by Eric Zuesse for The Saker Blog
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 infiormation 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.
—————
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.
Jewish Mafia antics as we love them …
As shown in this article, there is a key aspect to the entire anti-Russia/pro-Ukraine story that has received no coverage by the mainstream media:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/11/a-divided-ukraine-story-that-west.html
The West’s blanket condemnation of Russia and its so-called annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 would suggest that more of us need to educate ourselves on the history of Russia and Crimea in particular before we whole heartedly swallow the narrative that our political leaders and media foist on us.
So basically, Biden said ‘pay my son $16.5m or the loan guarantee is gone’.
If that is not grand larceny by a public official, then I do not know what is.
As the Democrats wish to impeach a Republican President, would it not be prudent for powerful Republicans to instigates proceedings to delare Biden Snr unfit to run for the Office of President?
Prevention is after all far more effective than cure.
As for Biden Jnr, is he ‘handling stolen goods’? ‘Being the recipient beneficiary of corruption and graft’?
There must be some way to bring him down for taking bungs from Ukraine…..
Especially as prissy America is SO strident about banning Russia from all sport for drug testing irregularities.
Murdering 1 million plus Iraqis is just one of those thngs in comparison….
The media will ignore these antics and try to pretend it never happen, while labeling anyone who believes that the Bidens did anything wrong in Ukraine as “conspiracy theorists”.
Meanwhile, they will continue attempting to impeach Trump for doing nothing other than attempting to expose the Bidens for this very blatant corruption. They literally want to impeach Trump because of something stupid that the Bidens did.
This is a very dark time for our country… the insanity, the madness, the carnival circus on LSD, has reached a fever pitch of pure maniacal insanity.
Something I do see with the media is that every time they tell a white lie, they die a little inside. But it hurts only for a second until the denial factor kicks in and all is good again. But the denial factor will soon be challenged and once proved that the competition of their life style and behavior is cancerous, the whole house of cards comes crashing down. Here in the US we are mowing down anchors at a rate never seen before, for what ever reasons, not strong enough to lie on tv, or not savvy enough to get away with so called truthful lies. But once the actual truth is forced out, they wont have the stomach to carry on as they have in the past.
I recently saw a typically hyper-obese thug from the Lockheed and Raytheon etc financed Australian Sinophobia Promotion Institute ranting on a discussion about autonomous weapons. According to this typical lunatic, we (the glorious West) must develop autonomous weapons, because our ‘adversaries’, Russia and China, do not share our moral values or observe the rules of war, as we do. As he ranted, to the general approval of the other dead-heads on the panel, I could not help thinking of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and Tokyo, Korea, bombed back to the Stone Age, Indochina, assailed by napalm, white phosphorus, cluster-bombs and Agent Orange, Iraq and the one million dead, drone missile strikes with 90% civilian ‘collateral damage’, the ‘turkey-shoot’ on the Kuwait-Basra Highway etc. And when he lied that ‘our adversaries’ ‘could not be trusted to observe any treaties’, I thought of the ABM Treaty, the JCPOA and the INF Treaties, for starters. This sort of deranged and mendacious Imperial bootlicker is the type that totally controls and dominates this ghastly little country.
The bidens!!
Jeez, what a family, Hunter’s first wife threw him out because he went thru family finances spending on “whores, strippers, and coke.” Joe said he was happy that Hunter took up with Beau’s widow and that they found “Happiness.” Maybe it is time to shot down the biden corruption machine and cut hunter off from the endless sources of millions.
But, wait for it, Joe is still the leading dimocrat candidate for 2020-as they say, what a country.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mother-of-hunter-bidens-illegitimate-son-was-a-dc-based-stripper-named-dallas
”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”
That’s taking understatement to the point of caricature; it would be suicide on Greenclown’s part. At any rate, it’s heartening indeed to be kept up to date on the subject of ’Jewropean values’ in what used to be the most industrialized part of the USSR. Good riddance to bad garbage.
Eric:
It wouldn’t be unusual, given the endless babble of “Ukraine gate” as presented by CNN, to wonder what the Ukrainians are saying. You’ve presented it for us, and from members of Parliament, people of standing. The picture we see is certainly of a “quid pro quo” not for information or knowledge but, in the case of the Bidens for money, a straight up payoff, done surreptitiously through phony consulting agreements, shell companies, offshore banking arrangements, etc.
The readers of the Saker can accept a literal translation and understand its implications, but to reach a wider American audience you need to present it in a more readily accessible format – hence this rendering.
Ian Ryman
Member of Ukraine’s Parliament Leaks Trove of Biden Financial Records
November 27, 2019
by Eric Zuesse
On Wednesday, November 20th, Russia’s Tass news agency headlined, “According to a Ukrainian MP, Joe Biden’s son and his partners received $16.5 million from Burisma,” 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. Ukrainian Rada MP Alexander Dubinsky of the ruling Servant of the People party told a press conference on Wednesday that the indictment contains information that Hunter Biden, son of former US Vice President Joe Biden, as a Burisma board member along with his partners, received $16.5 million for their services, citing the investigation’s materials. According to him, the money came from 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 set up by Hunter Biden and his friend, Devon Archer, the Yale college roommate of John Kerry’s stepson Christopher Hines. The partnership, Rosemont Seneca Boa, is associated with their Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC.
Derkach headlined “THE BILLION DOLLAR CORRUPTION: HOW TOP-OFFICIALS OF UKRAINE AND THE USA HAVE BEEN STEALING PUBLIC MONEY”. The Ukrainian documents were shown, along with English translations, from the NABU or National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine:
Data on the veiled transfer of funds for lobbying activities personally to Joe Biden were obtained during the investigation. Money in the amount of over USD 900 thousand was transferred to the aforesaid Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, with ‘Remuneration for consulting services’ as payment details. The person identified and interviewed as a witness in the course of the investigation, 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 means whereby the said transactions were performed. By making use of political and economic leverage over the 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.
According to data from the Financial Intelligence Unit of Latvia, Wirelogic Technology AS and Digitex Organization LLP paid, from July 2012 to December 2015 to a Burisma Holdings Limited (Cyprus) account established with AS PrivatBank, amounts of USD 14,665,982 plus EUR 366,015 and USD 1,964,375 respectively ‘as payments under the loan agreement.’ 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 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 delecti [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 is a “CLIENT STATEMENT for the Period May 1-31, 2015” from “Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management” showing, for example, that “Funds Transferred” by “WIRED FUNDS SENT” “BENE. ACCT. ROBERT [Hunter] BIDEN” was “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. “In total, according to our data from the report of Financial Intelligence Unit of Latvia, two shell-offshore companies, as well as Robert Hunter Biden and partners of the Burisma company, were paid no less than 16.5 million dollars.
Derkach says:
Shokin [the person whom Joe Biden demanded fired and was fired] has repeatedly called upon NABU director Sitnik in the Burisma criminal proceedings but always got the run-around.
He asks:
Why was the NABU in such a hurry to close the cases of Burisma, Zlochevsky and Biden, and for whom did they collect personal data on Shokin?
He notes that Shokin’s demand that NABU investigate the facts coincided with the arrival of US Vice President Joe Biden in Ukraine. And $1 billion of loan guarantees that the United States was 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 the 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.”
Derkach reported this in a video blog on Facebook adding an official statement from Morgan Stanley: “Here you can see the cash flow of Rosemont Seneca Boa, owned by Devon Archer, from May 2014 to October 2016. According to the bank statement, starting from May 2014 to October 2015 Burisma transferred $4.817 million to Rosemont, and the latter transferred $871,000 to the account of Biden.”
Derkach reiterated that in total, according to data from the Financial Intelligence Unit of Latvia report, Burisma paid no less than $16.5 million in favor of two shell-offshore companies, as well as Hunter Biden and partners.
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.
Although virtually all of the press says that Mr. Zlochevsky owns Burisma, both investigations indicate that Zlochevsky sold the company in 2011 to Ukrainian billionaire, Ihor Kolomoysky. Zlochevsky was allied with Ukraine’s democratically elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in a February 2014 Obama-Administration coup, supported by Kolomoysky.
While Zlochevsky was the person whom the U.S. Government wanted to be investigated for alleged crimes by Burisma, 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. Kolomoysky is also the chief political benefactor of Ukraine’s current President, Volodymyr Zelensky. 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 Donald Trump were to abandon Obama’s Ukraine policy, and were to require Zelensky to do likewise, and Zelensky then were to obey that command from the White House. Those things are, as of yet, not expected to happen.
On November 20th, the news agency Reuters headlined, “Ukraine widens probe against Burisma founder to embezzlement of state funds.” Buried in that 486-word article — no further information provided — was the stunning 15-word statement (the real news in the article), that “The investigation 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 fled Ukraine, much as he had done when Yanukovych was ousted in 2014. Thus far, Trump has adhered to 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.