Editorials & Other Articles

Purveyor

(29,876 posts) Tue Dec 8, 2015, 05:59 PM Dec 2015

Joe Biden, His Son and the Case Against a Ukrainian Oligarch

WASHINGTON — When Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. traveled to Kiev, Ukraine, on Sunday for a series of meetings with the country’s leaders, one of the issues on his agenda was to encourage a more aggressive fight against Ukraine’s rampant corruption and stronger efforts to rein in the power of its oligarchs.

But the credibility of the vice president’s anticorruption message may have been undermined by the association of his son, Hunter Biden, with one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies, Burisma Holdings, and with its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was Ukraine’s ecology minister under former President Viktor F. Yanukovych before he was forced into exile.

Hunter Biden, 45, a former Washington lobbyist, joined the Burisma board in April 2014. That month, as part of an investigation into money laundering, British officials froze London bank accounts containing $23 million that allegedly belonged to Mr. Zlochevsky.

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, an independent government agency, specifically forbade Mr. Zlochevksy, as well as Burisma Holdings, the company’s chief legal officer and another company owned by Mr. Zlochevsky, to have any access to the accounts.

But after Ukrainian prosecutors refused to provide documents needed in the investigation, a British court in January ordered the Serious Fraud Office to unfreeze the assets. The refusal by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office to cooperate was the target of a stinging attack by the American ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, who called out Burisma’s owner by name in a speech in September.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/world/europe/corruption-ukraine-joe-biden-son-hunter-biden-ties.html?_r=0

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Joe Biden, His Son and the Case Against a Ukrainian Oligarch (Original Post) Purveyor Dec 2015 OP

A few more snips that do raise some questions: KoKo Dec 2015 #1

Ukrainian Employer of Joe Biden’s Son Hires a D.C. Lobbyist newthinking Dec 2015 #2

KoKo

(84,711 posts)

1. A few more snips that do raise some questions:

Reply to Purveyor (Original post)

Tue Dec 8, 2015, 08:40 PM

Dec 2015

The NYT (as discredited as it is over Judith Miller and other Reporting isn't the only Media who has reported on Hunter Biden's involvement. It was out there when the Ukraine situation started to get more U.S. coverage and Hunter got the job in the aftermath of the whole Crimea situation.)

From the Article:

But Edward C. Chow, who follows Ukrainian policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the involvement of the vice president’s son with Mr. Zlochevsky’s firm undermined the Obama administration’s anticorruption message in Ukraine.

“Now you look at the Hunter Biden situation, and on the one hand you can credit the father for sending the anticorruption message,” Mr. Chow said. “But I think unfortunately it sends the message that a lot of foreign countries want to believe about America, that we are hypocritical about these issues.”

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Mr. Biden is the younger of the vice president’s two sons. His brother, Beau, died of brain cancer in May. In the past, Hunter Biden attracted an unusual level of scrutiny and even controversy. In 2014, he was discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine use. He received a commission as an ensign in 2013, and he served as a public affairs officer.

Before his father was vice president, Mr. Biden also briefly served as president of a hedge fund group, Paradigm Companies, in which he was involved with one of his uncles, James Biden, the vice president’s brother. That deal went sour amid lawsuits in 2007 and 2008 involving the Bidens and an erstwhile business partner. Mr. Biden, a graduate of Georgetown University and Yale Law School, also worked as a lobbyist before his father became vice president.

Burisma does not disclose the compensation of its board members because it is a privately held company, Mr. Toohey said Monday, but he added that the amount was “not out of the ordinary” for similar corporate board positions.

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Vice President Biden has played a leading role in American policy toward Ukraine as Washington seeks to counter Russian intervention in Eastern Ukraine. This week’s visit was his fifth trip to Ukraine as vice president.

Ms. Bedingfield said Hunter Biden had never traveled to Ukraine with his father. She also said that Ukrainian officials had never mentioned Hunter Biden’s role with Burisma to the vice president during any of his visits.

“I’ve got to believe that somebody in the vice president’s office has done some due diligence on this,” said Steven Pifer, who was the American ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000. “I should say that I hope that has happened. I would hope that they have done some kind of check, because I think the vice president has done a very good job of sending the anticorruption message in Ukraine, and you would hate to see something like this undercut that message.”

newthinking

(3,982 posts)

2. Ukrainian Employer of Joe Biden’s Son Hires a D.C. Lobbyist

Reply to KoKo (Reply #1)

Tue Dec 8, 2015, 10:10 PM

Dec 2015

Apparently they were targeting the development of fracking fields much of which was expected to be in the Donbass.

Ukrainian Employer of Joe Biden’s Son Hires a D.C. Lobbyist

http://time.com/2964493/ukraine-joe-biden-son-hunter-burisma/

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