Valery Sharifulin / TASS Ukraine's former president Viktor Yanukovych.

After then-president Viktor Yanukovych fled his palace during Ukraine’s bloody 2014 revolution, law enforcement agents across the globe focused on one question: How did the Kremlin-backed politician and his cronies make $40 billion in state assets disappear? The US, the UK, Latvia, and others pitched in to help the new Ukrainian government answer that question, and they traced how Yanukovych and his top lieutenants — including President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort — used shell companies in offshore havens to move $700 million between 2008 and 2014.

The 345-acre presidential palace itself displayed the extent of his regime’s plundering.

But documents obtained by BuzzFeed News show that Ukrainian law enforcement officials rarely followed up on what investigators found and have let Yanukovych’s associates — known as “The Family” — escape prosecution. The story of how Western and Ukrainian investigators followed the money shows how easy it was for the regime to move funds out of the country — and how they got away with it. The 345-acre presidential palace itself displayed the extent of his regime’s plundering: Yanukovych had built an estate so gaudy that it included a luxury car collection, an ostrich farm, and even a loaf of bread made of solid gold.

AFP / Getty Images Part of Yanukovych's luxury car collection.

Also in the palace were reams of financial records revealing how Yanukovych and The Family moved state assets across the globe to offshore accounts and companies they controlled. Among those companies was Davis Manafort Partners, a consulting firm that Yanukovych used to win elections and burnish his reputation. Manafort, one of the firm’s owners, has been indicted for using the company to launder money. He has denied the charges in court. Soon after the revolution, the US and UK governments announced an effort to help Ukraine recover pilfered funds. The FBI sent a small team of investigators to Kiev to sift through ledgers and other government documents, and agents turned to bank compliance teams for more information about how these transactions worked. Interpol placed Yanukovych on a wanted list, and Ukraine has said it plans to charge him with embezzlement and financial misconduct, even in his absence. Emails show that American officials thought the suspicious financial transaction records, generated by US banks, could be useful to financial intelligence units in Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Latvia, and Cyprus, as governments attempted to crack down on international money laundering, and hoped that “these kinds of disclosures may be reciprocated at some point.” While suspicious transactions are not, by themselves, evidence of a crime, they can help investigators identify the shell companies and accounts that autocrats, oligarchs, and others use to secretly move money across the globe.

Ukrainian law enforcement officials had plenty of leads, but rarely followed through.

The US Treasury Department started compiling these records as far back as 2014, when the FBI first began tracking suspected money laundering and corruption by the Yanukovych administration. That inquiry foundered, but the transactions surfaced again last year when they were turned over to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team as it investigated Manafort. Manafort is a “key witness” in three ongoing criminal probes in Ukraine: suspected money laundering by his former lobbying firm; a lucrative contract he steered toward the powerful American law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; and an investigation of the so-called black ledger, a document that reportedly shows illicit payments by the past regime. While Ukrainian officials say Manafort holds important information that would help their investigations, the likelihood of him ever speaking with them is slim. He has been charged in the US by Mueller’s team and faces trial later this month, and is unlikely to be to questioned by Ukrainians during such a sensitive inquiry. In 2014, US law enforcement shared with Ukraine information about accounts abroad that belonged to Yanukovych’s associates and former government officials. Documents obtained by BuzzFeed News show that Ukrainian law enforcement officials had plenty of leads, but rarely followed through. Among the transactions reviewed by BuzzFeed News: During the last six months of the Yanukovych regime, a conglomerate called Management Assets Company, or MAKO, which is controlled by Yanukovych’s son Oleksandr, sent or received $74 million in suspicious transactions through subsidiaries based in Ukraine, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The younger Yanukovych is believed to be in hiding in Russia. He became one of the richest men in the country during his father’s time in office, leading The Family and the company.



The US Treasury Department identified at least a dozen government insiders sending or receiving suspicious transfers in reports sent to Ukrainian investigators. For instance, Ukrainian legislator Yuriy Boyko, a former minister of fuel and energy, was flagged after media reports alleged he moved $400 million of state money through Latvia in order to purchase an oil drilling platform that cost only $248 million. Although US authorities referred to him as “the subject of a public corruption investigation,” Boyko was never convicted of a crime in Ukraine. According to Ukrainian media reports Boyko plans to run in the 2019 presidential elections and recently polled in third place.



A small contingent of oligarchs close to Yanukovych funneled more than $5 billion through oil, gas, and other energy companies, according to court documents filed in Ukraine. US law enforcement reported suspicious activity by Prosperity Developments, controlled by Serhiy Kurchenko, a 32-year-old oligarch who is close friends with Oleksandr Yanukovych. Registered in Panama, Prosperity Developments SA sent or received $550 million in suspicious wire transfers during a single year, US authorities found.

Boyko’s spokesperson in Ukraine’s parliament and Kurchenko’s office in Moscow did not respond to emails sent by a BuzzFeed News reporter. The Yanukovyches’ attorney, Vitaliy Serdyuk, told BuzzFeed News that his clients have done nothing wrong. “There are no requests of law enforcement agencies regarding the transfer of the $74 million mentioned in your inquiry,” said Serdyuk. “Viktor Yanukovych does not have any assets and funds outside of Ukraine. Neither in the US, nor in the EU.”

Prosecutors said The Family laundered state assets through 400 companies.