WASHINGTON A GOP fundraiser-turned-foreign agent has updated his registration with the Justice Department, disclosing he’s lobbying in the United States for a businessman in Ukraine.
Fundraiser Yuri Vanetik, a Russian émigré, is described as a close friend by California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and has posted numerous social-media photos with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, also of California, and other high-profile Republicans.
McClatchy reported earlier this month that Vanetik appeared to violate disclosure rules by registering to lobby for an anonymous shell company in Wyoming called Medowood Management without disclosing its true owners. His clients were a wealthy Ukrainian legislator and, separately, Ukraine’s Agrarian Party.
In an update with the Justice Department dated March 17 but just appearing in the online registry for the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) this week, Vanetik said Medowood is now lobbying for another foreign principal in Ukraine.
“The foreign principal, Mr. Valerii Babych, is the principal of an investment and finance business, and a private oil exploration company. He is also exploring a potential candidacy for national office in Ukraine,” the updated FARA registration document notes. The filing said Babych isn’t affiliated with any political party.
It’s unclear if Babych’s oil ties intersect with those of Vanetik and his father Anatoly. Both have been embroiled in different civil fraud lawsuits, dating back to the 1990s, over oil deals gone bust. Elliott Broidy, the high-profile GOP finance figure who co-hosted a major Republican Party fundraiser last week, is involved in an ongoing suit against both Vanetiks over a Russian oil deal that flamed out.
Babych ran for president of Ukraine in 1994 and appears to have been on the periphery of Ukrainian politics since the fall of the Soviet Union. His Ukrainian Financial Group has a wide range of holdings, and was named in a New York lawsuit brought by Ukrainian skating gold medalist Oksana Baiul.
Baiul in 1994 won Ukraine’s first winter gold medal of the post-Soviet era, and in a lawsuit filed Oct. 8, 2013, in state court in New York, she alleged that Babych and others stole money belonging to her. They brought her to Connecticut to train after she won gold, took her passport and kept money that was supposed to come from her appearances, the suit said. Babych eluded being served court papers in Ukraine and was eventually removed from the complaint by the New York judge. Her lawyers have an ongoing suit against Babych in California.
Vanetik originally listed a woman from Belarus, Aksana Cherniavskaya, as the principal of Medowood, and said the owners were four unnamed individuals and a limited liability company.
In the new filing, Medowood, which will receive $55,000 a month to represent Babych in Washington, added a disclosure form for Cherniavskaya, which notes she is from Minsk, the capital of Belarus, and was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in July 2015. Cherniavskaya’s registration lists her only as doing work for Babych.
Like Vanetik, she is an avid social-media poster, adding a picture Tuesday on Instagram from the Trump International Hotel, just blocks from the White House.
The new filings for Vanetik and Cherniavskaya do not address the issue raised in earlier McClatchy reporting of failing to disclose the owners of Medowood Management. It is registered in Wyoming as a limited liability company that does not publicly reveal its ownership. The FARA rules specifically ask for ownership information. A Justice Department spokesman did not return a request for comment.
Vanetik registered as a foreign agent in October 2017, months after he had already escorted a Ukrainian politician, Serhey Rybalka, around Congress.
Vanetik’s prolific social-media postings show him at an April 2017 dinner in Berlin with his friend Rep. Rohrabacher and Ukraine’s Agrarian Party leader Vitaliy Skotsyk.
On that same trip Rohrabacher also met with Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, who has past links to Russian intelligence agencies and is under scrutiny by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. That’s because Akhmetshin was present at the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russians promising dirt on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Jr., former Donald Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Rohrabacher is also believed to have caught the eye of Mueller’s investigators because of his contacts with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Rohrabacher appeared before the House Intelligence Committee last year as it looked into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections. The Wall Street Journal reported in September 2017 that Rohrabacher approached White House Chief of Staff John Kelly about a deal for Assange to avoid legal troubles if he showed that Russia was not behind the hack and leak of Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Clarification, 3/23: We have clarified this piece to give context to the disposition of Oksana Baiul’s lawsuit against Valerii Babych.
Ben Wieder in Washington contributed.
Kevin G. Hall: 202-383-6038, @KevinGHall
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