SPECIAL REPORT
21st Century Wire
Despite the constant deflections being employed by the Democratic Party and its affiliate media, the scale and scope of Biden family corruption scandal is still growing by the day. From a purely political standpoint, this story has the ability to impact the current 2024 election, and could disable President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, not to mention a severe blow to the Democratic establishment too. More crucially, it will impact the wider the Deep State – beginning with the FBI, the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and key U.S. diplomatic missions abroad – all of which are directly involved in this scandal in hiding evidence and slowing down any investigations into the current president and his son over the last five years.
As the story continues to build, journalists and politicians in the U.S. are becoming increasingly daring in confronting the Biden family’s corruption and influence peddling, as confirmed by the recent of release more documents and explosive witness testimonies. Among the the former, the emergence of still more key documents including international bank statements and incriminating correspondences gleaned from Hunter Biden’s laptop. Among the latter, are the testimonies of law enforcement officials who first accessed evidence of the Bidens’ corruption as part of their investigations, is of particular importance here.
Until recently, the Democrats had successfully used the fabricated charge of ‘election interference’ or ‘foreign influence’ by Russia, China or Ukraine in order to misdirect and fend-off inquiries into the Bidens’ dubious dealings. While this tactic may have worked during previous election cycles, it’s now becoming harder and harder to deflect all the accusations, especially after the House of Representatives passed a resolution in June which explicitly recognized there is no evidence the Trump campaign had ties to Russia. The same resolution also posits that Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA), who led the investigations and impeachment hearings for then President Donald Trump, had not only misled the American public, but “used his position and capabilities to threaten the national security of the United States” – as his Congressional colleagues noted. This means that the entire premise of Russiagate has been consigned to the growing dust heap of ‘official’ disinformation.
As a result, the subject of Joe Biden’s ties to various corruption schemes is now firmly established in the daily lexicon of American politics and mainstream media, effectively opening a path for the acceleration of two investigations by House Republicans committees. At the center of those investigations are the current U.S. President Joseph Biden (former Vice President under Barack Obama), members of his family (son Hunter Biden and brother James Biden) and his inner circle who currently occupy high positions within the White House, Department of State, as well as law enforcement agencies and diplomatic missions (in particular, Amos Hochstein, Antony Blinken, Marie Jovanovitch, George Kent, and John Kerry).
(Source: US Congress)
It should be no surprise that after being given control of the Ukraine portfolio by President Obama, that country became the epicenter of the Biden’s flourishing international corruption racket.
Despite concerted efforts by the U.S. political establishment to conceal the Bidens’ corrupt enterprise, and despite the policy of silence by the Deep State, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the key to the Bidens’ political past, present, and future – lies precisely in Ukraine.
How did this former Soviet state become the key to unlocking a puzzle of American political corruption?
Ukraine and corruption
When grappling when the issue of corruption in Ukraine, it’s impossible to ignore the sharp increase in U.S. influence on internal processes of Ukrainian governance starting in 2014. At that time, the Central European post-Soviet state, rich in natural resources and black soil, but mired in corruption, experienced a change of power as a result of one of many color revolutions that were conducted around the world with the active support of the United States. Following the Maidan protests and ouster of the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych, a new pro-Western government was formed in the country, and an active “purification” (also called “lustration”) of the central government, judicial and law enforcement agencies began. These changes took place with U.S. taxpayer funds – money originating from U.S. State Department and transferred through an array of USAID programs. Also in accordance with the U.S. and IMF requirements, brand new “anti-corruption” bodies and courts were imposed on the country, which, as local media reported, were not even provided for in the Ukrainian Constitution. These included, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine, and the State Bureau of Investigation.
The recruitment of heads and employees of these bodies was conducted under supervision of a special board instead of a regular contest commission, and which were touted as open and independent. But in reality, the lists of public observers who were members of those commissions were in fact pre-approved at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, with the personal involvement of Ambassador Marie Jovanovitch, and with positions open to both foreigners and Ukrainian citizens. To the uninitiated public, this procedure may have seemed rather harmless and desirable, but in reality it played a key role in the establishment of Ukraine’s external governance.
SEE ALSO: The Bidens’ Corruption Case – Will There Be Accountability in U.S. or Ukraine?
Of all the new foreign influenced institutions, none is more illustrative than NABU. To date, there are numerous examples in media which show how NABU actually duplicates the powers of other state law enforcement agencies, only with a much wider range of powers and special clearances, and at the same time, not under the direct control of the government and parliament. The impunity of NABU has led to numerous scandals related to violations of Ukrainian law by its management and detectives, as well as their complete and total accountability to the U.S. Embassy in Kiev.
The United States and international organizations demanded from Ukraine’s new leadership under then President Petro Poroshenko, and his coalition in Parliament (a government formed under the careful guidance of the State Department) to undertake a number of key reforms in areas such as the economy and public administration, including but not limited to judicial, law enforcement, energy, medical, land, and state property.
Between 2014 and 2016, Ukraine adopted an electronic declaration (although the Venice Commission later recognized its adoption as a human rights violation because it also applied to anti-corruption activists, which their Western handlers were not prepared for: “Strict disclosure requirements for public activists…would have dire consequences for civil society in Ukraine and should be completely abolished or significantly reduced”). Subsequently, for all state-owned companies, supervisory boards were formed, to which highly paid foreigners were most often appointed, and which also violated constitutional norms. A classic redistribution of property took place (by taking away assets from top officials and oligarchs who left the country), and an “independent” Ukrainian energy market was being formed.
During this period of complicated relations between Ukraine and the Russian Federation due to the annexation of Crimea and military actions in the east of Ukraine (in the so-called LPR and DPR), it was international organizations and the United States, which determined the size and scope of the development of the Ukrainian energy sector – towards “energy independence” from Russia, along with its integration into the European energy system. This transition implied the purchase of energy carriers at European spot prices and regulation of the domestic market in terms of pricing. These changes led to an active increase in gas, electricity and heating tariffs for industry and households alike, which has not stopped to this day.
The two key players in this industry were and still are the National Commission for State Regulation of Energy and Public Utilities, which influenced only the pricing of domestic market tariffs, and PJV Naftogaz of Ukraine, the state monopoly and Ukraine’s largest and most profitable company. The National Commission was headed by a rather young member of President Poroshenko’s cohort, 30 year-old, Dmytro Vovk, who had previously been a top manager of Poroshenko’s confectionery factory in Russia. As for the management of PJV Naftogaz of Ukraine, in addition to its immediate head Andriy Kobolev (many media outlets wrote about his close ties to the United States and even his American citizenship), the supervisory board of the company included one Amos Hochstein, an adviser on energy issues to U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden. Hochstein held that position until 2021, before being appointed as Biden’s White House advisor.
It is Amos Hochstein that the media dubbed “the architect” of the corrupt scheme that involved the so-called “reverse flow” of European gas back into Ukraine. It was to control its implementation by Kobolev that Amos Hochstein was appointed to the Supervisory Board of Naftohaz of Ukraine.
IMAGE: Scheme of withdrawal of funds received by Ukraine for so-called”reverse gas”, which was in fact Russian gas, and the presentation of the results of the investigation.
The Amos Hochstein-Andriy Kobolev nexus ensured the “reverse gas” supply scheme was alive and well during 2015-2020. As part of this scheme, Ukraine, having officially refused to purchase Russian gas, initiated the search for new supplier countries. The population read news about the transition to “reverse supplies” of gas from Europe, but in reality Ukraine bought the same Russian gas, although it paid for it with new companies, and with due regard for the financial interests of all those involved.
To physically organize corruption on the reverse route, several proxy firms were created. An example is the company “ERU Trading”, which in 2015 alone, purchased more than 420 million m3 of “European” gas from the Slovakian division of ENGIE, and then turned around and resold it to certain Ukrainian industrial enterprises. The funds received as a result of such a scheme were withdrawn from Ukraine and laundered through a network of offshore companies.
In particular, the Ukrainian media wrote that on two episodes from July 2016 to July 2017, sums of 348 and 274 million hryvnias were withdrawn from the account of ERU Management Services LLC. In total, more than 620 million hryvnias was taken. According to calculations made by a public inquiry in Ukraine, Kobolev’s team managed to withdraw $50 from the Ukrainian budget for each 1,000 m3 of gas on such supplies, amounting to a grand total of $1.5 billion.
At the same time, Ukraine has never denied that the scheme was organized by Amos Hochstein and with the patronage of Joe Biden. “The reverse from Slovakia in 2014 was made by Joe Biden,” said a commodities trader to the authoritative Ukrainian weekly publication, Liga.
The Burisma case
Gas production plays an important role in the Ukrainian energy sector. Compared to many other European countries, Ukraine is well endowed with some large gas and oil deposits. The key player in this sphere remains Burisma, a company owned by Mykola Zlochevsky, former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine. Zlochevsky held this post during the time of President Yanukovych, who fled Ukraine following the 2014 Maidan revolution. Not surprisingly, in a country with a high level of corruption, the minister’s company – whose ministry just happens to issue the permits to develop gas fields, was the first in gas production.
It is not surprising that after the Maidan, the redistribution of property began. Law enforcers led by the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine (the Prosecutor General at the time was Viktor Shokin, a close associate of President Poroshenko) initiated a number of criminal cases against legal entities belonging to the Burisma group of companies. In addition to Ukraine, interest in the financial frauds of the Burisma gas production company was also shown by authorities in the UK, Latvia and Cyprus, where some of the accounts and funds were found and seized.
Zlochevsky, who left Ukraine, quickly realized that without the involvement of some significant patrons, he could lose everything he had gained during the Yanukovych era. He needed to secure the services of key “big guys” if he was to save his corporate empire from being dismantled.
It didn’t take long. In early 2014, weighty international figures began appearing on the supervisory board of Burisma Holdings – Aleksander Kwasniewski, Alan Apter, Devon Archer and, strangely enough, Hunter Biden, son of US Vice President Joseph Biden, who just happened to be in charge of international policy towards Ukraine in Barack Obama’s office.
Why Hunter Biden was invited to a such a highly paid position in a gas production company despite having no relevant education or experience in the energy sector, remained a mystery. Later it would be revealed that other board members did not speak favorably of the young Biden. For example, below is a part of a conversation in which Vadym Pozharsky, director of Burisma, asks for additional advice for the company because Hunter Biden turned out to be “dumb”.
IMAGE: A fragment of a declassified FBI document called form FD-1023, where Vadym Pozharsky calls Hunter Biden “not smart” (Source)
And here the owner of Burisma himself, Mykola Zlochevsky, directly states that Hunter Biden “was so stupid that even his (Zlochevsky’s) dog was smarter”:
IMAGE: Excerpt of a declassified FBI document titled Form FD-1023, where Mykola Zlochevsky compares Hunter Biden to his dog (Source)
At first, Mykola Zlochevsky’s scheme garnered favorable results: his international patrons were able to protect his businesses from falling foul of authorities; criminal cases were stopped, arrests were lifted from accounts in Ukraine and Britain, and the main initiator of the Burisma prosecution – Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin – was forced to resign.
As it turned out, the pivotal role in this process was played by none other than US Vice President Joe Biden, who flew back and forth between the U.S. and Ukraine multiple times between 2014 and 2016, including personally pushing for Shokin’s removal as Prosecutor General, and the closure of all Burisma cases. Biden bragged that he visited the country “12-13 times in total,” including jointly with his energy adviser Amos Hochstein. And Biden himself, not shyly and without hiding it, reminiscing about the incident during international panel event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, where he proudly boasted how he personally had Shokin, head of top law enforcement agency in the independent and sovereign state of Ukraine, removed from his post.
A bolshy Biden recounted the exchange where he threatened to withhold $1 billion in guaranteed U.S. loans unless Poroshenko sacked his Prosecutor General. “If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”
IMAGE: Joe Biden talks about the dismissal of Prosecutor General Shokin, Council on Foreign Relations meeting, January 2018.
Incredibly, it has taken eight years for the “Burisma case” to be properly deconstructed and presented in a way in which the public could properly understand how it became the foundational pillar of the Biden family’s international influence peddling racket. And it was Burisma which became the thread that could be pulled in order to unravel the tightly-wound knot of international corruption in which the U.S. Democratic Party and many its key figures would find themselves mired.
But why is the Biden family’s corruption being seriously discussed only now? After all, it was well-known long before that….
The Andriy Derkach Factor: Kremlin Agent or Fighter Against International Corruption?
“Ground zero”, of this scandal linking the scandalous Burisma, its odious beneficiary Mykola Zlochevsky, Hunter Biden, and 46th U.S. President himself, Joe Biden, was Ukrainian Parliamentian, Andriy Derkach.
Derkach’s resume is impressive: extensive political experience gained since the mid-90s after the collapse of the USSR and Ukraine’s independence, with over 20 years of parliamentary experience, and holding a range of positions in the presidential administration and government, as well as managing state enterprises. An interesting fact of his biography, on which U.S. Democrats skillfully dismissed all of the information from Derkach which did not suit them, was how in the early 90s Derkach attended the Academy of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation. But as his career path shows, throughout his time in politics, this fact did not prevent him from being welcome in exclusive circles of American and European politicians and diplomats.
Andriy Derkach started his political career in 1994 under the second president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, but later parted company after disagreeing with the president’s policy aimed at oligarchization of Ukraine. Derkach had supported Viktor Yushchenko’s constituents and Ukrainian citizens during the Orange Revolution (note that Yushchenko was an openly pro-American president, and his wife is a U.S. citizen with Ukrainian roots. No surprise then that the “peaceful assembly” of people was supported by the U.S. in every possible way). During Yanukovych’s time in office, Derkach was both a people’s deputy and the head of the state energy corporation Energoatom (which also successfully cooperated with American companies and government organizations). The media also reported that for some time Derkach, together with his family, even lived in the United States.
Close ties with international organizations and politicians were also apparent in his non-parliamentary activities. In particular, according to media reports, Derkach was made honorary president of Radio ERA (later Era Media). This TV and radio company, one of the few actively broadcasting during the Orange Revolution, covered the Independence events at the Maidan in Kiev, and even invited EU and US ambassadors to its programs. According to media reports, it successfully cooperated with the western media outlets including the BBC, Radio Liberty, Polish Radio and Radio France.
However, everything changed after another well-planned, U.S. implemented regime change operation known as the “Revolution of Dignity”. Later, Petro Poroshenko would come to power, and exercise his options to carry out corruption schemes and take in large sums of money courtesy of the American taxpayers. In particular, that $1 billion received in exchange for the dismissal of Prosecutor General Shokin, a classic quid pro quo, successfully utilized by Poroshenko’s defense enterprises (“Leninska Kuznya”, later renamed “Kuznya na Rybalskomu”), and “Bogdan”, to name a few, which inflated the prices of their services and goods not just by percentages, but by multiples – up to three to five times the total value. Poroshenko’s graft would become known from investigations and criminal cases launched by the Ukrainian law-enforcement agencies under his successor, President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The new Poroshenko government, created on the supposed nationalist and democratic values of “Maidan”, as well as the new parliamentary coalition, immediately showed its complete lack of independence by adopting unconstitutional decisions and laws at the request of international organizations. Reforms, reorganizations, and lustration continued. The latter is a very interesting, but unconstitutional way of firing all executives of the “past government” with a single unconstitutional law and, as previously mentioned, the Venice Commission recognized as violating human rights.
Amid this noise, Poroshenko proceeded to place “his own people” in the vacated executive positions (!), trying to usurp power by executive fiat. The only thing that prevented him from fulfilling his plan to the end was the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine (which advocated the same ‘controlled’ vertical configuration of power, but controlled by the Embassy itself), as well as the presence of an active and effective political opposition figures, one of whom was Andriy Derkach.
Of course, the American diplomatic mission in Ukraine knew that the new billionaire oligarch in charge was busy introducing his various corruption schemes in every sector of the Ukrainian economy. But they realizing his greed, but still allowed him to do it, while boldly dictating its demands in return and getting even greater strategic benefit for its functionaries, opening for them the possibility of excessive earnings and laundering billions through Ukraine. It was a classic symbiotic relationship between the new Poroshenko government and its American managers.
During this period of time, being a people’s deputy of Ukraine and not being a member of any party organization (the Ukrainian electoral legislation allowed to be non-partisan and to be elected from a specific territory or “district”, and his district happens to share a border with the Russian Federation), Andriy Derkach took an active political position, going into opposition to the current government and announcing the creation of a new inter-factional alliance called, “It is forbidden to prohibit”. Being its head, he spoke from the tribune of the Parliament on a number of acute issues related to violations of the Constitution of Ukraine and the protection of citizens of all groups and spheres of activity – doctors, teachers, journalists, pensioners, parishioners of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and law enforcers. Through the work of his inter-factional alliance, he personally defended the interests of Ukrainian manufacturers at a time when Ukraine had just opened its market to competition from EU and U.S. manufacturers. This led to the closure of large businesses and the dismissal of tens of thousands of ordinary workers.
Derkach’s inter-factional alliance also actively monitored and informed the international community about violations of citizens’ rights in Ukraine. Reports were sent quarterly to international organizations, as well as to ambassadors from G20 countries.
According to media reports, Derkach also actively defended the interests of Orthodox believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at the time when Poroshenko, together with Mike Pompeo (who at that time had just moved from a brief stint as the head of the CIA to U.S. Secretary of State), were trying to obtain the Tomos from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, in an attempt to create a new state church by granting autocephaly for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
Derkach was also the initiator of important legal proceedings with the Poroshenko government. One of them was a trial on the illegality of the appointment of Ulyana Suprun, a U.S. citizen, as Acting Minister of Health. He was also actively informing (and monitoring as an MP) law enforcement agencies about criminal offenses and corruption schemes.
All this illustrates that throughout his political career, Andriy Derkach has been an active human rights activist, and defender of the interests of his constituents – citizens of Ukraine, as well as the interests of the state as it pertained to important constitutional issues – at an extremely critical juncture in the country’s history.
In the U.S., accusations have been made against Derkach, claiming that he had somehow interfered in the 2020 US presidential election, allegedly starting his “information campaign” a year before the election, in 2019. But upon closer examination, those grandiose charges appear to be patently false. And any meaningful “contact” Derkach had with the American politicum was a result of the new President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, allowing the United States to burrow too deeply into the mechanisms of governance in Ukraine, or what Derkach called the “external management” of the state apparatus – where no important process or appointment had taken place without the involvement of the United States and its functionaries.
One of the key fronts of Derkach’s struggle was the creation of anticorruption agency, NABU. As the politician stated, its creation was unconstitutional, with full control and accountability given to the U.S. Embassy, and not to the Ukrainian parliament or government. It’s likely that Derkach regarded NABU as a “Trojan horse”, and a tool for Washington to exert external control, and applying pressure on the already demoralized and corrupt leadership in the country under the guise of ‘fighting corruption’. In short, NABU was the blue and yellow glove in which the U.S. could insert its hand to steer internal affairs for its own selfish geopolitical purposes.
Andriy Derkach’s first contact with the NABU (in other words, with the United States) occurred back in 2017, when he filed an official application to initiate a criminal case to investigate interference by NABU officials in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
IMAGE: Donald Trump’s tweet commenting on Ukraine’s (NABU) interference in the election on behalf of the Hillary campaign and the Democratic Party.
As Derkach stated, in the midst of the campaign, NABU director Artem Sytnyk officially released information about the receipt of funds in Ukraine by the campaign manager for US presidential candidate Donald Trump, political consultant Paul Manafort. Allegedly, for consulting for former President Viktor Yanukovych and his political party “Party of Regions”, in what became known as the “Barn Book“. This seemingly innocuous detail led to Paul Manafort’s resignation, taking him out of the U.S. political process, which subsequently led to criminal proceedings and a prison term.
IMAGE: An alleged page from the so-called “Party of Regions barn book” (Source)
As Derkach stated, NABU director Artem Sytnyk did this deliberately at the request of certain representatives of the US Embassy in Ukraine. It seems that his goal was to help another US presidential candidate, Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton. At the same time, Derkach drew the attention of the Ukrainian leadership to the fact that such actions are unacceptable, as they undermine the US bipartisan support for Ukraine.
Artem Sytnik himself later admitted this to his interlocutor while vacationing at an elite gated country club in Ukraine – a recorded conversation which was later made public. In addition to Sytnyk, the intentionality of such a statement by NABU was also confirmed by President Poroshenko during a telephone conversation with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, clearly indicating the target of the “strike”was Paul Manafort. But we will talk about that a little later...
IMAGE: Fragment of a conversation between Petro Poroshenko and Joe Biden in which Poroshenko brags about the publication of “Party of Regions documents” after which Paul Manafort resigned.
Although Sytnyk did not confirm the authenticity of this conversation, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office became interested in this fact, and would later reveal that Sytnyk had stayed for several days and actively spent time (hunting, ATV riding, spa treatments) in the said elite club, free of charge. His bill was paid by a certain local businessman.
The case would later be brought to court, which recognized the fact of committing a corruption offense – a public official receiving a lavish in-kind gift or service, and proceeded to include Sytnyk in the state register of corrupt officials. It would seem an unthinkable and impossible combination: the director of an anti-corruption body… is corrupt. Amazingly, Sytnik still managed to remain in office, even avoiding suspension at the time of the investigation.
IMAGE: Ex-NABU head Artem Sytnyk – in the Unified State Register of persons who have committed corruption or corruption-related offenses (Source: https://corruptinfo.nazk.gov.ua/)
For years, Derkach attempts to investigate the case were delayed, and never properly investigated, with the file even closed several times. Each time the lawyers appealed the case closure in court, and the court confirmed the fact of sabotage of the investigation, deciding in favor of its continuance.
Still today, it’s not known exactly how this case ended, but in Ukraine, no one appears to be interested in establishing the truth of it. And it’s certainly not the first time law enforcement officials failed to fulfill their obligations.
Why did Artem Sytnik get away with it? The answer to this question should be obvious by now. But it’s worth taking note of, as this wasn’t the only American “functionary” exposed by Derkach who managed to escape punishment….
And it is not strange at all that while publicly defending the rights of citizens of his country, including journalists and law enforcers (the latter reacted keenly to NABU), Derkach had the opportunity to get certain key insights from them; reliable information about corruption, offenses, unsolved cases, and illegal activities of the authorities.
In October 2019, Derkach held a press conference with new materials confirming NABU’s accountability to the US Embassy in Ukraine. In particular, it was about the correspondence of NABU employees (Polina Chyzh, the assistant of the first deputy director of NABU Gizo Uglava, a citizen of Georgia – which in itself is a violation of Ukrainian law) with the embassy staff. It was shown that NABU was transferring to the embassy confidential data of criminal cases collected from confidential sources and databases concerning a number of officials and MPs (including those concerning Prosecutor General Shokin and his family!). It turns out that information about Shokin was collected and shared just as he was investigating Burisma case, and just as Joe Biden was trying to take him down. Once again, the synchronization of actions of NABU and the U.S. Embassy and the uncanny appearance of the “Manafort case” was confirmed.
Andriy Derkach stated from the very beginning that the creation of NABU in an extra-constitutional fashion, in effect, duplicating actual Ukrainian law enforcement agencies for money and under the control of the United States, could have severe negative consequences for the country. In particular, NABU could become a tool of political influence for external management of a more powerful state by putting pressure on MPs, government officials and law enforcers. In other words, a state within a state. There are many examples of NABU’s coordination with the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. This is what happened in the end: for a long time NABU wasted the money of taxpayers of both Ukraine and the United States, collecting profiles of undesirable people and launching fictitious criminal cases against them. Many well-known Ukrainian politicians and officials suffered from the corrupt escapades of NABU, including Viktor Shokin, Mykola Martynenko, Roman Nasirov (on the screen below).
IMAGE: Examples of NABU coordinating its actions with the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.
IMAGE: More examples of NABU coordinating actions with the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.
In November 2019, Andriy Derkach made another public statement, in which he confirmed the non-self-sufficiency and bias of the NABU. This time, Derkach published correspondence between the NABU and the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine suggesting that the NABU had sabotaged the investigation of cases against Mykola Zlochevsky and his Burisma group of companies. According to Derkach, the materials handed over to him by the investigative journalists explain well and illustrate why the NABU slowed down the investigation – they contained evidence of financial relations between Burisma and Hunter Biden’s company Rosemont Seneca Partners.
It is also important to recognize the fact that with his education in law and a scientific degree, Derkach was very thorough in terms of documenting his finding and cataloguing evidence. Most notably, was the confirmation of statements from Morgan Stanley regarding the accounts of Rosemont Seneca for the years between 2014 and 2016. As stated by Derkach and according to these documents, the company of the son of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden received more than $4.8 million (of which $900,000 thousand went directly to Biden’s personal expenses) for unspecified services. The founders of the company were Hunter Biden and Devon Archer, each of whom were on the Board of Directors of Burisma. But it was obvious that this was not about salaries, but rather, money for a different purpose…
Burisma later sued Derkach for allegedly disseminating false information, but after hearing arguments from all parties and reviewing the evidence, in late 2020, the court found the facts disclosed to be true, and summarily dismissed Burisma’s lawsuit. And in April 2021, Derkach defeated Burisma for the second time when Burisma lost the appeal in the Kiev Court of Appeal, which confirmed the prior decision of the Pechersk District Court of Kiev. It’s worth noting here that the representatives of the company did not even deny the facts of the funds transfer, but only tried to challenge the amount of the transfers, though they could not prove this to the high court either.
IMAGE: Fragment of the decision of the Pechersk District Court of Kiev dated September 4, 2020, in the last paragraph states: “The claimant [i.e. “Burisma”] in its statement does not dispute the facts of payment [i.e. confirms the payment for Biden’s services], but speaks about their significant differences and exaggerations” (Source)
IMAGE: Fragment of decision from Kiev Court of Appeal of March 10, 2021, in the upper paragraph the court also states that “the claimant [i.e. Burisma] in its statement does not actually dispute the facts of payment [i.e. confirms the payment for Biden’s services], but speaks about their significant differences and exaggerations” (Source)
In December 2019, after the new Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, appointed by the next President Volodymyr Zelensky, declared that “there is no Burisma case”, Derkach again caught law enforcers in a lie. At another press conference, he publicized new evidence implicating Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky. It was in this suspicion that the prosecutors investigating the criminal proceedings (42014-1590) found that there were other payments to Hunter Biden’s company, which amounted to another $3.4 million dollars. Later, the prosecutor of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, Kostyantyn Kulyk, who investigated the Burisma-Zlochevsky case, confirmed that the criminal case file contained official documents on payments from Burisma’s accounts to companies associated with Hunter Biden.
IMAGE: Example of funds transfer between Burisma’s accounts and the accounts of Wirelogic Technology AS and Digitex Organization LLP proxy companies.
In addition, Andriy Derkach together with Kostyantyn Kulyk managed to obtain valuable testimonies of witnesses – Latvian citizens who serviced front companies (Wirelogic Technology AS and Digitex Organization LLP, where Zlochevsky laundered money stolen and withdrawn from Ukraine) . One of the witnesses also maintained a separate account for Burisma which was used exclusively by Zlochovsky. The witness confirmed that on the instructions of two close aides of Zlochevsky (Vadym Pozharsky and Andriy Kicha) he carried out various transfers to his interests. Also, according to the witness, payments to Hunter Biden’s companies were made from the same account. In confirmation, the witness provided the investigation in Ukraine with his laptop from which the transfers were made, and which had all the financial documentation on such transactions. What is now happening with this case and with this valuable evidence remains a mystery, but, judging by the general reports, it is closed, as well as all other cases related to the hot topic for the Ukrainian authorities – corruption of Biden and Burisma.
IMAGE: Evidence from the interrogation of the Latvian citizens who confirmed the transfer of funds to Hunter Biden’s companies (Source: YouTube)
Mykola Zlochevsky wanted to keep both him and his business away from the spotlight of the authorities, so he was ready to pay – and pay everyone, including the Bidens and law enforcement in Ukraine, particularly at the moment when the Burisma case became publicized. And even despite the aforementioned statement by Prosecutor General Ryaboshapka in late 2019, that there were no more active Burisma or Biden cases.
And as early as May 2020, Andriy Kicha, legal director of Burisma and Zlochevsky’s personal assistant, was detained for bribing the heads of the NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) to the tune of $5 million in cash (he and his accomplices stashed another $1 million in the trunk of the car as a payment for the services of intermediaries).
IMAGE: Bribe of $6 million dollars for closing the criminal case against the owner of Burisma, where Hunter Biden worked for 5 years (Photo: NABU)
It was one of the largest largest cash bribes in recent European history, and it was intended to close the criminal proceedings against Burisma and Zlochevsky. In other words: for closing the case in which the investigation proved the transfer of funds to Hunter Biden’s company. Such a bribe also defied the whole logical basis of Ryaboshapka – if there is no case and no evidence, why was such a huge bribe given?
Apparently, Zlochevsky wanted to make not only a present for his birthday on June 14th (on the audio recordings available to the investigation, Kicha hurried the prosecutors to close the case before that date), closing the criminal proceedings for $5 million, but also to protect his friend, the “Big Guy”, on the eve of the presidential election in the United States. Informed people in Ukrainian law enforcement circles pointed out that the NABU leadership was happy to combine business with pleasure and close the case for a couple of bags of USD cash, but ran into a principled special prosecutor, Deputy Prosecutor General Nazar Kholodnytskyi, who decided to “insert his 5 kopecks” into the ostentatious world of NABU. It so happened that despite the fact that Kholodnitsky was above Sytnyk in the pecking order, the latter often put the young special prosecutor in an uncomfortable position, through the use of his connections in the U.S. Embassy. And when Sytnyk was compelled to “approve” the resolution to close the case (Ukrainian law requires the Prosecutor’s authorization in order to close a case) from Special Prosecutor Kholodnytskyi, he certainly took advantage of this opportunity.
It is rumored that Kholodnytskyi had time to make a decision, and he used it to consult with more “experienced” lawyers. One of them was Andriy Derkach, who gave him some sound advice: “You don’t know what to do? Do it according to the law!”
The fact remains that there was a case, and Zlochevsky’s assistant – the legal director of Burisma, Andriy Kicha, had paid a bribe to close it, and that both Ukrainian and American law enforcement had evidence of Biden’s corruption.
However, instead of procuring the costly gift of closing the case, the issue of Burisma received a new impetus.
In June 2020, at the next press conference, Derkach, together with Prosecutor Kostyantyn Kulyk, questioned the amount of the bribe, because according to the confirmed internal documents of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine (namely, in the report for its head) it was recorded that the mentioned Andriy Kicha had offered an even larger bribe of $50 million dollars. However, this time it was not in cash, but through a number of newly created shell companies.
So we have a $5 million dollar bribe to close the Burisma cases, a subsequent cover-up, and the dismissal of a Prosecutor General? Why is Derkach pursuing this story with such zeal? As Derkach himself repeatedly stated, perhaps he was deeply concerned about the President Poroshenko “selling” the country’s sovereignty to external foreign power.
This brings us to a new twist, and what is potentially the most explosive part of the story so far – a series of recorded audio conversations between Petro Poroshenko, Joe Biden, John Kerry, and even Vladimir Putin. They would later become known as “The Derkach tapes”.
“The Derkach tapes” revealed just how much Joe Biden was interested in issues related to Ukraine’s most lucrative industries. Biden was certainly juggling a busy portfolio, beginning with his interest in the fate of PrivatBank (Ukraine’s largest private bank, owned by oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi and nationalized by Poroshenko. Kolomoyskyi now is being tried in Ukraine at the request of the U.S., despite the fact that he is known to be a close associate of President Zelensky), while covering for the head of Naftogaz of Ukraine Andriy Kobolev, and rejoicing over NABU’s implicating Paul Manafort, and the firing of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
The tapes reveal an incredible conversation between Poroshenko and Biden, discussing the removal the Prosecutor General at Biden’s request: “Despite the absence of any allegations of corruption and data on any illegal actions on his part, I specifically asked him [Shokin] to resign. According to the results of our meeting, he, despite the support in Parliament, promised me to submit his resignation”. In response, you could hear Joe Biden breathe a sigh of relief, certainly not shy in expressing his joy.
IMAGE: The transcript of an audio recording of Joe Biden and Petro Poroshenko released at a press conference in Kiev in May 2019.
In addition to publishing the recordings and supporting documentation at his press conferences, Derkach represented a group of unnamed investigative journalists who created two news platforms, NABU Leaks and Democorruption. The Western media linked them directly to Derkach himself and his close circle of employees and colleagues. But if NABU Leaks posted information about NABU’s correspondence with the U.S. Embassy, corruption of its head, leaking of information and other illegal actions of the bureau (everything that Derkach published), then as far as the Democorruption portal is concerned, it can hardly be said that they could analyze such a large volume of information, documents and data on their own. That said, the information found on the Democorruption portal was instrumental in penetrating the veil of corruption in different government spheres, while exposing the common thread with connected all these cases: the direct or indirect involvement of U.S. government officials (most of whom happened to be Democrats).
As Derkach stated, the raison d’etre of his efforts was to try and bring the current Ukrainian government over to the side with common sense; in protecting state interests and the interests of Ukrainian citizens, to encourage the law enforcement system not to succumb to pressure in the form of lustration and reform, to investigate the crimes of greedy and unpatriotic leaders, and to extricate itself from external foreign governance, and remove Ukraine from global networks of corruption.
Aside from domestic Ukrainian issues, Derkach also highlighted the issues of international corruption, money laundering and influence peddling- something which definitely raised alarm bells for politicians on the other side of the Atlantic. Due to its potential impact on politics in the United States, interested parties began to work on establishing the veracity of his statements and material he had publicized. Naturally, the topic of Democorruption and Burisma was picked up by right-leaning media outlets, journalists and politicians, and gained incredible momentum in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. It was treasure trove of information, and with each subsequent statement by Derkach, the anxiety of the Democratic establishment grew. Every time he spoke, more new facts and evidence were add to the story.
Derkach met twice with former New York City mayor and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani – once in Kiev, and again in New York. In particular, on Common Sense, Derkach and Giuliani discussed the embezzlement of international technical assistance provided by USAID (i.e. with U.S. taxpayer money) to Ukraine, which was laundered by the U.S. Embassy through an elaborate network of local “grant seekers”.
IMAGE: Andriy Derkach takes part in the Common Sense program.
At the same time, the Main Investigation Department of the National Police of Ukraine registered Derkach’s statement and initiated criminal proceedings on the fact of possible embezzlement of international technical assistance funds involving a number of charitable and public organizations during the period of 2015-2017.
IMAGE: Registration of criminal proceedings on the application of Andriy Derkach regarding the embezzlement of international technical assistance in Ukraine in 2015-2017.
IMAGE: Andriy Derkach and Rudolph Giuliani meet in Kiev in December 2019.
It should be noted that Derkach’s activities in the United States were perfectly legal. In August 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice registered the previously concluded contract on lobbying support, which Andriy Derkach signed with the company Global Management Association, owned by Nabil Bader and Andriy Artemenko.
IMAGE: Lobbying support agreement between Andriy Derkach and Global Management Association company.
Not long after, Derkach would experience the powerful backlash from his investigative efforts. In September 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed economic sanctions against Derkach, accusing him of being a “Kremlin agent” for his “planned and compiled information campaign”. Derkach’s visa to the United States was immediately revoked, and all bank accounts in Ukraine were closed, and the activities of the ERA Media TV and Radio Company were halted. In addition, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree on imposing personal sanctions on him, making it one of the first cases in the history of Ukraine where the state imposed sanctions against one its own citizens.
The cancelation didn’t stop there, as Derkach’s Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts were all blocked, and the websites NABU leaks and Democorruption ceased to exist. In addition, almost all of the material presented in Derkach’s public statements at his press conferences – were deleted. As far as official sources go, nearly all references to Derkach’s published facts on international corruption, including the Burisma-Biden case, were scrubbed.
They literally made the story disappear.
In 2021, an assassination attempt was being prepared to ‘take out’ Derkach, which he believed was being organized by British foreign intelligence agency MI6 and its associated private security firm, Kroll (which had a confirmed financial relationship with Burisma). It is believed that a group of foreign mercenaries had arrived in Ukraine, who were supposed to study the routes of the deputy’s movement with the help of Ukrainian security services, and eliminate him at the opportune moment. But it is believed that Derkach was tipped-off about the assassination plot by the same law enforcement officials who still viewed him as a patriot who had been fighting for the independence of the law enforcement system for years. A criminal case was even opened, in which Derkach was recognized as a victim, and persons involved in the attempted assassination were even identified, but, strangely enough, after the apparent failure of the operation, the suspects were allowed to leave the country without incident.
IMAGE: Official appeal of Andriy Derkach to the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Iryna Venedyktova about the preparation of an attempt on his life by special agents of the company “KROLL Associated UK LTD”, April 6, 2021.
Following the outbreak of military hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, in June 2022, Derkach was then charged with treason for “undermining Ukraine’s relationship with the United States”.
In parallel, the U.S. conducted its own investigation into Derkach’s alleged violation of U.S. sanctions and money laundering, resulting in an indictment in December 2022, and being placed on an international wanted list.
Today, the US government, in conjunction with its “puppet” proxy in Kiev, the Zelensky government, are attempting to remove Derkach from the current information space, discredit him as a legitimate and valuable source of information – basically nullifying everything he has said previously. Interesting, all the facts presented by Derkach which in the United States government was quick to declare as “disinformation” and “Russian propaganda,” are actually confirmed in official investigative documents in the United States itself? And how about the fact that in the U.S., they first accused the Russian state of interfering in the American elections, but admit that real interference was done by FBI? And what about when Facebook and YouTube delete all your years of advocacy – at the request of the FBI? And still no mention of foreign interference from Ukraine? How about when law enforcers are not allowed to do their job, but instead are ordered to destroy anything that might harm the “Big Guy”?
Today, a number of media outlets are increasingly talking about strangely coordinated actions of law enforcement in both Ukraine and the United States, and about further attempts to hide or destroy everything relating to the Burisma-Biden cases, and how the authorities are trying to move any possible witnesses of Biden’s international corruption in Ukraine out of the way. In the last six months alone, two cases involving key witnesses to Biden’s corruption schemes have been closed in Ukraine. The first, regarding Andriy Kicha’s bribe for closing the criminal case on Zlochevsky and Burisma, which includes evidence of financial relationships with Hunter Biden and millions of dollars in illicit funds. The second is against Andriy Kobolev, the head of Naftogaz of Ukraine, who is the executor of Amos Hochstein’s billion-dollar scheme to “reverse European gas” to Ukraine. Incredibly, Zlochevsky himself was found guilty by the Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine for organizing the bribe to top law enforcers, but was punished only with a fine equivalent to two thousand USD (the fourth – the last – defendant in the case, Mykola Ilyashenko, was also released in October 2023).
All this resembles a performance, but not a theatrical one, more like a circus.
IMAGE: Andriy Derkach during a press conference in Kiev, October 9, 2019, (Photo: Hlib Garanych/Reuters)
Derkach’s information is confirmed in U.S
Form FD-1023
We should note here that in the U.S., landmark legal processes are beginning to take place which not only confirm Derkach’s claims, but also expose the intricate system constructed to cover up corruption schemes and influence peddling by the Biden family. A telling example was the Comer House Committee’s fight to make public a confidential FBI document, known as “Form FD-1023.”
It was previously believed that Hunter Biden was paid $50,000 a month at Burisma, even though he had no oil and gas experience. But in mid-June 2023, through the efforts of Republican congressmen Chuck Grassley and James Comer, it became known that the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice had information in their possession for several years that Joe Biden and Hunter Biden may have received at least one bribe of $5 million each. Moreover, the same source (Form FD-1023, prepared in June 2020) revealed that Zlochevsky may have recorded at least 17 phone conversations with Hunter and Joe Biden discussing corruption schemes in Ukraine.
Form FD-1023 is an FBI interview with its agent who, beginning in 2015, had been in close contact with Zlochevsky for several years, and demonstrating key characteristic examples from their many meetings and conversations:
The interview show Zlochevsky explaining to the agent that Burisma must “pay the Bidens” because Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin is investigating its activities. The agent asks if it is possible to “pay each of the Bidens $50,000,” to which Zlochevsky replied that it will be “not $50,000”, but “$5 million”….“$5 million for one Biden, $5 million for the other Biden.”
Zlochevsky then tells the agent that he “paid” the Bidens “through so many different bank accounts” that investigators won’t be able to “unravel this for at least 10 years.” And that he was thus able to “not pay the Big Guy (a reference to Biden) directly.”
The full version of Form FD-1023 remained classified, so much so that even members of Comer’s committee could only view it in redacted form, and then only after threatening FBI Director Christopher Wray with a contempt of Congress lawsuit. Republican Congressmen have repeatedly said that the release of the FD-1023 form was blocked on purpose to ensure Biden would be elected president.
IMAGE: The declassified FBI Form FD-1023 document made public by Senator Chuck Grassley.
Hunter Biden’s deal with the investigation
Another important episode concerns Hunter Biden directly. In April 2021, experts established the authenticity of materials from the laptop of the president’s son, which he left in a Delaware commputer repair workshop, where they found 103,000 text messages, 154,000 emails, over 2,000 photos, allegedly confirming his guilt and involvement in some 400 crimes.
On June 20, 2023, Hunter Biden, most likely due to a marked increase in Oversight Committee activity, pleaded guilty to two counts of tax violations (willful failure to pay income taxes), as well as one count of possession of a firearm by an addicted person.
It turns out that Hunter Biden has been under federal investigation since 2018. The investigation into his possible tax fraud began after the discovery of a number of suspicious contracts which triggered suspicious activity reports, or SARs, and possible receipts of funds from China and several other countries around the world. All this time, America is waiting for Hunter Biden’s bank records to be made public. In particular, Congress wants to see his bank and credit card statements, which are expected to show that the Biden family has received at least $30 million from foreign entities and citizens, for political decisions made in their favor. Among these are suspected sums of $10 million from the owner of Burisma for firing Prosecutor General Shokin, $3 million from Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu, and $3 million from an energy company in China.
Twitter and Burisma news
At the end of 2022, another scandal unexpectedly erupted in the United States. The new owner of the social network Twitter, billionaire Elon Musk posted in his profile a link to internal documents of the social network, which were then published by a group of independent investigative journalists led by Matt Taibbi, which became known as “The Twitter Files”. From this we learned that on the eve of the 2020 election, Twitter took “extraordinary measures” to bury the Hunter Biden laptop story, which, among other things, exposed the corrupt business dealing between the Bidens and Burisma.
The story burst into the public sphere in October 2020, after the New York Post published its investigative piece detailing the cache of secret emails received from the laptop of Hunter Biden, and how Twitter “took extraordinary measures to hide this story”. The social network removed links to it, posted warnings about their “insecurity” and even blocked sharing the story privately through direct messages.
Derkach’s information is confirmed in Ukraine
In parallel, important processes showing how the Biden camp were cleaning up traces of corruption schemes in the run-up to the presidential election – were also taking place in Ukraine. Andriy Kicha, the legal director of Burisma and a man privy to all the secrets of financial relations between Zlochevsky and the Biden family, and who was caught handing bribes of $5 million and $1 million dollars – ended up getting away with it.
Not surpringly, Kicha made a deal with the investigation and got off with a much lighter sentence than expected. The Supreme Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine conducted Kicha’s case in closed court with complete secrecy. The court’s decision will remain classified for a long time, or until Ukrainian journalists manage to get access to it. Thanks to the deal with the investigation, Kicha received a surprising decision: the court fully found him guilty with a sentence of five years in prison, but then reduced his sentence to one year of probation, and then released him.
And on August 1, 2023, following a similar scheme, the panel of judges of the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine finally announced the verdict in the case of Mykola Zlochevsky. The ex-minister, who was accused of embezzlement of public funds, and the transfer of a record-high bribes to the heads of anti-corruption bodies of Ukraine. In the end, he was only fined a mere 68 thousand hryvnias (the equivalent of $2000 dollars), and was also released.
Finally, in October, the last of the four defendants in the case, who was still under investigation, was released. Under the terms of the agreement, Mykola Ilyashenko pleaded guilty to complicity in bribery, and made a deal with the investigation, and paid a fine. The court gave him a 5-year suspended sentence without confiscation of assets or property, before being released.
This once again confirmed Derkach’s arguments that the Democratic administration in the U.S. will do everything possible to bury any evidence linking the high-profile U.S. persons to financial crimes – including money laundering, corruption, influence peddling, and shadowy money-making at Burisma, especially during an U.S. presidential election cycle.
Conclusion
Analyzing the activities of Andriy Derkach, it becomes clear that he was not concerned about Joe Biden personally, but about what Biden, his administration, and their proxy ‘puppet’ government in Ukraine had put in place – which was undermining the sovereignty and independence of the Ukrainian state.
So who is he, Andriy Derkach? A suspected Kremlin agent spreading disinformation, or a man who used his experience and connections with top journalists, law enforcers, intelligence officers, and bravely challenged, and exposed, how Washington’s vaunted liberal establishment was mired in corruption overseas?
Where is he now – this valuable witness and the man who began to expose the Biden family’s international network of corruption?
We can only wonder if he is watching the development of the situation around the Burisma case?
While we do not have answers to these questions, it would certainly be very interesting to hear his opinion.
This is a corruption scandal that stretches all the way to the very pinnacle of political power in Washington DC, and beyond.
Many believed this story had been successfully buried by the mainstream media and the political establishment. In reality, it’s only just beginning.
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