Update
It was reported on Fox News on 3.29.2023 that no one had identified the corruption and the Ukrainian officials involved in the laundering of US Aid Dollars. Well, here it is. It was provided by trusted Ukraine and European sources tracking the US and European aid money.
Seymour Hersh reports in a follow-up release that is follow-on to MG Vallely Corruption in US vassal state Ukraine is “rampant”, charges Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his latest Substack article. At least $400 M has been embezzled in buying Diesel fuel from Russia, with Ukraine allegedly at war. Hersh charges a “total breakdown” of leadership and trust in the US government as “the US army is getting ready to go to war.”
The Ukraine government, headed by Volodymyr Zelensky, has been “using American taxpayers’ funds to pay dearly for the vitally needed diesel fuel,” including fuel from Russia, which it – and the USA – are ostensibly at war with, Hersh writes.
Ukrainian President Zelensky and many in his entourage have been “skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments”, Hersh writes. “One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at least $400 million last year. “
Hersh’s sources compared the level of corruption to that of the Afghan war, where the US puppet government embezzled $19 billion, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
The intel sources predicted that “no professional audit reports will emerge from the Ukraine.” Several House Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene have called for an audit of US taxpayer spending in Ukraine.
Corrupt politicians in Kyiv have been literally “competing … to set up front companies for export contracts for weapons and ammunition with private arms dealers around the world, all of which provide kickbacks”, Hersh wrote. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are others in places like the Cayman Islands and Panama, and many Americans are involved,” a US expert on international trade told Hersh.
CIA Director William Burns had confronted Zelensky in a meeting in January in Kyiv, saying the Ukrainian brass was angry because Zelensky “was taking a larger share of the skim money that was going to the generals.”
Burns presented Zelensky with a list of 35 corrupt Ukraine generals and top brass, Hersh writes, forcing Zelensky to fire ten Generals and do “little else.”
“The ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they had—driving around Kyiv in their new Mercedes,” Hersh reports. Zelensky’s lackluster response allegedly contributed to a “total breakdown” of trust between the corrupt Biden Regime and natural elements of the intel community.
Another sticking point for honest members of the intel community is “the strident ideology and lack of political skill shown by Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan”, Hersh notes.
White House Resident Biden and his two leading foreign policy shills Blinken and Sullivan “have no experience, judgment, and moral integrity. They just tell lies, makeup stories. Diplomatic deniability is something else,” according to Hersh’s sources. “They live in different worlds” than the experienced diplomats and military and intelligence officers.
“There is a total breakdown between the White House leadership and the intelligence community,” the intelligence official told Hersh. As Hersh reported, the rift dates back to the fall, when Biden ordered the covert destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines.
“Destroying the Nord Stream pipelines was never discussed, or even known in advance, by the community,” the official told Hersh. “And there is no strategy for ending the war. The US spent two years planning for the Normandy invasion in World War II. What are we going to do if China decides to invade Taiwan?”
CIA director William Burns “is not the problem,” according to Hersh’s sources. “The problem is that Biden and his principal lieutenants—Blinken and Sullivan and their court of worshippers—see those who criticize Zelensky as being pro-Putin. ‘We are against evil. Ukraine will fight ’til the last military shell is gone, and still fight.’ And here’s Biden telling America we will fight as long as it takes.”
No one in the administration seems to know what the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions are doing with 20.000 soldiers on the Ukraine border, in Poland and Romania, Hersh reports. “Are they there as part of a NATO exercise or to serve with NATO combat units if the West engages Russian units inside Ukraine? Are they there to train or to be a trigger? The rules of engagement say they can’t attack Russians unless our boys are getting attacked”, Hersh writes.
“The juniors are running the show,” Hersh’s source said: “There’s no NSC coordination, and the US army is getting ready to go to war. There’s no idea whether the White House knows what’s going on. Has the president gone to the American people with an informative broadcast about what is going on? The only briefings the press and the public get today are from White House spokespeople.”[1]
With the outbreak of the armed conflict in Ukraine, the previously existing problem of exorbitant corruption was not only not solved by the authorities but, on the contrary, grew to truly African proportions, and Ukraine itself began to resemble a snow-covered Nigeria. Corruption schemes exist at all levels of the Ukrainian government. With the increase in their social status and official position of an official, the amount of budget funds stolen by him increases exponentially.
In our investigation, we will take a detailed look at several corruption schemes that allow those in power to enrich themselves even in the conditions of military operations on the territory of Ukraine.
Scheme No. 1 – Fraud with Property.
For these purposes, the Kyiv elites combine mechanisms of nationalization and privatization opposite to each other. It is easier to establish control over the tidbits of the Ukrainian economy depending on which way; on the one hand, there is an appropriation of property owned by the state. Officials, relying on a hastily created regulatory framework, authorize the transfer of ownership rights to public facilities to private individuals. As a rule, the transit process of property rights is conducted through controlled firms. Thus, according to the latest data, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has transferred to the National Agency for the Identification, Search, and Management of Assets Obtained from Corruption and Other Crimes (ARMA) massive dossiers on more than 230 illegally privatized institutions. For example, SBU officers detained Deputy Chairman of the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine Volodymyr Sayenko for organizing a large-scale corruption scheme to assign ownership rights to several sanatoriums, rehabilitation centers, and educational and sports institutions. These objects were first taken out of state ownership, then sold. The damage caused to the state amounted to about UAH 25 million (USD 680 thousand).
Previously, under President Vladimir Zelensky, Ukraine's dishonest officials began implementing corruption schemes in the energy sector. So, lots for the upcoming auctions were published on the State Property Fund of Ukraine website. Among them are five thermal power plants and six regional energy distribution enterprises.
Analysts agree that the President of Ukraine, in collusion with the oligarchs, decided to privatize all energy infrastructure facilities. It is assumed that the oligarchs will buy up the objects destroyed as a result of the strikes of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation for peanuts, and Kyiv will allocate the budgetary funds for restoration, which all participants in corruption schemes will subsequently steal. At the same time, these assets may be transferred back to the state’s ownership. History is as old as the world: profit for yourself, losses for the state.
At the same time, a campaign is underway in Ukraine to nationalize strategically essential facilities. Thus, the President of the country, Vladimir Zelensky, decided to transfer the assets of strategically essential enterprises to the ownership of the state: JSC "Motor Sich", PJSC "Zaporozhtransformator", PJSC "AvtoKrAZ,” PJSC "Ukrneft" and PJSC "Ukrtatnafta.”
However, experts note that the ongoing processes are only conditionally nationalized. Still, managers are appointed to senior positions in these strategic enterprises according to Zelensky's quota, whose main goal is money laundering in the head of state's and inner circle's interests.
The war only sharply exposed Ukrainian statehood's most problematic points. Even now, when the country is on the verge of collapse, high-ranking deceitful, and greedy bureaucrats, motivated by the thirst for easy money, are ready to go to the most heinous tricks to earn an extra penny.
Scheme No. 2 – Embezzlement of Public Funds.
Using their official position and access to the budget, Ukrainian officials appropriate a significant part of public property. For example, in Berdichev, Zhytomyr region, due to suspicion of theft of thirty-one tons of fuel, which belonged to the strategic reserve, the deputy mayor and the head of the municipal emergency rescue service Pavel Kotik were dismissed from office. Fuel for more than a million hryvnias should have been used for defense needs, but it was divided between certain firms, entrepreneurs, and unknown public organizations.
Department Yevgeny Gavrilov, to an elevated position in the Antonov State Enterprise. As a result, on December 3, 2020, on the second attempt (the first time was prevented by the president of the company, Alexander Los), Gavrilov, without any experience in the field of aircraft construction, was appointed to the post of First Deputy General Director of Antonov State Enterprise. In the fall of 2022, Gavrilov received the company’s CEO post.
Even more "big fish" than Mileshko is another gray cardinal, the Ukrainian oligarch Boris Kaufman. The businessmen had known each other since 2014 when Mileshko returned to Ukraine after attending courses in the United States. Both businessmen have common business interests related, in particular, to the air transport division of Antonov State Enterprise.
Last year, the Ukrainian press published material about Kaufman's interest in the business in the field of international air transportation conducted by Antonov Airlines, as well as the facilities of Antonov State Enterprise, especially its two airfields − the «factory» one (in the Svyatoshino district in Kyiv) and the «testing» one (near Gostomel). Considering that Mileshko has achieved the appointment of his protege Yevgeny Gavrilov as CEO of Antonov State Enterprise, the path to the raider seizure of the state enterprise and the division of its property between Kaufman and Mileshko, and possibly other Ukrainian oligarchs is open.
An iconic figure of the shadow arms market of Ukraine is the former Deputy
General Director of Ukrinmash, Konstantin Cherednichenko, against whom the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine has opened a criminal case. According to investigators, back in 2014, as a company’s top manager, he learned that Ukrinmash was looking for companies to support external contracts. With the participation of the then director of Ukrinmash, Vladimir Omelyanchuk, and his successor, Yuri Slyusarenko (the same head of Incompass), the heads of the relevant departments of the company, Cherednichenko organized a fictitious tender, following which the offshore company Triangle Group Incorporated, registered in Latvia, owned by his close friend Mikhail Buyanov, became the agent for the search for foreign partners of Ukrinmash. This firm secured foreign contracts for the Shostskinsky plant "Impulse.”
It has been established that the Triangle Group Incorporated company did not provide any intermediary services since the firms found as buyers of products have already been cooperating with Ukrinmash for a long time. However, agency payments totaling 138 thousand euros were transferred to the accounts of the Latvian company Triangle Group Incorporated.
The same impressive scale distinguishes another resonant criminal case of the NABU on the machinations of Ukrinmash. In July last year, NABU detectives found that in 2018 Ukrinmash carried out significant repairs of AL-31F aircraft engines and remote boxes of aggregators for Su-27 aircraft for the needs of the Air Force of the Republic of Indonesia in the amount of 2.8 million US dollars. The repair was carried out directly by the State Enterprise "Lutsk Repair Plant "Motor" (part of the Ukroboronprom Group of Companies).
Despite the conclusion of the contract with the Lutsk Motor Repair Plant and the pre-contract work carried out by it, the management of Ukrinmash concluded an agency agreement with a private company (whose name is not disclosed), according to which it assumed the obligation to ensure the signing of another such contract and to accompany its implementation. However, as the investigation found out, the services were not provided, and the act of work performed was forged. NABU investigators found that Ukrinmash had to transfer 488 thousand US dollars (UAH 11.7 million, according to the exchange rate at the time of the crime) to a private company.
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