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Latvian government says it flagged ‘suspicious’ Hunter Biden payments in 2016
https://johnsolomonreports.com/
“In this case, the Latvian FIU reached out to its Ukrainian counterpart seeking additional clarifications,” he added. “Information was received, yet no incriminatory evidence for further analysis was provided by the Ukrainian authorities.”
Saburovs said authorities in his country could find no evidence they flagged the same transactions to U.S. authorities even though Hunter Biden and two others named in the letter were Americans and the U.S. firm, Rosemont Seneca Bohais that was connected to Hunter Biden, routinely received monthly payments totaling more than $166,600 from Burisma.
“We do not possess such information,” he said when asked about contacts with U.S. officials.
A lawyer for Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s campaign did not respond to requests Monday seeking comment.
The Latvian correspondence adds to a growing body of evidence that questions and investigations of Burisma were swirling in early 2016 just before Joe Biden used his authority as vice president to force the firing of Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in March 2016 by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid.
Shokin was overseeing a wide-ranging Ukrainian investigation of Burisma and has said he was making plans to interview Hunter Biden when he was fired by Ukraine’s president and parliament in March 2016 under pressure from Joe Biden.
Biden and his defenders have said he forced the firing of Shokin because the Ukraine prosecutor was an ineffective corruption fighter; Shokin alleges he was dismissed because he wouldn’t end the Burisma probe.
The Biden family has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, with Jill Biden offering the latest defense of her son this past weekend. “I know my son. I know my son’s character. Hunter did nothing wrong. And that’s the bottom line,” she told MSNBC.
But recently, multiple State Department witnesses testified during the impeachment hearings against President Trump that Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma while his father oversaw U.S.-Ukraine policy as vice president created the appearance of a conflict of interest. One testified e even blocked a project with Burisma because State was concerned about allegations of corruption.
When I first divulged Joe Biden’s role in Shokin’s firing last year, Democrats and their allies in the media and Ukrainian civil society organizations claimed it was no big deal because the Burisma investigation in Ukraine was dormant at the time Biden took action.
But since that time, significant evidence has emerged that the investigation was, in fact, active and that Burisma itself had concerns about the corruption allegations swirling around it.
For instance, Ukrainian prosecutors confirmed in December 2015 they transferred their investigative files to detectives at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to pursue several leads.
On Feb. 2, 2016, the Ukraine prosecutor general’s office secured a court order to re-seize the assets of Burisma Holdings founder Mykola Zlochevsky. Officers went to the home, placed seizure notices and took items from the home that included a luxury car, officials said.
About two weeks later, the Latvian suspicious financial transactions memo was transmitted to Ukrainian authorities.
And then in late February, according to U.S. documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, Burisma’s American representatives pressed the U.S. State Department to try to help end the corruption allegations against the company. You can read those documents here.
By mid-March 2016, State’s top official for Ukraine policy publicly called for Shokin’s ouster, and less than three weeks later Joe Biden managed to force Ukraine’s president to fire Shokin by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees.
Almost immediately, Burisma’s American legal team was in Ukraine seeking to meet with Shokin’s replacement at the Ukraine prosecutor general’s office.
A summary of an April 6, 2016 meeting between Burisma representatives and Ukraine prosecutors – released by the Prosecutor General’s Office – states “false information” was used to justify Shokin’s firing.
Whatever the case, the corruption investigations were dropped in late 2016 and early 2017, and Burisma paid a penalty for tax issues.
But early in 2019, NABU and the Ukraine prosecutor general’s office announced they were reopening the investigation into Burisma, specifically to revisit the allegations about money laundering, according to the notice of suspicion released by prosecutors in that country. You can read NABU’s request to reopen the probe here.
That probe is ongoing and recently was expanded to look at other issues. And the entire Burisma episode is now part of the larger impeachment proceedings playing out in America against President Donald Trump.