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The Documentary Podcast

Ukraine’s Stolen Billions and the Riddle of the Helipad

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.32.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2018

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Parkovy Conference and Exhibition Centre, a huge modernist structure of concrete and glass, stands boldly on the banks of the Dnieper River in central Kiev, a helipad on the roof. It hosted the official after party for last year’s Eurovision Song Contest and was meant to be a symbol of Ukraine’s economic development. Instead, four years after President Yanukovych was overthrown by a people sick of corruption, it has become a focus of efforts to reclaim the billions of dollars said to have been stolen by the ex-president’s regime. In this edition of Assignment, Tim Whewell attempts to unpick the tangled global web of companies behind the building’s ownership. Who does the helipad actually belong to and what does it tell us about Ukraine’s attempts to bring its corrupt politicians to account?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Live from Kyiv. It's the grand final of the Eurovision song contest 2017.

0:09.0

It was a magnificent event, a magnificent party with a lot of singers from another

0:16.0

countries it was many happy faces it was the great view it was emotions which we like Ukrainian nation will remember for a long time.

0:28.0

A spring night to last year and under the stars on a rooftop in the Ukrainian capital Kiev

0:37.7

contestants from across the continent danced and

0:45.0

for the official after party at the end of the Eurovision Song Contest.

0:47.0

I'm Tim Hewell

0:48.0

and for assignment here on the BBC World Service

0:51.0

I've come to Kiev to recall that triumph for Ukraine.

0:55.6

Just three years earlier, it had ousted its elected President Victor Yanukovych in a bloody

1:00.5

uprising, against corruption, and for European values.

1:06.3

But what had really changed?

1:08.8

Ukrainian authorities now believe that the helipad that those revelers were dancing on was built with money stolen from the state and

1:16.5

assignment has discovered that Janakovic's circle profited from that Eurovision party even

1:22.3

years after the disgraced leader had fled the country.

1:25.6

This place brings in millions in profit every month and those millions go to the people who own it and they are the

1:35.1

family of Yanekevich.

1:37.8

In this program I follow the trail of that money 2,000 kilometers from the golden domes of Kiev to

1:45.0

the United Kingdom.

1:48.0

A very ordinary town in Britain

1:50.0

and a company that's still keeping its secrets despite the UK's efforts to become a beacon

1:56.7

of corporate transparency.

...

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