Mezhyhirya Festival, an annual gathering of investigative journalists since 2014, takes place at ex-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s billion-dollar, 140-hectare estate some 10 kilometers north of the capital.
It was one asset that he couldn’t get out of the country — another $40 billion, by official estimates, was stolen during Yanukovych’s four years in office before the EuroMaidan Revolution put a stop to his rule on Feb. 22, 2014.
Very little of that money has been recovered.
The topic of recovering stolen assets was discussed at the two-day Mezhyhirya Festival, taking place on June 9-10
Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, said that Ukrainian law enforcement did everything it could to recover the money — and succeeded in getting about Hr 44 billion (nearly $1.7 billion. He said the state won the return of the Mezhyhirya complex, Odesa Oil Refinery and Metalist stadium in Kharkiv.
“Today’s Mezhyhirya is not a symbol of corruption, it is a symbol of corruption’s collapse,” Lysenko said.
Investigative journalist Denys Bihus from Nashi Groshi TV program, however, believes that prosecutors shouldn’t take credit for taking control of Yanukovych’s residence. He said it would have been impossible if activists and journalists didn’t enter the residence in 2014.
Bihus says that there is another “Mezhyhirya” on the other side of Kyiv, the mansion of Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, the former lawmaker from the Party of Regions, who was believed to be the right-hand man of Yanukovych. Ivanyushchenko is in exile abroad while prosecutors are not hurrying to seize his assets.
“I do not understand why a huge number of people from the Yanukovych team have been left behind,” Bihus said.
Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, believes that Ukraine didn’t achieve any unambiguous victories in assets returning although there were opportunities for that.
She says that, after the Euromaidan Revolution, many countries arrested assets of Yanukovych’s allies but were unable to return them to Ukraine as the Ukrainian side didn’t provide the evidence of assets’ criminal origin.
The anti-corruption activist says that one of such cases were brothers Andriy and Serhiy Klyuyev, whose assets were attested by Austrian prosecutors in 2014 but released later.
“Four years ago when we had our first conference in Mezhyhirya I couldn’t imagine that four years later we would be standing almost on the same ground regarding Yanukovych deals,” Kaleniuk said.
Ukrainian lawmaker and former investigative journalist Sergii Leshchenko, who moderated the discussion, says that money laundering is a complicated crime that includes two parts: the crime of getting money and the crime of laundering.
Leshchenko said that in brothers Kluyev case, Austria had to prove the fact of laundering, yet Ukraine had to prove there was a crime in getting of those funds, which wasn’t accomplished.
International experience
The second panel of the festival focused on the international experience in assets recovery.
Investigative journalists Cecilia Anesi from Italy, Matiss Arnicans from Latvia and Vladimir Thornik from Moldova shared their countries’ experience.
Anesi spoke about four main criminal groups, so-called mafias, in Italy and the success of seizing of their assets inside the country due to the effective anti-mafia legislation.
“Italy is good at seizing assets that’s why they (mafias) reinvest and launder assets abroad,” Anesi said.
However, the Italian journalist said the country didn’t have any accomplishments in returning assets from abroad.
The moderator of the discussion, British journalist Oliver Bullough, says that “the problem with assets is that they are kept in different countries.”
Bullough talked Britain’s unsuccessful attempt to return assets to Ukraine when the country arrested $23 million of Mykola Zlochevsky, Yanukovych’s ecology minister, yet was unable to prove their criminal origin.
“Britain felt let down by the Ukrainian authorities,” he said.
Latvian journalist Arnicans also told the audience about the ineffective cooperation of his country with Ukraine.
He said that the State Police of Latvia started the investigation on money laundering because of Ukrainians’ money on Latvian bank accounts. The case involved Yanukovych’s first deputy prime minister, Serhiy Arbuzov, oligarch Sergiy Kurchenko and Ivanyushchenko. Arnicans says that Ukrainian authorities couldn’t provide evidence that the money was stolen from the state budget.
“Nobody came public about Ukrainian money. Latvian side sent a request to receive more information. There wasn’t even a reply,” he said.
The Latvian journalist believes that the reason for that is the connection between former and current Ukrainian authorities.
“These people were very influential and they still have some control over Ukrainian authorities,” he said.
