The head of Burisma at the center of an alleged bribery scheme involving Joe and Hunter Biden insisted that “no one” in his company had any contact with Joe when he was vice president, according to a transcript released by top Oversight Democrat Jamie Raskin.
The transcripts came from a 2019 interview with Mykola Zlochevsky, the head of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden was paid $50,000 a month to sit on the board.
In the interview, Zlochevsky told an associate of Rudy Giuliani, “Nobody from Burisma ever had any contact with VP Biden or people who worked for him during Hunter Biden’s engagement.”
Zlochevksy is the founder of Burisma. He also served as Energy Minister of Ukraine. He has since fled the country and is wanted on corruption charges.
The head of Burisma at the center of an alleged bribery scheme involving Joe and Hunter Biden insisted that “no one” in his company had any contact with Joe when he was vice president, according to a transcript released by top Oversight Democrat Jamie Raskin
Republicans claim there is evidence that a director of Burisma, believed to be Zlochevsky, paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each during the Obama-Biden administration in exchange for Joe pressuring the Ukrainian government to fire prosecutor Victor Shokin, who reportedly investigating Burisma.
President Biden has long insisted that he pressured the Ukrainian government to fire Shokin for corruption. In 2018, he boasted that he had threatened to block foreign aid if they did not.
“I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor doesn’t get fired, you don’t get the money.” Well, asshole. He’s fired,” Joe Biden said at the time.
The transcripts came from a 2019 interview with Mykola Zlochevsky, the head of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden was paid $50,000 a month to sit on the board.
Republicans have demanded that the FBI release an FD-1023 document in which a paid informant details the scheme between Zlochevsky and the Bidens, the money being paid through a series of 20 shell companies to hide the source.
Raskin strikes back with his own contradictory evidence — a three-page transcript of a July 7, 2019 conversation that was uncovered as part of the 2019 impeachment inquiry against former President Donald Trump.
Raskin said the oversight committee received the transcripts from Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani, who recorded conversations with Zlochevsky.
In it, Zlochevksy is also asked if he knew about Hunter’s meeting with State Department officials, including now-Sec. Antony Blinken, in May and December 2015.
“We never approved or asked him to conduct those meetings on Burisma’s behalf,” Zlochevsky said.
Asked about Shokin’s resignation, the former head of Burisma said he learned of the ouster through “newspapers and the internet.”
“We never interacted with VP Biden during his visits to Ukraine.”
Zlochevsky denied that then-VP Biden or his staff had given Burisma any “assistance.” He said Burisma put Hunter and business partner Devon Archer on the board because they “both had great resumes” and wanted “characters with great relationships in the United States and Europe.”
But a 2015 email from the Hunter Biden laptop showed a Burisma executive named Vadym Pozharskyi thanking Hunter for the chance to meet his father at a charity dinner.
Raskin has insisted that FBI officials have already investigated the information in the FD-1023 as part of Rudy Giuliani’s corruption allegations and have found nothing worth investigating further.
The FBI has not publicly confirmed that, and Raskin throws out whatever the committee has on hand to poke holes in his Republican counterparts’ accounts.
“Despite being interviewed in 2019 and 2020 by Mr. House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) on Thursday.
‘Mr. Zlochevsky’s statements are just one of many that have debunked the corruption allegations against President Biden, first raised by Rudy Giuliani and reviewed by former President Trump’s own Justice Department,” Raskin said.
In a statement, Comer said Raskin’s transcript does not dispute what the FD-1023 said and pushed back his claims that the claims made in the document were part of Giuliani’s claims.
“If Ranking Member Raskin thinks there’s nothing on the FD-1023 form, then he should join us in calling on the FBI to make it public. Ranking Member Raskin, however, is again deliberately lying about the FBI’s Biden bribery record. This file is not part of the material Rudy Giuliani provided to the FBI.”
Comer claimed that in the FD-1023, which he saw, a “Burisma executive alleges that then-Vice President Biden solicited and received a bribe of $5 million in exchange for certain actions. The director also claims that he did not pay ‘the big man’ directly, but used so many bank accounts that it would take a decade to unravel.”