Lawyer previously accused of large-scale fraud appointed to fight corruption

Olena Tyshchenko, a lawyer who previously represented the interests of
Kazakh-banker-turned-fugitive Mukhtar Ablyazov, has been chosen to head the
bureau’s department on recovering Ukrainian assets illegally moved overseas.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced the appointment on July 7,
praising Tyshchenko as a “remarkable individual” with vast professional
experience.

But lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko soon took to Facebook to slam Avakov’s
decision, pointing out that while Avakov had credited Tyshchenko with nine
years of experience in the Verkhovna Rada’s committee on corruption, she had
actually only worked for less than a year – and for the rest of the time she
hadn’t even been in the country.

She was, however, visiting her fugitive boss in France and London,
according to the French authorities, not to mention spending time in a Russian
jail on suspicion of large-scale fraud, according to the Ukrainian Interior
Ministry and Tyshchenko herself — although she says she was jailed for
political reasons.

“In other words, out of nine years of service to the state, Tyshchenko
spent eight years not serving the state at all, but in London, France and in a
Moscow detention facility. And now she will be responsible for cooperating with
Western security services in recovering stolen assets. Do you not find that
ridiculous?” Leshchenko wrote.

Tyshchenko was jailed by the Russian authorities in the fall of 2013 on
suspicion of large-scale fraud and the laundering of more than $3.3 billion in
illegally obtained funds. The allegations against her stemmed from her time
representing Ablyazov, the former head of Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank.

Ablyazov – who fled what was one of the biggest fraud cases to be heard
in the United Kingdom – is accused by a
London court of embezzling more than $6 billion from the bank during his time
there. He is currently in custody in France and fighting extradition to Russia.

Russian investigators believe Tyshchenko was in charge of covering up
the traces of the money-laundering schemes at the bank, making illegally
obtained assets appear as if they were obtained legally. She was held in
Russian custody for four months before being released in an amnesty.

She returned to Ukraine in the spring of 2014, and was appointed head of
the presidential administration’s interdepartmental working group on
anti-corruption legislation in May. That appointment, just like the latest one,
triggered a flurry of criticism and theories that Tyshchenko had gotten the job
only because of her ex-husband’s ties to Serhiy Pashinsky, the then acting head
of the presidential administration.

Pashinsky denied those claims, however.

And the outcry over Tyshchenko’s new appointment also concerns her
ex-husband directly.

The Security Service of Ukraine
(SBU) suspects Serhiy Tyshchenko of taking part in a scheme to embezzle over
85,000 tonnes of oil products, Ukrainska Pravda reported in May, citing a
document sent by the SBU to the Prosecutor General’s Office. The oil products
belonged to tycoon Serhiy Kurchenko, an ally of ousted President Viktor
Yanukovych, and were seized by the government in the course of an investigation
into a smuggling case, according to the SBU.

The Interior Ministry has no qualms with Olena Tyshchenko’s past,
however.

Artyom Shevchenko, a spokesman for the ministry, told the Kyiv Post that
Tyshchenko was chosen for the job based on her professional merits, and that
her ties to her ex-husband and previous involvement with Ablyazov “would not
influence her effectiveness” in recovering stolen assets.

“The appointment was made considering her ability to get results in
recovering stolen assets. In this sphere, she is very competent, and I think we
will see good results from her work,” he said.

“She was detained by the Russian authorities for a period of time. But
those suspicions never led to a conviction, and she was released,” he said.

Tyshchenko responded to the growing outcry over her appointment at a
press conference on July 8, saying her detention by Russian authorities in 2013
was politically motivated.

“I was working as the defense lawyer in a major international case that
concerned citizens of Kazakhstan and Russia, and in that case there were
representatives of Russia’s radical opposition,” she was cited as saying by
Ukrainian online news site Ukrainska Pravda.

As for the suspicions surrounding her
ex-husband, Tyshchenko said she did not have “working or professional
relations” with him.

In addition, she said, the
accusations against her ex-husband had nothing to do with the task before her
in the interior ministry, as her team was responsible for investigating “the
billions of dollars taken out of the country by Kurchenko,” and not oil assets
inside Ukraine.

Staff writer Oleg Sukhov contributed to this report. He can be reached
at [email protected]

Staff writer Allison Quinn can be reached at [email protected]