According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky embezzled $400 million last year that the US had allotted Ukraine for the purchase of fuel. Hersh claimed that Zelensky has made millions by buying cheaper Russian fuel instead of purchasing from approved sources.
He wrote, “The Ukraine government, headed by Volodymyr Zelensky, has been using American taxpayers’ funds to pay dearly for the vitally needed diesel fuel that is keeping the Ukrainian army on the move in its war with Russia. It is unknown how much the Zelensky government is paying per gallon for the fuel, but the Pentagon was paying as much as $400 per gallon to transport gasoline from a port in Pakistan, via truck or parachute, into Afghanistan during the decades-long American war there,” on his website.
He claimed that instead of purchasing fuel via the Pakistani port, the Ukrainian president has been purchasing fuel from Russia, a country with which both Ukraine and the United States are at war and that the latter and numerous members of his entourage had been syphoning off huge sums from the American dollars set aside for payments for diesel fuel. By purchasing cheaper Russian oil, Zelensky and his associates are pocketing the balance amount received from the USA, according to Seymour Hersh.
“One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kyiv (or Kiev, Ukraine’s capital) as approaching that of the Afghan war, although there will be no professional audit reports emerging from Ukraine,” he revealed.
He claimed to have received information from an informed American intelligence official who stated, “Zelensky’s been buying discount diesel from the Russians. And who’s paying for the gas and oil? We are. Putin and his oligarchs are making millions on it.”
He was informed that many government agencies in Kyiv had been competing to establish front businesses for export deals for guns and ammunition with independent arms dealers across the world, all of whom offered kickbacks. Many of those businesses are located in Poland and the Czech Republic, while some may also be found in Israel and the Persian Gulf.
An American expert on international trade disclosed to him, “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are others in places like the Cayman Islands and Panama, and there are lots of Americans involved.”
During a meeting with CIA Director William Burns in January in Kyiv, the topic of corruption was specifically brought up with the Ukrainian President. An intelligence official with firsthand knowledge of the encounter informed the journalist that his message to Volodymyr Zelensky was straight out of a 1950s gangster film.
“The senior generals and government officials in Kyiv were angry at what they saw as Zelensky’s greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because he was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.” he unveiled.
“Burns also presented Zelensky with a list of thirty-five generals and senior officials whose corruption was known to the CIA and others in the American government. Zelensky responded to the American pressure ten days later by publicly dismissing ten of the most ostentatious officials on the list and doing little else,” he added.
The ten people he fired were boasting openly about their wealth and cruising about Kyiv in their new Mercedes, the intelligence official divulged to Seymour Hersh.
