Hunter Biden and Burisma open an account in a corrupt foreign bank

Hunter Biden and his Ukrainian gas company employer were involved in setting up an account at a foreign bank that was closed following a money laundering investigation.

Burisma, the allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas company that hired the president’s son in 2014, set up an account with him in Malta at a bank that was later closed after an investigation into financial crimes, bombshell emails show.

The revelation that the First Son and Burisma are linked to a bank accused of violating money laundering rules comes on the heels of allegations by a longtime FBI informant revealed by lawmakers this month that the owner of Burisma sent $10 million to Hunter and his father using a complex web of offshore transactions.

Emails obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop show that in 2016 he gave income statements, passport details and even utility bills to Burisma director Vadym Pozharskyi to set up an account with the now-defunct SataBank in Malta.

Hunter was asked to provide ‘a certified statement of source assets’, notarize them with a lawyer and send them to the owner of an auction house in Malta.

The auctioneer, Pierre Pillow, and his company PGP Trading Limited were charged in 2020 with money laundering of ‘millions of euros’.

Maltese prosecutors said they were tipped off by an allegedly suspicious transaction about the sale of a dismantled oil rig involving Burisma.

During the trial, it emerged that Mykola Zolchevsky, the owner of Burisma, rented Pillow’s apartment in Ta’ Xbiex, Malta, in 2014 while applying for citizenship of the country through its golden visa program, the Times of Malta reported in December 2020.

In 2014, Zlochevsky and Burisma were the targets of a financial crime investigation by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office, with assistance from US authorities. The case was closed without charge.

Pillow pleaded not guilty to his money laundering charges. His lawyer Giannella de Marco told the judge that police “didn’t even conduct the basic investigations,” that the purchase of the oil rig was “a simple transaction through a Maltese company,” and that “due diligence had been done and approved by a bank.”

There are no reports of Pillow’s conviction for the alleged crimes, but reports from the Maltese government from April say his assets are still frozen.

Emails from Pozharskyi show that the account Burisma was setting up by sending documents to Pillow was with Satabank in Malta.

Satabank was shut down in 2018 after an investigation by the Maltese anti-money laundering organization, the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU), found “gross deficiencies” in compliance with the country’s anti-money laundering and terrorist financing laws.

“While the bank became aware of the widespread shortcomings and the risks it was exposing itself to, it remained passive and never took corrective action,” said a report by the FIAU.

It said the bank had allowed “significant amounts of money” to pass without adequate safeguards.

In August 2022, the Maltese Government Gazette revealed that it owed more than $81 million to more than 5,000 creditors during the liquidation.

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who led a four-year investigation into the Biden family with colleague Chuck Grassley, said the FBI has serious questions to answer.

“No one should find this latest revelation surprising,” he told DailyMail.com.

“The Bidens knew exactly what kind of people they had to deal with — alleged money launderers like Patrick Ho, Mykola Zlochevsky, and now reportedly Mr. Pillow. The question now is, what did the FBI know, when did they know, and what did they do about it?’

Hunter’s link to a bank and foreign auctioneer accused of money laundering comes after the FBI revealed to Congress that an informant told them about an alleged $10 million money laundering and bribery scheme involving Joe and Hunter in 2020 goods.

The House Oversight Committee said they were tipped off by a whistleblower about the existence of a document detailing the plan, but were initially rejected by the FBI when they asked for a copy.

It wasn’t until they were about to hold Director Christopher Wray contemptuous of Congress that the Bureau relented and showed members of the congressional committee a redacted version earlier this month.

House members said the document, dated June 30, 2020, detailed claims made by a longtime informant who had been paid a total of $200,000 by the FBI for information since 2010.

The informant claimed that they had been meeting with Burisma owner Zlochevsky since 2015. The informant said Zlochevsky told them of his plan to pay $5 million each to Hunter and his father through a network of bank accounts that would take “10 years” to disconnect.

The payment was allegedly a bribe to halt an investigation into Burisma by Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin and to allow favorable treatment from the gas company, and the informant claimed it was in fact paid.

According to the informant, Zlochevsky, who is not named in the document, claimed to have 17 audio recordings: 15 of phone conversations between him and Hunter, and “two audio recordings of phone conversations between him and then-Vice President Joe Biden.” Senator Chuck Grassley said in a speech Monday.

Grassley also said he had seen the original, largely unredacted version of the FBI document, called an FD-1023.