To view Trump’s full Sept. 2015 video address to the YES conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-G282x71i0
For the better part of a year, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s slammed his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for taking large private donations from foreign nationals in exchange for political favors.
Tax returns released on Nov. 22 by Trump’s namesake foundation revealed that the organization received $150,000 from Ukrainian billionaire oligarch Victor Pinchuk for a 19-minute video linkup to the evening audience at the 2015 Yalta European Strategy conference.
Pinchuk is known to spend large sums of money on celebrities and powerful politicians to get them to appear in Ukraine. He has been a long-time supporter of Elton John’s AIDS charities, paid to get actor Kevin Spacey to this year’s YES conference and paid an estimated $250,000 each (based on the rates their agents said they charge) for speaking appearances by Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, two former U.S. defense secretaries.
According to the records, the Trump Foundation received the donation from Pinchuk’s own charity just prior to the launch of the U.S. presidential campaign season late last year.
Pinchuk’s made the donation in exchange for Trump agreeing to speak via a video link to the Yalta European Strategy forum – an annual Davos-format gathering of businesspeople and politicians organized by Pinchuk.
In his Skype address, which clocked in at just under 19 minutes, Trump criticized U.S. President Barack Obama for failing to sufficiently back Ukraine in its war with Russia and their separatist proxies in the country’s war-torn eastern Donbas region.
Trump told the audience that Obama’s weak reactions to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine gave Moscow a free hand to deal with Kyiv as it pleased and allowed Putin to act with impunity.
“Part of the problem that the (sic) Ukraine has with the United States is that Putin does not respect our president whatsoever,” Trump said in his Skype call. He later added that he had “tremendous feelings” for Ukraine and “lots of friends there,” including Pinchuk.
Then-candidate Trump failed to offer any actual specifics as to how his administration would approach its relationship with the two former Soviet republics, but instead, only offered bland platitudes that emphasized his business and personal ties to both Ukraine and Russia.
Pinchuk, one of Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarchs and the son-in-law of former President Leonid Kuchma, is one of the country’s highest-profile businessmen. He gained a reputation in Ukraine for being one of the country’s most influential, pro-Western oligarchs.
Worth an estimated $1.52 billion by Forbes, he gained a reputation in Ukraine for being one of the country’s most influential, pro-Western oligarchs.
Pinchuk served as a member of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, from 1998-2006. He made most of his fortune in the 1990s as the owner and founder of Interpipe Group, one of Ukraine’s largest metallurgical companies.
Pinchuk has come under public criticism since the outbreak of hostilities between Kyiv and Moscow in 2014, owing to the fact that two of Interpipe’s main customers are Russian-state owned energy giants Gazprom and Rosneft.
He has countered those arguments by pointing to his foundation’s active work in fighting against the spread of AIDS and HIV in Ukraine and the praise he received for his philanthropic work and support for the arts both at home and abroad.
The New York Times reported in August that Pinchuk is widely known to have donated substantial sums to the Clinton Foundation in years past. According to the report, he gave between $10 and $25 million to the Clintons and allowed the former First Family to use his private jet on at least one occasion.
The Clinton family and Trump have both had relationships with Pinchuk for several years. Bill and Hillary Clinton have both spoken at previous Yalta European Strategy conferences and Pinchuk has been an occasional guest at exclusive gatherings hosted by the Clintons for large donors.
For over a year from Sept. 2011-Nov. 2012, a former Clinton political consultant and advisor to the Pinchuk Foundation, Douglas Schoen, arranged several meetings with State Department officials on behalf of and with Pinchuk while Hillary served as Obama’s Secretary of State.
According to Thomas Weihe, chairman of the Pinchuk Foundation, Trump and Pinchuk first met in New York several years ago, when he first made an offer to Trump to speak at the Yalta forum, Weihe told U.S. news site Buzzfeed.
“The payment to President-elect Trump’s foundation was in support of a video link appearance at a conference called Yalta European Strategy Annual Meeting, which the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and Yalta European Strategy (YES) — an NGO founded by Mr. Pinchuk — organize annually in September in Ukraine,” Weihe wrote in an email to BuzzFeed. “Mr. Pinchuk had met Mr. Trump some years ago in New York, this is how the invitation for Mr. Trump to speak at the (Kyiv) meeting came about,” he added.
The revelation that Trump received a hefty speaking fee from a well-connected foreign national opens the door to accusations that Trump also took part in the same sort of “pay-for-play” schemes that dogged Hillary Clinton during the campaign.
In addition to the controversy surrounding the Pinchuk payment, Trump’s charitable foundation is in hot water with the U.S.’ internal revenue services for what the federal agency called “self-dealing “ – confidential payments to foundation insiders that the IRS calls “disqualified persons.”
The Internal Revenue Service claims Trump’s charity broke the law by allowing non-profit organization leaders and their families to us the foundation’s money for personal or professional use. In IRS documents posted on the non-profit tracking site, GuideStar, the Trump Foundation admitted that it had transferred assets to an unidentified “disqualified person” – likely Trump, himself, or a member of his family.
Trump’s refusal to disclose his personal tax returns or shed light on his previous business dealings has set off alarm bells in Washington, D.C., as concerns over a major conflict of interest continue to mount in the weeks leading up to Trump’s inauguration as the country’s chief executive.
