The Aluminum messenger

Kilimnik’s administrative work for Yanukovich in 2004-2005 presumably was organized through the aluminium producing company BasEl, a Russian entity owned by the billionaire Oleg Deripaska, according to a source who worked in the IRI at the time. In April 2018, Deripaska came under personal US sanctions as an oligarch close to Vladimir Putin.

At the end of 2004 and beginning of 2005, Kilimnik sent employees of the IRI to the office of BasEl on Rochdelskaya Street in Moscow no less than 20 times, says one of the people who directly carried out such assignments for Kilimnik. There, Kilimnik’s messengers were handed envelopes with cash and air tickets for him and the political consultants he hired. Kilimnik did not explain why the money for Ukrainian assignments was obtained from BasEl.

The manager of the IRI says that the institute never sent Kilimnik or his political technologists on business trips to other ex-USSR countries, and that all work there was conducted through local offices. Deripaska’s representative told The Project that neither he nor BasEl had ever financed Kilimnik, and “private investment relations of Deripaska and Manafort, whose existence is not disputed, have never been aimed at achieving political goals.”

Oleg Deripaska

Deripaska’s ties with Manafort were not a secret. According to Philip Griffin, one of Manafort’s assistants, at the end of 2004 he was sent by Manafort’s office to Ukraine “to help Deripaska“.

Cooperation between Manafort and Deripaska continued until at least 2016. That summer, according to the Washington Post, Manafort and Kilimnik repeatedly discussed the possibility of meeting Deripaska. Deripaska’s plane landed at Newark Airport on August 3, 2016, a few hours after Manafort met with Kilimnik. Three days later, as is known from the investigation of the Anti-Corruption Foundation in Russia, Deripaska met with Russian Vice Premier Sergei Prikhodko, on a yacht off the Scandinavian coast and in the company of go-go girls.

As The Project found out, Kilimnik and Manafort worked not only in Ukraine, but also in Central Asia. And Kilimnik again received money for this at Rochdelskaya, 30.