The 2024 election race in the United States is entering the finish line. The battle between the Democratic and Republican camps is marked with a high tension. Donald Trump, the top candidate from the Republican Party, is seeking a rematch for the 2020 elections, accusing Joe Biden and members of the Democratic Party of falsifying the results of the previous vote. A separate topic in the electoral struggle of Trump is the business activities of Hunter Biden, the son of the incumbent US President, in particular, information about his illegal enrichment from abroad during the years of his father Joe Biden as US Vice President (2009-2017). (Updated at 02:11 p.m.)
On the other flank, he is echoed by Russia, which seeks to divert global attention from the war in Ukraine and has been using all available means of propaganda to discredit the Biden family for many months now. Russian media and spokespersons have been systematically attacking the US president and his son, accusing him of indirect financing of terrorist actions by the Ukrainian security services on Russian territory. A separate thesis of Russian propaganda is the undermining of the Nord Stream pipeline, for which, despite the obvious evidence of Ukraine’s involvement, Moscow accuses Washington, insisting that the Americans are using Kyiv as a cover.
The explosions on the then-stalled Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 took place on 26 September 2022 against the backdrop of Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine and at the peak of the gas conflict between Russia and the European Union. The sabotage in the exclusive economic zones of Denmark and Sweden destroyed both lines of Nord Stream 1 and one of the two lines of Nord Stream 2.
For a long time, Russian propaganda has been unable to form a coherent stance on who detonated the Nord Streams explosion. This was partly hindered by investigative issues and delays in the process on the part of Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. And only in early 2024, against the backdrop of growing terrorist attacks on its (Russia) territory, the most tragic of which was the massive killing of at least 145 people in the Crocus City Hall shopping mall outside Moscow in March this year, Russia began to accuse the United States not only of sabotaging the pipeline, but also of indirectly financing the Ukrainian security services, which, according to the Kremlin, are responsible for sabotage on Russian territory. To publish “insiders” and new information, Moscow uses fugitive Ukrainian MPs and officials who are wanted in Ukraine for state treason. The degree of frankness and unbiasedness of these individuals is no less doubtful than the quality of the information they voice.
The Head-Post team set a task to sort out all available elements of the story around the most toxic Burisma issue and related allegations of Russian propaganda. Within the framework of the material from open sources, all of Moscow’s key theses were collected from the accusations against the current US administration of financing terrorist attacks in Russia and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, from the information circulating about the Biden family’s improper receipt of funds in Ukraine in the post-2014 period, as well as Washington’s interference in Kyiv’s affairs. Many dozens of text and video sources, statements of US, Russian, and Ukrainian officials and speakers, as well as analytical articles were reviewed during the compilation of this material. This article was prepared to demonstrate to the audience the case described above in the context of the ongoing information war between Russia and the United States. Its discrepancies and grey areas are an excellent ground for manipulation and creation of myths by Russian propaganda in the run-up to the November elections in the United States.
CONTENT:
- ETERNAL ZLOCHEVSKY
- POST-MAIDAN PERIOD
- “TOXICITY” OF BURISMA AND POWER OF ZLOCHEVSKY
- TOP BRIBE
- TERROR AND PROPAGANDA
- “ERU TRADING”: A PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN WORD IN THE STORY?
- RESULT: US ELECTIONS, KOLOMOISKY’S FATE, INFORMATION PURITY
Chronology of key events directly or indirectly related to the Burisma case / according to media reports and Russian propaganda theses
ETERNAL ZLOCHEVSKY
The political and business career of Mykola Zlochevsky, one of the main actors of the current issue, started in 2002, when he became a people’s deputy from the united Social Democratic Party of Ukraine and founded the currently well-known company Burisma (registered in Cyprus). The main consolidation of its assets took place during 2006-2007, when 12 operating companies were linked to it resulting in its transformation into Burisma Holdings Ltd, the largest private gas production group of companies in Ukraine. Using his political influence, Zlochevsky achieved the opening of large preferences for the rapid diversified expansion of Burisma’s operations. After the Orange Revolution in 2004, Zlochevsky joined Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions (fled to Russia after the winter 2013-2014 protests), which focused mainly on the electoral interests of Eastern and Central Ukraine.
The most odious circumstance in the Burisma case is that Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky has been the shadow owner of Burisma Holdings Ltd. since 2011, according to the US Anti-Corruption Action Centre (ANTAC). Thus, all actions related to the story of Zlochevsky and his energy group can be examined through the prism of the interests and influence of Kolomoisky, who had a large presence in the energy sector of Ukraine.
Throughout his political career, Zlochevsky has been linked to the state bodies responsible for natural resources, thus reflecting his direct financial interest. Meanwhile, the rapid flourishing of Zlochevsky’s energy business, while retaining top government positions, indicates his deep incorporation into Ukraine’s political elite.
The peak of his political career came in 2010, when he headed the Ministry of Environmental Protection, later reorganised into the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources. Subsequently, Ukrainian law enforcers will open more than one criminal prosecution against the Burisma head for numerous cases of illegal enrichment and use of his official position for personal purposes. According to Ukrainian media, the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources under Zlochevsky was turned into his tool for uncontrolled personal enrichment, where he not only issued licences to himself for the right to develop gas fields at underestimated prices, but also received large bribes directly in his personal office.
In 2012, he was dismissed from the post of minister, but remained in power as Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council until the protests in the winter of 2013-2014. Over the years of Zlochevsky’s political activity, Burisma Holdings Ltd. became Ukraine’s only energy group carrying out exploration, production, and sale of hydrocarbons.
POST-MAIDAN PERIOD
The events after the change of power in Ukraine in 2014 due to the civil revolt and coming to power of the new elite, which is in favour of political integration with the West and opposes ties with Russia, showed the real viability of the business structure built by Zlochevsky.
In just five years since Zlochevsky’s patron Yanukovych fled to Russia, his capital has grown by about 2.5 times. In the ranking of the richest Ukrainians compiled by the Dragon Capital in 2018, Mykola Zlochevsky was ranked eleventh, with his fortune estimated at $636 million compared to about $250 million in 2013.
In his book Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back, British journalist Oliver Bullough tells the stories of significant corrupt officials from various countries who hid stolen funds and assets offshore. He cites Ukraine as an example and mentions Zlochevsky, who is described as “a sturdy man with a shaved head, who prefers to wear square suits and does not fasten the top buttons of his shirt.”
Nevertheless, in 2014, Zlochevsky’s business structure and he himself faced a difficult exam for “survivability.” The new realities of political turbulence in Ukraine, associated with a large series of lustration and persecution of “former” officials from the Yanukovych era, forced the head of Burisma Holdings Ltd. to leave Ukraine for a while. Ukrainian law enforcement agencies launched several criminal proceedings against him and seized his property. In 2014, the UK authorities seized $23.5 million dollars transferred from Latvia to the accounts of Zlochevsky’s companies at a branch of the French bank BNP Paribas based in London. Representatives of the British Serious Fraud Office argued in court that they had grounds to believe that Zlochevsky was engaged in criminal activities in Ukraine, with the funds in the BNP Paribas account being the revenues from those activities.
At that moment in the story of Zlochevsky and Burisma Holdings Ltd. the surname Biden entered the history of Burisma Holdings Ltd. and has been closely associated with the name “Burisma” ever since. In April 2014, Hunter Biden, the youngest son of US Vice President Joe Biden, joined Burisma’s Board of Directors with a statement that it was necessary to strengthen the work to increase the investment attractiveness of Burisma Holdings Ltd. abroad. Former Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Devon Archer, a friend of the stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as a number of other influential foreign individuals, have also joined the board. According to Zlochevsky, Biden was to supervise the legal block and promote the company in international organisations.
According to a number of sources, his salary was $50,000 per month, although the law firm Schiller & Flexner LLP, based in New York, remained his main place of work. At the same time, he served as chairman of the US Global Leadership Coalition, the Centre for Security Policy, and the National Democratic Institute. In a 2019 story, Reuters quoted Oleksandr Onyshchenko, a businessman and former member of the Ukrainian parliament, who knew the Burisma founder. He told the magazine that it was Zlochevsky’s own idea to include H. Biden on the board of directors. “It was to protect (the company)” at a time when it was facing investigations by Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies.
Reuters also reported on reviewed records of payments allegedly from Burisma Holdings Ltd. that showed payments of $3.4 million to the accounts of Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a company headed by Biden family business partner Archer, between April 2014 and November 2015. “Specifically, the records show 18 months in which two payments of $83,333 per month were paid to Rosemont Seneca Bohai for ‘consulting services.’ The two sources said that one of those monthly payments was intended for Biden and one for Archer,” Reuters wrote.
Remitter, amountRemittee
Source: media // public access
“TOXICITY” OF BURISMA AND POWER OF ZLOCHEVSKY
Shortly after the new personnel decisions at Burisma Holdings Ltd, the process of Zlochevsky’s criminal prosecution was suspended without official reasons. In late 2014, UK representatives travelled to Ukraine to obtain information from the Prosecutor General’s Office about the origin of the $23.5 million arrested on Zlochevsky’s account. However, they were not provided with sufficient assistance. As a result, in 2015, the UK law enforcement authorities lost a court case against Zlochevsky, as the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine delayed the process of transferring documents. The office of the case in Ukraine was closed, with the account arrest lifted.
Despite the unequivocal victory in the UK, strong pressure was exerted on Zlochevsky in Ukraine. According to a number of Ukrainian journalists, this could be related to the personal interests of Ukrainian President (and oligarch) Petro Poroshenko, who was attempting to redistribute property in the country, including in the energy sector. It is hard to say how closely his actions could be linked to the activities of the Prosecutor General’s Office, but Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, appointed by Poroshenko, became Zlochevsky’s most ardent opponent. At briefings in 2015, he repeatedly reported on the progress of the proceedings, accusing the former head of the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of large-scale corruption and issuing licences to himself for Burisma Holdings Ltd.
Next, none other than then-US Vice President J. Biden enters the case, as he personally revealed later on. In 2018, during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., he told how he convinced Poroshenko and then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk during a visit to Kyiv in 2016 to dismiss Prosecutor General Shokin, accusing him of fostering corruption. That, he said, was his condition for Kyiv to receive a $1 billion loan guarantee from Washington.
“I remember going over, convincing our team, our leaders to – convincing that we should be providing for loan guarantees. And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kyiv. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor [Viktor Shokin]. And they didn’t.”
“So they said they had – they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to – or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said – I said, call him. I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
Further, the name of one of Ukraine’s most influential oligarchs, Kolomoisky, appears more and more prominently in the story surrounding the Burisma case. In August 2020, the US Department of Justice filed two lawsuits in the District Court of South Florida regarding the acquisition of real estate in Kentucky and Texas by Kolomoisky and his business partner Gennadiy Bogolyubov. The US law enforcement agencies accused them of withdrawing money for those purposes from PrivatBank, which belonged to Kolomoisky. It is alleged that the scheme, through which several billion dollars were withdrawn from the bank, had been in operation since 2008, and Ukraine’s nationalisation of the financial institution in 2016 put an end to it. Since then, relations between Kolomoisky and the US government have been tense, which would later play a key role for him.
Burisma Holdings Ltd. itself is often associated, especially by Russian media, with the disappearance of $1.8 billion of the $3 billion in foreign aid that went to Ukraine. According to Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (the name Burisma itself does not appear in the investigation), in 2015 this money was transferred from the IMF to accounts in PrivatBank, then owned by Kolomoisky, and then disappeared. The authors specify that the $1.8 billion deal using forged contracts was a classic money laundering operation “through dark channels.” It is noteworthy that Kolomoisky himself was in the US at the time and, despite the scandal that broke out in Ukraine, the Ukrainian government failed to reach him.
After Shokin’s dismissal in April 2016, Yuriy Lutsenko (the in-law of President Poroshenko) became Ukraine’s Prosecutor General. It is noteworthy that Lutsenko had no appropriate legal education for his new position. To be able to appoint him as Prosecutor General, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed a law that allowed the Prosecutor General not to have a higher legal education.
The Burisma case took a new unexpected turn. Under Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, the Prosecutor General’s Office transferred the group’s case (about illegal licences) to the newly established National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU). But the case of Zlochevsky’s illegal enrichment remained with the prosecutors, after which it underwent a strange metamorphosis. The proceedings against unlawful enrichment of Zlochevsky personally were reclassified into proceedings against tax evasion by the accountant of the company Esko Pivnich, which belonged to the group Burisma Holdings Ltd. In other words, earlier the Prosecutor General’s Office should have investigated the legality of the origin of Zlochevsky’s fortune, but afterwards, for no apparent reason, it switched to the issue of paying taxes on his income. Zlochevsky’s name was removed from the case. After all fines and taxes were paid, the Burisma case was closed, and Zlochevsky himself managed to easily avoid prosecution. Investigative journalists in Ukraine attribute this to the corrupt interference of a third party.
During the period 2017-2019, investigations into various circumstances of the Burisma Holdings Ltd. case have been resumed repeatedly. It was mainly due to the internal struggle between the “old” law enforcement branches represented by the Prosecutor General’s Office and the “new” anti-corruption offices represented by the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine (HACC), established within the framework of the programme to increase transparency of the law enforcement system and fight corruption as insisted by the EU, the US, and the IMF.
Burisma received a new high-profile mention in the media in 2019, which was due to the demand of the US President Donald Trump’s administration to the newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the case of Zlochevsky’s group of companies. The process was led by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who published a large collection of materials based on documents and personal meetings with Ukrainian officials who dealt with Zlochevsky. The new Prosecutor General of Ukraine Ruslan Riaboshapka announced the resumption of proceedings against Zlochevsky. In a commentary to Reuters, Riaboshapka stated that he was not aware of any evidence of H. Biden’s misconduct during his work at Burisma Holdings Ltd.
Trump’s request to Zelensky to investigate the Burisma case and Giuliani’s activity turned into unexpected consequences for the incumbent US president himself. The US Democratic Party accused Trump of pressurising Kyiv in his own personal and political interests by initiating impeachment proceedings in the winter of 2019-2020. Presumably, the Republican team planned to use the Burisma case as a trump card in the presidential election in autumn 2020. Meanwhile, according to Fox News, Shokin told Giuliani that he was asked to close the Burisma case, although the Prosecutor General tried to continue the investigation. Nevertheless, despite Trump’s acquittal by the US Senate, it is still not known exactly who was more harmed by the case regarding H. Biden’s actions in Ukraine – the Republicans or the Democrats. At the same time, J. Biden himself claims that he has never spoken to his son about his business dealings abroad.
TOP BRIBE
The Burisma story received a new unexpected development in June 2020. At that time, a high-profile scandal broke out in Ukraine over an attempt to pay a $6 million bribe to Artem Sytnyk, director of the NABU, and Nazar Kholodnitsky, head of the SAPO, for the ultimate closure of the case against Zlochevsky under Part 5 of Article 191 (embezzlement, misappropriation of property, or taking possession of it by abuse of office) and Part 3 of Article 209 (legalisation of property, obtained by criminal means) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The issue in question is Case No. 1590 (2014) regarding the embezzlement of a stabilisation loan from the National Bank of Ukraine allocated to Real Bank, where Zlochevsky was the key defendant.
Extract from сourt сaseSource: media, public access
The intermediary was a top manager of Burisma Holdings Ltd. Andriy Kicha, who was detained while trying to transfer the money. However, in a conversation with journalists, Kholodnytsky emphasised that US presidential candidate J. Biden and his son Hunter were not involved in this episode and had nothing to do with the attempt to exonerate Zlochevsky from liability at the time.
Meanwhile, the former head of the group of prosecutors of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine for investigating economic offences, Kostiantyn Kulik, who led the Burisma case, stated that initially the bribe for closing the case against Zlochevsky was not $6 million, but $50 million. A separate question was raised about the possible origin of that large sum; it was not ruled out that it could have been received from “patrons” from abroad.
Ukrainian MP Andrii Derkach, who later fled to Russia and became one of the mouthpieces of the Russian propaganda campaign against Biden, agreed with Kulik at the time. He stated that one of the episodes of official suspicion against Zlochevsky in Case No. 1590 included facts of his complicity in money laundering using Burisma Holdings Ltd. and Archer’s Rosemont Seneca Bohai. However, when Burisma representatives were detained on a $6 million bribe, Rosemont Seneca Bohai was no longer included in the case. Derkach links this to the change in the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office, when Lutsenko was replaced by Riaboshapka, a friend of Volodymyr Zelensky. After that, the recording of the $50 million bribe allegedly stopped.
A new “struggle” for the case of Zlochevsky has started. The Pechersk District Court of Kyiv ordered the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine to close the criminal case, after which the NABU claimed that the decision was corrupt. After that, the same court ordered the new Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova to seize the bribe case from the NABU and the SAPO in exchange for closing the case against Zlochevsky, where Kicha was the main defendant. The NABU stated that the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv had no right by law to hand over the NABU case to anyone, and that the Pechersk Court and the Prosecutor General’s Office were trying to protect Zlochevsky and “ruin” the case. At the time, Kicha himself was on a limited release on bail of 40.3 million dollars.
In July 2020, Derkach published audio recordings of what he claimed were talks between former President Poroshenko and former US Vice President J. Biden and former State Department chief John Kerry. On one of the recordings, the US side allegedly offered Poroshenko $1 billion in exchange for the dismissal of Prosecutor General Shokin. The most notable thing is that Derkach handed over all the recordings to the office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine along with a statement of offences to open a criminal case. Nevertheless, the story did not receive any further factual development. The secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, said that the published recordings were part of the information war and did not inspire confidence.
TERROR AND PROPAGANDA
In March 2022, after the start of a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine, the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine approved the agreement with the investigation in the criminal case of Kicha. The court confirmed the fact of Zlochevsky’s attempt to bribe the heads of the NABU and the SAPO through an intermediary to close the case against him. The case was heard in a closed format, and as a result, Kicha avoided serious punishment. He was sentenced to a one-year probation and paid $2.7 million to the United24 foundation established by Zelensky to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces. A year later, in 2023, the court published details of Kicha’s agreement with the investigation. According to it, the entire amount of $6 million bribe and UAH 40.3 million bail was transferred to the needs of a certain “Ukrainian force structure.” At the same time, many critics of the episode seriously believe in the version that the real amount of the bribe was $50 million. However, there is no clear data on the remaining $44 million, except for the information published by dubious sources.
This very circumstance is the core of Russia’s entire information campaign to accuse J. Biden and the US Democratic Party of financing terrorism.
Moscow offers the following chronology of events to be believed:
- In the spring of 2022, the process of concluding the agreement between Kicha and the HACC takes place. Russia refers to the base of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry’s General Directorate of Intelligence (HUR), headed by Kyrylo Budanov, which, among other things, specialises in sabotage activities, as a “Ukrainian force structure.”
- On 22 August 2022, after the appearance of “additional (extra-budgetary) funding” for the HUR, the assassination of Darya Dugina, daughter of Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin (close to Vladimir Putin), is carried out in Russia by a member of the Ukrainian National Guard, Natalia Vovk, who then successfully fled Russian territory.
- On 26 September 2022, a sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines takes place, for which Ukrainian specialists were allegedly involved as a “cover.”
- On 2 April 2023, pro-Russian blogger Vladlen Tatarsky (real name Maxim Fomin) is killed in an explosion in a cafe in St. Petersburg.
- On 6 May 2023, Russian publicist Zakhar Prilepin, who spoke in favour of Vladimir Putin’s policies, is targeted in an explosion. Prilepin himself survived, his driver was killed.
- The most notorious event of this tragic series is the terrorist attack in the Crocus City Hall shopping mall (near Moscow) by ISIS members, which killed 145 people and injured 551 others, on 22 March 2024. The perpetrators of the attack had Tajik citizenship, but fled and were apprehended near the Russian-Ukrainian border. According to the Russian statement, they confessed that they were commissioned by the Ukrainian side, which was supposed to provide them with asylum after the mission was completed.
Prior to the terrorist attack in Crocus, Moscow had already actively promoted the Zlochevsky case, accusing J. Biden of actual financing of terrorism. The role of the financial channel, according to the Russian statement, was played by Burisma group, which had a long experience of working with J. Biden’s entourage and the democratic elite. In April 2024, the Investigative Committee of Russia initiated a case against the leadership of the United States and NATO countries on the financing of terrorism. The Investigative Committee said in a statement that the enquiry found that funds received through commercial organisations, in particular Burisma Holdings Ltd., had been used over the past few years to carry out terrorist attacks in the Russian Federation, as well as abroad, in order to eliminate prominent political and public figures and inflict economic damage.
Moscow’s mouthpiece in this case was the already mentioned former Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada deputy Andrii Derkach, who fled to Russia and is wanted in Ukraine for state treason. “We traced virtually all movements of funds through Burisma and transfers of funds via Morgan Stanley to Rosemont Seneca. This is a company that is affiliated and owned by Biden’s son, where he received the money. We’ve shown all the records, those records are in the possession of Congress,” he said.
Derkach insists that the US Congress allegedly has a sufficient collection of documents on the involvement of partners of President J. Biden’s family in the financing of terrorism. However, there are no signals about this from the US law enforcement system, which casts doubt on all the statements of the former Ukrainian MP.
“ERU TRADING”: A PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN WORD IN THE STORY?
Today, Russia’s information campaign accusing the Bidens of financing terrorism is being actively raised. While developing the Burisma issue and the alleged “unlawful enrichment”, Russia is simultaneously promoting another issue allegedly related to the shadow financial activities of the Biden family and some Democrats in Ukraine. Moscow claims that Burisma Holdings Ltd. is not the only fact of the involvement of J. Biden and his entourage in Ukraine’s energy sector.
Separate sources claim that they have obtained details of the NABU investigation into the activities of the Energy Resources of Ukraine group of companies run by prominent businessman and official Andriy Favorov. Favorov is said to be the key person behind the withdrawal of funds from the Ukrainian energy sector in 2014.
It is alleged that the ERU Trading company and a network of shell companies associated with it in the US offshore jurisdiction became the centrepiece of the mechanism. In particular, these are ERU Trading CJSC, ERU Trading LLC, ERU GAS LLC and Energy Resources of Ukraine LLC. The funds withdrawn from the Ukrainian energy sector were allegedly transferred through the Ukrainian subsidiary ERU Trading to the accounts of organisations whose beneficiaries were US and Ukrainian citizens Dale Wesley Perry and Yaroslav Mudry.
Notably, from November 2018 to March 2020, Favorov acted as the head of the integrated gas business of Naftogaz of Ukraine, a state-owned company that produces, transports and processes oil and natural gas.
It is alleged that the smooth flow of ERU Trading’s funds abroad was carried out by Scott Nathan, the head of the US Development Finance Corporation (DFC), who is close to J. Biden. Nathan was supported by businessman Amos Hochstein, also a close friend of J. Biden, and former US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. It is noted that Scott Nathan ensured the final “legitimisation” of the money withdrawn from Ukraine for use in the interests of the Biden family on the territory of the United States. ERU Trading became a partner of the US government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), which helped US businesses invest in emerging markets and promoted US foreign policy priorities.
During the Obama administration,Hochstein served as a special ambassador and coordinator for energy issues (2014-2017). From 2017 to 2020, he was a member of the supervisory board of Naftogaz of Ukraine (at about the same time, Favorov was one of the top managers there). In 2019, some Ukrainian media called Hochstein the patron of Favorov. Despite the fact that Hochstein himself does not hide friendly relations with H. Biden, whom he stood up for when Prosecutor General Shokin investigated the Burisma case.
Ukraine was actively engaged in business activities by the ERU group. In April 2017, the equity capital of ERU Trading LLC was only 100,000 hryvnias ($2.6 thousand), and there were only two employees. Nevertheless, the company won a tender for the purchase of natural gas for Ukrtransgaz worth UAH 1,352.5 billion ($52 million). Ukrainian law enforcers drew attention to the activities of ERU Trading, but the implementation of the state contract continued.
ERU TradingSource: media, public access
In early January 2017, the State Tax Service attempted to recover through the court the debt of CJSC ERU Trading in the amount of UAH 137.5 million resulting from non-payment of taxes. However, first the District Court of Kyiv and then the Kyiv Administrative Court of Appeal decided to reject the claim with the wording that “it may lead to the bankruptcy of CJSC ERU Trading and negatively affect the economy of Ukraine.”
Literally after that, ERU Trading paid three US companies SP Capital Management LLC, TNA Corporate Solutions LLC and ERU Management Services LLC a lump sum of 96.8 million hryvnias (more than $3.5 million) for providing certain “information and consulting services.” It is alleged that one of the directors of ERU Management Services LLC was Perry, a beneficiary of CJSC ERU Trading and co-founder of the company together with Mudry.
NABUThe alleged “scheme” of withdrawing funds from the energy sector of Ukraine through the mediation of Favorov and his affiliated companies // Source: media, public access
A total of more than 121 million hryvnyas ($4.5 million) was paid to the US firm for “information and consulting services” in 2016-2017. It is alleged that this is a well-oiled “scheme” of capital outflow from Ukraine to the US, developed by Favorov.
It is noteworthy that ERU Management Services LLC and ERU Corporation are registered in the state of Delaware, where J. Biden began his political career.
RESULT: US ELECTIONS, KOLOMOISKY’S FATE, INFORMATION PURITY
As already mentioned, in the run-up to the US presidential election in November 2024, there is a strong pressure on the Democrats from their key rivals from the Republican Party. The Republicans accuse the Biden family of embezzling $10 million in bribes from foreign companies, all during the period when J. Biden was Vice President under President Obama. In the spring of 2023, Republican James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, submitted a 36-page dossier on J. Biden’s foreign activities. Although the investigation is currently focused only on the business of H. Biden, Republicans consider J. Biden to be involved as a “person with information important for establishing the truth.” This does not entail criminal liability, but the shadow of the charges against his son may affect J. Biden’s participation in the race for the White House.
A little earlier, in the spring of 2023, another strange event indirectly related to the Burisma case took place. Officers of the Security Service of Ukraine searched the house of oligarch Kolomoisky, an unofficial sponsor of President Zelensky and shadow owner of Burisma Holding Ltd. According to critics, his arrest covers the traces of many problems, in particular those related to the name of J. Biden. He is a key unofficial witness in the Zlochevsky case who can be called to testify in the case and can be indirectly linked to the Biden family. During the election race in Ukraine in 2019, fighting against Poroshenko and promoting Zelensky for the presidential post, Kolomoisky had connections with Giuliani. He allegedly took an active part in collecting compromising evidence on J. Biden and his son Hunter on Ukraine. Kolomoisky himself, despite being formally stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship, is still in a Ukrainian prison, where critics claim he was deliberately “hidden” by Zelensky from a possible US demand for his extradition.
As one can see, the entire information case around the connection of the Biden family and those close to it with Ukraine’s energy sector is a big tangle with a huge number of gaps, manipulations and outright myths. Absolutely all opponents of J. Biden personally and of the US Democratic Party are using this literally all over the world. Any statements and accusations should take place exclusively in the legal field, while everything outside it may well turn out to be malicious slander. Therefore, it is necessary to strictly observe information caution and try to verify information extremely carefully. In the era of information wars, information is a weapon that strikes even harder than bombs and missiles.
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