Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has racked up a string of lucrative directorships since leaving office, The Post can reveal, including a multi-million-dollar consulting gig with Ukraine’s top cell phone operator.
Pompeo, whose security detail was revoked by President Trump in January, signed up for an advisory job with Kyivstar and its Nasdaq-listed parent VEON in June of last year, financial filings show.
The 61-year-old had joined the boards of Kyivstar and VEON in November 2023 and May 2024, respectively.
Documents reviewed by The Post show that Pompeo is paid $50,000 a month — or $600,000 a year — for “strategic and financial advice” and “supporting dialogue with relevant Ukrainian, US and EU stakeholders.”
Pompeo’s Delaware-based Impact Investments firm was also handed stock warrants worth $16 million, and a $3 million bonus “in connection with the successful completion of a strategic M&A transaction.”
Kyivstar is also planning to list on the Nasdaq by the end of this year with a planned valuation of $2.2 billion, filings show.
The lucrative deal also guarantees Pompeo first-class flights or the use of a private jet whenever he is traveling on behalf of the Ukrainian telecoms giant.
Washington insiders have questioned the extent of Pompeo’s perks, saying they doubted the former secretary of state has the necessary influence with the 47th president.
A source close to Pompeo told The Post the former secretary of state is in regular contact with members of Trump’s cabinet.
Pompeo, who served as America’s top diplomat during the final 33 months of Trump’s first term, also demanded an eye-watering $300,000 fee from a Ukrainian charity that helps wounded veterans to appear in Kyiv in April 2023, when he was flirting with a possible run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
The former Kansas congressman took the fat check from oligarch Victor Pinchuk for a whirlwind 24-hour visit during which he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, sources familiar with the matter said.
That works out to a whopping $12,500 per hour, dwarfing the pre-tax annual salary of $221,400 he earned as America’s top diplomat during Trump’s first term.
Ten days after returning from Ukraine, Pompeo ruled himself out of the 2024 race.
“Mike Pompeo’s lost faith in himself masqueraded as a loss of faith in President Trump,” former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon told The Post. “That road to perdition ended for him in the morass of Ukrainian oligarchs’ blood money.”
Another source close to President Trump said of Pompeo: “He sold us out.”
In addition to Pompeo’s Ukraine interests, the former secretary of state is also a non-executive director of Israeli cybersecurity firm Cyabra and holds stock options worth $368,888, according to SEC filings.
The former CIA director has also bagged top jobs with copper mining giant ACG Metals — run by UK-Russian national Artem Volynets and which has significant interests in Turkey — and Gor Investments, a shadowy firm from the gas-rich dictatorship of Uzbekistan that has former Energy Secretary Rick Perry on its board.
Terms of those directorships have not been disclosed.
While Pompeo no longer has a security detail, there has been no public announcement that Trump has stripped him of his clearance, which he did for former President Joe Biden, ex-Secretary of State Antony Blinken and others.
One legal expert said that sometimes the US government encourages former officials to leverage their business networks abroad to help the country with intelligence gathering.
“Having foreign contacts is not in itself enough for a ban on having a clearance,” said Dan Meyer, national security partner at the Tully Rinckey law firm in Washington, DC.
“(The intelligence services) may say we want you to maintain contact with such people and keep us apprised of what they are up to,” he added.
“Under longstanding policy and given privacy considerations, the Department does not publicly comment on individual security clearance matters,” a State Department spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for the CIA, which Pompeo led from January 2017 to April 2018, did not respond to a request for comment. The White House failed to respond to The Post’s request for comment.
