview” after Maguire testifies in a rare, open session Thursday, September 26, in a “secure location.”

Bakaj made a $100 campaign contribution to former Vice President Joe Biden’s 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign through ActBlue, according to Federal Election Commission records. He made the contribution on April 26, 2019. ActBlue is a nonprofit that facilitates contributions to Democratic candidates.

Bakaj interned for Senator Chuck Schumer in the spring of 2001 and for then-Senator Hillary Clinton the fall of the same year. Hat tip.

Your Forced RSVP to the Cancel Party

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This list is hardly a complete list but it should stimulate some critical thought when it comes to Progessives attempting to run our lives and force law and policy upon us. The Progressives equal the Democrats, the Socialists, the Liberals. The notion of civil society is fading fast.

The Fight Doesn’t End With Kavanaugh | Earthjustice

Consider the following:

  1. The impeachment inquiry consuming Washington DC is effectively cancelling not only the vote for Trump to drain the swamp but to undo and redo past administration(s) actions.
  2. Cancelling history, changing the education syllabus on civics, monuments and principles.
  3. Cancelling the protections of the Bill of Rights, mostly all of them forcing government, state and federal to dispense their own versions of protections.
  4. Democrat organizations conspiring with media to cancel real news and facts with opinion.
  5. Cancelling and omitting law for protests, demonstrations, gang violence and shame.
  6. Cancelling new life for late term abortions while opposing the death penalty.
  7. Cancelling public safety and sovereignty by enabling homelessness, sanctuary cities, and legal challenges on immigration law.
  8. Cancelling self-governance for full reliance on government(s).
  9. Cancelling access to health treatment(s) and medicines with overwhelming costs, deductibles and policy restrictions.
  10. Cancelling any privacy protections when it comes to banking records, healthcare records, personal habits, buying trends, education, travel and homelife.
  11. Cancelling consequences for unlawful acts while selectively applying consequences for others, application of indictments and sentencing is subjective.
  12. Cancelling constituent access and legislative input.

Each of these items require the reader to apply real events to prove the points. Admitting the truths is the first step to seeking solutions, importance and call to actions by voters.

In this fractured and separated landscape, hate and apathy prevail such that any notion of recovery is fleeing. We have class warfare, fake news, deep fakes, shadow operations, new definitions and promoted manufactured dangers.

We have lost confidence in enforcing law, statesmenship, leadership, trust where it has been replaced by distrust, fear, self-censorship and isolation.

Pew Research this past June published a fascinating study.

Many Americans see declining levels of trust in the country, whether it is their confidence in the federal government and elected officials or their trust of each other, a new Pew Research Center report finds. And most believe that the interplay between the trust issues in the public and the interpersonal sphere has made it harder to solve some of the country’s problems. This research is part of the Center’s ongoing focus on issues tied to trust, facts and democracy.

The first item in the study:

Three-quarters of Americans say that their fellow citizens’ trust in the federal government has been shrinking, and 64% believe that about peoples’ trust in each other.

When asked a separate question about the reasons why trust has declined in the past 20 years, people offer a host of reasons in their written answers. Those who think there has been a decline of trust in the federal government over these two decades often see the problem tied to the government’s performance: 36% of those who see the decline cite this. Some worry the government is doing too much, others say too little, and others mention the government doing the wrong things or nothing at all. Respondents also cite concerns about how money has corrupted it and how corporations control the political process. President Donald Trump and his administration are mentioned in 14% of answers, and a smaller share lays the blame on Democrats. Additionally, 10% of those who see decline lay fault at the feet of the news media.

Those who think interpersonal trust has declined in the past generation offer a laundry list of societal and political problems, including a sense that Americans on the whole have become more lazy, greedy and dishonest. Some respondents make a connection between what they think is poor government performance – especially gridlock in Washington – and the toll it has taken on their fellow citizens’ hearts. Overall, 49% of adults think interpersonal trust has been tailing off because people are less reliable than they used to be.

***

2 Nearly two-thirds (64%) say that low trust in the federal government makes it harder to solve many of the country’s problems. About four-in-ten (39%) who gave follow-up answers on why this was the case cite domestic concerns, topped by immigration and border issues, health care, racism and race-related issues, or guns and gun violence issues. Some also cite environmental issues, tax and budget matters, or political processes like voting rights and gerrymandering.

Another 70% of Americans believe that citizens’ low trust in each other makes it harder to solve problems. (They were not asked a follow-up question to explain their answer.)

3 Most think the decline in trust can be turned around. More than eight-in-ten Americans (84%) believe it is possible to improve the level of confidence people have in the government. Their written responses about how to make headway on trust problems urge a variety of political reforms, starting with more disclosure of what the government is doing, as well as term limits and restrictions on the role of money in politics. Some 15% of those who answered this question point to a need for better political leadership, including greater honesty and cooperation among those in the political class.

Read the full study here.

 

Two Formal Challenges to Pelosi’s Impeachment Inquiry Mission

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You read it here, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is creating an off ramp to the early launch of the impeachment inquiry of President Trump. In previous months, Gerald Nadler, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has been on a quest to impeach listing all kinds of reasons to do so. Nothing was really sticking as far as Pelosi was concerned. But then came this phone call President Trump had with Ukraine that gave us a whistleblower and before all the facts and the complaint was released, Pelosi lit the impeach inquiry candle. Turns out all along, she knew about the call details and the whistleblower all due to Congressman Adam Schiff office secret work with authoring the whistleblower complaint in the first place. Deep state is getting deeper….
Meanwhile…..

Image result for congressman kevin mccarthy
Enter House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. He sent a letter to Pelosi challenging telling her to halt the whole inquiry thing because she is clearly not following rules, procedures and protocol. (I think she is doing that on purpose, read ‘off ramp)
In the McCarthy letter to Pelosi he demands answers to the following questions, which prove so far that Pelosi is not following procedures.

Those questions were as follows:

Do you intend to hold a vote of the full House authorizing our impeachment inquiry?
Do you intend to involve the full House in each critical step of this inquiry, including defining its scope and establishing its rules and procedures?
Do you intend to grant co-equal subpoena power to both the Chair and Ranking Member at the committee level?
Do you intend to require that all subpoenas be subject to a vote of the full committee at the request of either the Chair or Ranking Member?
Do you intend to provide the President’s counsel the right to attend all hearings and depositions?
Do you intend to provide the president’s counsel the right to present evidence?
Do you intend to provide the president’s counsel the right to object to the admittance of evidence?
Do you intend to provide the president’s counsel the right to cross-examine witnesses?
Do you intend to provide the president’s counsel the right to recommend a witness list?
Do you intend to refer all findings on impeachment to Chairman Nadler and the Judiciary Committee, as prescribed by Rule X of the Rules of the House, or is Chairman Schiff in charge of leading the inquiry as reported in the press?

“By answering ‘no’ to any of the above, you would be acting in direct contradiction to all modern impeachment inquiries of a sitting president,” McCarthy wrote.

Okay, hold on because here comes Congressman Doug Collins.

Image result for congressman doug collins

Collins is the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, is telling a federal judge that the Democrats’ impeachment investigation has no legal basis per his amicus brief.

The amicus brief: doug.collins.amicus

(in part)

That part of the text of the amicus brief echos that of Minority Leader’s letter to Pelosi.

All the while, the whole Ukraine phone call thing the House Democrats are using to pull the trigger on impeachment inquiries is also falling apart. The whole Biden scandal continues to fester.

Stay tuned…

The Ukraine Thing will Soon Lead to Cyprus, Meanwhile

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It is a must to fully comprehend how far and wide the choreography was on the Russian collusion thing. Still much of that is unresolved, hence the reason for AG Barr spending a good deal of time in Europe, while John Durham is working his side of the case.
Then there was the massive anti-Kavanaugh Supreme Court thing such that two books were published describing that epic yet failed campaign with hundreds of players inside and outside of government.
Now we have Ukraine percolating while other embers are burning larger that include many of the usual players and others not so well known. This will eventually lead to Cyprus which is a well know hub for money laundering and shell companies.

The players and choreography here as well is a nasty monster.

Meanwhile…
Meet Karen Greenaway.

Recovery of assets stolen by Yanukovych regime: FBI admit they could not return even single ... She lived in Russia before becoming an FBI agent.

Lil miss Karen was a long-timer at the FBI as a case agent and supervisor managing and investigating crimes of money-laundering, financial crimes and international corruption. For context, she worked on Transnational Organized Crime in the former Soviet Union, Middle East, Africa and Asia. She speaks fluent Russian.
Having now left the FBI, she has been still quite busy. In 2018, she was a keynote speaker on those topics at a conference in Copenhagen. She was also included in the panel at the IACC in Seoul in 2020. Here she even mentions a ‘trail of blood that lead to the knife for the murder investigation’. Humm okay.

She must have impressed in her work at the FBI, as later she was also a top investigator on all things Paul Manafort. It is important to go back to 2013 when Viktor Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine fled to Russia. It is thought he and his team, some that also successfully fled, while others did not pilfered billions in corruption schemes. Ms. Greenaway, at the FBI during that time, has the goods, but to what end is uncertain.

As John Soloman of The Hill published due to his stellar work, the Obama administration sent an envoy to Ukraine with an interesting list of people and companies that were not to be investigated, one of them being Burisma. But there is yet another operation that is much more influential and important and that is AntAC. Karen was investigating the Firtash case in Austria back in 2016 as she explained at a AntAC conference in December of 2016.

Now it gets even more interesting. Seems AntAC did not appreciate Solomon’s reporting. Oh, it must be noted that AntAC is a George Soros operation well know by the Obama White House and Victoria Nuland from the State Department.

Just this past February, there was an interesting briefing in the Dirksen Senate Office building dealing with ‘asset recovery’ in Eurasia. Karen Greenaway was there too. A large part of the matter was not only Ukraine but monies in the realm of an estimate trillion dollars, some of which belong to the U.S. government (read, taxpayer).

Greenaway recently retired, and Soros’s AntAC soon after announced she was joining its supervisory board.

It is all complicated and it really is complicated if you read the summary below. But….this was all going on during the Obama administration with John Kerry as Secretary of State.

This is long, but a must read:

The opinion article, which was published on March 26 on The Hill media platform, contained a number of allegations regarding AntAC. We would like to offer our fact check and explanations.

Quote from the opinion article: “While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC).

The focus on AntAC was part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted.

The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, where the Obama administration took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and the group.”

The criminal case into alleged embezzlement of U.S. technical assistance of 4 million USD  of the US taxpayers money which had to be spent on the PGO’s reforms was opened on March 16, 2016 by the Prosecutor General’s Office under the leadership of the previous Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

On April 4, 2016 the PGO received the letter from the U.S. Embassy.

Yuriy Lutsenko, who was appointed to the position of the Prosecutor General in May 2016, fully agreed that the allegations were groundless, he even said that they ‘simply dishonor the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine’.

As soon as Lutsenko was appointed, the case was closed in May 2016 by the PGO.

“Yuri Lutsenko, widely regarded as a hero in the West for spending two years in prison after fighting Russian aggression in his country, was named prosecutor general and invited to meet new U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.”

Firstly, Yuri Lutsenko is widely regarded in the West as “hero” for his drunken and disorderly conduct in Frankfurt airport, where he was detained by the police in 2009 while serving as a Minister of Interior Affairs of Ukraine.

Secondly, Yuri Lutsenko was sentenced to four years in prison in early 2012, this was two years before Russian aggression that started in 2014. Allegations against Lutsenko were for embezzlement of funds of the Ministry of Interior under his leadership and abuse of office resulting in illicit allocation of state-owned apartment to his former driver, facilitating illicit social security payments to this person and illicit allocation of funds for the celebration of the Militia (police) day in 2008-2009. He was charged with causing damages of $125,000 to the state. Lutsenko submitted a claim to the European Court of Human Rights and in 2012 the court ruled that Lutsenko’s arrest and subsequent detention violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

“Lutsenko told me he was stunned when the ambassador “gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute.” The list included a founder of the AntAC group and two members of Parliament who vocally supported the group’s anti-corruption reform agenda, according to a source directly familiar with the meeting.”

During the first possible meeting of Madam Ambassador with Lutsenko, which could not have happened earlier than late August 2016, there were no ongoing criminal prosecutions against AntAC Head of Board Vitaliy Shabunin.

The criminal case against AntAC on alleged embezzlement of the U.S. taxpayers money was already closed for around 3 months.

The criminal investigation into Shabunin’s punch of a bully-provocateur, which took place on June 8, 2017, was triggered in summer 2017. There is an ongoing trial in this case in the court.

“It turns out the group that Ukrainian law enforcement was probing was co-funded by the Obama administration and liberal mega-donor George Soros.”

AntAC was founded in the end of 2011 by Vitaliy Shabunin and Daria Kaleniuk, who formerly were activists of youth NGO “Foundation of Regional Initiatives”. In 2012 AntAC was functioning without any financial support as a volunteer project of its founders.

In 2013 the NGO received first funding as a subgrant from the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDs supported by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the public monitoring of public procurement of medications in Ukraine.

“In the end, no action was taken against AntAC and it remains thriving today.”

This is not true. The action was taken in May 2016 – the PGO closed the criminal case “due to the absence of criminal offence.” However, no-one from PGO officers who abused the power triggering criminal investigation on AntAC was punished disregarding organization’s requests. Information PGO obtained through the course of the investigation (banking statements) was later repeatedly leaked to media with the goal to discredit the organization.

“After the Obama Justice Department launched its Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative a decade ago to prosecute corruption in other countries, the State Department, Justice Department and FBI outsourced some of its work in Ukraine to groups funded by Soros.”

In December 2013 in the middle of the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine AntAC launched a campaign on freezing foreign assets of Ukraine’s former President Yanukovych and his associates. AntAC was running a webpage yanukovich.info, which gathered all publicly available facts about corrupt assets of Yanukovych’s allies and mapped the role of Western lawyers, banks and companies in covering and enabling grand corruption. The campaign was funded via crowdfunding from concerned citizens and was not financially supported by neither government of the U.S. nor Soros foundation.

Within the campaign AntAC reached out to the law enforcement agencies in the EU, Switzerland, the U.S. with request to investigate foreign assets of Yanukovych and his associates. DoJ Kleptocracy Asset Recovery initiative was part of a long list of foreign law enforcement agencies AntAC reached out in December 2013 – February 2014.

“One key U.S. partner was AntAC, which received 59 percent (or $1 million) of its nearly $1.7 million budget since 2012 from U.S. budgets tied to State and Justice, and nearly $290,000 from Soros’s International Renaissance Foundation, according to the group’s donor disclosure records.”

Apart from the projects, funded by abovementioned donors U.S. government and Open Society foundations, since 2013 AntAC was funded by a wide range of other donors, including:

  • The Global Fund via All-Ukraine Charitable Organization “All-Ukraininan Network of People living with HIV/AIDS”
  • The Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands via Matra program
  • The Embassy of the United Kingdom
  • The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic
  • European Union
  • Donations from individuals/legal entities

“The U.S.-Soros collaboration was visible in Kiev. Several senior Department of Justice (DOJ) officials and FBI agents appeared in pictures as participants or attendees at Soros-sponsored events and conferences.”

Right after the victory of the Revolution of Dignity and runaway of former President Yanukovych from Ukraine, AntAC activists were invited to the meetings with law enforcement officers from various countries willing to help Ukraine in tracing proceeds of corruption of ousted president Yanukovych. AntAC also met with representatives from DOJ and shared with them all publicly available information the organization gathered on corrupt officials under Yanukovych regime.

Recovery of proceeds of corruption of Yanukovych and his associates was one of the key priorities of work of AntAC, which was organizing specialized asset recovery conference in Ukraine in 2014, 2015, 2016. Law enforcement officers from Ukraine and abroad were invited to these conferences, including Karen Greenaway. Apart from DOJ officials  there were Ukrainian (including PGO), Italian, British, Swiss law enforcement officers speaking and participating at AntAC asset recovery conferences.

“Greenaway recently retired, and Soros’s AntAC soon after announced she was joining its supervisory board.”

In February 2019 Karen Greenaway agreed to join AntAC Supervisory Board after she will finish her other professional obligations.

AntAC Supervisory Board membership is a non-paid commitment from distinguished professionals who care about Ukraine and countering grand political corruption. Among AntAC Supervisory Board members there are Francis Fukuyama from Stanford University, Giovanni Kessler, former head of the EU Anti-Fraud Office, Oliver Bullough, British author and investigative journalists, Oleksa Shalayskyi, head of Nashi Groshi investigative project in Ukraine.

“Senior U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed to me that the early kleptocracy collaborations inside Ukraine led to highly visible U.S. actions against the oligarch Dmitri Firtash, a major target of the Soros group, and Manafort. Firtash is now represented by former Hillary Clinton lawyer Lanny Davis and former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb.”

Dmitri Firtash was never a major target of the Anti-corruption Action Centre.

AntAC collects publicly available evidence of alleged corruption and money laundering of all oligarchs in Ukraine, as well as all top corrupt officials. AntAC has been doing this under the regime of ousted president Yanukovych and continues to do that under the new government leaded by President Poroshenko since spring 2014.

“Ukrainian NGO Anticorruption Action Centre (AntAC) petitioned the United States Justice Department on behalf of Ukrainian civil society to dedicate the nearly $3 million in forfeited and seized assets allegedly laundered by former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, to creating an anti-corruption training facility,” a 2015 foundation document stated.

In 2013 AntAC submitted a petition to the DoJ with request to repatriate $250mln proceeds of corruption of Pavlo Lazarenko, a former Prime Minister of Ukraine, convicted in the US for money laundering back in 2006. Since 2004, the U.S. government started in rem forfeiture procedure aiming at recovery of proceeds of crime. The procedure is still pending.

In the petition supported by more than 10 civil society organizations AntAC called the US government to refrain from repatriation of stolen assets back to the corrupt government of Ukraine at that time headed by Yanukovych, which could steal them again. AntAC called the US Government to consider the success story of repatriating proceeds of corruption to Kazakhstan, where  independent BOTA foundation was set up for the repatriation of proceeds of corruption. In 2015, AntAC updated the petition given the abrupt changes in the country and emerged news in media claiming that Lazarenko’s funds were about to be confiscated by the DoJ.

“Spokespersons for AntAC and Open Society Foundations did not respond to repeated requests for comment.”

AntAC did not receive any requests for the comments by John Solomon following recent Lutsenko’s interview. The only request from him to provide answers to the questions was received back in October 2018 (six months before publication of Lutsenko’s interview). At that time, AntAC did not provide any response to Solomon after the background checks on him. AntAC became aware of John Solomon’s controversial reputation in American media for spreading manipulative and biased messages. For instance, last year, the staffers of the Hill expressed their concerns over Solomon’s biased reporting. AntAC was rightfully concerned that our answers would be misused and manipulated by Solomon.