He’s the Ukrainian billionaire who shelled out big bucks to two Trump-connected lawyers to dig up dirt on the Bidens. So who is Dmytro Firtash? What is his relationship with the central players in the Trump-Ukraine story? And how did an obscure plan to mine titanium products in India drag a Ukrainian oligarch into the spotlight of America’s biggest political story?
Welcome to Rabbit Hole.
Extradition: Ever since prosecutors indicted him on corruption charges in 2013, Firtash has been trying to avoid extradition to the U.S.. He was arrested in Vienna, Austria, in 2014 on charges that he directed bribes to green-light a mining operation in India and has since mounted a years-long legal campaign to avoid being sent to the U.S. to face trial.
ADVERTISEMENT
That very same legal campaign apparently brought him front and center into the impeachment story when, according to Bloomberg, he sought to win the help of President Trump’s personal attorney by waging his own campaign to dig up kompromat on Joe Biden. To do so, Firtash reportedly hired Victoria Toensing and Joe DiGenova, two pro-Trump attorneys and Fox News pundits who have helped Rudy Giuliani hype up conspiracy theories about the former vice president and his son’s dealings in Ukraine. Toensing and DiGenova, according to the Washington Post, began working for Firtash in July and raised his case in a face-to-face meeting with Attorney General William Barr. Barr was reportedly unmoved by the pitch and said he wouldn’t act on the case.
Politico reported on Thursday that Toensing and DiGenova, close allies of Giuliani, also represent John Solomon, The Hill columnist whose stories about Biden and the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor first brought the Biden conspiracy theory to national attention.
The association has raised questions about whether Firtash, directly or indirectly, was involved in assisting Solomon’s stories about the Bidens. Firtash associates had collected a statement from the Ukrainian prosecutor at the center of the conspiracy claims against Biden, Viktor Shokin, alleging that he was forced out as part of a Biden-led corruption cover-up. That same statement was later waved around on cable news by Giuliani after also getting extensive coverage by Solomon.
Toensing and DiGenova had also hired Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-American businessman and Giuliani client currently charged with making illegal campaign contributions, to ostensibly serve as an interpreter in their dealings with Firtash. Many have expressed skepticism about that claim, however, and prosecutors in Chicago who had originally filed the corruption charges against Firtash reportedly suspect he may have an even closer relationship to Giuliani’s clients.
Giuliani’s proximity to Firtash, via his clients, is ironic given his past comments about the Ukrainian oligarch. When his predecessor, Michael Cohen, broke with Trump and hired prominent Democratic lawyer Lanny Davis, Giuliani blasted Davis for having represented Firtash. “He is considered to be one of the close associates of [Semion] Mogilevich, who is the head of Russian organized crime, who is Putin's best friend,” he told The Hill back in March.
The rise of Firtash: Firtash has historically been aligned with Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions, which mostly collapsed when the Maidan revolution ousted the party leader, former President Viktor Yanukovych, and installed a pro-Western government.
Firtash’s primary nemesis in Ukrainian politics was former Ukrainian President Yulia Tymoshenko. Tymoshenko ran afoul of Moscow during a 2008 dispute over the price of Russian gas. The feud saw Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom cut off the supply of gas to Ukraine as Vladimir Putin haggled with Tymoshenko over gas prices.
The dispute led Tymoshenko to strike a deal with Russia, which earned her a prison stint under the government of her successor, the Kremlin-friendly Yanukovych. The deal also hurt the business interests of Firtash, whose company RosUkrEnergo had acted as a middleman for Russian gas deliveries between Gazprom and Ukraine. Tymoshenko’s 2009 deal cut out Firtash’s company as the middleman and replaced it with the Ukrainain state energy company, Naftogaz, as the sole Russian gas supplier.
Firtash subsequently threw his weight behind Tymoshenko’s rival, becoming what U.S. diplomats called a “major financial backer” of Yanukovych.
While the 2009 deal hurt Firtash’s gas business, he wasn’t entirely worse off after the deal. His favored candidate, Yanukovych, beat Tymoshenko in the 2010 Ukrainian presidential elections and Tymoshenko was soon jailed for her role in the 2009 gas deal in a trial widely derided by Western countries as politically motivated.
With Yanukovych in charge, Naftogaz lost its monopoly on buying gas from Russia and Firtash began selling to the Ukrainian government again through a different company, Ostchem. A Reuters investigation found that Russia lost about two billion dollars in revenue by selling gas at below market prices to Firtash’s company—a sign of Firtash’s close relationship with Moscow.
Russia’s Gazprombank also extended Firtash up to $11 billion in lines of credit as he expanded into the fertilizer and mining industries, according to Reuters.
Charges: Firtash’s expansion into different industries led to his greatest challenge yet: criminal charges from federal prosecutors in the U.S.. Prosecutors indicted Firtash in 2013 for what they said was a conspiracy to bribe Indian government officials for mining licenses that could have yielded one of Firtash’s companies $500 million in annual revenue. Firtash, the government claims, spent $18.5 million bribing officials from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh in such a way as to “make it falsely appear that money transferred for the purpose of paying these bribes was transferred for legitimate commercial purposes.” Firtash has denied the charges.
The bribery case even drew in the elite consulting firm McKinsey & Company. According to reporting from the New York Times, Boeing asked McKinsey to look into the Firtash-backed consortium’s proposed titanium mining plan in India, and the firm reportedly told Boeing that the group planned to “respect traditional bureaucratic process including use of bribes.”
Those are not the only allegations that Firtash has used political influence to further his business interests. In 2013, two Ukrainian businessmen, Ilya and Vadim Segal, sued Firtash in U.S. courts and alleged that he had used political allies in Ukraine to deprive the two of their soybean business. The Segals claimed that Firtash, through friendly courts in Kyiv and a relationship with Valeriy Khoroshkovskyi, the head of Ukrainian intelligence at the time, to maneuver the two out of a $50 million soybean plant. The Segals withdrew their suit in 2014 after a federal judge raised questions about jurisdiction in the case.
Alleged mob ties: Firtash has been dogged by allegations of an association with Russian organized crime, specifically Semion Mogilevich. Mogilevich was indicted by federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania in 2003 on racketeering charges and was once one of the FBI’s top ten most wanted fugitives. He was briefly detained by Russian authorities on tax evasion charges but was released and is currently living freely in Russia.
In a 2008 conversation with the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor—now a star witness in House Democrats’ impeachment hearings—Firtash reportedly “acknowledged ties to Russian organized crime figure Seymon Mogilevich, stating he needed Mogilevich’s approval to get into business in the first place” but claimed that he hadn’t committed any crimes himself in the course of running his business, according to a leaked diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks.
Firtash has repeatedly and strenuously denied any connection to organized crime, or Mogilevich. Through his former attorneys, he claimed he “never had any business dealings” with Mogilevich. In a statement issued after the WikiLeaks cables were published, Firtash denied the account of his conversation with Taylor and said that he “never stated, to anyone, at any time, that he needed or received permission from Mr. Mogilevich to establish any of his businesses.”
