Zelensky and the “Panama Papers”: the poor memory of newspapers … (by C.A. Mauceri)
We thank CA Mauceri for this piece. Since we often talk, rightly, of the misdeeds of the Russian leaders, we also remember something of what the other party did. Because there is no need for fans, but for informed people
Everyone's attention is now turned only to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine (after the pandemic – now almost no longer talked about – as if it were all over to boast the title of "news of the day". Let's face it right away: attacking a sovereign state, starting a war is NEVER the right choice. If only because, as history teaches, it is never the leaders, the upper echelons of power, who pay the highest price in wars: they are always the weakest. On both sides.
The "bosses", the so-called "leaders", almost never pay for their faults. At most they leave the scene and go to lull themselves in some tax haven with the money they have accumulated in ways that are not always clear and transparent.
All wars are accompanied by an avalanche of falsehoods spread in the media and by unspoken truths. The ongoing war in Ukraine is no different. Every day the media pour rivers of images of the one-way war on the net. The condemnation of the Russian leader Putin is firm from the media and governments (we repeat: attacking another country and starting a war is always a wrong choice). On the other hand, however, cloying and repetitive acclaiming Ukrainian President Zelensky in the foreground everywhere and everywhere may no longer be enough. After more than two months of conflict, however, it seems that his green shirt and his constant requests for guns and money (and his refusals of any agreement) have tired the public. So, here is his wife. Presented by the newspapers as a saint, as the "first woman" victim of the war.
Yet there is so much to say about her. The newspapers had already talked about her. And not during the war: before.
A few years ago, Pandora Papers, a journalistic investigation conducted by hundreds of investigative journalists in hundreds of countries around the world (in Italy, the l'Espresso / Repubblica group collaborated) brought out the widespread practice of famous people to bring their money in tax havens. Among the prominent politicians involved was also the name of Ukrainian President Zelensky. Some documents show that Zelensky (and his friends from the television production company, Kvartal 95), as early as 2012, would have used a network of offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus and Belize. The wife of the Ukrainian leader plays a key role in all that dirty affair. At the center of the journalists' investigations, a company, Maltex, divided equally between shell companies attributable to Zelensky and people close to him. According to investigative reporters, Zelensky, along with his wife (the same who is now presented as the first innocent victim of the conflict in Ukraine), owned a quarter of Maltex through a Belize-registered company called Film Heritage. In 2019, in the midst of Zelensky's election campaign, Film Heritage transferred ownership of Maltex to another company, owned by Serhiy Shefir, the future assistant chief of the future Ukrainian president. The transfer documents, prepared by a lawyer, Iurii Azarov, apparently predicted that Maltex would continue to pay dividends to Film Heritage even though he no longer owned any stake in the company (?). As of 2019, Zelensky's wife, Olena Zelenska, is the sole actual owner of Film Heritage, which means all subsequent payments would go to her, according to the officials' online registry of wealth declarations. To the person who is now reported heartbroken on the headlines for not having seen their husband for two months except in video conferencing (in practice, which all wives do whose husbands boarded on commercial or cruise ships or at work on platforms or abroad to send a piece of bread home).
Strangely enough, the newspapers that published the photos of the devastated and displeased Ukrainian first lady did not speak of all this. Nor did they say that Zelensky would forget to mention Maltex in his public asset statements, including the one filed for 2018, when he still owned 25% of the company. Documents in the Pandora Papers contain details that dovetail with broader allegations of offshore machinations made against Zelensky and his partners during the 2019 election. But even that no one seems to want to talk about when they mention the Ukrainian "hero".
During that election campaign (well short of a Russian invasion), a member of the Ukrainian parliament from the opposite side of Zelensky's side accused him and his partners of benefiting from an offshore network of companies that received $ 41 million. of payments from Privatbank, the Ukrainian financial institution that the oligarch Kolomoisky allegedly looted. He did this by presenting a graph (also finished on Facebook) showing the complex network of transactions between layers of companies based in offshore havens including the BVI, Cyprus and Belize. The graph showed that money flowed from the bank through a series of apparent hedging entities to companies allegedly owned by Zelensky. Confirmation that this was the truth again came from the Pandora Papers: at least 10 of the companies that would receive the money would belong to Zelensky and his partners.
In 2019, to show that he was "clean", Zelensky appointed Ruslan Ryaboshapka as the country's prosecutor. He was removed from office in early 2020 after he told OCRP that “a president should not own offshore companies. In general, offshore companies are bad, regardless of whether they are owned by a president or not ”. According to Ryaboshapka, offshore money transfer "an old tradition" in Ukraine, because the country was perceived as a dangerous place with no "rule of law". However, the use of such companies today raises red flags of "tax evasion or legalization of dirty money".
According to Forbes, the heartbroken Olena Zelenska and her husband have a bank account with about 2 million dollars (including cash and government bonds), cars and jewelry for a million, and real estate that, according to Forbes, would be worth about 4 million. dollars. Not bad for those who govern one of the poorest countries in Europe and the world. According to what was reported, in February 2021 (i.e. before the war), by the vice president of the Verkhovna Rada, Elena Kondratyuk, the level of poverty in Ukraine was about 50%: there were about 19 million poor people. As early as 2019, Bloomberg's annual report ranked Ukraine in the top 10 "poorest" economies in the world, based on unemployment and inflation. 8 out of 10 pensioners lived below the poverty line many Ukrainians had to struggle to survive: a pensioner with a pension equivalent to about thirty euros a month had to spend a third to buy bread. Even the former Ukrainian Economy Minister Viktor Suslov had declared that 9 out of 10 citizens risk going below the poverty line in the future: "… Ukraine is on the verge of a serious socio-political crisis due to impoverishment of its population… A serious crisis awaits us. It will affect not only the financial sector, but also the socio-political one… This is caused by the impoverishment of the population. We have 90% of the population, which will soon be below the poverty line, and we will have 10% fairly rich people… We will face a serious socio-political crisis and there will be a further crisis of social stratification ”.
But all this was not about the president and the kind wife. What some media now present is heartbroken and sorry, hidden in the luxury residence where she took refuge.
Given that the possibility of Ukraine joining the NATO countries, some have thought as an alternative solution to quickly annex it to the European Union. Once again a stretch that would not take into account the real facts: not later than September last year, the EU Court of Auditors published a document in which it stated that "the great corruption and capture of the state" are still widespread in Ukraine. Press Release SR Grand corruption Ukraine (europa.eu) And that “in fact, EU aid had brought only few results”. In all in sectors. Even from the judicial point of view where "EU support for judicial reform has not produced sufficient results" and "EU projects and capacity building assistance have contributed to reformulating the Ukrainian Constitution", "but these results they are constantly at risk, with numerous attempts to bypass laws and water down reforms ”. A system where corruption reigns: "The main anti-corruption institutions that the EU helped to create are still struggling to make their presence felt." Indeed, according to the European Court of Auditors, the National Anti-Corruption Office itself "is constantly under threat". In a few months all these judgments, all these facts (and misdeeds) have ended up in oblivion.
One wonders if, instead of asking for "weapons and weapons and weapons" (as a government delegate to NATO did) and making appearances in all media events on the planet, it would not have been better for Ukrainian leaders to ask for bread for the dozen of millions of fellow citizens who are dying of hunger.
C. Alessandro Mauceri
Thanks to our Telegram channel you can stay updated on the publication of new articles of Economic Scenarios.
The Zelensky article and the “Panama Papers”: the poor memory of newspapers… (by CA Mauceri) comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/zelensky-e-i-panama-papers-la-scarsa-memoria-dei-giornali-di-c-a-mauceri/ on Tue, 24 May 2022 06:00:01 +0000.