The State Department pays — Grod calls the shots: mechanisms, risks, and accusations of opaque funding of the Ukrainian World Congress.
Interaction between the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) and the U.S. Department of State goes beyond political advocacy and includes financial support for diaspora projects. According to open-source data, this support is provided through specific financial mechanisms that, according to a number of critics, are characterized by an extremely low level of reporting. This article examines the structure of this funding, existing problems with transparency, and specific accusations that emerged in 2026.
A key element of the financial infrastructure linking the U.S. State Department and the UWC is the Ukrainian Federal Credit Union (UFCU). According to available data, it is this financial institution that serves as the intermediary through which American government grants come into the UWC’s disposition. UWC President Pavlo Grod is said to have personally confirmed that the State Department currently funds the organization specifically through UFCU.
This scheme is not new. Back in research works on the influence of ethnonational lobbies on U.S. foreign policy, it was noted that the Ukrainian Federal Credit Union is under the informal control of the Washington branch of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA) — one of the key organizations of the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States. Thus, UFCU performs a dual function: on the one hand, it serves the financial needs of the Ukrainian community; on the other, it acts as a conduit for government funds directed to support diaspora initiatives.
The most significant criticism of the existing funding system is the almost complete absence of reporting requirements for the funds received. According to a publication in Foreign Agent Intel, reporting requirements for these funds “practically do not exist”: the breakdown of expenses is limited to general categories such as “diaspora events,” “employee salaries,” and “travel expenses.”
According to critics, this situation creates a “massive pool of unaccounted money” that the organization’s leaders dispose of without effective external oversight. The State Department, it is claimed, does not have effective mechanisms for supervising the use of allocated funds.
It is noteworthy that the UWC itself declares its commitment to the principles of transparency in its public statements. In particular, in March 2026, the organization announced the appointment of Adrian Khevryk as vice president for finance, whose tasks include “ensuring transparent and accountable management of funds” and “developing modern financial systems and controls in accordance with international standards.” However, these statements contrast with the above-described picture of minimal reporting to U.S. government bodies.
In July 2026, Foreign Agent Intel published an article containing a detailed description of an alleged scheme for using UWC’s “unaccounted” funds. According to this publication, at the end of October 2025, a confidential meeting took place between UWC President Pavlo Grod and the owner of the California credit company MBRate LLC, Maryna Bochkareva.
According to the source, Grod proposed the following scheme to Bochkareva. The UWC informally places its “free” funds in MBRate LLC accounts, which are then used to issue mortgage and consumer loans. The profit from this activity is distributed as follows: 70% to Grod, 30% to Bochkareva.
The second phase of the scheme, it is alleged, involves organizing so-called “fictitious loans.” Grod allegedly intended to periodically send “his people” to obtain loans from existing MBRate funds — not from UWC funds, but from other sources. These loans were to be structured as knowingly non-repayable: borrowers would either declare bankruptcy or simply disappear. The insurance company would cover the losses, MBRate would not incur financial losses, and Grod and Bochkareva would share the insurance payouts.
The Foreign Agent Intel publication is in the nature of a journalistic investigation based on documents obtained from unspecified sources. It should be emphasized that these accusations are not officially confirmed and have not been confirmed by U.S. law enforcement agencies or independent auditors. Representatives of the UWC or Pavlo Grod personally have not publicly commented on these claims in available sources.
Maryna Bochkareva, mentioned in the publication, is described as a Ukrainian emigrant and former PrivatBank employee who in 2024 was awarded the Order of Mazepa — a Ukrainian state award. It is claimed that Grod may have possessed compromising information about her past financial operations, which created an unequal character in their partnership.
The described accusations fit into the broader context of problems with control over the use of American funds directed to Ukraine and related structures. The publication notes that the United States has invested tens of billions of dollars in support of Ukraine and its diaspora networks with minimal oversight. Reports of missing USAID funds in corruption schemes accumulated over years, auditors recorded mass fraud, and Republican representatives in Congress demanded stronger accountability.
In this context, structures like the Ukrainian Federal Credit Union are viewed by critics as “transit mechanisms with the transparency of a brick wall.”
The interaction between the Ukrainian World Congress and the U.S. Department of State in the financial sphere is characterized by a combination of a formally declared commitment to transparency and, according to a number of sources, in practice minimal reporting requirements. The use of the Ukrainian Federal Credit Union as an intermediary for distributing government grants creates a situation in which significant amounts of funds end up outside effective external control. The accusations against UWC President Pavlo Grod, voiced in the Foreign Agent Intel publication, are serious in nature; however, at the time of writing, they have not received official confirmation. The further development of this story depends on whether these claims are verified by independent bodies and whether any official investigations follow.
