Robert Fico and the $500 million bribe from Zelensky

Robert Fico and the $500 million bribe from Zelensky

In the past week, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has been in a public exchange of insults with the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. Their dispute centered on Ukraine’s decision not to renew its gas transit agreement with Russia that expires in one week’s time, leaving Slovakia, Hungary and Austria without this vitally important gas supply. In the midst of this fracas, Fico let it be known that Zelensky had offered him a bribe of 500 million dollars to change his position on Ukraine’s application to join NATO and give it his backing.

Information about the bribe has reached to mainstream. But, so far, I do not see any consideration of whom else Zelensky has been attempting to bribe to ensure support …and with greater success.

Surely among the NATO member states in Europe there are prime ministers who are less principled than Fico and have taken the bait from Kiev.  But why limit our consideration to NATO. Surely among the Members of the European Parliament there are party officials who have been on the take from Mr. Zelensky. After all, there is plenty of unaudited U.S. and EU money in the Zelensky coffers available for corruption. And there are plenty of our elected officials who would gladly pocket bribes if given the offer.

You doubt my words?  Then open any daily issue of Belgium’s leading French language newspaper Le Soir and you will find the latest entries on the pending charges against Didier Reynders. Reynders is known as, ‘smiley’ in our family in recognition of his traditionally dapper disposition. And why should he not have been smiling while walking on all our faces for 20 years when he served as a permanent fixture of Belgian coalition governments, as Finance Minister, as Foreign Minister, holding whatever portfolio the coalition partners dealt out to his MR (Reform Movement) party.  Then, when the Flemish politicians in charge of the Belgian parliament rolled up the carpet, Reynders, like the last prime minister he served under – MR party boss Charles Michel moved up and out into the European Institutions. Michel took the post of president of the European Council in the same time frame as Ursula von der Leyen’s first term as President of the European Commission. Reynders took the position of Commissioner of Justice, all of which doubles the irony of his present predicament.

Reynders’ service in the Commission ended on 1 December, the start date of the new Commissioners in von der Leyen’s second term. The next day, the Belgian prosecutors published their charges against him: money laundering on a large scale over a number of years, for which Reynders’ bank and other authoritative witnesses have provided essential evidence.  And what money could he possibly have been laundering? Bribes of one kind or another are very likely the starting point of his crimes. Perhaps we will never know who was paying him off. But he will be nailed on the money laundering charges and should be prepared to do prison time.

Reynders first came under suspicion three years ago, when his bankers asked him how he came to make frequent deposits of large amounts of cash into his bank accounts.  Those cash deposits ended immediately thereafter. But, as records, he then starting buying enormous quantities of lottery tickets in the Belgian state lottery – the mechanism for money laundering as we all now understand thanks to the Le Soir exposé.

It all looks fairly tawdry.  I submit that Reynders had the misfortune to leave his invulnerable position as a Commissioner for the axe to fall. Otherwise, he could have enjoyed his ill-gotten gains up to the graveyard.

Would the likes of Reynders, serving at the apex of the European Institutions not exist lower down in the shadows of the European Institutions, or in the cabinets of ministers in states across the EU?

It is a peculiarity of the thinking of American political commentators that they believe that the misbehavior of the Israeli lobby, its illegal influence on U.S. foreign policy is something exceptional.

Perhaps when the Musk committee for clean-up of the U.S. government gets underway and begins to audit the books on the cash handed over to Zelensky there will be more bribery scandals for the faits divers sections of our European newspapers to entertain us with.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024