Documents show Viktor Yanukovych spent millions of dollars on furniture, hundreds of thousands of dollars on fresh flowers, and had a bodyguard who kept tabs on the opposition.
Remember Viktor Yanukovych? Just six weeks ago, he was the president of Ukraine.
Maxim Shemetov / Reuters
He lived in this big house on Mezhyhirya, a palatial 340-acre estate outside Kiev.
Yanukovych murkily privatized the residence in 2007 through a mysterious Ukrainian firm, Tantalit, whose paper trail stretches through Austrian and British front companies to an offshore entity in Lichtenstein. Little is known about Tantalit's director, Pavel Litovchenko, other than that he used to work for Yanukovych's eldest son, Alexander, and then served as the family's lawyer. Lawmaker Sergei Kluyev, whose brother Andrei was Yanukovych's right-hand man, took over the estate in August 2013. Activists now want the state to turn it into the world's first museum of corruption.
In November 2013, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets against him.
The protests began over Yanukovych's U-turn from the European Union toward Russia, but soon turned into a full-fledged revolutionary movement demanding his ouster. Though remarkably peaceful most of the time, they eventually spiraled into violent clashes with the police Feb. 19 to 21. More than 100 people died, many of them from sniper fire.
Vasily Fedosenko / Reuters
Yanukovych fled the estate for Russia on Feb. 22 and still claims to be Ukraine's legitimate president. Hundreds of stunned Ukrainians descended upon Mezhyhirya later that day.
Konstantin Chernichkin / Reuters
