Biden treated Ukraine ‘as his private property’, says purged prosecutor Shokin on Burisma scandal – UkraineGate documentary

Former top Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin says he was pushed out under pressure from US Vice President Joe Biden, after he seized the assets of the oligarch behind Burisma, the gas company that employed Biden’s son.

President Donald Trump’s efforts to investigate Biden’s role in getting Shokin fired served as a pretext for his impeachment in the House of Representatives back in December. However, after Trump was acquitted by the Senate, the US media forgot about Burisma — and Ukraine.

French investigative journalist Olivier Berruyer, founder of popular anti-corruption and economics blog Les Crises, did not. In the fourth installment of his documentary series  ‘UkraineGate: Inconvenient facts,’ Shokin reveals why and how he was ousted and what role the US has played in Ukraine.

Shokin tells Berruyer that Biden and the US government had approved his appointment as prosecutor-general — as, indeed, they did all major appointments in Ukraine since the 2014 Maidan upheaval — and worked with him well until he started getting too close to Burisma. He rejected reports that described his probe as “dormant.” 

“Biden was acting on behalf of his own interests, and those of his family, and not in the interest of the American people,” Shokin said, adding that Barack Obama’s VP “believed that Ukraine was his private property, his fiefdom and that he could do whatever he wanted here.”

Within a few days of Shokin seizing the assets of Mykola Zlochevsky, the oligarch owner of Burisma, President Petro Poroshenko summoned him and told him to back off.

“Don’t you understand what Biden wants from you? Why are you getting into this Burisma stuff again?” Shokin quoted Poroshenko as saying. Within a few weeks, he was replaced by someone Biden called “more solid” – Yuriy Lutsenko, who had no training in law, and whom Shokin describes as a traitor to Ukraine. 

The previous installment of Berruyer’s documentary featured testimonies from Ukrainians who argued that Poroshenko was directly involved in corruption, and that Hunter Biden’s job at Burisma was a de facto bribe intended for his father. 

https://www.rt.com/news/481791-biden-ukraine-burisma-pressure/

Poroshenko ‘most corrupt president ever,’ Hunter Biden’s board job may have been bribe for his father – UkraineGate documentary

Former Ukrainian officials told a French journalist that President Petro Poroshenko was directly involved in corruption, and that Hunter Biden’s job at the gas company Burisma was a bribe to his father, the US vice president. 

US President Donald Trump is currently on trial in the Senate, having been impeached by the House over Democrat allegations that withholding military aid to Ukraine over corruption concerns amounted to an abuse of power. Former Ukrainian officials and anti-corruption activists, however, have testified that not only was there corruption involving Burisma, the natural gas firm tied to former vice president and Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden’s son, but that it went all the way to the top.

These revelations can be found in the third installment of the documentary series ‘UkraineGate: Inconvenient facts’, produced by the French investigative journalist Olivier Berruyer, founder of popular anti-corruption and economics blog Les Crises.

Hunter Biden was hired “solely to pressure Ukrainian authorities into stopping the criminal investigations into Burisma,” former Deputy Prosecutor-General Renat Kuzmin told Berruyer. These investigations had raised the possibility that Biden’s compensation was in effect a bribe being channeled to his father, who handled the Ukraine policy for the Obama administration. 

When VP Biden demanded the firing of head prosecutor Viktor Shokin – as he later boasted on camera – Poroshenko was happy to oblige, even if he had to bribe some members of the Rada to make it happen, interviewees have revealed. 

A leading anti-corruption activist openly accused the former president of keeping the office of prosecutor-general under personal political control. One former deputy prosecutor said that Poroshenko treated the office as “an escort service,” in his pursuit of money and power.  

A former employee of the prosecutor-general’s office described Poroshenko as “the most corrupt president in our history, as of now.” 

Former MP Oleksandr Onyschenko testified that Burisma’s owner Mykola Zlochevsky used him in late 2015 to relay a $50 million bribe offer to Poroshenko to make the investigations go away – and that the president agreed. The former parliamentarian and close associate of Poroshenko has since turned whistleblower, admitting to taking bribes himself in exchange for votes, such as the one to remove Shokin. 

Poroshenko lost his re-election bid in 2019 to comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, and is currently reported to be facing multiple criminal investigations for corruption.  

“Unfortunately, Ukraine is corrupt to the core,” said former Deputy Prosecutor Kuzmin, pointing the finger of blame at the US government’s involvement with Poroshenko’s administration.

https://www.rt.com/news/479578-burisma-biden-poroshenko-corruption-berruyer/

UkraineGate: MSM believed Biden’s narrative, but documentary reveals ousted prosecutor had 6 cases against Burisma

Joe Biden pushed to oust the top Ukrainian prosecutor who had six cases against gas firm Burisma, where Hunter Biden sat on the board of directors. A new documentary is challenging the narrative that the media failed to check.

Burisma Holdings is a major private Ukrainian gas company, with headquarters in Cyprus, which employed Biden’s son Hunter from 2014 to 2019. The firm’s name surfaced last year when it was alleged that Donald Trump pressured his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky to open a probe into the firm – and his Democratic rival Joe Biden.

The claims snowballed into ‘abuse of power’ and ‘obstruction of Congress’ charges, which eventually led to the impeachment of President Trump by the House of Representatives on December 18. Trump has denied any wrongdoing, with his lawyers describing the row as a “dangerous perversion of the Constitution.”

When Joe Biden lobbied Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to replace Ukraine’s top prosecutor Viktor Shokin with Yuriy Lutsenko in 2015, his entourage claimed that Shokin had failed to thoroughly investigate corruption, and by pushing for his replacement “saint” Biden even acted against his family’s interests.

But the second episode of the documentary series ‘UkraineGate: Inconvenient facts’ produced by French investigative journalist Olivier Berruyer, founder of popular anti-corruption and economics blog Les Crises, shows information that undermines this narrative.

The American media reported that Shokin’s case against Ukrainian energy company Burisma had gone “dormant,” and that by pressing for Lutsenko’s appointment, Biden was quashing corruption, even if that meant subjecting his own son to investigation in the process. Hunter Biden was on the company’s board from 2014 till 2019. However, documents collected by Berruyer show that Shokin’s Burisma probe was far from “dormant.” Shokin himself even told ABC News that his office had six investigations into Burisma open at the time of his resignation.

Lutsenko, he said, “stopped all those cases.”

ABC didn’t air this part of the interview, and the American media – including the Washington Post and the New York Times – continue to label Shokin’s investigation “dormant,” despite a number of publicly available documents showing otherwise and presented in the documentary.

One day after Lutsenko’s appointment, Biden called Poroshenko to welcome the announcement, and to inform him that the US would move forward with a $1 billion aid loan to Ukraine.

The cases against Burisma and its head Mykola Zlochevsky were closed under Lutsenko for various reasons. The company paid around $7 million in taxes, but it’s a fraction of the $70 million that Lutsenko himself said the company owed.

Berruyer does not claim that Shokin is an incorruptible public servant, and says that there are two hypotheses for the reasons for investigation. Either he wanted to punish criminal activity, or he may have been motivated to pursue the Burisma case to seize the assets of the company’s founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, before shaking the oligarch down for a bribe.

“In any case, this issue doesn’t change anything about the main point, Joe Biden’s involvement. Since the investigations were moving forward, he de facto helped the oligarch, voluntarily or not,” Berruyer said.

The second episode of the documentary is already available online, with two more to come.

https://www.rt.com/news/478817-biden-oust-ukrainian-prosecutor-documentary-berruyer/

UkraineGate documentary shows Joe Biden’s ‘someone solid’ for Ukrainian General Prosecutor was anything but

Former US vice-president and White House hopeful Joe Biden “brazenly lied” about supporting anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine while actually hindering them, according to a new hard-hitting documentary film.

US President Donald Trump was impeached in the House of Representatives based on the narrative that he interfered in Ukrainian domestic affairs for personal political gain – but it was Biden himself who interfered while he was Barack Obama’s deputy, according to ‘UkraineGate: Inconvenient Facts.’

The documentary was produced by French investigative journalist Olivier Berruyer, founder of popular anti-corruption and economics blog Les Crises.

Biden publicly boasted about using US and international aid as leverage in 2015 to get prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired and replaced by Yuriy Lutsenko, who was an interior minister in 2005-2006 but was later convicted by a Ukrainian court for corruption. After the 2014 Euromaidan coup the sentence was quashed.

Those interviewed in Berruyer’s film describe Lutsenko as a “crook” who was “abusing his office,” a man who “does not have any moral values and principles,” and who had done “nothing” to fight corruption while in his post.

"Our investigation and its many powerful testimonies prove that Joe Biden lied brazenly and misled many people" when he claimed Shokin's replacement was “someone solid,” says Berruyer.

https://www.rt.com/news/478156-biden-ukrainegate-documentary-berruyer/