Ahead of Presidential Elections, Democrats Are Covering up the Traces of Biden's Corruption Schemes in Ukraine

Biden and his son Hunter are seen together in 2010. Hunter’s overseas business ventures while his father was vice president have drawn scrutiny from Biden’s critics

After Joe Biden announced his intention to run for a second presidential term, it became apparent that one of the key topics of the campaign would be the findings of two congressional committees led by Jim Jordan and James Comer. The committees’ investigations concern influence peddling that the Biden family may have carried out in Ukraine, China and South America. And according to pi-news.com, while in the latter two cases it can take quite a long time to find evidence, the case of Ukraine is a special one. It was in Ukraine that enough documented information was found about corruption schemes and money laundering that involved the gas production company Burisma, where Biden’s son Hunter served on the board of directors for five years. And it was Ukraine that was linked to the episode when Joe Biden put direct pressure on the country’s leadership to replace the Prosecutor General who was investigating the case involving his son and whom he did not like.

In Ukraine this information is not something unexpected and new. It is enough to open the materials of the criminal cases of corruption against Mykola Zlochevsky, a minister from the time of President Yanukovych and his Burisma company. Another fact, which intentionally or accidentally escaped media attention, will most likely catch the attention of the congressmen: literally the day before, a former director of Burisma’s legal department, facing at least 5 years in prison, received a suspended sentence and was actually set free. According to information from Ukraine, the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court (SACC, controlled by handlers from the US State Department and the FBI) considered the case of the largest cash bribe in Europe in the amount of $5+1 million in closed mode in complete secrecy, while blocking access to the text of the decision. Despite the huge evidence base and considerable media coverage, the Ukrainian court unexpectedly ended the case and sentenced Burisma’s top lawyer Andrei Kicha to a 1-year suspended sentence. Kicha promised (but in fact paid off) to transfer UAH 100 million to the Ukrainian United 24 Foundation, although the origin and source of these funds remains unclear. Most likely, it was done at the expense of the same Mykola Zlochevsky.

Andrei Kicha with his lawyer at the court session

To understand just how inconsistent the decision of the Democrat-controlled court is with the gravity of the crime committed and how important it is for the Democrats to “clean up” everything related to the company where Hunter Biden worked for so long, it is enough even to briefly recall the circumstances of this case. In 2020, information about the record-breaking bribe in Europe swept the world’s media. Three people associated with the owner of Burisma, Zlochevsky, tried to give a bribe of $5 million (plus one million for mediation) to the leadership of Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies – the SAP (Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecution Service) and the NABU (National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine). For this money the anticorruption bodies were supposed to close the criminal proceedings against Mykola Zlochevskyy, who was accused of two articles – “embezzlement, misappropriation of property”, as well as “laundering of money obtained by criminal means”. Andriy Kicha, a top lawyer and one of the heads of a group of companies affiliated with Zlochevsky, as well as the first deputy head of the Kiev State Tax Service Mykola Illyashenko and a confidante of Zlochevsky, former head of one of the departments of the State Tax Service Olena Mazurova were assigned to hand over the bribe. According to Ukrainian media reports, it took law enforcement agencies 12 hours just to count the money.

Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption authorities display piles of U.S. currency totaling $6 million. They say it was a bribe aimed at getting authoirites to drop an investigation against the founder of the natural gas company Burisma. (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)

Why is the court decision being hidden from the public and journalists? And why is it so important for the Democrats that the scandals involving Hunter Biden’s company disappear from the media space forever, especially before the start of the U.S. election campaign? It’s enough to recall at least a few of the following episodes.

Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of Burisma in 2014 and served until his term expired in 2019.

Since Burisma has been at the center of President Trump’s impeachment proceedings, it has become known that, as vice president, Joe Biden pressured then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Biden demanded that Poroshenko fire Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in exchange for $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees. Experts say that Biden wanted to prevent investigations that could implicate his son in wrongdoing. This was also stated by Shokin himself. According to him, Ukraine was under investigation for laundering more than $33 million in funds by Burisma. Moreover, Ukrainian prosecutor Konstantin Kulik, who was in charge of the Burisma case and whose decision was crucial to include Hunter Biden in the investigation, stated after his dismissal that the record bribe of $5 million was no more than part of an even larger sum, namely $50 million, which was meant not just to drop charges against Zlochevsky, but to address a larger issue as well – to close all cases against Burisma at all, to clear any suspicions against Hunter Biden.

Mykola Zlochevsky and Hunter Biden

Biden was also accused of receiving $900,000 for lobbying activities from Burisma. And that Biden’s father and son also sold influence in China and Romania. At a press conference in Kiev, it was revealed that the $900,000 had been transferred to the American company Rosemont Seneca Partners, which, according to public sources, particularly the New York Times, is affiliated with Biden. The purpose of the payment was for consulting services. Participants at the press conference insisted that in addition to Ukraine, Biden had also used his influence to stifle the Burma investigation, where Hunter reportedly earned up to $50,000 a month while serving on the corporation’s board of directors. And according to the Romanian media, Hunter Biden had business dealings in that country as well. He ran a real estate business in Bucharest and allegedly tried to be a lobbyist for local real estate magnate Gabriel Popoviciu before he was sentenced to prison in a high-profile corruption case in 2017, G4Media.ro reported.

House Oversight Committee head James Comer said on the Fox News Sunday Morning Futures show that at least 12 relatives of U.S. President Joe Biden may be involved in questionable business deals and financial transactions with foreign companies. According to Comer, “We believe there are about a dozen companies set up by members of the Biden family to hide income or launder money.” With these words in the background, we can assume that after the Biden family business in Ukraine led to the impeachment of U.S. President Donald Trump, many scandals such as Ukrainian courts closing clearly corrupt cases, avoiding punishment for bribes, leaking data that qualifies as influence peddling (see the scandal around correspondence from Hunter Biden’s laptop) and censorship of democratic media, the Biden business in Ukraine will continue to be the focus of the election campaign in the United States.