Ten Inconvenient Truths About Ukraine Largely Ignored by the Media (4)

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Canada’s support for these extreme ultra-nationalist groups

In the following CityNews report from Nov. 10, 2021, extremism researcher Brad Galloway, coordinator from the Centre on Hate Bias & Extremism, expressed concern that far-right Canadians may join the ranks of paramilitary groups such as Azov in the Ukraine.

The report also provides damning evidence about Canada’s diplomatic and military involvement in the training of the Azov Battalion, even though they knew they were a far-right fascist neo-Nazi group.

The report cites an Ottawa Citizen article as well as documents obtained by the news outfit through an Access to Information Law which validated the claim, stating:

“A year before the meeting, Canada’s Joint Task Force Ukraine produced a briefing on the Azov Battalion, acknowledging its links to Nazi ideology. ‘Multiple members of Azov have described themselves as Nazis,’ the Canadian officers warned in their 2017 briefing.”

As per the same article, “Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, policy director of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center [for Holocaust Studies], said Canada had to make it a priority that its military personnel have no involvement with far-right fascist militias in Ukraine under any circumstances, further stating: ‘It’s concerning that, for the second time in a month, we have seen evidence of Canadian military officials engaging with Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups’.”

Kirzner-Roberts also referred to a report titled Far-Right Group, Made Its Home in Ukraine’s Major Western Military Training Hub from the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at George Washington University which revealed that Centuria, a far-right group made up of Ukrainian soldiers linked to the Azov movement, boasted they received training from Canada and other NATO countries. The researchers had tracked social media accounts of Centuria documenting its Ukrainian military members giving Nazi salutes, promoting white nationalism, and praising members of Nazi SS units.

The report also confirms Canada’s role, through its UNIFIER military operation, for providing training to Ukraine’s armed forces, as per a statement from Andrii Taran, the Minister of Defence of Ukraine:

“Our Canadian partners are constantly assisting to strengthen the institutional capabilities of Ukraine’s Defence Ministry. Modern principles of defence management and democratic civilian control undergo implementation, and leaders of the strategic and operational levels receive their training. Canada provides all opportunities to improve skills and field training of units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine within the Operation UNIFIER. Therefore, Canada’s key role in training of Ukraine’s defence and security forces is unquestionable.”

What is perhaps more troubling with regards to the Canadian military training Ukrainian forces lies with its official response to the mentions of training Ukrainian soldiers from these far-right extremist fascist groups and what their overall approach is:

“Canadian Forces spokeswoman Lt.-Cmdr. Julie McDonald said it was up to Ukraine to vet its own security forces. But, if Canadian military personnel saw first-hand evidence of extremist views, they could refuse to train those soldiers, she added. The Canadian Forces, however, does not proactively examine the backgrounds of those they train or look for signs of support for far-right causes.”

Notice the word “could” in her statement which would imply that refusing to train the soldiers would be optional and at the discretion of the Canadian military personnel.

This statement was not so different than that from the Canadian Defence Attaché in Ukraine Colonel Robert Foster who stated that when it comes to screening Ukrainian recipients of training for extremist views and ties, Canada trusted the Ukrainian government to select and identify the right candidates; specifically stating: “It is their responsibility.”

Such denialism was brought back to the forefront in April 2022 when the Ottawa Citizen reported that Canada failed to properly monitor its own military training program. “Defence sources acknowledged the crest worn by the Ukrainian soldier in Canadian military photos is the insignia of Ukraine’s SS unit which fought for the Nazis,” asserted the report. And yet another Canadian Forces officer, Capt. Véronique Sabourin, affirmed that Ukraine is responsible for vetting its own personnel, shunning responsibility, rather than addressing the highly contentious matter.

The author of this article has contacted the Canadian Armed Forces for comment on the matter. They confirmed that the statement from Capt. Véronique Sabourin from above was accurate, adding “the Canadian Armed Forces are strongly opposed to the glorification of Nazism and all forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, intolerance and extremism. In all of its international relationships,” stressing that all members “deployed on Operation UNIFIER were briefed to help them recognize patches and insignia associated with right-wing extremism.” Yet, they appeared consistent with their stance stating: “However, and ultimately, Ukraine is a sovereign country and was thus responsible for recruiting and vetting its own security forces.”

Even amidst the complexity involved in screening members of foreign forces for military training, for the Canadian Armed Forces to maintain such a stance whereby they are seemingly willing to turn a blind eye to such far-right extremist groups should put into question Canada’s role, financial, and military contributions regarding this external conflict.

Zelensky’s hidden fortune

While numerous reports online vary widely in terms of the actual net worth of Volodymyr Zelensky as well as the means by which he amassed his fortune, at least tens of millions of dollars worth are traceable.

Beginning with a report from Headlines & Global News (HNGN), Zelensky co-owned the television entertainment firm Kvartal 95 which he co-founded in 2003; and, according to Volodymyr Landa, deputy editor-in-chief of Forbes Ukraine, the company earns between $20 and $30 million per year, with Zelensky owning a 25% interest. Roughly speaking, that could amount to a conservative figure of $100 million or more for Zelensky’s stake since 2003, of course, depending on the net income of the firm.

“On the campaign trail, Zelensky pledged to clean up Ukraine’s oligarch-dominated ruling system. And he railed against politicians such as the wealthy incumbent Petro Poroshenko who hid his assets offshore,” noted an October 3, 2021 article from The Guardian which delved into the President Zelensky’s offshore connections.

The article references the Pandora papers which were leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and shared with the Guardian as part of a global investigation which suggests that Zelensky is “rather similar to his predecessors.”

It mentions that the files reveal Zelensky participated in a sprawling network of offshore companies, co-owned with his long-time friends and TV business partners, including Ivan Bakanov who was general director of the previously mentioned production studio, Kvartal 95.

And though Zelensky had declared some of his private assets before becoming President, including Film Heritage, the Pandora papers reveal he had other assets stored offshore.

Film Heritage had a 25% stake in Davegra, a Cyprus holding company which in turn owns Maltex Multicapital Corp, a previously unknown entity registered in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI). Zelensky held a 25% stake in Maltex.

According to the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) report titled Pandora Papers Reveal Offshore Holdings of Ukrainian President and his Inner Circle, though around the time of his 2019 election, Zelensky handed his shares in a key offshore company over to Serhiy Shefir (his former TV producer and First Assistant to his current Presidency), the two appear to have made an arrangement for Zelensky’s family to continue receiving money from the offshore entity. As per The Guardian article:

“Roughly six weeks later, after Zelensky’s landslide victory, a lawyer acting for the Kvartal 95 group signed another document. It stipulated that Maltex would continue to pay dividends to Zelensky’s Film Heritage, even though it no longer owned any stake in the company. Its main revenue comes from activity in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, according to a Maltex client profile.”

“Zelensky’s wife, Olena, is now the declared beneficial owner of Film Heritage, meaning any payments since 2019 would have flowed to her.”

Notice from the above citation that Zelensky, or at least his wife Olena, is still receiving funds from Film Heritage’s operations, including in Russia, their stated bitter enemy.

The OCCRP report also states that offshore companies were used by Shefir and another business partner to buy three expensive London real estate properties, including a three-bedroom flat on Glentworth Street, bought for 1.58 million pounds ($2.28 million), and two-bedroom flat nearby in Baker Street’s Chalfont Court building, which was bought by Shefir for 2.2 million pounds ($3.5 million).

According to an article from Euromaidan Press, a Ukraine-based English-language independent newspaper, which was largely sourced by a team of a team of independent investigative journalists from Slidstvо.Info, it was revealed that Zelensky had strong ties to the Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoiskyi, as per further examination of the Pandora papers. They discovered a network of interlinked offshore entities by Zelensky and his partners, specifically:

“Among the persons named in the documents of offshore registrars that became known thanks to Pandora Papers, journalists feature the names of Ukraine’s state leadership, such as Ivan Bakanov, Head of Security Service of Ukraine, Serhii Shefir, First Assistant to the President, and President Zelensky.”

Ivan Bakanov who is the Head of Security Service of Ukraine and a close friend to Zelensky, used his power to prevent the screening of the film Offshore 95 by Slidstvo.Info which showcased the extent of the corruption of Zelensky and his close friends and business partners, including Ihor Kolomoisky, the powerful Ukrainian banking oligarch.

The team of investigative journalists had also discovered that around a dozen persons in Zelensky’s inner circle have offshore companies, and that the offshore registrar Fidelity and Ukrainian lawyer Yurii Azarov helped create the network. What’s more, they also revealed that:

“The Pandora Papers disclosed that since 2012, an offshore company affiliated to Kolomoiskyi’s 1+1 group at least once paid more than $1 billion to Zelenskyy’s offshore firm SVT from the British Virgin Islands, for the popular TV show ‘Make a Comedian Laugh’ created by Kvartal 95. And Maltext owns half of SVT.”

Moreover, according to Slidstvo.Info’s data, Zelensky’s and Kolomoiskyi’s companies made a transaction worth $40 million in 2012. The team traced the origin of this money which led them to conclude that that the companies that gave these $40 million are suspected of laundering huge sums from Privatbank.

Though not entirely proven or knowingly, Zelensky’s company could have been implicated in an operation conducted via the Cyprus branch of the Kolomoiskyi-owned Privatbank (to which funds were funneled from Ukraine).

The OCCRP also investigated Kolomoiskyi’s Privatbank in which the oligarch, along with the oligarch co-owner of the bank, Hennadiy Boholiubov, appear to have stolen $5.5 billion of the bank’s assets.

Quoting from the piece: “The former chairwoman of Ukraine’s central bank dubbed it one of the biggest financial scandals of the 21st century.”

PrivatBank was Ukraine’s largest commercial lender and had a whopping 33% of the population’s deposits. The state, depositors, and other stakeholders had to absorb the loss and the bank had to be nationalized.

The OCCRP investigation also mentions that Kolomoisky’s 1+1 channel overwhelmingly favored Zelensky in its news coverage during the election period. And, though Zelensky denied he owed anything to Kolomoisky, he nonetheless affirmed “He is my business partner, not my boss,” in an interview.

The Biden administration has officially barred Ihor Kolomoisky from entering the United States, sanctioned, and accused him of looting the country’s largest bank and funneling the proceeds into investments into the U.S. and elsewhere.

According to yet another exposé by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) titled the FinCen Files, the Ukrainian oligarch has a lot to answer to regarding his shady business dealings, particularly those from his offshore entities in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands.

Concluding this section, it is fair to say that Volodymyr Zelensky has been less than honest – even after he was elected, as per his own testimony in the Atlantic Council, a known mouthpiece for NATO. He has lied about his wealth and the facts provided above show that it can easily range in the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not a billion or more.

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yogaesoteric
February 15, 2023