{"id":12995,"date":"2015-10-04T07:39:05","date_gmt":"2015-10-04T12:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12995"},"modified":"2015-10-04T07:39:05","modified_gmt":"2015-10-04T12:39:05","slug":"us-tax-dollars-and-ukraines-finance-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12995","title":{"rendered":"US Tax Dollars and Ukraine\u2019s Finance Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2015\/10\/03\/us-tax-dollars-and-ukraines-finance-minister\/\" target=\"_blank\">US Tax Dollars and Ukraine\u2019s Finance Minister<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>Special Report:<\/strong>\u00a0Though touted as the face of reform inside Ukraine\u2019s post-coup regime, Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko enriched herself at the expense of a U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund \u2013 and USAID now says it\u2019s missing some of the audit records detailing Jaresko\u2019s dealings, reports Robert Parry.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>The U.S. government is missing \u2013 or withholding \u2013 audit documents about the finances and possible accounting irregularities at a $150 million U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund when it was run by Ukraine\u2019s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who has become the face of \u201creform\u201d for the U.S.-backed regime in Kiev and who now oversees billions of dollars in Western financial aid.<\/p>\n<p>Before taking Ukrainian citizenship and becoming Finance Minister in\u00a0December 2014, Jaresko was a former U.S. diplomat who served as chief executive officer of the Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), which was created by Congress in the 1990s with $150 million and placed under the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to help jumpstart an investment economy in Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"image-anchor\" href=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Ukraines-newly-appointedFinance-Minister-Natalie-Jaresko-a-US-citizen-who-now-heads-a-Kiev-based-investment-fund.jpeg?55ac53\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-14269\" src=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Ukraines-newly-appointedFinance-Minister-Natalie-Jaresko-a-US-citizen-who-now-heads-a-Kiev-based-investment-fund-300x212.jpeg?55ac53\" alt=\"Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko.\" width=\"300\" height=\"212\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>After Jaresko\u2019s appointment as Finance Minister \u2014 and her resignation from WNISEF \u2014 I reviewed WNISEF\u2019s available public records and detected a pattern of insider dealings and enrichment benefiting Jaresko and various colleagues. That prompted me in February to file a Freedom of Information Act request for USAID\u2019s audits of the investment fund.<\/p>\n<p>Though the relevant records were identified by June, USAID dragged its feet on releasing the 34 pages to me until Aug. 28 when the agency claimed nothing was being withheld, saying \u201call 34 pages are releasable in their entirety.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, when I examined the documents, it became clear that a number of pages were missing from the financial records, including a total of three years of \u201cexpense analysis\u201d \u2013 in three-, six- and nine-month gaps \u2013 since 2007. Perhaps even more significant was a missing paragraph that apparently would have addressed an accounting irregularity found by KPMG auditors.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US Tax Dollars and Ukraine\u2019s Finance Minister Special Report:\u00a0Though touted as the face of reform inside Ukraine\u2019s post-coup regime, Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko enriched herself at the expense of a U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund \u2013 and USAID now says it\u2019s missing some of the audit records detailing Jaresko\u2019s dealings, reports Robert Parry. The U.S. government is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,6],"tags":[6963,1610,8116,7203,821,827,9574,9575],"class_list":["post-12995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-consortium-news","tag-kiev","tag-natalie-jaresko","tag-robert-parry","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-us-taxpayer","tag-usaid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12996,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12995\/revisions\/12996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}