Eric Zuesse
On Wednesday, November 20th, Russia’s Tass news agency headlined “Joe Biden’s son and his partners received $16.5 million from Burisma — Ukrainian MP”, and reported:
The Ukrainian Office of the Prosecutor General has drawn up an indictment against the owner of the Burisma Holdings energy company, ex-Ecology Minister Nikolai Zlochevsky, that contains information that the son of former US Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter, as a Burisma board member along with his partners, received $16.5 million for their services, Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada MP from the ruling Servant of the People party Alexander Dubinsky told a press conference on Wednesday, citing the investigation’s materials. According to him, the money came from duplicitous criminal activity.
Another Rada member, Andreii Derkach, had earlier posted, to Facebook, on November 11th, what he alleges to be photos of bank statements and other financial records documenting the flows of money from Ukraine into the partnership that Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and his friend the Yale college roommate of John Kerry’s stepson Christopher Hines, Devon Archer, had set up. The partnership, Rosemont Seneca Boa, is associated with their Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC.
Derkach headlined “THE BILLION DOLLARS CORRUPTION: HOW THE TOP-OFFICIALS OF UKRAINE AND THE USA HAVE BEEN STEALING THE PUBLIC MONEY”. The Ukrainian documents were shown, along with English translations of them. For example, from the NABU or National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine:
The data on the veiled transfer of funds for lobbying activities personally to J. Biden were obtained during the investigation. Money in the amount of over USD 900 thousand was transferred to the aforesaid Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, the resident company, with an indication of ‘Remuneration for consulting services’ as payment details. The person was identified and interviewed as a witness in the course of the investigation, who has been personally engaged in holding transactions for laundering and legitimization of funds in favor of M. Zlochevsky and the Bidens. Investigators possess original copies of the payment instruments and engineering means, whereby the said bargains were performed. Through making use of the political and economic leverages over new government authorities of Ukraine and intimidating them with the issue of granting financial assistance to Ukraine, Joe Biden has actively promoted the closing of the criminal cases against M. Zlochevsky and Burisma Group corporate executives.
Another document:
According to the data from the Financial Intelligence Unit of Latvia, Wirelogic Technology AS and Digitex Organization LLP paid from July 2012 to December 2015 to Burisma Holdings Limited (Cyprus) account established with AS PrivatBank amounts of USD 14,665,982 + EUR 366,015 and USD 1,964,375 accordingly ‘as payments under the loan agreement.’ Consequently, the part of the aforesaid funds was charged off in favor of Mr. Alan Apter (EUR 302,885), Mr. Aleksander Kwasniewski (EUR 1,150,000), Mr, Devon Archer and Mr. Hunter Biden [no amounts specified for either].
A letter is shown addressed to Derkach from “The Prosecutor Office of Ukraine,” the “General Prosecutor Office of Ukraine,” and signed by the Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka, dated 30 October 2019. It said:
As a result of the pre-trial investigation on 02.09.2019, the investigator decided to close the above mentioned criminal proceedings on the basis of paragraph 2 of Part 1 of Art. 284 of the CPC of Ukraine in connection with the lack of corpus delicti [evidence of a crime]. … There are no grounds for re-entering information on the facts stated in your application” for “Pre-trial Investigations.
The Burisma cases would not go to trial.
Among the photos that Derkach showed in his article are a “CLIENT STATEMENT for the Period May 1-31 2015” from “Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management” showing, for example, that on “5/13,” “Funds Transferred” by “WIRED FUNDS SENT” “BENE. ACCT. ROBERT [Hunter] BIDEN” were “15,000.00”.
Derkach explains:
The kind of activity Biden was paid for through the shell company is not clear. There are no agreements, according to which Robert Hunter Biden should receive these payments.” Furthermore: “In total, according to our data from the report of Financial Intelligence Unit of Latvia, for the benefit of two shell-offshore companies, as well as Robert Hunter Biden with partners of the Burisma company, paid no less than 16.5 mln dollars.
Derkach says:
Shokin [the person whom Joe Biden demanded fired and was fired] has repeatedly called upon the NABU director Sitnik in the criminal proceedings on Burisma case, but always got the run-arounds.
He asks:
Why was the NABU in such a hurry to close the cases of Burisma, Zlochevskiy and Biden, and for whom did they collect personal data on Shokin?
He notes that
the moment when Shokin demanded from NABU to investigate facts of international corruption coincided with the arrival of US Vice President Joe Biden to Ukraine. And $ 1 billion of loan guarantees that the United States had to provide Ukraine depended on Biden.
He shows a time-line indicating that the turning-point to close down the investigation was “Biden’s visit to Kyiv” occurring “December 7-8, 2015.” On “June 3, 2016,” was the “Signing by the Government of the United States and Ukraine of loan guarantee agreement [U.S. taxpayers to take any loss] worth $1 billion.”
Also on November 11th, Ukraine’s Interfax news agency headlined “MP Derkach says Biden Jr. received Burisma payments via mediators”, and reported that:
Starting from May 2014 to October 2015 Burisma company transferred to Rosemont company $4.817 million, and the latter transferred a payment amounted to $871,000 to the account of Hunter Biden, son of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, reported MP Andriy Derkach in a video blog on Facebook.
“This is the official statement from Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley is one of the biggest bank holdings in the USA. Here you can see a cash flow of Rosemont Seneca Boa company owned by Devon Archer, for a year and a half (from May 2014 to October 2016). According to the bank statement, starting from May 2014 to October 2015 Burisma company transferred to Rosemont company $4.817 million, and the latter transferred a payment amounted to $871,000 to the account of Biden,” said Derkach adding an official statement from Morgan Stanley.
He noted that in order to help the investigation, he made public new documents on international corruption, which were transferred to him by investigative journalists in 11 criminal proceedings.
Derkach reminded that in total, according to his data from the report of Financial Intelligence Unit of Latvia, in favor of two shell-offshore companies, as well as Hunter Biden with partners, the Burisma company paid no less than $16.5 mln. …
Although virtually all of the press says that Mr. Zlochevsky owns Burisma, both of the detailed investigations that have been done of the matter indicate that Zlochevsky sold majority-ownership of the company in 2011 to a Ukrainian billionaire, Ihor Kolomoysky. Whereas Zlochevsky was allied with Ukraine’s democratically elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, who was elected in 2010, Yanukovych became ousted in a February 2014 U.S. Obama-Administration coup and replaced by fascist rulers, who included Kolomoysky. Therefore, Zlochevsky was the person whom the U.S. Government wanted to be investigated for alleged crimes by Burisma, and Kolomoysky isn’t even being mentioned as an owner, much less as the controlling owner, of the firm. But Hunter Biden’s actual boss at Burisma was Kolomoysky, not Zlochevsky, who is, instead, perhaps a paid decoy of Kolomoysky. Kolomoysky is also the chief political benefactor of Ukraine’s current President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Consequently, Kolomoysky had supported both the overthrow of Yanukovych and the recent election of Zelensky. For Kolomoysky, instead of Zlochevsky, to be targeted in corruption investigations that would be supported by Kolomoysky’s agent Zelensky, would be unlikely, unless America’s current President, Donald Trump, were to abandon entirely his predecessor, Obama’s, Ukraine-policy, and were to require Zelensky to do likewise, and Zelensky then were to obey that command from the U.S. White House. Those things are, as of yet, not expected to happen.
On November 20th, the U.S.-allied ‘news’-agency, Reuters, headlined with the anodyne “Ukraine widens probe against Burisma founder to embezzlement of state funds” and buried in that 486-word article — and provided no further information regarding — the stunning 15-word statement (the real news in the article), that “The investigation [by Ukraine’s Government, of Zlochevsky] is effectively on hold, however, because the Ukrainian authorities cannot determine Zlochevsky’s whereabouts.” Reasonable presumptions would be that Zlochevsky had received advance notice that he was going to be targeted in yet another ‘investigation’ into alleged Burisma corruption and had fled Ukraine, much as he had done when Yanukovych was ousted in 2014. Consequently, thus far, U.S. President Trump has been adhering to his predecessor, Barack Obama’s, Ukraine policy (which targeted the pro-Yanukovych Zlochevsky, instead of the anti-Yanukovych Kolomoysky). However, with the recent firing of Obama’s Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, that could change.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
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