Even more interesting is the “lobbying” for the
European Center for Modern Ukraine (ECFMU) by Mercury LLC (of Manafort and his employee Rick Gates) and the Podesta Group from 2012 to 2014.
ECFMU was affiliated with Viktor Yanukovych, who was the president of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014. Yanukovych is pro-Putin and had to flee the country after protesters overthrew his government. He was reportedly helped by Putin to escape to Russia.
Reportedly Podesta and Manafort had to lobby the message that Ukraine’s 2012 election was really democratic and that the country’s leaders wanted to move further away from Putin and closer to the West.
The Podesta Group has in the past lobbied for foreign government clients with abysmal human rights records, like Vietnam, Azerbaijan and South Sudan.
Mercury LLC’s filings with the Justice Department show that its lobbyists, including Ed Kutler (an ally of Newt Gingrich), spent time setting up meetings related to Ukraine issues. One person they introduced to numerous Hill offices and to a senior official at the
Export-Import Bank was Sergiy Klyuyev.
Less than a year after Mercury LLC introduced Klyuyev around the Hill, the EU froze his assets in the wake of the collapse of the Yanukovych regime. Klyuyev was one of more than a dozen Yanukovych allies the EU suspected of embezzling state money. Klyuyev and his brother reportedly also fled to Russia. Sergiy’s brother has been accused of orchestrating mass killings of Euromaidan protesters:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/how-dc-lobbyists-helped-paul-manafort-prop-up-a-putin-puppet
(archived here:
http://archive.is/lRJm1)
Over $1.5 million has been paid by the Party of Regions to American politicians in 2012 and 2013 alone. The founders of the
ECFMU, at that time, were 3 Members of the Parliament from the
Party of Regions, who in 2 years since have moved considerably up the power ladder — the current Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara, the current head of the Budget Committee of Parliament Ievgenii Hiellier and the current head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Verkhovna Rada Vitaliy Kahlyushnyy.
The reported budget of the
ECFMU (located in Brussels, Belgium) is only €10,000. In 2012, the Belgian mediator paid the American lobbyists 80 times that amount
— $800,000. In 2013 they have paid American lobbyists 79 times their budget
— $790,000.
The Podesta Group, was founded by brothers Tony and John Podesta. John headed the office of President Bill Clinton in 1998-2001, since December 2013 was a senior adviser to President Obama and then campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton. In 2012, 2013 the Podesta Group received $1.02 million from the ECFMU.
The second company that was hired by
ECFMU, is
Mercury/Clark & Weinstock, of Manafort and Rick Gates. Mercury is affiliated with ex-Republican congressman John Vincent "Vin" Weber, who was involved in the last presidential election campaign of Mitt Romney. Mercury received $570,000 from Brussels in 2012, 2013.
What’s bizarre about the
ECFMU is that it was first reported to be founded by acting Members of Parliament in the Ukraine: Leonid Kozhara, Ievgenii Hiellier and Vitaliy Kahlyushnyy.
The surnames of Kozhara, Hiellier and Kahlyushnyy were taken out of the registry, and replaced by former MP Oleg Nadosha, ex-MP Oleksiy Plotnikov and Kseniya Solovyova (born in 1987).
German Ina Kirsch Van de Vater, was also among the founders for the
ECFMU. Ina Kirsch claimed that the
ECFMU has no relation to the
Klyuyev Foundation (suspected of embezzling state money):
U.S. companies that cooperate with the ‘European Centre for Modern Ukraine’ have no relation to the Party of Regions. They work exclusively in support of the Center (...) The Center has nothing to do, directly or indirectly, to Klyuyev’s fund.
Strangely Ina Kirsch “forgot” to mention that her husband Robert Van de Vater in 2014 was a Deputy Board Chairman of the
Klyuyev Foundation:
http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2014/02/5/7012902/
(archived here:
http://archive.is/GhInS)
The following graph explains this in short.
Possibly the most interesting from the official document...
Prosecutors say in:
total, more than $75 million flowed through the offshore accounts. MANAFORT laundered more than $18 million
