Hollywood Scripting

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Re: Hollywood Scripting

Postby Elvis » Wed May 18, 2022 5:06 pm

The pivot may be Igor Kolomoyskyi (or Kolomoisky, etc.).

Zelensky’s biggest critics will point out that one of his top backers, billionaire Igor Kolomoisky, under U.S. sanctions, has enjoyed support from Parliament to avoid higher taxes on his mining operations.

The State Department has alleged that Kolomoisky, long believed to be a key supporter to Zelensky’s campaign in 2019, laundered money from a Ukrainian bank into dollar accounts here and elsewhere, The Washington Post reported in March.

Zelensky’s relationship with Kolomoisky media company 1+1 was the subject of the Panama Papers investigations of the offshore accounts of the rich and powerful.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/ ... 24dd967d68



The US State Department announced the public designation of Kolomoisky due to his involvement in “significant corruption” in his official capacity as governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk Oblast from 2014 to 2015. A statement accompanying the news claimed the designation “reaffirms the US commitment to supporting political, economic, and justice sector reforms that are key to Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic path. The United States continues to stand with all Ukrainians whose work drives reforms forward. The Department will continue to use authorities like this to promote accountability for corrupt actors in this region and globally.”

While the State Department decision does not involve any financial sanctions, it does mean Kolomoisky and his immediate family members are now unable to enter the United States.

The Office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared to welcome the news, releasing a statement declaring “Ukraine must overcome a system dominated by oligarchs” and acknowledging that “Ukraine is grateful to each partner for its support along the way.”

Many observers interpreted the sanctions measures as a signal from the US that it now expects Zelenskyy to take his own steps against Kolomoisky. Zelenskyy won election in 2019 as an anti-establishment candidate promising to end decades of oligarch dominance, but he has so far struggled to deliver on his campaign promises of a new era. Instead, he has faced lingering accusations of being too close to Kolomoisky, whose media empire helped establish Zelenskyy as one of Ukraine’s most popular celebrities. Meanwhile, since 2019, Kolomoisky has become increasingly closely associated with efforts to derail crucial anti-corruption reforms and undermine Ukraine’s ties with the country’s Western partners.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/u ... olomoisky/



As of 2019, Kolomoyskyi owned 70% of the 1+1 Media Group whose TV channel 1+1 aired "Servant of the People", the comedy series in which Volodymyr Zelenskyy played the role of president of Ukraine. On 31 March 2019 Zelenskyy won the most votes in the first round of Ukraine's real presidential elections,[98] resulting in Yulia Tymoshenko being eliminated from the next round.[99]

Zelenskyy was viewed by some as Kolomoyskyi's candidate. Zelenskyy appointed Kolomoyskyi's personal lawyer as a key campaign advisor, travelled to Geneva and Tel Aviv to confer with the then-exiled Kolomoyskyi on multiple occasions, and benefited from the endorsement of Kolomoyskyi's media empire. Once in office, Zelenskyy appeared to remove officials deemed a threat to Kolomoyskyi's interests, among them the Prosecutor General, Ruslan Ryaboshapka and the Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), Yakiv Smolii, and Zelenskyy's first prime minister, Oleksiy Honcharuk, who tried to loosen Kolomoyskyi's control of a state-owned electricity company.[100][101]

Following his backlisting by the United States in April 2021, Kolomoyskyi appears to have lost influence with Zelenskyy.[102][103] Kolomoyskyi had began to call for a new partnership between Ukraine and Russia; proposing that when it happens, "NATO will be soiling its pants and buying Pampers."[103] The President, meanwhile, was striking "a more assertive tone", pushing for membership of the European Union and the NATO alliance".[104] In response to the announced of US sanctions against Kolomoyskyi, the Office of Ukrainian President released a statement declaring “Ukraine must overcome a system dominated by oligarchs” and acknowledging that “Ukraine is grateful to each partner for its support along the way”.[105]

A week before the invasion, Kolomoysky reported that he no longer communicated with Zelenskyy[106] (in November 2021, Zelenskyy assured reporters that it had been two years since they had had talks). Kolomoyskyi explained that Zelenskyy "has chosen his path, he is the president of the country, he has his own vision, program, plans" and as he, as a businessman, no longer wants anything from the state, they have nothing to talk about.[106]

Kolomoyskyi had the reputation for being able to dictate the votes of deputies within Zelenskyy's parliamentary faction by phone, but appeared suddenly to have "disappeared", staying deliberately away from politics--no longer the oligarch. Despite this, Zelenskyy's Justice Minister Denis Malyuska suggested that Kolomoyskyi's was an "obvious" name to be entered on the register of a new anti-oligarchic law that was to come into effect in May 2022.[102] Investigative journalists, nonetheless believed that channels of communication between Kolomoyskyi and the president remained open.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihor_Kolomoyskyi



It would make a good Hollywood script.





Joe Hillshoist » Sat Mar 19, 2022 3:00 am wrote:Volodymyr Zelensky was groomed by covert CIA operatives in Ukraine since his student life while he was studying law at the Kryvyi Rih National University.

Instead of pursuing a legal career, he chose acting as a profession at the behest of his influential patrons to gain nationwide publicity, particularly through comedy television series “Servant of the People” in which Zelensky “prophetically played” the role of the Ukrainian president.

In fact, his production company Kvartal 95, which produces films, cartoons and television shows, was generously funded by deep pockets of Western security agencies. Comically exposing corruption and sleazy dealings of Ukraine’s politician and oligarch, the series “Servant of the People” aired from 2015 to 2019 and struck a chord with Ukrainian masses.

Western security agencies not only lavishly funded his obscure media organization but also introduced him to a clandestine cabal of illustrious Hollywood producers and directors adept in psychological warfare and public relationing. The media success of “Servant of the People” is attributed as much to the efforts of the employees of Kvartal 95 as to the skill of international media organizations specializing in global opinion-making.


Any actual evidence for this?

Any names, dates, places .... anything other than the author's assertion its true?
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Re: Hollywood Scripting

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Wed May 18, 2022 11:41 pm

Have you read this?

The Allegedly Murderous Oligarch, the Duped CIA Chief, and the Trumpkin

Who was behind a mysterious fake hearing in the basement of the U.S. Capitol?

Betsy Swan, Former Political Reporter

On Sept. 25, 2017, a windowless room in the basement of the Capitol Building became the site of one of Washington’s more mysterious recent events.

On hand: an investor who was once unsuccessfully sued for allegedly helping murder his own boss, a former congressman from the Florida panhandle, and a former Trump campaign staffer. One of two Ukrainian media outlets to cover the event is owned by an old associate of Paul Manafort’s—a man who federal prosecutors allege to be an “upper-echelon associate of Russian organized crime."

Oh, and the former director of the CIA was involved.

The former CIA director told The Daily Beast he wouldn’t have gotten involved if he had known what was going on. One of the American lobbyists said the event was used for propaganda. The guy who got sued over his boss’s death? He now takes credit for the whole shebang.

THE BANK TAKEOVER

This story starts in Kyiv, Ukraine, on June 19, 2014. That’s when a woman named Valeriya Gontareva became the chair of the country’s powerful central bank. Ukrainian politics is rife with corruption, especially by American standards, and is dominated by the country’s powerful oligarchs. As chair of the national bank, Gontareva made a host of changes to the country’s financial system—and some powerful enemies.

One of the biggest changes she oversaw was a government takeover of the country’s biggest commercial bank, Privatbank. The oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky (who The Wall Street Journal once described as “feisty”) co-founded it. When Gontareva presided over the bank’s nationalization, its accounts were missing more than $5 billion, according to the Financial Times, in large part because the bank lent so much money to people with connections to Kolomoisky.

“International financial institutions applauded the state takeover,” wrote FT. “It has been widely seen as the culmination of Ukraine’s efforts since 2014 to clean up a dysfunctional banking sector dominated by oligarch-owned banks.”

The bank’s founders weren’t pleased.

After the bank takeover, Gontareva received numerous threats. One protester put a coffin outside her door, according to Reuters. On April 10, 2017, she announced at a press conference that she was resigning from her post. She touted her accomplishments at the event, but cautioned that in her absence the country’s financial sector could fake greater troubles.

“I believe that resistance to changes and reforms will grow stronger now,” she said.

THE FAKE HEARING

Five months later, in Washington D.C., something odd happened: American lobbyists hosted an event, ostensibly on anti-corruption issues, in the basement of the Capitol Building. The event vilified Gontareva. Organizers distributed literature featuring a grim close-up of her face, calling her a threat to Ukraine’s economic security, and asking if she was “CINDERELLA OR WICKED STEPMOTHER?”

Serhiy Taruta, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, is named as the author of the report. In 2008, Forbes estimated his net worth at $2.7 billion. According to a diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, American government officials believed Taruta played a role in the sale of a majority stake in the sale of one of Ukraine’s largest steel groups—valued at $2 billion—to a powerful Russian businessman. Taruta was a close ally of politician Yulia Tymoshenko at the time, and the cable said she and Taruta wanted to keep the deal “hidden from public view” to avoid criticism. Had the nature of the deal been made public, the cable said, Tymoshenko could have faced “increased attacks from political rivals for ‘selling out’ Ukrainian assets to Russian interests, perhaps to finance her presidential campaign.”

The event’s organizers are adamant that they did not plan for it to look like a fake congressional hearing. But Ukrainian reporters who attended the event covered it that way. Former Rep. Connie Mack, one of the American lobbyists who organized the event, sported the pin that members of Congress wear. James Woolsey, former CIA director, attended and spoke briefly to the group.

Woolsey’s spokesperson, Jonathan Franks, later said he was duped.

“Ambassador Woolsey was deliberately misled about the nature of this event when he agreed to attend,” Franks told The Daily Beast. “He expected to be a member of the audience for a serious discussion of issues facing the Ukraine, an area he’s been interested in for decades. He didn’t agree to be identified a ‘special guest’ nor did he agree to speak. Perhaps he was guilty of being old fashioned, but it never occurred to him the organizers would lure him to an event in the Capitol in order to make him an involuntary participant in a sham.”

Rep. Ron Estes, a freshman from Kansas, booked the room for Mack and Co. His office later told The Daily Beast this won’t happen again.

Mack and Matt Keelen, a lobbyist whose firm’s website boasts of his “well fostered relationships” in the Trump administration, both disclosed in federal registration forms that they put on the event for a shell company based in the British Virgin Islands called Interconnection Commerce SA.

“I never portrayed this as a hearing,” Mack told The Daily Beast. “We didn’t do anything to make it look like a hearing. It was in a very stale room in the basement, no markings of a congressional hearing at all.”

At the event, Mack used the term “we” when referring to Congress, and was emphatic that members should investigate Gontareva.

“One thing is clear: that we, the Congress of the United States—and there are taxpayer dollars at risk, and there are allegations, suggestions, and evidence—should investigate,” he said, according to an audio recording of the event.

Mack blamed BGR Group, a lobbying firm that works for Ukraine’s current president, Petro Poroshenko, for pushing the narrative that he and Keelen put on a fake hearing.

Two Ukrainian news outlets covered the event. One of those outlets, ChannelOne, described it as a hearing of the nonexistent “U.S. Congressional Committee on Financial Issues.”

“That was pure propaganda on their part,” Mack said. “Whoever those news outlets are, it really is fake news. They had to go a long way to try to make it look like a hearing.”

The other Ukrainian news outlet that covered the event was UkraNews, which—according to the Objective Project, which monitors media ownership in Ukraine—belongs to Dmitry Firtash.

That name should ring a bell, if you’ve been following the far-flung drama into foreign influence on the 2016 election. Federal prosecutors in Chicago are seeking Firtash’s extradition to the United States to put him on trial for racketeering. Manafort, former Manafort deputy Rick Gates, and Firtash worked on a deal in 2008 to buy New York’s Drake Hotel—for a cool $850 million—but the deal fell through.

Lanny Davis—a former special counsel in Bill Clinton’s White House who today represents Firtash—said his client had nothing to do with the hearing.

“Mr. Firtash had and has no knowledge of, no position on, and no involvement whatsoever in the congressional briefing that occurred and takes no position and has no interest in the issues discussed,” Davis said.

THE MYSTERY MAN

So who dreamed up this fake hearing? And who paid for it? For months, the backer of this so-called sham was a mystery. But when The Daily Beast started asking who paid for the event, a little-known figure came forward to take full responsibility: Anatoly Motkin, a one-time aide to a Georgian oligarch accused of leading a coup attempt.

A spokesperson for Motkin, formerly an associate to the now-deceased Badri Patarkatsishvili, told The Daily Beast that he paid for the entire event. Alison Patch, a spokesperson for Motkin, said Motkin paid for the event himself in his personal capacity.

Motkin was an aide to Patarkatsishvili when he reportedly tried to foment a coup in Georgia. After Patarkatsishvili died, Motkin found himself embroiled in a legal battle with Patarkatsishvili’s cousin. The cousin alleged in documents filed as part of a civil suit in New York state court that Motkin was part of a plot to kill Patarkatsishvili (PDF).

A spokesperson for Motkin said he decided to fund the event because Taruta, the Ukrainian billionaire, brought the allegations about Gontareva to his attention.

“Although this report was entirely brought by Mr. Taruta’s initiative, for many years Mr. Motkin has worked on promoting democratic values amongst communities close to the former Soviet Union,” said Patch. “Knowing of his interest in supporting anti-corruption efforts, Mr. Taruta shared the information about his report. Mr. Motkin found the evidence presented compelling and decided that if he could help get the issues in front of people who may make a difference, he would.”

Anders Aslund of the Atlantic Council, an expert on oligarchs’ politicking, didn’t quite believe it. Aslund said he believes the driving force behind the event was Ihor Kolomoisky—the Ukrainian oligarch whose cronies lost all that money when Privatbank was nationalized. Kolomisky would have millions of reasons to detest Gontareva, the object of the fake hearing’s ire, according to Aslund.

“This was entirely Kolomoisky,” he said. “Kolomoisky is crooked and clever. He is a person who makes business by doing bankruptcy rather than making profits.”

Kolomoisky has faced allegations of involvement in contract killings, which he denies. An attorney for Kolomoisky did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The short version of all of this: Eastern European politics are circuitous, colorful, and—weird. And last September, a little of that weirdness seeped across the pond and into the basement of the Capitol.


This from before Zelenskyy was elected.
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Re: Hollywood Scripting

Postby Elvis » Thu May 19, 2022 1:07 am

Joe Hillshoist wrote:Have you read this?

The Allegedly Murderous Oligarch, the Duped CIA Chief, and the Trumpkin


I had not read that, that I recall, thanks.

I came back to add this subplot— from 2014, the same Kolomoysky who backed Zelensky was a chief funder of various far-right paramilitaries.

There are over 30 pro-nationalist, volunteer battalions similar to Aidar, such as Ukraina, DND Metinvest and Kiev 1, all funded by private investors.

The Aidar battalion is publicly backed by Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who also allegedly funds the Azov, Donbas, Dnepr 1, Dnepr 2 volunteer battalions, operating under orders from Kiev. Last spring Kolomoyskyi offered a bounty of $10,000 of his own money for each captured Russian "saboteur".

https://www.newsweek.com/evidence-war-c ... ows-269604


Interesting choice of words there—"private investors."

The Newsweek report is more about Azov's "ISIS style" tactics, but that's a different movie (thread).
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Re: Hollywood Scripting

Postby Laodicean » Fri May 20, 2022 6:37 pm



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