Jewish Corruption in Ukraine

[D. Ray]

> “At the same time, fifty Jewish families own 80% of all wealth. Where do
> you see the Ukrainian oligarch? I don’t know any. They are all Jews.
> Their wealth betrays their own bragging rights: Rolls-Royces, planes,
> castles, hotels, casinos owned in Monte Carlo. Aircraft and yachts under
> foreign flags. And, of course, they don’t pay taxes. And plants and
> factories were bought by them not at a real price, but stolen from the
> entire Ukrainian people.”
Serhiy Ratushniak, Former Mayor of Uzhhorod

With Russia now slowly escalating its ‘special military operation’ against
Ukraine on the eve of its first anniversary, I find myself drawn once again
to the complex but stark phenomenon of extreme Jewish corruption in the
latter nation. While it’s become commonplace to note Volodymyr Zelensky’s
Jewishness, and perhaps also that of Volodymyr Groysman, the first Prime
Minister to serve under Zelensky, I have yet to read a detailed discussion
of the major Jewish players in the ongoing saga of Ukrainian oligarchy and
its political affiliates. If anything, the present conflict is a huge
distraction from the fact that, for decades, the biggest threat to Ukraine
hasn’t been Russia, but financiers and speculators operating with impunity
within Ukraine’s borders to exploit ethnic Ukrainians and plunder their
resources.

Speaking in general terms, of course, Ukraine is an extremely corrupt
country, with the culture of fraud and graft stemming in large part from
the Soviet legacy and saturating all levels of society. Crooks of all
ethnic backgrounds are ubiquitous in the nation. Bribery is systematic,
where it’s accepted as a basic fact of life by ordinary citizens and
extends even to such mundane tasks as vehicle inspection. As well as
infesting politics, bribery and other forms of corruption remain endemic in
the police force, higher education, health care, and the justice system,
with the result that Ukraine ranks alongside some of the worst African
nations in Transparency International’s assessment of corruption
perception. According to 2015 data, politically connected businesses
accounting for less than 1 per cent of companies in Ukraine owned more than
25 per cent of all assets and accessed over 20 per cent of debt financing.
In the capital-intensive mining, energy and transport sectors, politically
connected businesses accounted for over 40 per cent of turnover and 50 per
cent of assets.

Far from being the beacon of freedom presented to us now by the mass media,
Ukraine is a nation bankrupt in social trust and well-accustomed to the
yoke of exploitation. There has been little internal outcry over the
massive trafficking of its women for sex, both inside and outside the
country, with coastal cities such as Odessa becoming sex tourism hubs for
the worst of the Turkish and Israeli middle classes. Ukraine now has the
highest adult HIV prevalence outside Africa, with sexual contact outpacing
injection drug use as the primary form of transmission since 2008. The
National Institute on Drug Abuse points out that substance abuse in Ukraine
has been at epidemic proportions for the last 15 years.

Ukraine is on multiple levels a deeply flawed and troubled state, and like
any bloody carcass it has attracted its share of hyenas. I believe,
however, that Jewish corruption in Ukraine, despite Jews only comprising
around 0.5% of the Ukrainian population, is of a character significant
enough to merit special attention. In the following essay I want to explore
some of the key players and their interconnections, as well as to offer
some thoughts on the reasons why anti-Jewish attitudes have not taken hold
in Ukraine, and why they are unlikely to do so in the future.

How ‘Anti-Corruption’ Is Zelensky?

Now overshadowed by his reinvention as a kind of Second Coming of Winston
Churchill, Zelensky’s first great transformation was that of a close
associate of the worst of Ukraine’s oligarchs (Ihor Kolomoisky, discussed
below) into an “anti-corruption” populist. Zelensky’s relationship with
Kolomoisky goes back to around 2012, when Zelensky and the Jewish brothers
Serhiy and Boris Shefir, began making content for Kolomoisky’s TV stations
through their production production company, Kvartal 95. As is now
well-known, Zelensky’s political ascent began after his starring role in
the political satire ‘Servant of the People,’ which began airing on
Kolomoisky’s 1+1 network in 2015. The 1+1 channel had been founded by
another Jew, Alexander Rodnyansky. Servant of the People starred Zelensky
as a school teacher whose anti-corruption rant in class is filmed by a
student, goes viral, and wins him the presidency. Zelensky turned to
real-world politics, capitalized on widespread public anger at corruption,
and ended up winning the Presidency with ease just three-and-a-half years
after the show’s launch.

Zelensky is entirely a media creation, a blank canvas upon which anything
can be projected. Before the war, the German Council on Foreign Relations
pointed out that “Zelensky has so far been very vague about his policies
and vision for the future. So it has been extremely difficult to tell what
he stands for or fact-check his largely policy-free statements in the way
the experts have for other candidates. He rarely mentions facts.”

Zelensky’s 2019 campaign was dogged by doubts over his authenticity given
his close association with Kolomoisky. Britain’s Royal Institute of
International Affairs astutely observed that, even if Zelensky was earnest
in his claims to oppose the corrupt, “he cannot govern without systema [the
oligarchic structure] and will bow to its interests.” In the heat of the
campaign, an ally of incumbent Petro Poroshenko (rumored to have a Jewish
father), journalist Volodymyr Ariev (who also claims Jewish ancestry),
published a chart on Facebook purporting to show that Zelensky and his
television production partners were beneficiaries of a web of offshore
firms, which they had set up beginning in 2012, that received $41M in funds
from Kolomoisky’s Privatbank. Many of these allegations were proven correct
after the leaking of the Pandora Papers, millions of files from 14 offshore
service providers, to the International Consortium of Investigative
Journalists.

The documents show that Zelensky and his Jewish partners in Kvartal 95 set
up a network of offshore firms dating back to at least 2012, the same year
the company began making regular content for Ihor Kolomoisky. The
offshores, which filtered Kolomoisky’s money through the British Virgin
Islands (BVI), Belize, and Cyprus in order to avoid paying tax in Ukraine,
were also used by Zelensky associates to purchase and own three prime
properties in the center of London. The documents also show that just
before he was elected, Zelensky gifted his stake in a key offshore company,
the British Virgin Islands-registered Maltex Multicapital Corp., to Serhiy
Shefir — soon to be his top presidential aide. And in spite of “giving up
his shares,” the documents show that an arrangement was soon made that
would allow the offshore to keep paying dividends to a company that now
belongs to Zelensky’s wife.

Besides providing financial support during Ukraine’s 2019 election,
Kolomoisky supplied Zelensky with cars, and the bulletproof Mercedes
Zelensky used on the campaign trail was owned by Kolomoisky associate Timur
Mindich — who is on the board of trustees of the Jewish Community of
Dnipropetrovsk, a body of which Kolomoisky was president. Although Zelensky
continued to deny that his relationship to Kolomoisky was anything but
professional, the Kyiv Post reported in April 2019 that Zelenskiy traveled
a total of 11 times to Geneva and an additional two times to Tel-Aviv,
during precise periods when Kolomoisky was in these locations. Zelensky’s
travel companions during these trips included Jewish oligarch and close
Kolomoisky associate Gennadiy (Zvi Hirsch) Bogolyubov, and the brothers
Hryhoriy and Ihor Surkis both whom have been accused of serious corruption.
They are among the wealthiest people in Ukraine and are Jewish through
their mother Rima Gorinshtein. The very Jewish character of these trips
should come as no surprise given that, where possible, Zelensky likes to
surround himself with Jewish aides. In the aftermath of the outbreak of
war, for example, it emerged that he sought advice on public relations from
two Likud-backing Israelis, Srulik Einhorn and Jonatan Urich.

Zelensky hasn’t exactly turned on the hand that fed him, and his rise
coincided with the downfall of several of Kolomoisky’s opponents. After
Zelensky became President, Kolomoisky’s nemesis at Ukraine’s central bank,
Valeria Gontareva, was subjected to a sustained campaign of intimidation.
Criminal proceedings were brought against her for alleged abuse of office
during her time at the central bank, her Kiev flat was raided by the
police, a car belonging to her daughter-in-law, also called Valeria
Gontareva, was torched, and her house outside the Ukrainian capital was set
ablaze and destroyed. Under Zelensky, Ukraine’s parliament passed a measure
that prevented Kolomoisky from having to pay higher taxes on his mining
operations, and prior to the start of the war with Russia all indications
pointed to the renewed influence of interest groups opposed to reform.
First, in March 2020, was the dismissal of the government of prime minister
Oleksiy Honcharuk (who didn’t help his case by attending a concert
headlined by an anti-Jewish heavy metal band), followed, a day later, by
the removal from office of the reformist prosecutor-general, Ruslan
Ryaboshapka. Then, in April, came the Constitutional Court’s blocking of
judicial reforms, and a ruling by the same court, in October, that
effectively paralyzed the work of the National Agency for Corruption
Prevention. In July 2020 Zelensky forced the resignation of Yakov Smolii as
National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) governor. After leaving his position, Smolii
referred to “systematic political pressure” on the bank, and did not rule
out a coincidence of interest between the President’s Office and
Kolomoisky. He said that the President’s Office wanted to replace the NBU’s
leadership with people it could control. Smolii’s resignation came shortly
after Ukraine had received the first tranche of a new $5 billion IMF
stand-by arrangement. A key condition for continued IMF support was the
independence of the NBU, and the IMF had made it clear that it held Smolii
and his team in high regard.

Seeking international assistance in the aftermath of Russia’s “special
military operation,” Zelensky has done much to give the appearance of
fighting corruption while actually doing very little. Western media and
politicians in the last few weeks have lavished praise on Zelensky for a
series of raids and dismissals tackling corruption in the country, but few
charges have been brought and the raids have been perfectly timed with EU
accession talks and attempts to obtain European financial and military
assistance. Political commentator Yuriy Vishnevskyi pointed out the
uselessness of the raid against Kolomoisky, stressing that “detectives knew
perfectly well that they would most likely not find anything there, since
Kolomoisky was not an official at [government bodies suspected of tax
evasion]. It is doubtful that he compiled documents at home that would
prove his involvement in criminal schemes.” Rumors that Zelensky has
stripped Kolomoisky of his Ukrainian citizenship, along with the Ukrainian
citizenship of Jewish oligarchs Hennadiy Korban and Vadim Rabinovich, have
prompted counter-rumors that this is nothing more than a clever sleight of
hand designed to free these figures from already weak anti-oligarch laws
passed in 2022.

Ihor Kolomoisky – Supreme Parasite

Kolomoisky, who also holds Israeli and Cypriot citizenship, is probably one
of the worst thieves to ever walk the earth, and there has been no greater
parasite feeding on Ukrainians. Once named by the Center for Corruption and
Organized Crime Research (OCCRP) as being in the top four most corrupt
individuals on the planet, Kolomoisky used his ownership of PrivatBank to
defraud customers of around $5.5 billion in deposits, which amounted to 40%
of all private deposits in Ukraine. Although now banned from entering the
United States, where he has numerous assets, Kolomoisky has never been
arrested in Ukraine and Zelensky shows no indications of ever bringing him
to justice. Regarded as criminal by almost anyone with a brain, Kolomoisky
is a hero of the international Jewish community. In 2008 Kolomsoisky was
elected President of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine, and in 2010 he
was elected president of the European Jewish Council.

In keeping with centuries of the same historical pattern, large-scale
Jewish financial crime perpetrated by small numbers key actors continues to
benefit the general Jewish population. Jews internationally have benefited
for years from Kolomoisky’s plundering of the Ukrainian people. In March
2021 it emerged that two Miami-based Jews, Mordechai Korf, 48, and Uri
Laber, 49, were acting as Kolomoisky’s middlemen in the United States. As
well as laundering his money in various assets, the pair donated more than
$11 million to nearly 70 yeshivas and religious charities (Jewish
Educational Media, Colel Chabad, among others) in Brooklyn and across the
state of New York. Kolomoisky is also a listed donor for Yad Vashem. Both
Korf and Laber also held shares in PrivatBank, and are reported by The
Forward as having pumped “about $25 million into Jewish nonprofits between
2006 and 2018.” Kolomoisky is of course the patron of “Menorah,” the
largest Jewish center in the world. Entirely appropriate given its
existence is owed to international robber barons, the center is home to
travel agencies and banks. The official website says that the building is
something “every Dnipro resident can be proud of,” to which I can only
reply that I’d hope so given that, willingly or not, some of the savings
and deposits of every Dnipro resident went into its construction.

One of the best examples of how Kolomoisky conducts business is his
ownership of Dnipro Airport. In 2009 Kolomoisky bought 99.45% of shares in
the airport through his company Galtera, Under the terms of the investment
agreement, Galtera was to invest UAH 882.1 million in the development of
the airport, and had to hand over the runway, radio beacon system, and land
plots to the state. By 2015, Galtera had invested only UAH 142,145, and
failed to turn over any real estate to the government. A sequence of
litigations began, but with Ukraine’s justice system fully in thrall to the
oligarchy, no resolution was ever reached. Kolomoisky, meanwhile, made
flying from the airport so expensive (one commentator explained that even
short flights carried fees that would elsewhere take one to space) that the
citizens of Dnipro unanimously opted to drive three hours to Kharkiv rather
than pays the airport’s extortionate and inflated prices. On the bright
side, they have an absolutely gargantuan Jewish center they can be proud
of.

Jewish Invisibility in Ukraine

The lack of outcry over Ukrainian money going into Jewish pockets might
seem surprising to Western observers but is perfectly explainable. There
have certainly been no shortage of Jews acting parasitically in Ukraine. In
addition to Kolomoisky and others named above, Hennadiy Kernes, Pavel Fuks,
Andriy Yermak (now Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine),
Hennadiy Korban, Vadim Rabinovich, Alexander Feldman, and Victor Pinchuk
have engaged in fraud, corruption, and the amassing of vast amounts of
wealth and power at the expense of the Ukrainian people. In Ukraine,
however, pronounced examples of corruption and oligarchy are also found
among other ethnic minority groups like Muslim Tatars (e.g. Rinat Akhmetov)
and among ethnic Ukrainians themselves. The country is so corrupt that even
clear examples of ethnic cohesion, such as the overlapping Jewish circles
of Zelensky and Kolomoisky, fade into a broader picture of socio-political
decay.

Discussion of the particularities of Jewish corruption in Ukraine became
more difficult in September 2021 when Zelensky signed a new law defining
the concept of anti-Semitism and establishing punishment for transgressions
including imprisonment up to five years. The new laws mean that outbursts
such as that by Vasily Vovk and Nadiya Savchenko will become a thing of the
past. Vovk, a retired general who held a senior reserve rank with the
Security Service of Ukraine wrote in a 2017 Facebook post that Jews “aren’t
Ukrainians and I will destroy you along with Rabinovich. I’m telling you
one more time — go to hell, zhidi [kikes], the Ukrainian people have had it
to here with you. Ukraine must be governed by Ukrainians.” In the same
year, Savchenko, a fighter jet pilot who was elected to parliament in 2014
while she was still being held as a prisoner of Russia, said during an
interview “I have nothing against Jews. I do not like ‘kikes.’” She later
said Jews possess “80 percent of the power in Ukraine when they only
account for 2 percent of the population.”

Investigations into Jewish criminality are also being hampered by
accusations of anti-Semitism, as witnessed in the May 2020 case involving
Mykhailo Bank, a senior police official in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of
Ukraine. As part of an investigation into “transnational and ethnic
organized groups and criminal organizations,” Bank wrote to Yakov
Zalischiker, the head of the Jewish community in the city of Kolomyia,
demanding the names all Jewish community members as well as those of
foreign Jewish students staying in the city. Reading between the lines, one
assumes that Bank had good reason to believe that these “transnational and
ethnic organized groups and criminal organizations” were Jewish.
Unfortunately for Bank, he was singled out by Eduard Dolinsky, Ukraine’s
incarnation of the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt, who portrayed the demand as
implying an impending Holocaust. “This is called stigmatization,”
complained Dolinsky. “They [the National Police] did not send such a letter
to the Greek Catholics or the Orthodox to compile lists in connection with
the fight against organized crime. They turned to the Jews. This shows deep
xenophobia.” The case was further amplified by the involvement of Jewish
politician Igor Fris, who personally lobbied Zelensky about the matter. The
head of the Department of Strategic Investigations of the National Police
of Ukraine, Andriy Rubel, and the head of the National Police, Ihor
Klymenko, were both forced into groveling apologies. Within weeks Bank was
spontaneously “discovered” to have been involved in corruption and was
quickly fired.

Finally, since Kolomoisky was one of the main funders of Ukrainian
ultra-nationalist groups like Right Sector, was linked with the Svoboda
party, and was involved with the Azov Battalion, Ukrainian
ultra-nationalism has a strangely non-ethnic quality; or rather, it is
concerned more with defining itself as being against Russia than in pushing
for any kind of “Ukraine for Ukrainians” platform. As such, Ukrainian
ultra-nationalism has become a kind of aggressive civic nationalism,
harmless to Jews and other minorities but incendiary enough to play a part
in provoking the massive conflict currently absorbing the attention of the
world.

What kind of Ukraine will emerge from the ruins remains to be seen. What
seems certain is that luxury homes in Florida, London, Geneva, and Tel Aviv
will long continue to host those who’ve fattened themselves on Ukrainian
money, and who continue to hoard their stolen profits while tens of
thousands of body bags continue their somber transit to the graveyards of
Kiev and Moscow.

<https://www.unz.com/article/jewish-corruption-in-ukraine/>

<https://archive.ph/x3wzH>

[jdyoung]

On Tuesday, February 21, 2023 at 2:38:40 PM UTC-5, Nazi Nutcase D. Ray wrote:
> > “At the same time, fifty Jewish families own 80% of all wealth. Where do
> > you see the Ukrainian oligarch? I don’t know any. They are all Jews.

I think "D.Ray/JohnN/loosecannon" sees Joos everywhere.
Look out, Iben, they're under your bed!
Boo!

Here's a Final Solution we can all get behind, "D.": Kill yourself before the Joos get to you!

ROTFL!

J Young
jdyo...@ymail.com