Pavlo Lazarenko - Imprisonments and Trials

Imprisonments and Trials

Lazarenko was elected to the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) in March 1998, where he headed the parliamentary faction of his political party "Hromada". "Hromada" frequently sided with the parliamentary faction of Oleksandr Moroz.

In December 1998, Lazarenko was detained on money-laundering charges as he crossed by car from France into Switzerland. In a few weeks, he was released on bail in the amount of three million dollars.

Meanwhile, details of his arrest in Switzerland led to a political scandal in Ukraine. Apparently, Lazarenko attempted to cross the Swiss border with a valid Panamanian passport even though Ukrainian law prohibits dual citizenship.

The public uproar was, in part, instigated by Kuchma's administration who pressed for Lazarenko's arrest. The parliament finally acquiesced to waive Lazarenko's parliamentary immunity on 17 February 1999. However, Lazarenko fled the country on the eve of the parliamentary vote.

He initially stopped in Greece, but was later detained in the New York JFK airport on 20 February 1999 on suspicion of illegally entering the United States. Reportedly, Lazarenko had a stack of documents with him, including a Ukrainian diplomatic passport with an outdated U.S. visa, and requested political asylum.

Subsequently, Lazarenko was transferred to a jail in San Francisco, since his family owned a ranch in California. In 2000, the Ukrainian authorities requested his extradition after charging him over the 1996 killing of Yevhen Shcherban and two attempts on the lives of high-ranking officials. The office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine also claimed that Lazarenko instigated the assassination of Vadym Hetman in late April 1998.

In the United States, Lazarenko was put on trial for money-laundering, corruption, and fraud. Attorney Daniel Horowitz represented Lazarenko on charges arising out of his operation of the Ukrainian gas business, Doron Weinberg represented him regarding charges of extortion of a business partner. The judge dismissed more than half the charges but allowed the remaining charges to be presented to the jury for decision. In late May 2004, a federal jury in San Francisco found him guilty of using his position to get rich through a series of business schemes. In October 2005, Lazarenko stated his intention to return to Ukraine in order to run in the March 2006 parliamentary elections.

From June 2004 until August 2006, Lazarenko remained under house arrest at an undisclosed location on $86 million bail after being convicted by a 12 member jury.

In 2004 Transparency International named Lazarenko the eighth most corrupt political leader in recent history.

On 25 August 2006, Lazarenko was sentenced to 9 years in federal prison.

On 18 October 2006, an appeal stemming from Lazarenko's conviction (but not the appeal of the conviction) was heard by a three judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which included former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Sandra Day O'Connor sitting by designation.

Lazarenko is incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California. On 19 November 2009 U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer cut Lazarenko's sentence from 108 to 97 months in prison. The court took into account the fact that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had dismissed his conviction on approximately half the counts of conviction leaving convictions only for acts committed 17 years ago. In November 2009 Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko stated that if Lazarenko returns to Ukraine he will be detained as he is on the international wanted list.

In a special investigative report conducted by Kelly Carr and Brian Grow, two Reuter's journalists, it is stated that Lazarenko "was once ranked the eighth-most corrupt official in the world by watchdog group Transparency International" and that "Court records submitted in Lazarenko's criminal case and documents from a separate civil lawsuit, as well as interviews with lawyers familiar with the matter, indicate Lazarenko controls a shelf company incorporated in Cheyenne that owns an estimated $72 million in real estate in Ukraine through other companies". That shelf company, a special type of shell company, is named Capital Investments Group.

The Prosecutor General of Ukraine suspects the involvement of Lazarenko (with Yulia Tymoshenko) in the murder of Donetsk businessman Yevhen Shcherban en Olexandr Momot in 1996 and the assassination of banker Vadym Hetman in 1998; Lazarenko has denied involvement in all these cases.

He is now at FCI Terminal Island with a scheduled release date in November 2012. It is not clear if he will be extradited to Ukraine after his release. He owns the luxurious mansion in Marin county. This mansion was bought with the money looted by Lazarenko from the Ukrainian budget.