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Same person? Excerpt from article https://themarketswork.com/2019/04/27/joe-biden-obama-officials-stood-to-gain-from-ukraine-influence/
Biden’s Involvement in Ukraine
In April, Biden would get personally involved, as would his son, Hunter. On April 18, 2014, Hunter Biden was appointed to the Board of Directors for Burisma–one of the largest natural gas companies in Ukraine.
Four days later, on April 22 2014, Vice President Biden traveled to Ukraine, offering his political support and $50 million in aid for Yatsenyuk’s shaky new government. Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire politician, was elected as president of Ukraine on May 25, 2014.
Biden became close to both men and helped Ukraine to obtain a four-year $17.5 billion IMF package in March 2015.
In October 2016, Foreign Policy wrote a lengthy article, What Will Ukraine Do Without Uncle Joe, which described Biden’s role in the removal of Ukraine’s general prosecutor, Victor Shokin. Shokin, the choice of Ukrainian president Poroshenko, was portrayed as fumbling a major corruption case and “hindering an investigation into two high-ranking state prosecutors arrested on corruption charges.”
The United States pushed for Shokin’s removal and Biden led the effort by personally threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees. In an interview with the Atlantic, Biden recalled telling Poroshenko, “Petro, you’re not getting your billion dollars. It’s OK, you can keep the [prosecutor] general. Just understand—we’re not paying if you do.” Shokin was removed by Poroshenko shortly thereafter, in early 2016.
But according to reporting by The Hill, Shokin had been investigating Burisma, the company that Biden’s son Hunter was a board member of, at the time of his firing. Shokin’s investigation into Burisma had previously been disclosed back in June 2017, by Front News International.
Burisma is owned by the former Minister of Ecology for Ukraine, Nikolai Zlochevsky (also known as Mykola Zlochevsky). According to Front News, Zlochevsky issued a “special permit for the extraction of a third of the gas produced in Ukraine” to his own company, Burisma.
According to the Ukrainian non-profit “Anti Corruption Action Center,” Zlochevsky owns 38 permits held by 14 different companies—with Burisma accounting for the majority with 33 of the permits. Zlochevsky left Ukraine after former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia during the Ukrainian Revolution known as Euromaidan.
Investigation Into Burisma
In the spring of 2014, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office opened an investigation at the behest of the UK prosecutors office, which was investigating money laundering allegations against Zlochevsky and had just frozen $23.5 million in assets allegedly belonging to him in early April 2014. Shokin, who was not appointed as general prosecutor until February 2015, was not yet involved in the case.
Ukrainian prosecutors refused to provide the UK with needed documents and in January 2015 a British court ordered the assets unfrozen. This action was pointedly called out in a speech by former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, who stated “In the case of former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the U.K. authorities had seized $23 million in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian people.” Instead of receiving cooperation from Ukrainian prosecutors, they “sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result, the money was freed by the U.K. court, and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus.”