(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for records regarding waste, fraud and abuse tied to aid money sent to Ukraine (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Agency for International Development(No. 1:25-cv-00508)).
Judicial Watch’s FOIA requests include a demand records of USAID’s then-Administrator Samantha Power and others regarding:
1) any reported allegations of sexual exploitation, abuse or trafficking of migrants fleeing Ukraine and / or receiving assistance from USAID inside Ukraine.
2) any third-party monitoring contractors or NGOs reporting potential fraud associated with USAID aid to Ukraine.
3) any reported allegations of Direct Cash Assistance Program fraud or attempts to conduct cash transactions in Russian Rubles associated with USAID aid to Ukraine.
4) any USAID-branded commodities appearing for sale in open markets or outside of response activities in Ukraine.
USAID never responded to Judicial Watch’s FOIA requests, citing “unusual circumstances.”
In December 2023, the agency’s Inspector General’s Office issued a fraud warning citing “Conflicts of Interest in USAID’s Ukraine Response,” including:
Example 1: Missing Conflict of Interest Policy
A USAID prime awardee, executing a Multipurpose Cash Assistance program, discovered that an employee of a subawardee was simultaneously a registered beneficiary of the program and tasked with confirming beneficiary eligibility. The prime awardee reported the matter to OIG, which determined that the subawardee did not have a conflict of interest policy in place to prevent an employee from participating in administered programs as beneficiaries.
Example 2: Unreported Personal Relationship Between Procurement Staff and Bidder
A USAID prime awardee determined that a subawardee’s procurement official had an unreported ongoing personal relationship with a bidder. Upon discovery, the bidder was disqualified, and the procurement official was retrained by the subawardee on handling conflicts of interest and reporting potential conflicts.
Example 3: Awardee Employee Working for a Subawardee
A USAID prime awardee identified an unreported conflict of interest when it found an employee responsible for quality control of a subawardee was also working for that subawardee. After identifying this conflict, the prime awardee prohibited the conflicted employee from any further contact with the subawardee and issued the subawardee a written warning.
According to a February 13, 2025, USAID Inspector General’s report, the agency did not properly vet humanitarian groups it funded to prevent sexual abuse of Ukrainian war victims:
According to the United Nations, approximately 90 percent of the nearly 6.5 million people who fled the country are women and children, with women at the greatest risk of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA), human trafficking, and forced prostitution.
In July 2022, we issued an advisory notice highlighting key considerations for USAID’s developing humanitarian response led by its Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), which included risks of SEA. However, more than a year later, we had not received any allegations of SEA, which raised concerns that cases were underreported.
President Trump on January 20 ordered a “90-day pause in United States foreign development assistance for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy.”
In a January 2025 exit memo, USAID stated it sent Ukraine “close to $35 billion” since the Russian invasion in February 2022.
“The American people deserve an immediate and full accounting of the billions of dollars that the Biden USAID sent to Ukraine,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “USAID is a notoriously corrupt agency, and we hope the Trump administration, through this lawsuit, brings transparency on this key issue.”
Judicial Watch has several ongoing FOIA lawsuits regarding Ukraine.
In December 2020, Judicial Watch uncovered records from the State Department revealing that then-United States Deputy Chief of Mission to Ukraine and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs George Kent sent an email to then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch stating that Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko informed Kent that he was offered “high-level” access to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign by the same firm that represented Burisma Holdings.
Also in December 2020, Judicial Watch revealed records from the State Department which showed that former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch had specifically warned in 2017 about corruption allegations against Burisma Holdings. During her November 2019 testimony in the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, Yovanovitch told lawmakers that she knew little about Burisma.
In January 2020, Judicial Watch sued the United States Department of State for records related to a January 19, 2016, meeting at the White House that included Ukrainian prosecutors, embassy officials and CIA employee Eric Ciaramella, who reportedly worked on Ukraine issues while on detail to both the Obama and Trump White Houses. Ciaramella was widely reported as the person who filed the whistleblower complaint that triggered the impeachment proceedings. His name reportedly was “raised privately in impeachment depositions, according to officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings, as well as in at least one open hearing held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry.”
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