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Pro-Zelensky MPs getting $20,000 monthly secret payments
– former aide
17 Dec, 2021 08:21
By Layla Guest
Lawmakers from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s party are allegedly being slipped thousands of dollars in cash and can be fined for not voting on important laws, the leader’s ex-chief of staff has sensationally claimed.
Speaking in a marathon interview with journalist Dmitry Gordon on Tuesday, Andrey Bogdan said the ‘Servant of the People’ MPs are purportedly handed money each month, in envelopes, as part of an unofficial salary. He named a figure totaling around $20,000. This sum, however, is not paid in Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia, according to Bogdan.
The ex-chief of staff went on to claim that if lawmakers do not vote in line with the party whip on key issues, then they will face financial penalties, thereby reducing their earnings.
Bogdan was appointed head of the presidential administration after Zelensky won the election in 2019 and served until February 2020. In September last year, he was summoned for questioning by the Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation after he told Gordon that Kiev’s government, under the president’s current administrative head, Andrey Ermak, had made several promises to Moscow, including dealing with Crimea’s status, re-starting flights between the Eastern European nation and Russia, as well as prisoner exchanges.
Although he did not claim to have seen the promises himself, Bogdan said he had heard rumors of the secret agreement from various diplomats and intelligence officials.
Before his work as the head of the president’s office, Bogdan worked as the lawyer of the influential Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, a long-term supporter of Zelensky, who has since worked to distance himself from the billionaire. Earlier this year, Washington introduced measures against the notorious businessman and his family, including a travel ban, in response to allegations that he was involved “in significant corruption.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed that “in his official capacity as a Governor of Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk Oblast from 2014 to 2015, Kolomoisky was involved in corrupt acts that undermined rule of law and the Ukrainian public's faith in their government's democratic institutions and public processes."
Ukraine targets 2nd opposition leader with 'treason' case,
Poroshenko follows Medvedchuk
20 Dec, 2021 19:07
Ukraine's government has targeted another opposition leader with a treason case, just after his party passed out the ruling Servant of the People in an opinion poll. This time former president Petro Poroshenko is the target.
The case is ostensibly linked to the coal trade between Kiev and the breakaway eastern Ukrainian regions in the Donbass during his time in office. Poroshenko, who heads the European Solidarity grouping, was a vehement opponent of both the unrecognised statelets and Russia.
Earlier this year, another Ukrainian opposition leader, Viktor Medvedchuk was placed under arrest, allegedly for committing treason in dealings with Crimea. Just like Poroshenko, Medvedchuk's Opposition Platform – For Life had polled ahead of Zelensky's faction before he was prosecuted.
Medvedchuk has claimed the case against him is clearly politically motivated.
“The fifth President of Ukraine … was informed about the suspicion of high treason and facilitating the activities of terrorist organizations,” Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigations (DBR) said in a statement on Monday.
Poroshenko left Ukraine on Friday, with his party stating that he was heading for a pre-scheduled visit to Turkey and Poland. Shortly before his departure, the DBR tried to hand him a notice, summoning him for questioning. The ex-president, however, “ignored the representatives of the law enforcement agency and left in an unknown direction,” the DBR said.
The ex-president is suspected of being a part of a conspiracy to purchase coal from the breakaway republics Donetsk and Lugansk, with the estimated worth of goods traded amounting to some 1.5 billion hryvnias (nearly $55 million). The conspiracy allegedly included unspecified “representatives of the top leadership of the Russian Federation,” the DBR claimed.
Since the breakaway republics are regarded as ‘terrorist organizations’ by Kiev, the ex-president is facing charges ranging from terrorism support and financing to high treason. If convicted on such charges, Poroshenko might face up to 15 years behind bars. The notice of suspicion was supplied to the ex-president in accordance with the country’s standing criminal procedure code, the DBR said.
The ex-president has also been summoned for questioning, scheduled for Thursday, his attorney Ilya Novikov revealed on Monday. The lawyer, who published the text of the notice in a Facebook post, has cast doubts on the legality of its delivery procedure.
Novikov alleged that the notice was deliberately delivered while Poroshenko was abroad, so that media outlets “close to the administration” of President Volodymyr Zelensky could claim the ex-leader fled the investigation and aimed to hide from it in other countries.
“A delegation from the prosecutor's office came to the house of Petro Poroshenko, asked the security guard if the fifth president was home (he is at a conference in Warsaw, and it's unlikely they didn't know it) and slipped the notice into an opening in the gate,” Novikov said.
The lawyer accused the prosecutors of “giving in” to pressure from the current Ukrainian administration and acting as part of the alleged smear campaign against his clients. The attorney has not, however, revealed when – or if – Poroshenko will return back home.
Ukraine’s Zelensky continues crackdown on critical media
Kiev has imposed sanctions on three companies that run TV channels
which don't support the current government
Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky has continued his crackdown against dissent in the media by imposing a new set of restrictive measures against three companies that own opposition-aligned TV channels, it emerged on Tuesday.
The sanctions take aim at channels UkrLive and First Independent, both of which are believed by the Ukrainian authorities to be owned by Taras Kozak, an MP for the country’s largest opposition party, Opposition Platform – For Life.
The measures also hit the Novosti media holding company, the owner of channels 112 Ukraine, NewsOne, and ZIK. These stations were taken off air in February this year, having been blacklisted by Zelensky. All three channels are also owned by Kozak, who dubbed the move “an act of blatant censorship.” The president explained his decision by suggesting that Kiev was fighting “propaganda,” and linked the channels to Russia.
Kozak is thought by many to be the right-hand man of politician Viktor Medvedchuk, the chairman of the political council of Opposition Platform – For Life. Medvedchuk is considered an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the party has consistently called for closer links with Moscow. Medvedchuk is currently under house arrest, accused of treason and the attempted looting of national resources.
The new sanctions on the holding companies include the blocking of assets, restrictions on trade operations, and the canceling of licenses. In a joint statement published on Tuesday night, UkrLive and First Independent slammed them as “illegal,” and accused the National Security and Defense Council of running a “dictatorship” where there is a “de facto ban on opposition activities.”
“The Ukrainian authorities have once again proved that they see free media as their main enemy and will act by any means to suppress freedom of speech in Ukraine,” the statement said. “We regard today’s events as another attempt by the Ukrainian authorities to suppress any alternative opinion about the situation in Ukraine and to use the repressive machine to fight against independent media.”
In the past year, Zelensky has also placed restrictions on the opposition-leaning websites Strana.ua and Shariy.net.
Almost all news outlets in Ukraine are bankrolled by wealthy individuals such as Kozak. Zelensky himself came to power in 2019 with support from the 1+1 Media Group, owned by Igor Kolomoisky, a billionaire oligarch and former regional governor.
CIA-backed secret experiments conducted on hundreds
of Danish orphans – documentary
A new documentary has accused the US intelligence agency of supporting
experiments on several hundred Scandinavian children
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) allegedly backed secret experiments into schizophrenia on 311 Danish children, many adopted or from orphanages, during the early 1960s, according to a newly released documentary.
Danish Radio’s documentary ‘The Search for Myself’ accuses the US spy agency of supporting the experiments at the Municipal Hospital in Cophenhagen. The studies were reportedly investigating the link between schizophrenia and heredity or the environment.
Per Wennick, who claims to have been a participant in the experiments as a child, alleged that he was placed in a chair, with electrodes strapped to him and forced to listen to loud, shrill noises. The aim of the test was supposedly to find out if a child had psychopathic traits.
“It was very uncomfortable. And it's not just my story, it's the story of many children,” Wennick said, describing his experience.
I think this is a violation of my rights as a citizen in this society. I find it so strange that some people should know more about me than I myself have been aware of.
The project was co-financed by a US health service, receiving support from the Human Ecology Fund, which is operated on behalf of the CIA, according to Wennick and the National Archives.
While the children were not told what the experiments were for, during or after the research, a dissertation was published in 1977 by Danish psychiatrist Find Schulsinger detailing the study.
The Danish Welfare Museum’s Jacob Knage Rasmussen said that this is the first documented time where children under care were used for research purposes in the country.
“I do not know of similar attempts, neither in Denmark nor in Scandinavia. It is appalling information that contradicts the Nuremberg Code of 1947, which after World War II was to set some ethical restrictions for experiments on humans” Rasmussen stated.
Theranos founder convicted of fraud & conspiracy
Elizabeth Holmes, once touted as the Steve Jobs of biotechnology,
could now face a lengthy prison term
listens during a visit to Theranos manufacturing in Newark, California, on July 23, 2015
© Anda Chu / MediaNews Group / Bay Area News via Getty Images
The founder and CEO of ‘revolutionary’ blood-testing health technology company Theranos, has been found guilty on four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud investors, but not patients.
Elizabeth Holmes, 37, was found not guilty on four charges revolving around “wire fraud against Theranos paying patients,” and the jury in California also remained deadlocked on three other charges on Monday. But with a partially guilty verdict she could still face up to 20 years in prison for each count, although some observers believe she is unlikely to receive the maximum sentence.
Theranos was once a $9 billion Silicon Valley wonder that promised to revolutionize blood testing. It was founded by Holmes in 2003, after she dropped out of Stanford University at age 19. The company’s board of directors at some point included former senators, future Defense Secretary James Mattis, as well as former Secretaries of State George Schultz and Henry Kissinger.
Praised as a self-made billionaire and “future Steve Jobs” of biotechnology, Holmes would appear at events alongside former Alibaba CEO Jack Ma, former President Bill Clinton and even then-Vice President Joe Biden, claiming that her company could offer blood tests for 240 diseases using just a few drops from a fingertip pin-prick instead of a needle or syringe.
The entire enterprise collapsed following a 2015 Wall Street Journal report by John Carreyrou, which exposed the fact that the company’s miracle technology did not actually work. This triggered an inquiry by federal agencies that led to indictments against Holmes and former Theranos COO Ramesh Balwani in 2018. Balwani is set to stand his own trial next month.
Since the technology didn't work, how could the jury possibly find her not guilty of defrauding her customers? It would appear that every single one was defrauded.
Ex-president’s assets arrested amid high treason case
Ukrainian court has arrested assets of former president Poroshenko,
now a top opposition figure, who faces charges of ‘high treason’
© Getty Images / Ukrinform / Hennadii Minchenko
Ukraine’s former president, Petro Poroshenko, has had his assets frozen by a court amid a high treason case over financial dealings with separatists. Poroshenko says he’ll fight to clear his name on his return home from Poland.
Poroshenko’s assets were arrested by a Kiev court on Thursday. They reportedly include a mansion outside Kiev, two apartments, land plots, and shares of several companies held by the former president.
Poroshenko’s legal team has branded the court decision as a politically-charged persecution by the incumbent government of President Volodymyr Zelensky, and vowed he would appeal the arrest of his assets. Poroshenko was targeted by the criminal case back in December, facing multiple charges ranging from “facilitating the activities of terrorist organizations” to high treason.
The case revolves around an alleged conspiracy to purchase coal from the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The amount of goods traded was estimated to be about 1.5 billion hryvnias (nearly $55 million), according to Ukrainian prosecutors. Apart from Poroshenko, the conspiracy allegedly involved unspecified “representatives of the top leadership of the Russian Federation.”
The Ukrainian judiciary failed to deliver a questioning notice to Poroshenko in December, with the former leader, who currently holds a seat in the country’s parliament, abruptly leaving Ukraine for a “pre-scheduled” trip. The politician was ultimately informed of the charges in absentia, with his opponents accusing him of fleeing the country.
Poroshenko, however, maintains that this is not the case, promising to return to Ukraine later in January. He reiterated his resolve to face the prosecutors in a Facebook post on Thursday.
“On January 17, I, as promised, will return to Kiev to appear in court and have a meeting with the Attorney General, using the right of an MP to get an emergency reception. I am returning not to defend myself from [President Volodymyr] Zelensky, but to protect Ukraine from incompetent leadership and external aggression,” Poroshenko said.
Viktor Medvedchuk, one of the leaders of Opposition Platform — For Life (OPFL), the most popular political party in eastern Ukraine, who’s been labeled as “the Kremlin ally” in the media, was also placed under house arrest last year after being charged with treason.
In 2021, Zelensky moved to ban several opposition TV channels, similarly accused of spreading a pro-Russian narrative, in what his critics have called a stifling attack on the freedom of press.
