KIEV, Ukraine—When ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych hurriedly fled his 343-acre palatial estate outside the capital Kiev last Friday night, he left behind garages full of collector cars, a zoo of exotic animals, greenhouses filled with banana trees and golden-headed monogramed golf clubs, among dozens of other extravagances.
But the most important discovery came when a group of journalists found thousands of documents floating near a dock that juts from the waterfront residence into the Kyiv Sea. What they couldn’t grab floating on the surface, divers recovered from the seafloor. The documents, which were published online Tuesday, reveal how much these lavish things actually cost: $2.3 million for dining room decorations, $800 for fish food, nearly $1 million for a lawn watering system and $17,000 for tablecloths — the list goes on.
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In all, nearly 200 folders filled with thousands of invoices, contracts, insurance policies, cash payment orders and other documents were recovered from the murky depths. The edges of some had been scorched, suggesting that before fleeing Yanukovych had first ordered them to be burned before they were tossed into the sea.
The documents also shed light on the dubious dealings that led to the privatization of Mezhyhirya — the name of Yanukovych's estate, which was once a state-owned complex. The estate, which seems out of place in a country where 35% live below the poverty line, was privatized in 2007 through shell companies. The documents prove that the official owner of the compound is a mysterious firm called Tantilit, owned by a 35-year-old named Pavlo Litovchenko.
Ukraine’s parliament voted unanimously on Sunday to return it to the state. Many people have said they would like for it to be eventually be turned into a hospital, orphanage or sanitorium. Yuriy Bondarchuk, a 35-year-old mechanic from Kiev, said he would like to see it turned into “a museum of corruption.”
Recovered reports — some of which were previously published on social media by top Ukrainian journalists Katya Gorchinskaya and Mustafa Nayyem of the Kyiv Post and Ukrainska Pravda, respectively — point to egregious spending. For example, one document outlined a 2006 Tantilit purchase of more than $2 million in wooden furniture for homes on the estate, and another showing a “running boar” decorative piece for an outdoor shooting range for $93,000.
Further reports point bribery and large-scale money laundering schemes. Among those is a receipt for $12 million in cash from a Yanukovych representative to another person.
Several documents show that Yanukovych spared no expense to outfit his security details with the best gear, including top of the line bulletproof vests and sniper rifles costing thousands of dollars.
Others prove that he closely monitored his biggest critics. One receipt was found that showed Tantilit had paid $5.8 million for monitoring mass media. A blacklist comprised of activists and journalists was also found, which included the name, photograph and license plate number of Tetyana Chornovol, a prominent investigative journalists who was chased down in her car and beaten by several men before being left to die in a ditch in December.
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Yanukovych hasn't been seen since he fled the opulent estate last weekend under the cover of darkness. Footage from security cameras caught him and his guards boarding two helicopters before reportedly flying to the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Local media placed him later at an airport in Donetsk, where border guards kept him from flying out of the country.
Acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov reported that he then fled by car to the Crimean city of Balaklava before cutting communication and vanishing completely. Avakov, who said he had search himself for Yanukovych on Sunday in Balaklava, on Monday issued a warrant for his arrest warrant charging the disgraced former president with “mass murder of civilians.”
Christopher J. Miller is an editor at English-language newspaper the Kyiv Post in Ukraine.