The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lawyer pleads guilty to lying to special counsel
Dutch national spoken to as part of look into Manafort’s dealings.
WASHINGTON — An attorney whose firm was accused of whitewashing abuses by the former president of Ukraine in cooperation with Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, pleaded guilty Tuesday to lying to the special counsel investigating Russian election interference.
The attorney, Alex van der Zwaan, worked in London for the prominent New York law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. He was accused of making false statements regarding communications he had with Rick Gates, a longtime associate of Manafort and a former Trump campaign aide, about work they did in 2012 for the Ukrainian government, according to court papers.
Both Gates and Manafort have been charged by special counsel Robert Mueller with money laundering and violations of tax and lobbying laws and have pleaded not guilty. The investigation into the two men is centered on foreign lobbying work they did before they worked on Trump’s campaign.
Van der Zwaan, 33, a Dutch national, entered the plea in U.S. District Court in Washington. A speaker of Russian, Dutch, English and French, van der Zwaan also is the son-in-law of a wealthy Russian, German Khan, who was on a roster of oligarchs named in a recent Treasury Department list
of prominent Russians with links to President Vladimir Putin.
Though Manafort was not mentioned by name in the court document about van der Zwaan, the history between Manafort and the law firm suggests that the special counsel has cast a wide net in investigating Manafort’s business relationships around the world.
Manafort’s relationship with Skadden dates to years before his work on the Trump campaign. He enlisted the firm in his effort to shield a client, Viktor Yanukovych, the Russia-aligned president of Ukraine, from international condemnation.
Manafort asked Skadden to draft a report that critics have said essentially whitewashed Yanukovych’s human rights record. One day after its release, a State Department official called it “incomplete,” saying that it “doesn’t give an accurate picture” and that the State Department was concerned that “Skadden Arps lawyers were obviously not going to find political motivation if they weren’t looking for it.”
The law firm’s work was being investigated by Ukraine’s top prosecutor, which asked the Department of Justice for help in questioning eight lawyers who the Ukrainians believed were involved, including van der Zwaan, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.
It is unclear what role van der Zwaan played in crafting the report. According to a report last year in the Kiev Post, van der Zwaan served as a go-between for the Skadden team that went to Ukraine for its report.
Ukraine’s prosecutor also wanted to question Skadden’s lead lawyer on the report, Gregory B. Craig, who served as President Barack Obama’s White House counsel, as well as Clifford M. Sloan, who also worked in the Obama administration.
In a statement, Skadden said: “The firm terminated its employment of Alex van der Zwaan in 2017 and has been cooperating with authorities in connection with this matter.”
Van der Zwaan’s expertise at the law firm was in congressional investigations and government policy, according to a biography once on the law firm’s website that has been taken down.
The request by the Ukrainian prosecutor was part of a criminal corruption investigation into the government of Yanukovych. The Ukrainian general prosecutor alleged that Yanukovych’s government circumvented contracting rules by initially agreeing to pay Skadden a fee that was less than the threshold for competitive bidding — reportedly about $12,000 — then later paying the firm a total of nearly $1.1 million.
In court documents in the Ukranian case, Manafort is identified as having facilitated the contract for the law firm.
Skadden has not answered questions about payments it received for the Ukrainian work. But last year, after the Justice Department began inquiring about it, Skadden refunded to the Ukrainian government $567,000 — about half of the total it was reportedly paid. The firm told The Times last year the refund represented “the balance of Ukraine’s payment, which had been held in escrow for future work.”
Skadden has defended its work on the report, casting it as independent, and pointing out that it criticized Yanukovych’s government for denying a political rival, the former Ukrainian prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, “basic rights under Western legal standards” during a corruption trial.
The Skadden report was used to push back on international critics who charged that Yanukovych prosecuted Tymoshenko’s case, which resulted in a 2011 conviction and jail time, for political reasons and without sufficient evidence.
Manafort worked with other firms as well as part of his consulting work for Yanukovych. The Podesta Group, formerly led by a prominent lobbyist and Democratic donor, Tony Podesta, and Mercury Public Affairs have been subpoenaed by the special counsel’s office for records and testimony about the work they did for the European Center for a Modern Ukraine. Manafort referred the center, a nonprofit group based in Brussels that had done work with Yanukovych, to the other two Washington-based firms.
Last week, the special counsel’s office indicted 13 Russians and three companies for interfering in the 2016 U.S. election with a sophisticated influence campaign on popular social media platforms. An American, Richard Pinedo, of Santa Paula, California, also pleaded guilty to identity fraud regarding some bank accounts used by the Russians in their influence campaign.