Ukrainian gas executive says indicted Giuliani associates tried to recruit him for company takeover

An executive with Ukraine’s state-owned oil and gas company said two recently indicted associates of Rudy Giuliani attempted to recruit him to take control of the firm from its CEO, who they said was part of a plot to undermine President Trump along with then-U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Andrew Favorov, head of natural gas for Naftogaz, said Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman told him they wanted him to be “our guy” in opposition to a “cartel” run by liberal philanthropist George Soros, the Journal reported Sunday night.

Favorov said he met with federal prosecutors in New York this week as part of their investigation into Fruman, Parnas and Giuliani, who is Trump’s personal attorney. He said that after the meeting, he informed CEO Andriy Kobolyev and told the two men he couldn’t participate.

Favorov told the newspaper the meeting took place in March in Houston at an energy conference, where the two men showed him pictures of them with Trump and Giuliani and presented themselves as influential with regard to the president.

Fruman’s and Giuliani’s attorneys declined to comment to the Journal, while Parnas’s lawyer, Ed McMahon, called the story “completely false.” None of the attorneys immediately responded to requests for comment from The Hill.

Trump has insisted he doesn’t know Fruman or Parnas, despite multiple pictures posted on social media by Parnas with the president.

In both her closed-door and public testimony in the House impeachment inquiry, former National Security Council official Fiona Hill blasted conspiracy theories about Yovanovitch and Soros, comparing them to the infamous anti-Semitic Russian forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”