The Cabinet has yet to announce a date for the tender on the "Dobre" lithium deposit, yet the winner is already clear. Dozens of international media outlets report that 81-year-old Ronald Lauder is gaining access to Ukrainian lithium assets on behalf of TechMet, a South African company registered in Dublin and portrayed in the press as "American."
This is the same Lauder who, together with Vadym Rabinovych (former OPFL MP, now wanted for high treason), was named in a U.S. Department of Justice investigation over $1.2 million in bribes to Ukrainian officials, funneled through offshore entities and intermediaries, to obtain a broadcast license for "1+1".
Representing Lauder and TechMet in Ukraine is Volodymyr Ihnashchenko - a notorious former deputy economy minister under Yanukovych, best known for inserting a shell company linked to Yanukovych's son into a Shell–Ukraine production-sharing agreement. Shell lost $100 million and pulled out of the country.
Sadly, Lauder's "victory" is being presented as a U.S.–Ukraine mineral resource deal. In reality, lithium licenses are set to go to South African nationals tied to Rabinovych and Medvedchuk, currently living in Monaco. They will likely extract nothing - and simply abandon investors under the cover of wartime force majeure. All of it - in classic Yanukovych-era fashion.
Want to know how Lauder, Lozhkin, Rabinovych, and Medvedchuk are all connected? Read the full investigation.
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