Ukraine’s $100 million corruption scandal may be just the tip of the iceberg, but it already implicates a lot of Ukrainian movers and shakers. From Thomas Zaja at unz.com:
The klepto-nepotistic regime of Volodymyr Zelensky is circling the toilet bowl as yet another corruption scandal soils his good name and tarnishes Ukraine’s reputation for fighting on behalf of all Europeans for democratic values. The aptly named Operation Midas has brought to light an immense extortion racket worth 100 million dollars. Published photos show the golden bathrooms of Zelensky’s associates and duffel bags of greenbacks fresh from the Federal Reserve. After years of de facto carte-blanche spending, Ukraine has merely demonstrated that its sole connection to Atlantic civilization is as a Bermuda Triangle for cargo loads of wealth and weaponry.
In my April piece, I made the case that Ukraine’s chief villains and criminal war profiteers were typically neither Slavic nor Christian. The latest cadre of unsavory actors is a vindicating addendum to that theory. In the latest scandal, long-time Zelensky associate Timur Mindich and his chief financial officer Oleksandr Zuckerman hatched a truly diabolical plan to take advantage of a special wartime law that prevents the enforcement of debts on the state nuclear operator Energoatom. With no legal recourse to sue for unpaid services, contractors were given an ultimatum to pay 10–15% of the contract value to Mindich. Contractors were even threatened with their companies being blocked indefinitely, destroyed, or having staff mobilized to the frontline. Audio recordings reveal Mindich and colleagues jokingly referring to the enterprise as the “shlagbaum“ [boomgate] that lifts once the toll is paid.
According to Ukrainska Pravda, both men are now in Israel, having been tipped off that the anti-corruption agencies were about to swoop. Slipping out undetected during wartime is no small feat; alas the story makes much more sense if we recall that in July Zelensky himself attempted to neuter the independence of the EU-backed anti-corruption bureaus, but backed down due to public outrage.
Mindich and Zelensky go all the way back to their days at Kvartal 95 — the media company that transformed Zelensky from a comedian into a TV star. It was Mindich who introduced him to Ihor Kolomoisky. Mindich then went from Kolomoisky’s fixer to Zelensky’s consigliere until very recently (when anti-corruption bodies started investigating). It’s therefore obvious who gave Mindich and Zuckerman advanced warning and packed the golden parachutes to Israel to go along with their golden bidets. From one gangsta’s paradise to another.
Isn’t it right next to Taiwan? (s/)
We have always been at WAR with Northern Eurasia.