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<\/p>\nAndrew Joyce, Ph.D.
\nOCCIDENTAL OBSERVER<\/p>\n
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\u201cAt the same time, fifty Jewish families own 80% of all wealth.\u00a0Where do you see the Ukrainian oligarch?\u00a0I don\u2019t know any.\u00a0They are all Jews.\u00a0Their wealth betrays their own bragging rights: Rolls-Royces, planes, castles, hotels, casinos owned in Monte Carlo.\u00a0Aircraft and yachts under foreign flags.\u00a0And, of course, they don\u2019t pay taxes.\u00a0And plants and factories were bought by them not at a real price, but stolen from the entire Ukrainian people.\u201d With Russia now slowly escalating its \u2018special military operation\u2019 against Ukraine on the eve of its first anniversary, I find myself drawn once again to the complex but stark phenomenon of extreme Jewish corruption in the latter nation. While it\u2019s become commonplace to note Volodymyr Zelensky\u2019s Jewishness, and perhaps also that of Volodymyr Groysman, the first Prime Minister to serve under Zelensky, I have yet to read a detailed discussion of the major Jewish players in the ongoing saga of Ukrainian oligarchy and its political affiliates. If anything, the present conflict is a huge distraction from the fact that, for decades, the biggest threat to Ukraine hasn\u2019t been Russia, but financiers and speculators operating with impunity within Ukraine\u2019s borders to exploit ethnic Ukrainians and plunder their resources.<\/p>\n Speaking in general terms, of course, Ukraine is an extremely corrupt country, with the culture of fraud and graft stemming in large part from the Soviet legacy and saturating all levels of society. Crooks of all ethnic backgrounds are ubiquitous in the nation. Bribery is systematic, where it\u2019s accepted as a basic fact of life by ordinary citizens and extends even to such mundane tasks as vehicle inspection. As well as infesting politics, bribery and other forms of corruption remain endemic in the police force, higher education, health care, and the justice system, with the result that Ukraine ranks alongside some of the worst African nations in Transparency International\u2019s assessment of corruption perception. According to 2015 data, politically connected businesses accounting for less than 1 per cent of companies in Ukraine owned more than 25 per cent of all assets and accessed over 20 per cent of debt financing. In the capital-intensive mining, energy and transport sectors, politically connected businesses accounted for over 40 per cent of turnover and 50 per cent of assets.<\/p>\n Far from being the beacon of freedom presented to us now by the mass media, Ukraine is a nation bankrupt in social trust and well-accustomed to the yoke of exploitation. There has been little internal outcry over the massive trafficking of its women for sex, both inside and outside the country, with coastal cities such as Odessa becoming sex tourism hubs for the worst of the Turkish and Israeli middle classes. Ukraine now has the highest adult HIV prevalence outside Africa, with sexual contact outpacing injection drug use as the primary form of transmission since 2008. The National Institute on Drug Abuse points out that substance abuse in Ukraine has been at epidemic proportions for the last 15 years.<\/p>\n Ukraine is on multiple levels a deeply flawed and troubled state, and like any bloody carcass it has attracted its share of hyenas. I believe, however, that Jewish corruption in Ukraine, despite Jews only comprising around 0.5% of the Ukrainian population, is of a character significant enough to merit special attention. In the following essay I want to explore some of the key players and their interconnections, as well as to offer some thoughts on the reasons why anti-Jewish attitudes have not taken hold in Ukraine, and why they are unlikely to do so in the future.<\/p>\n How \u2018Anti-Corruption\u2019 Is Zelensky?<\/strong><\/p>\n Now overshadowed by his reinvention as a kind of Second Coming of Winston Churchill, Zelensky\u2019s first great transformation was that of a close associate of the worst of Ukraine\u2019s oligarchs (Ihor Kolomoisky, discussed below) into an \u201canti-corruption\u201d populist. Zelensky\u2019s relationship with Kolomoisky goes back to around 2012, when Zelensky and the Jewish brothers\u00a0Serhiy and Boris Shefir<\/a>, began making content for Kolomoisky\u2019s TV stations through their production production company, Kvartal 95. As is now well-known, Zelensky\u2019s political ascent began after his starring role in the political satire \u2018Servant of the People,\u2019 which began airing on Kolomoisky\u2019s 1+1 network in 2015. The 1+1 channel had been founded by another Jew,\u00a0Alexander Rodnyansky<\/a>. Servant of the People starred Zelensky as a school teacher whose anti-corruption rant in class is filmed by a student, goes viral, and wins him the presidency. Zelensky turned to real-world politics, capitalized on widespread public anger at corruption, and ended up winning the Presidency with ease just three-and-a-half years after the show\u2019s launch.<\/p>\n Zelensky is entirely a media creation, a blank canvas upon which anything can be projected. Before the war, the German Council on Foreign Relations pointed out that \u201cZelensky has so far been very vague about his policies and vision for the future. So it has been extremely difficult to tell what he stands for or fact-check his largely policy-free statements in the way the experts have for other candidates. He rarely mentions facts.\u201d<\/p>\n Zelensky\u2019s 2019 campaign was dogged by doubts over his authenticity given his close association with Kolomoisky. Britain\u2019s Royal Institute of International Affairs\u00a0astutely observed<\/a>\u00a0that, even if Zelensky was earnest in his claims to oppose the corrupt, \u201che cannot govern without\u00a0systema<\/em>\u00a0[the oligarchic structure] and will bow to its interests.\u201d In the heat of the campaign, an ally of incumbent Petro Poroshenko (rumored<\/a>\u00a0to have a Jewish father), journalist Volodymyr Ariev (who\u00a0also claims Jewish ancestry<\/a>), published a chart on Facebook purporting to show that Zelensky and his television production partners were beneficiaries of a\u00a0web of offshore firms<\/a>, which they had set up beginning in 2012, that received $41M in funds from Kolomoisky\u2019s Privatbank. Many of these allegations were proven correct after the leaking of the Pandora Papers, millions of files from 14 offshore service providers, to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.<\/p>\n The documents show that Zelensky and his Jewish partners in Kvartal 95 set up a network of offshore firms dating back to at least 2012, the same year the company began making regular content for Ihor Kolomoisky. The offshores, which filtered Kolomoisky\u2019s money through the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Belize, and Cyprus in order to avoid paying tax in Ukraine, were also used by Zelensky associates to purchase and own three prime properties in the center of London. The documents also show that just before he was elected, Zelensky gifted his stake in a key offshore company, the British Virgin Islands-registered Maltex Multicapital Corp., to Serhiy Shefir \u2014 soon to be his top presidential aide. And in spite of \u201cgiving up his shares,\u201d the documents show that an arrangement was soon made that would allow the offshore to keep paying dividends to a company that now belongs to Zelensky\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n Zelensky and Serhiy Shefir<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Besides providing financial support during Ukraine\u2019s 2019 election, Kolomoisky supplied Zelensky with cars, and the bulletproof Mercedes Zelensky used on the campaign trail was owned by Kolomoisky associate Timur Mindich \u2014 who is on the board of trustees of the Jewish Community of Dnipropetrovsk, a body of which Kolomoisky was president. Although Zelensky continued to deny that his relationship to Kolomoisky was anything but professional, the\u00a0Kyiv Post<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0in April 2019 that Zelensky traveled a total of 11 times to Geneva and an additional two times to Tel-Aviv, during precise periods when Kolomoisky was in these locations. Zelensky\u2019s travel companions during these trips included Jewish oligarch and close Kolomoisky associate\u00a0Gennadiy (Zvi Hirsch)\u00a0Bogolyubov<\/a>,\u00a0<\/strong>and the brothers\u00a0Hryhoriy and Ihor Surkis<\/a>\u00a0both whom have been accused of serious corruption. They are among the wealthiest people in Ukraine and are Jewish through their mother Rima Gorinshtein. The very Jewish character of these trips should come as no surprise given that, where possible, Zelensky likes to surround himself with Jewish aides. In the aftermath of the outbreak of war, for example, it emerged that he sought advice on public relations\u00a0from two Likud-backing Israelis<\/a>, Srulik Einhorn and Jonatan Urich.<\/p>\n Zelensky hasn\u2019t exactly turned on the hand that fed him, and his rise coincided with the downfall of several of Kolomoisky\u2019s opponents. After Zelensky became President, Kolomoisky\u2019s nemesis at Ukraine\u2019s central bank, Valeria Gontareva, was subjected to a sustained campaign of intimidation. Criminal proceedings were brought against her for alleged abuse of office during her time at the central bank, her Kiev flat was raided by the police, a car belonging to her daughter-in-law, also called Valeria Gontareva, was torched, and her house outside the Ukrainian capital was set ablaze and destroyed. Under Zelensky, Ukraine\u2019s parliament passed a measure that prevented Kolomoisky from having to\u00a0pay higher taxes<\/a>\u00a0on his mining operations, and prior to the start of the war with Russia all indications pointed to the renewed influence of interest groups opposed to reform. First, in March 2020, was the dismissal of the government of prime minister Oleksiy Honcharuk (who didn\u2019t help his case by\u00a0attending a concert headlined by an anti-Jewish<\/a>\u00a0heavy metal band), followed, a day later, by the removal from office of the reformist prosecutor-general, Ruslan Ryaboshapka. Then, in April, came the Constitutional Court\u2019s blocking of judicial reforms, and a ruling by the same court, in October, that effectively paralyzed the work of the National Agency for Corruption Prevention. In July 2020 Zelensky forced the resignation of Yakov Smolii as National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) governor. After leaving his position, Smolii referred to \u201csystematic political pressure\u201d on the bank, and did not rule out a coincidence of interest between the President\u2019s Office and Kolomoisky. He said that the President\u2019s Office wanted to replace the NBU\u2019s leadership with people it could control. Smolii\u2019s resignation came shortly after Ukraine had received the first tranche of a new $5 billion IMF stand-by arrangement. A key condition for continued IMF support was the independence of the NBU, and the IMF had made it clear that it held Smolii and his team in high regard.<\/p>\n Seeking international assistance in the aftermath of Russia\u2019s \u201cspecial military operation,\u201d Zelensky has done much to give the appearance of fighting corruption while actually doing very little. Western media and politicians in the last few weeks have\u00a0lavished praise<\/a>\u00a0on Zelensky for a series of raids and dismissals tackling corruption in the country, but few charges have been brought and the raids have been perfectly timed with EU accession talks and attempts to obtain European financial and military assistance. Political commentator Yuriy Vishnevskyi pointed out the uselessness of the raid against Kolomoisky,\u00a0stressing<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cdetectives knew perfectly well that they would most likely not find anything there, since Kolomoisky was not an official at [government bodies suspected of tax evasion].\u00a0It is doubtful that he compiled documents at home that would prove his involvement in criminal schemes.\u201d Rumors that Zelensky has stripped Kolomoisky of his Ukrainian citizenship, along with the Ukrainian citizenship of Jewish oligarchs Hennadiy Korban and Vadim Rabinovich, have prompted counter-rumors that this is nothing more than a clever sleight of hand designed to free these figures from\u00a0already weak anti-oligarch laws<\/a>\u00a0passed in 2022.<\/p>\n Ihor Kolomoisky \u2013 Supreme Parasite<\/strong><\/p>\n Kolomoisky, who also holds Israeli and Cypriot citizenship, is probably one of the worst thieves to ever walk the earth, and there has been no greater parasite feeding on Ukrainians. Once named by the Center for Corruption and Organized Crime Research (OCCRP) as being in the top four most corrupt individuals on the planet, Kolomoisky used his ownership of PrivatBank to defraud customers of around $5.5 billion in deposits, which amounted to 40% of all private deposits in Ukraine. Although now banned from entering the United States, where he has numerous assets, Kolomoisky has never been arrested in Ukraine and Zelensky shows no indications of ever bringing him to justice. Regarded as criminal by almost anyone with a brain, Kolomoisky is a hero of the international Jewish community. In 2008 Kolomsoisky was elected President of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine, and in 2010 he was elected president of the European Jewish Council.<\/p>\n In keeping with centuries of the same historical pattern, large-scale Jewish financial crime perpetrated by small numbers of key actors continues to benefit the general Jewish population. Jews internationally have benefited for years from Kolomoisky\u2019s plundering of the Ukrainian people. In March 2021 it\u00a0emerged<\/a>\u00a0that two Miami-based Jews, Mordechai Korf, 48, and Uri Laber, 49,\u00a0were acting as Kolomoisky\u2019s middlemen in the United States. As well as laundering his money in various assets, the pair donated more than $11 million to nearly 70 yeshivas and religious charities (Jewish Educational Media, Colel Chabad, among others) in Brooklyn and across the state of New York. Kolomoisky is also a listed donor for Yad Vashem. Both Korf and Laber also held shares in PrivatBank, and are reported by\u00a0The Forward<\/em>\u00a0as having\u00a0pumped<\/a>\u00a0\u201cabout $25 million into Jewish nonprofits between 2006 and 2018.\u201d Kolomoisky is of course the patron of \u201cMenorah,\u201d the\u00a0largest Jewish center<\/a>\u00a0in the world. Entirely appropriate given its existence is owed to international robber barons, the center is home to travel agencies and banks. The official website says that the building is something \u201cevery Dnipro resident can be proud\u00a0of,\u201d to which I can only reply that I\u2019d hope so given that, willingly or not, some of the savings and deposits of every Dnipro resident went into its construction.<\/p>\n Menorah \u2013 Largest Jewish Community Center in the World<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n One of the best examples of how Kolomoisky conducts business is his ownership of Dnipro Airport. In 2009 Kolomoisky bought 99.45% of shares in the airport through his company Galtera. Under the terms of the investment agreement, Galtera was to invest UAH 882.1 million in the development of the airport, and had to hand over the runway, radio beacon system, and land plots to the state. By 2015, Galtera had invested only UAH 142,145, and failed to turn over any real estate to the government. A sequence of litigations began, but with Ukraine\u2019s justice system fully in thrall to the oligarchy, no resolution was ever reached. Kolomoisky, meanwhile, made flying from the airport so expensive (one commentator explained that even short flights carried fees that would elsewhere take one to space) that the citizens of Dnipro overwhelmingly opted to drive three hours to Kharkiv rather than pay the airport\u2019s extortionate and inflated prices. On the bright side, they have an absolutely gargantuan Jewish center they can be proud of.<\/p>\n Jewish Invisibility in Ukraine<\/strong><\/p>\n The lack of outcry over Ukrainian money going into Jewish pockets might seem surprising to Western observers but is perfectly explainable. There have certainly been no shortage of Jews acting parasitically in Ukraine. In addition to Kolomoisky and others named above,\u00a0Hennadiy Kernes<\/a>,\u00a0Pavel Fuks<\/a>,\u00a0Andriy Yermak<\/a>\u00a0(now Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine),\u00a0Hennadiy Korban<\/a>,\u00a0Vadim Rabinovich<\/a>,\u00a0Alexander Feldman<\/a>, and\u00a0Victor Pinchuk<\/a>\u00a0have engaged in fraud, corruption, and the amassing of vast amounts of wealth and power at the expense of the Ukrainian people. In Ukraine, however, pronounced examples of corruption and oligarchy are also found among other ethnic minority groups like Muslim Tatars (e.g. Rinat Akhmetov) and among ethnic Ukrainians themselves. The country is so corrupt that even clear examples of ethnic cohesion, such as the overlapping Jewish circles of Zelensky and Kolomoisky, fade into a broader picture of socio-political decay.<\/p>\n Discussion of the particularities of Jewish corruption in Ukraine became more difficult in September 2021 when Zelensky signed a new law defining the concept of anti-Semitism and establishing punishment for transgressions including imprisonment up to five years. The new laws mean that outbursts such as that by\u00a0Vasily Vovk<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Nadiya Savchenko<\/a>\u00a0will become a thing of the past. Vovk, a retired general who held a senior reserve rank with the Security Service of Ukraine wrote in a 2017 Facebook post that Jews \u201caren\u2019t Ukrainians and I will destroy you along with Rabinovich. I\u2019m telling you one more time \u2014 go to hell, zhidi [kikes], the Ukrainian people have had it to here with you. Ukraine must be governed by Ukrainians.\u201d In the same year, Savchenko, a fighter jet pilot who was elected to parliament in 2014 while she was still being held as a prisoner of Russia, said during an interview \u201cI have nothing against Jews. I do not like \u2018kikes.\u2019\u201d She later said Jews possess \u201c80 percent of the power in Ukraine when they only account for 2 percent of the population.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nSerhiy Ratushniak,\u00a0Former Mayor of Uzhhorod<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theoccidentalobserver.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/pictu1-1.jpg\")
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