The head of the Open Dialogue Foundation holds a Belgian residence card. Yesterday – under Article 25 of the Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement, her name was deleted from Schengen Information System (SIS) which means that she can move around the zone unhindered. Secret evidence from the Polish special services that she is a threat to national security was also recently challenged by the Regional Administrative Court which Onet wrote about. We wrote in DGP as early as in September last year, relying on informers from the ABW (Internal Security Agency) circles that the data had been of poor quality. Now the Court has confirmed this. We read the April judgment of the Regional Administrative Court (WSA) and the statement of grounds therefor. DGP also has a full version of the Moldovan Parliament’s report, which was supposed to disgrace ODF and Bartosz Kramek’s company Silk Road Biuro Analiz i Informacji. It’s an amalgamate of truth, half-truths and a manifest falsehood. We familiarised ourselves with accounts of people involved in the work of the Investigation Committee which produced this document. In a conversation with us, they revealed the backstage of its formation and the pressure exerted on them by the oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc – removed from power two weeks ago. It was against him that the ODF spoke against in Moldova.
Both what is happening in Poland and in Belgium, as well as messages coming from Moldova, allow an assumption that the Polish State in the clash with the ODF is close to failure. Evidence is missing of Kozlovska’s links with the Russian services. Besides, Maia Sandu, working closely with the ODF, and now supported by the US and the European Union and approved by Russia has become head of the government in Moldova, which is considered a tectonic change in the definition of the eastern policy by Brussels and Washington. Meanwhile, it was the links with her and her circles that were supposed to be the primary evidence of the Foundation’s being engaged in obscure financial schemes and money laundering under the so-called Moldovan laundromat. However, neither the Moldovan report nor the inspection by the Łódź Customs and Treasury Office, which examined the Foundation’s finance, demonstrated that (we have a document that contains the results of this inspection. The inspection is still continuing with respect to the business of Ludmyla Kozlovska’s husband, Silk Road Biuro Analiz i Informacji, is still going on).
Plahotniuc’s revenge
The authors of the 34-page report, made in the Rumanian language, of the Investigation Committee of the Moldovan Parliament are six MPs. Half of them come from the Democratic Party controlled by Plahotniuc. As one of the DGP interlocutors argues, the informal curator of the work on the document was his mate and vice-head of the Democrats Andrian Candu. – Even though he was not a member of the Investigation Committee, he was the one to edit its final version, and this is evidenced by the information contained in the so-called metadata word file in which the report had been saved before it was converted to PDF – DGP’s informer says – It is clear from it that the document was edited or even entirely written by Candu and his people – he adds. Plahotniuc, who began his career in the pimp business and specialised over time in gathering erotic films discrediting his political and business opponents, ruled the country indivisibly until mid-June this year. A week ago – immediately after a conversation with the US Ambassador – he evacuated himself by car from Chisinau, through the separatist Transnistria, to the Ukrainian Odessa, and from there by plane to Istanbul. For several years, he enjoyed the support of the West because he had caused the signing of an association agreement with the European Union and in the declarations at least he guaranteed geopolitical orientation towards the West and the deterring of Russia’s influence along eastern border of the EU-NATO – Moldova. He lost that support when it turned out that the agreement was only an alibi which allowed him to rob, without moderation, the state in which a rebellion was still smoldering, following the model of Viktor Yankovych. After Kozlovska was entered into the SIS by Poland last summer, Plahotniuc – referring directly to the statement that came from the Ministercoordinating the Special Services Mariusz Kamiński – ordered the appointment of an investigation committee to demonstrate the diversionary activities of ODF. The target of the hunting was not only Kozlovska, but above all the pro-Western opposition seeking to seize the power. – An attempt was to delegalise groups that could threaten him, Natalia Morari, a Moldovan journalist and activist collaborating with Maia Sandu and Kozlovska, was saying in a conversation with DGP. In her view, the objective of Plahotniuc was total monopolisation of the state. The building of a system of power relying on family and friends known as cumetrie. In Romanian, this term has double meaning. It means loyal, quasi-family links and arrangements but also plain cronyism. The head of the Moldovan Investigation Committee, which began its work on 5 October 2018 and was inspired by Poland’s measures towards ODF, was a trusted politician of the Democratic Party and a trusted friend of Plahotniuc himself, the lawyer Igor Vremea. His direct curator was the aforementioned Candu. The main sources of knowledge of the Committee were three local special services which the oligarch controlled – Information and Security Service (SIS – equivalent of the Polish ABW), the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Anti-money Laundering and Prevention service (SPCSB – equivalent of the Polish tax intelligence). We read in the document that the persons who testified in the matter of ODF and the opposition included Vasile Botnari, representing the SIS, head of the SPCSB – Vasile Şarco and secretary of state at the Ministry of Internal Affairs – Dorin Purice. The report concludes that the foundation was financed by the Russian Ministry of Defence, and the funds were supposedly to flow through tax havens. No evidence is presented though. The main donor of the foundation was supposedly to be Petro Kozłowski, Ludmyla’s brother (which is no secret, which the ODF did not conceal and which appeared, inter alia, in the so-called Rey Report, the Polish publication describing the foundation’s links) and his business partners Arkadiy Agarkov of the Stali company operating in Saint Petersburg and Andrey Brovchenko from the same city. You can also read that Ludmyla’s sister, Olena Miroshnikov, is a co-owner of a network of companies in Sevastopol (this information was also contained in the Rey document). ODF was supposedly provided with money from these people, and Silk Road supposedly cooperated with a number of companies related to Petro Kozlovsky and his businesses (DGP has a full list of these entities, and about some of them which did not appear in the so-called Rey Report – the Moldovan side could find out from the Polish side by which it might have infringed treasury secrecy in the ongoing proceedings against Silk Road).
All of the aforementioned persons have long been present in reports of Polish media in the context of the Kozlovsky’s links with the Crimean company Mayak producing lighting for the Russian Navy.
– We never concealed the relations with Lyudmyla’s brother and the fact that he was the chief donor. The information about Mayak is no secret either. However, it is hard to understand the thesis of his relationship with Russia, since he permanently lives in Florida, he left Crimea at the beginning of 2014, supported the pro-Ukrainian Foundation, and has nothing to do with Mayak today, Bartosz Kramek, head of Silk Road Biuro Informacji and the husband of Ludmyla Kozlovska tells DGP. As is apparent from our information, some of Kozlovska’s family remained in the Crimea. – Some supported the peninsula’s annexation. As it is said, they were vatniks (from term originating from the Russian and Ukrainian languages vata (cotton wool) to describe those who uncritically endorse the idea of the Russian world – editor’s note). However, this tells nothing about the activity of Ludmyla in Poland – our informer argues. Cases are common in Ukraine where a family is divided around the question of how they see what happened during and after the Majdan in 2014. This includes, for example, the former miner, and the famous Ukrainian publicist and writer today, Maxim Butchenko, who comes from the Luhansk and now lives in Kyiv. Some of his family supported the separatists of the Luhansk People’s Republic. He himself participated in the revolution of dignity against Viktor Yanukovych. He defines members of his family define as an opolchenye (uprising and insurgents), using a term which is disliked in the Ukrainian capital, because it does not have a pejorative context.