Hunter Biden’s Ukraine contact allegedly a ‘fixer’ for shady oligarchs
Trim, prone to sharp suits and with a Jason Statham vibe, Vadym Pozharskyi is the mysterious “advisor” to the head of Ukraine’s notorious Burisma oil and natural gas company — and the man at the center of the latest Biden family scandal.
As operatives for Ukrainian oligarchs go, Pozharskyi, 41, is one of the toughest, trained in the trenches of one of the world’s most corrupt countries, say sources familiar with him.
He’s been linked to Hunter Biden, 50, since Biden joined the company’s board in 2014. The son of then-Vice President Joe Biden was useful to Pozharskyi as a liaison to the powerful in Washington, DC. At home, Biden’s appointment to the Burisma board at a salary of $50,000 a month would give a shiny patina to what had sometimes been seen as a corrupt company.
Since 2014, four journalists have uncovered links between the myriad offshore companies that are part of Burisma Holdings and Ukraine’s most powerful, ruthless oligarch, Igor Kolomoisky. Shrouded in secrecy, Burisma has been described as “a big shell company network of a classic British kind, with ownership and control completely obfuscated.”
According to emails obtained by the Post, Hunter introduced his veep dad to Pozharskyi less than a year before Joe Biden leaned on government officials in Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating the $400 million company.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together,” Pozharskyi wrote to Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015. “It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.”
An earlier email from May 2014 shows Pozharskyi asking Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.
The emails — which directly contradict Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” — were contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer Hunter Biden left with a Delaware repairman. A copy of the hard drive was later given to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who provided a copy to The Post.
The Biden campaign has denied that Joe Biden ever had an “official” meeting with Pozharskyi but later admitted it couldn’t rule out that the two men had ever met.
Pozharskyi met plenty of powerbrokers during his frequent forays to Washington and New York. He was pictured with US Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker, who served as a US special representative to Ukraine, and Daniel Fried, US Ambassador to Poland, at meetings of the Atlantic Council, a DC-based think tank partially funded by Burisma.
Hunter Biden left Burisma in 2019 but Pozharskyi, the No. 3 executive at the company, is believed to still be connected to it. Pozharskyi’s current whereabouts are unknown. He did not return emails from The Post, nor did anyone at Burisma. Phone calls to Burisma’s offices in Kiev, Cyprus and London went unanswered.
But being at the center of a U.S. election scandal is not something that would likely rattle the battle-hardened veteran of Ukraine’s lawless past, when corporations literally were at war.
Pozharskyi forged his career at a time in post-Soviet Ukraine when, analysts say, ruthless businessmen like Kolomoisky used their own private armies to wrest control of other companies. Because the military was so weak, private military battalions funded in part by oligarchs often operated with impunity in the country – both fending off Russian separatists and lining their own coffers by strong-arming energy companies they wanted to take over.
“Pozharskyi’s the kind of guy who greases the wheels, shakes the hands and gets the trains to run on time,” a Moscow-based fixer familiar with eastern European oligarchs told The Post. “He’s not spending that much time on yachts like the boss. He’s out hustling and networking.”
More
https://nypost.com/2020/10/31/hunter-bidens-ukraine-contact-allegedly-fixer-for-rulers/