Thread by @MsMariaT

"Manafort’s funder was Serhiy Lovochkin, today a member of the Ukrainian parliament and a leader of its largest opposition party. From 2010 to 2013, he was CoS to...Yanukovych, who would...flee to Russia after being overthrown in a popular revolution."

occrp.org/en/investigati…

Serhiy Lovochkin aka Lyovochkin:

https://twitter.com/dcpoll/status/1029923069731725314

"Part of Manafort’s strategy was to recruit a **TURKISH** politician and a trio of former European national leaders to promote the view that the association agreement should go forward despite Tymoshenko’s imprisonment.

Oh?

OMG.

"These lobbyists included Mevlut Cavusoglu, a former president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), who was first elected to Turkey’s parliament in 2002 and *now serves as the country’s foreign minister.*

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1044709074569285632

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/947637328406704128

So not only did Manafort utilize "the Hapsburg Group" to disseminate disinfo, he used the Turkish Foreign Minister....

"Manafort also recruited the “Hapsburg Group,” a shadowy informal outfit that consists of former Polish Pres Aleksander Kwasniewski, former Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, and former Italian PM Romano Prodi, who previously served as European Commission President."

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1040666254128766977

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1040669657500246016

To coord the campaign, Manafort worked w/Alan Friedman, an American ex-journalist who is a well-known political commentator and PR consultant in Italy....

All 3 members of the Hapsburg Group, as well as CAVUSOGLU and Friedman, were on Lovochkin’s payroll, the emails show." 🔥🔥

Did anyone know that Turkish FM (Cavusoglu) was *allegedly* being paid by Manafort's Ukrainian oppo party benefactor, Lyovochkin?

This is the first I am reading of this.

@KlasfeldReports 👆👆👆

@KlasfeldReports Rudy's firm Greenberg Traurig, was doing the visas for them by the way, just sayin'

https://twitter.com/mopeng/status/957016517111046144

@KlasfeldReports "Miami’s Latest Newcomers: Wealthy Turkish Home Buyers
Amid global turmoil, Turkish buyers have set their sights on Miami’s condo devs, purchasing lux properties for use as 2nd or 3d homes."

Second and third homes you say? Wow. Sounds like $$$ laundering

wsj.com/articles/miami…

Moving on...

"All three members of the Hapsburg Group, as well as Cavusoglu and Friedman, were on Lovochkin’s payroll, the emails show. By mid-2013, however, Lovochkin was in arrears, and Gusenbauer grew concerned."

occrp.org/en/investigati…

"Cavusoglu needed a “separate” transfer of 230,000 euros, Friedman told Manafort, who had his assistant, Konstantin Kilimnik, send the email chain to Lovochkin on the day he received it."

WOW. @KlasfeldReports

@KlasfeldReports "[Manafort] urgently requests SL [Serhiy Lovochkin] be told the Hapsburg comrades are getting out of control because of non-pymt of their svc and asks to clarify what he should do,” Kilimnik wrote to Lovochkin’s assistant, who fwd'd the email chain to Lovochkin’s priv address."

@KlasfeldReports Cavusoglu was also secretly lobbying while serving as a member of a PACE mission to observe Ukraine’s 2012 parliamentary elections.

Cavusoglu publicly advocated for the association agrmt, while urging politicians not to criticize Ukraine’s government over the Tymoshenko case...

@KlasfeldReports ... He also gave positive reviews of the elections to media, contrary to assessments by international observation groups — including his own — that noted serious irregularities."

WHOA. This is crazy!

"Andreas Gross, who led the PACE observation mission, was critical of the electoral process and vocal about Tymoshenko’s imprisonment, arguing that she had been jailed on political grounds without sufficient evidence of corruption....

"...Cavusoglu publicly condemned those comments, telling the news agency Interfax Ukraine that Gross was “neither fair nor objective.”

"Gross told OCCRP that Cavusoglu “often had controversial assessments” of elections, but he was unaware that Cavusoglu had been “engaged by the [Ukrainian] president’s lobby.”....

"...When you are indirectly or directly engaged and paid by the government or his consultants, you can never sign up for an observation mission in this same country,” Gross said. “The conflict of interest of Mevlut [Cavusoglu] is obvious.”

"Although their activities may have been as unethical as they were lucrative, Cavusoglu and Kwasniewski do not appear to have broken any laws by lobbying while performing duties assigned to them by PACE and the European Parliament."

"In the end, the lobbying campaign orchestrated by Lovochkin and Manafort helped Yanukovych score a major political win. The EU offered Ukraine an association agrmt even as its opposition leader was still detained.

But then, in a shocking about-face, Yanukovych refused to sign."

The reversal came after intense Russian pressure to halt the agreement, including the threat of trade disruption and political repercussions.

Yanukovych’s choice of Russia over the EU sparked mass protests, which grew into a popular uprising that overturned his government..."

"Accused of corruption and rights abuses, Yanukovych fled to Russia in 2014, and parliament freed Tymoshenko from prison.

Ukraine signed an economic association agreement with the EU on June 27, 2014."

<eot>

Link back:

Exposed: The Ukrainian Politician [Serhiy Lovochkin / Lyovochkin] Who Funded Paul Manafort’s Secret EU Lobbying Campaign

twitter.com/intent/tweet?s…: The Ukrainian Politician Who Funded Paul Manafort’s Secret EU Lobbying Campaign+occrp.org/en/investigati…