15 March 2019
A massive leak of hacked files, under the title Ukrainian Papers, has caused an eruption of a corruption scandal around embattled President Petro Poroshenko. The general elections are only two weeks away.
The leak contains thousands of documents and correspondence relating to Poroshenko’s offshore business empire, his business partners and political allies Oleg Hladkovskiy and Ihor Kononenko, and their managers Sergii Zaitsev and Dmytro Lytvynets.
In March Poroshenko dismissed his business partner and deputy head of the National Security and Defence Council Hladkovskiy after a similar leak previously.
The leaked documents suggest that Poroshenko has been trading with “the enemy” Russia. This is bad news for the upcoming elections.
It is still not clear whether the information said to be contained in the Ukrainian Papers are real or fake news ahead of the election. However, the previous leaks such as the Panama Papers, as well as of loan and deposit data for Poroshenko’s Ukrainian pocket bank International Investment Bank (IIB) in 2016, provide some reference points for cross checking.
A first glance at the data indeed shows that Poroshenko’s pals’ network of offshores extends far further than previously known. Many of these are formally owned by Serhii Zaitsev, one of Poroshenko’s top managers at the chocolate factory Roshen. Others are owned by Oleh Hladkovskiy, whom Poroshenko fired from his post of deputy head of the National Security and Defence Council over corruption allegations on March 4. Bne intellinews reorted.
