John Kiriakou’s Explosive Allegation against the Phanar – and His Enigmatic Retraction

The initial allegations of a $25 million bribe to Bartholomew took place in 2018, not 2010, as Kiriakou’s (now retracted) statement says, when the President of Ukraine was the chocolate magnate Petro Poroshenko. Later, Pat. Bartholomew pretended that he was bribed with chocolates by Poroshenko (link here), while the telling video – equivalent to an admission of guilt – has now been removed from YouTube.  The fact that Karloutsos is mentioned as “pivotal to the retraction” makes the whole “retraction story” suspicious.

By Nick Stamatakis

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou recently generated significant media attention with the allegation that (as he later summarized it). “I gave an interview a few weeks ago to my friend Julian Dorey (you can watch it below), during which we discussed corruption in Ukraine. As part of that discussion, I told him a story I had heard in 2010 when I was the senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The story was that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had offered Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople $20 million to recognize the autocephalous, or self-governing, nature of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which had been under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church for centuries.”

PHOTO: Pat. Bartholomew with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.  Bartholomew allegedly would not proceed to granting the “Tomos” until Poroshenko delivered to the Phanar the missing $10 million…

Kiriakou supplied Dorey with further details, such as:

“He [i.e., Patriarch Bartholomew] then says, ‘Wait a minute, where’s the other five? It was supposed to be $20 million, where’s the five?’ And the State Department replies, ‘Oh, we don’t know anything about that. All we know is that we paid. So now you must declare the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church,'” Kiriakou continued, stressing that this “immediately caused a near-war situation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.”

The stir caused by Kiriakou’s remarks reflected not only the scandalous nature of the allegations but his own solid reputation as a former intelligence professional and a principled whistle-blower who had been railroaded to prison for opposing his former agency’s authorization to torture terrorist suspects.

Even at the time they were delivered, Kiriakou’s remarks generated some puzzlement, starting with the time period of the facts he alleged. As reported elsewhere, including by former diplomat Jim Jatras, the alleged bribe to the Phanar (reportedly $25 million) took place not in 2010 but much later – in 2018, under the presidency in Ukraine of Petro Poroshenko. Also, the relevant Secretary of State was Mike Pompeo, not Hillary Clinton. Moreover, information about the alleged payoff (which Jatras indicated at the time he had received from “an unsolicited, confidential informant in the Greek Archdiocese in New York” but conceded had no way to confirm) came on the heels of other financial scandals relating to the Archdiocese and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, such as the vanishing of millions of dollars donated to rebuild the St. Nicholas church at Ground Zero in Manhattan and the waste of millions on the Crete 2016 “Eighth Ecumenical Council” fiasco.

Perplexity around Kiriakou’s remarks was then compounded by his abrupt and categorical repudiation of his remarks to Dorey (as stated in a triumphalist release from the Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate):

“And now Kiriakou has retracted his claims in their entirety, saying: ‘… I learned, however, that the story is false. No such transaction took place. I should have verified the facts before repeating them.’  Kiriakou is the only CIA officer to have been convicted for passing classified information to a reporter. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 months in prison. The Rev. Protopresbyter Alex Karloutsos, Spiritual Advisor of the Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, played a pivotal role in eliciting Kiriakou’s retraction, reaching out to him and urging him to issue a clarification of his remarks.” 

Noteworthy is Kiriakou’s flat-out assertion that his allegations to Dorey were not just unproven, unsupported, or even improbable (especially in view of the 2010 timeframe) but “false” and that “no such transaction took place.” How can he or anyone else – other than the principals involved – possibly know that? Proving that something did happen is itself a daunting task, no matter how plausible the circumstances. Proving a negative – that something didn’t happen – is virtually impossible.

Especially noteworthy is the mention of Karloutsos, who – to put it mildly – for decades has been at the center of virtually every concern in the Greek Orthodox community about the way the Archdiocese and the Patriarchate operate. What dark magic might have been wrought by this consummate political operator to secure not just a “clarification” but a categorical denial of unascertainable facts can only be guessed at. Why would the Achons’ press release mention Karloutsos’s name? It’s a sure sign of incompetence, if you ask me. Just mentioning his involvement betrays that something sinister is hiding behind the story. 

PHOTO: The infamous 2018 Christmas event at the Phanar where Bartolomew threw chocolates to the children, stating that he was not bribed with money by Poroshenko but with chocolate!! (link here to the Turkish newspaper of record Hurriyet). The video of the event has disappeared!!

Predictably, Kiriakou’s disavowal was immediately picked up by the usual suspects in the Greek-American and Greek media, as no doubt intended by Fr. Alex, purporting to be a complete vindication of the Archdiocese and the Phanar. It appears that postings of Kiriakou’s initial statement are rapidly disappearing from the internet.

We at Helleniscope remain unconvinced.  Rather, we suggest, at a time when the Trump Administration is turning over a lot of slimy rocks, Kiriakou’s initial assertions no doubt created an atmosphere of panic among those in Istanbul, New York, Washington, and Kiev who would prefer that their malfeasances remain in the shadows. For the moment, they appear to have averted this particular threat to let the sunlight in – but there will be others.

Especially because President Trump is known to have a particular “sensitivity” to “Ukraine corruption” stories, with both Joe and Hunter Biden personally involved and others like Alexander Vindman testifying for his impeachment in Congress. Let’s not forget that just a few weeks ago, Elon Musk and his DOGE team announced that they “traced $48 billion from Ukraine to the Caribbean.” How many other transactions will be traced elsewhere? Also, there are a number of corruption and bribery stories involving the Patriarchate and GOARCH: the infamous “golden cufflinks” from the Chicago Metropolis intercepted in Istanbul by Turkish authorities, the Federal investigation into GOARCH finances after the St.Nicholas Shrine fundraising scandal, the big amounts of gold found in he Metropolis of Paris in the infamous gay sex scandal…

Finally, it has been well documented that since 1945, the Patriarchate has been a tool of American foreign policy. If anything describes the seven weeks since the Trump inauguration, it is the multiple revelations about the corrupt funding of such foreign policy globally.

March 14, 2025, n.stamatakis@aol.com   www.helleniscope.com

DISCLAIMER: The views and statements expressed in this article constitute constitutionally protected opinions of this author.

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