The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP, has uncovered the “Ploshchadka system”, a vortex of tax evasion and money laundering involving senior officials and top politicians in Kiev.
The documents obtained by the OCCRP’s investigative journalists uncovered a network of offshore companies, real estate acquisitions and money transfers from Ukraine to many western countries. Rivers of money of unknown origin, hidden to the tax authorities. And behind it there are the same politicians and officials who are supposed to be building the new Ukraine: the country born from the ashes of the Maidan, the post-Yanukovich state that cost the blood of 108 protesters killed during the protests.
“Ploshchadka”, the “playground” of Ukrainian millionaires, was already working at full capacity while the war was breaking out in Donbass.
Golden kids
Mykola Gerasimyuk, first deputy prosecutor general between June and December 2014, was a servant of “Ploshchadka”, serving to bring money to Europe. According to documents obtained by the ‘OCCRP, Gerasimyuk has transferred property to his wife Kateryna for at least $ 650,000 in Slovakia and Croatia, using two companies in the Seychelles, the Itaco Alliance S.A. Berly and Trade Ltd.
The former deputy has also sent, between 2013 and 2014, something like 100,000 dollars to his daughter for her study expenses and sustenance in Britain.
The journalists from the OCCRP are also able to tell where all this money came from. In an email exchange with a contact who worked on behalf of Armen Sarkisyan, a businessman of Horlivka in the east of Ukraine, Gerasimyuk is offered a sum to clear him of the charge of organizing the pro-Russian riots. “How much?” asks the then deputy. “100,000 when you achieve freedom of movement, another 400,000 when they celebrate the acquittal,” replies the contact.
The contracts say that Gerasimyuk transferred at least $150,000 via Itaco Alliance S.A. to one of the authorized agents. Itaco Alliance was established in the Seychelles in July 2014, along with Berly Trade.
Gerasimyuk and his wife transferred another $500,000 to Slovakia and Croatia for real estate acquisitions, wiring funds via other companies in the Ploshchadka, the UK firm Smartus Business and a Belize firm, Old World Management Ltd.
Gerasimyuk also transferred up to $100,000 via the Ploshchadka to pay for his daughter’s university tuition fees and living expenses in the UK in 2013-14.
According to other emails obtained by OCCRP, Gerasimyuk was being offered bribes to drop charges against associates of Yanukovych. He was also contacted over politicized property disputes worth tens of millions of dollars.
One correspondent, using the name “China Town”, appealed to Gerasimyuk on behalf of Armen Sarkisyan, a businessman from the East Ukrainian town of Horlivka, offering a $500,000 bribe for his freedom. Gerasimyuk answered in Cyrillic letters, ‘Match? How?” possibly a corruption of the English ‘how much’?
The applicant replied, “100,000 guests will come to you when a person receives freedom of movement, another 400,000 will be invited to celebrate when the charges are fully dropped, I will be guarantor and depository,” suggesting a total $500,000 bribe for dropping charges against Sarkisyan.
Gerasimyuk is behind the money of other Ukrainian officials. In December 2014 he moved about 800 thousand dollars to a bank in Switzerland and has paid at least one third of the 360 thousand dollars needed to buy the London loft of nineteen year old Oleksandr Tereshchenko.
Oleksandr’s father, Yury Tereshchenko is former head of the state-owned Ukroboronprom weapons company, in 2014 the factory was at the head of the State Agency for the control of exports, which authorizes the export of weapons and military products. In 2015, the Secret Service, Sbu, arrested his deputy while he was pocketing a bribe of $ 250 thousand. According to the report of the ‘Sbu, part of the money was found at the home of Tereschenko, who in June was removed from office.
A losing battle
The children seem comfortable with the “Ploshchadka”. Young Yan, son of Stanislav Klushke, in March 2015 received $ 122,000 in his account in Switzerland from a Belize company, Rion Group Ltd, which received funds from a British company, Tweedale Trading LLP, which once received money from the usual Berly Trading and Itaco Alliance. The interesting fact is that Klushke’s father is one of the most visible figures in the fight against corruption and money laundering in Ukraine. In December 2015 he was nominated without success to the summit of the newly created National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
But it is not only the children of the powerful. Roman Zabzalyuk is a former lawmaker of the Batkivshchyna party Yulia Tymoshenko is deputy head of the Committee for National Security and a member of the committee against corruption and organized crime. Between 2014 and 2015 Zabzalyuk moved at least 735,000 dollars into his accounts in Hungary, to buy properties in Budapest. Again, it wass Berly Trading, together with the Adlon Investments Inc. of Panama, that paid the money into Zabzalyuk’s accounts.
And yet, the former member of the Rada, Gennady Balashov, founder of the party 5.10, and unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Kiev in 2015, was paid by Berly Trade to the amount of 100,000 dollars, into an account in the United States. Even the co-founder of the party 5.10, Oleg Prytula, took money from Berly Trade: 400,000 Euros, also to an account in the USA. The two are business partners in real estate in Florida.
The OCCRP investigation was published on the organization’s website, but does not seem to have had a major impact at home. The fight against corruption in Ukraine is still a losing battle.
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The documents obtained by the OCCRP’s investigative journalists uncovered a network of offshore companies, real estate acquisitions and money transfers from Ukraine to many western countries. Rivers of money of unknown origin, hidden to the tax authorities. And behind it there are the same politicians and officials who are supposed to be building the new Ukraine: the country born from the ashes of the Maidan, the post-Yanukovich state that cost the blood of 108 protesters killed during the protests.
