Prime time for prime minister
In its 2004 ‘Global Corruption Report’, Transparency International ranked Ukrainian former prime minister Lazarenko eighth out of the world’s 10 most corrupt politicians in the previous two decades. Yesterday a federal appeals court upheld his earlier conviction in the US. He was sentenced to nine years in prison in August 2006 and he will need to do some more ‘prime time’.
Lazerenko was in office from May 1996 to June 1997. Prosecutors claim that during this period (he was quite a busy guy) Lazerenko has funneled over $200 million originating from extortion and kickbacks from the Ukraine to bank accounts in the US. While in office, he exercised control over a large swathe of the economy and influenced the privatisation of Ukraine’s vast natural gas sector. Most of the allegations of embezzlement of state funds and abuse of office against him are related to the fight for gas revenues between rival political and business groupings in Ukraine in the 1990s. He had previously held the post of energy minister.
Lazarenko was arrested in 1999 in New York when he entered the country with an outdated visa and diplomatic passport.
In June 2000, a court in Geneva, Zwitserland, found him guilty in absentia of laundering $6.6m through Swiss banks. Lazarenko admitted moving money to Swiss banks but said he had acquired it legitimately. He was given an 18-month suspended sentence and $6.5m was confiscated from his Swiss accounts.
In June 2004 he was convicted in the US and he has spent his ‘prime time’ in an US jail since. Lazarenko’s defense attorney acknowledged that Lazarenko used his position to make a fortune, but said that had been usual and acceptable behavior in the 1990s in Ukraine. American lawyer and journalist Mary Mycio lives in Ukraine. She practiced law in California, the state where Lazarenko was tried, and explained that in the end Lazarenko was convicted because he broke U.S. laws rather than Ukrainian ones. “The laws that he broke were American laws — American laws on money laundering,” she said. “Basically, the fundamental crime at the heart of money laundering is that the money is derived from criminal activity and then it gets into American banks and goes through the whole laundering process.” The prosecutors successfully made a case that Lazarenko had extorted money — a crime in Ukraine during his time as prime minister. Their key witness was Ukrainian businessman Petro Kiritchenko, who told the court he felt forced to give Lazarenko many millions of dollars and ownership of half of a company to help expand his firm.
Lazarenko’s trial in the US was held in San Francisco, California, where he has an 18-acre estate, for which he is said to have paid $6.7m in cash.
By the way -not that is a minor issue-: the Ukrainian government requested his extradition related to the murder of several policital opponents in the 1990′s. He allegedly ordered the 1996 killing of a prominent politician, Yevhen Shcherban, and was involved in two failed assassination attempts on high-ranking officials. We all know that this type of activity leaves less traces (and for sure no paper trail) than money laundering through bank accounts so let’s just hope justice will be served. Even (or should I say especially) in politics it can be ‘all about the money.’…
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-ukraine-lazarenko11-2009apr11,0,1377497.story
