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Hunter Biden’s $83K PER MONTH Salary From Ukrainian Company Raises Eyebrows


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Joe Biden’s son Hunter has a long history of benefitting off of his father’s influential position in government, and the recent whistleblower complaint against President Trump has blown right back in the Biden family’s face, drawing attention to the Bidens’ connection to the Ukraine.

The Biden-Ukraine controversy centers around this: while Joe was Vice President in the Obama administration, Hunter had a position on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, where he was paid out $83K PER MONTH.

What exactly was his role to earn such a hefty salary?

Your guess is as good as mine. 

Hunter Biden had no prior experience in the energy industry or the Ukraine prior to taking up the position on the Burisma Holdings board.

At the time of being appointed to the Bursima Holdings board, Hunter Biden didn't exactly have a squeaky-clean background either.

Yet, of course, the mainstream liberal media is keeping their silence on this issue.

And, Hunter Biden is nowhere to be found or heard from!

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Breitbart has more details on Hunter Biden's huge earnings and position at the Ukrainian energy firm that is drawing suspicion as to what exactly he did to earn it:

The hefty salary that Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden’s youngest son, drew while serving on the board of directors of a Ukrainian oil and gas giant is raising questions not only about his role with the company, but also if he profited from his father’s political influence.

The younger Biden, who has a history of getting rich from entities tied to his father, is at the center of controversy after President Donald Trump suggested the Ukrainian government look into his business dealings in the country. Although the former vice president has attempted to paint the issue as an abuse of power on Trump’s part, many have noted the unanswered questions surrounding his son’s tenure at Burisma points to serious conflict of interests, if not outright corruption.

The most prominent and perplexing question is how and why Hunter Biden was appointed to the company’s board of directors in the first place. As Peter Schweizer, senior contributor at Breitbart News, detailed in his book, Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, Hunter Biden had no prior experience with either the energy industry or Ukraine before joining Burisma in April 2014. In fact, his background in investment banking, lobbying, and hedge fund management paled in comparison to that of current and past members of the company’s board of directors.

At the time of his appointment, ethics watchdogs highlighted the younger Biden’s lack of qualifications but were more concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest. In particular, many worried Hunter Biden’s ascension to the board of directors, a position that paid at times more than $83,000 per month, was related to his father’s position as the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine.

The poor optics not only raised flags among ethics watchdogs, but also with Hunter Biden’s own business partners. Christopher Heinz, the stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry and co-owner of an investment firm with Hunter Biden in 2014, rushed to play damage control with State Department officials at the time of the appointment, according to internal emails obtained by the Washington Examiner.

Adding to concerns is the fact that at the time Hunter Biden joined Burisma, the company was seen as actively courting western leaders to prevent further scrutiny of its business practices. The same month Hunter Biden was tapped for the group’s board, the government of Great Britain froze accounts belonging to Burisma founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, under suspicion of money laundering. Zlochevsky, a former Ukrainian minister of natural resources, would later be accused of corruption for using his office to approve oil and gas licenses to companies under his control.

Joe Biden’s role in the entire matter has only increased suspicions of conflicting interests. As the sitting vice president, Joe Biden led the Obama administration’s response to the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014. In that role, he pushed billions of dollars in aid to the Ukrainian government, some of which allegedly was filtered to Burisma.

More troubling, however, is an episode that took place in 2016, when Joe Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire Viktor Shokin, the country’s top prosecutor.

Officially, the former vice president has claimed his threat to withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine if Shokin was not fired came from the Obama administration, which had lost confidence in the prosecutor’s abilities to root out corruption.

Unofficially, though, it was well known that Shokin was investigating both Burisma and Zlochevsky for wrongdoing. Regardless of the reason, Shokin’s successor closed the investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky, allowing the oligarch to return to the country after having fled in 2014.

Bloomberg via Yahoo News also said the following about the Bidens and their connections to the Ukraine:

After Joe Biden became vice president in 2009, Hunter, a lawyer by training, pursued business opportunities with foreign parties, often in ways that intersected with his father’s work. In May 2014, Cyprus-registered Burisma Holdings, one of the largest natural gas companies in Ukraine, announced that Hunter Biden had joined its board.

The company was at a sensitive point. Mykola Zlochevsky, who founded Burisma in 2002, later served as Ukraine’s environment minister under President Viktor Yanukovych. In February 2014, mass protests swept Yanukovych from power. Western governments encouraged Ukraine’s new leaders to investigate corruption. The U.K. froze $23 million in London bank accounts linked to Zlochevsky and sought Ukraine’s help to build a money-laundering case.

After the U.K. request, Ukrainian prosecutors opened their own investigation into Zlochevsky, first looking at whether he embezzled public funds. Burisma and Zlochevsky have denied any wrongdoing. Zlochevsky’s lawyer, Petro Boyko, declined to comment.

That spring, Burisma began adding several prominent foreigners to its board. In a statement announcing Hunter Biden’s role, Burisma said it was part of an effort to introduce “best corporate practices” at the firm. It said he would advise on “transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion, and other priorities.”

Hunter Biden’s compensation for serving on the board was apparently routed through Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC, a U.S. company set up by one of his business partners, Devon Archer, who also served as a Burisma director. Bank records from 2014 and 2015, disclosed in unrelated litigation, show the company receiving funds from Burisma and paying more than $850,000 to the younger Biden. He remained on the board until this year.

The Zlochevsky Investigations

The U.S. sent a letter to Ukrainian prosecutors in December 2014 complaining that they weren’t assisting the U.K. authorities with their Zlochevsky investigation and warned of negative consequences if the lack of cooperation continued. In January 2015, the U.K. case collapsed and a court released the $23 million in seized funds.

The Ukrainians’ own inquiries into Zlochevsky expanded to include tax evasion and the awarding of gas licenses during his time as minister. Viktor Shokin, who served first as a deputy prosecutor and then as prosecutor general, handled at least some aspects of the investigation. But the cases languished under Shokin, according to Vitaliy Kasko, a former deputy prosecutor who worked with Shokin and who spoke with Bloomberg News this year. Kasko added that there was no U.S. pressure to end the inquiries.

U.S. officials continued to accuse the prosecutor general’s office of failing to fight corruption. In a September 2015 speech, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine faulted the office for “subverting” the U.K. probe.

Vice President Biden’s Role in Ukraine

Joe Biden played a key role in U.S. diplomacy with Ukraine. He has said he made at least a dozen visits to Kyiv as vice president.

At one point, the U.S. threatened to withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee unless Shokin was removed from office. Biden delivered the message directly to Ukrainian officials. “If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” he told them, according to an account of the conversation he gave at a 2018 conference. Shokin was ousted in March 2016, and the loan guarantee came through.

The U.S. push for Shokin’s dismissal wasn’t the vice president’s idea and filtered up from officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation. The International Monetary Fund was also faulting Ukraine for a failure to tackle corruption, and demonstrators on the streets of Kyiv were calling for Shokin’s ouster.

Joe Biden has said that he’s never spoken with his son about his foreign business dealings. Hunter told the New Yorker earlier this year that they once touched on Ukraine obliquely. “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do.’”

In January 2017, Burisma issued a statement saying that “all legal proceedings and pending criminal allegations” against Zlochevsky and the company were closed and that it had agreed to make up any unpaid taxes if it was found deficient.



 

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