Burisma owner said he was 'coerced' to pay Bidens

FPI / July 21, 2023

An FBI informant file containing a $10 million bribery allegation against Joe Biden and Hunter Biden was released on Thursday by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.

The file shows Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky telling an FBI informant that he was “coerced” into making the payoff.

Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma Holdings, which employed Hunter Biden as a board member, told the FBI informant in a 2016 meeting at a coffee shop in Vienna, Austria, that “it cost 5 [million] to pay one Biden, and 5 [million] to another Biden,” according to the redacted FD-1023 form released by Grassley.

“Zlochevsky made some comment that although Hunter Biden ‘was stupid, and his (Zlochevsky’s) dog was smarter,’ Zlochevsky needed to keep Hunter Biden (on Burisma’s board) ‘so everything will be okay,’ ” the June 2020 document says.

The paid federal informant asked whether Hunter Biden or Joe Biden told Zlochevsky he should “retain” the younger Biden. Zlochevsky replied, " ‘They both did,’ ” according to the file.

In the document, the informant — assessed by the FBI to be highly credible — described four conversations with Zlochevsky, beginning with a meeting near Kyiv in late 2015 or early 2016 and continuing through a 2019 phone call.

Zlochevsky has said he has 17 recordings of conversations with the Bidens, two of which involved Joe Biden. He also claims to have “many text messages” and two documents that the informant “understood to be” financial records of “payment(s) to the Bidens.”

The federal informant said that Zlochevsky was convinced the recordings and other evidence showed he was “somehow coerced into paying the Bidens to ensure Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired.”

Shokin, who had been investigating alleged corruption at Burisma, was fired after then-Vice President Biden warned that Ukraine would lose $1 billion in U.S. aid if Shokin was not fired.

When asked about Shokin’s investigation of Burisma at their Vienna meeting in 2016, Zlochevsky allegedly told to the informant that Hunter Biden was a conduit to his father

“Zlochevsky replied something to the effect of, ‘Don’t worry Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad.’ [The informant] did not ask any further questions about what that specifically meant,” the file reported.

In their final discussion, Zlochevsky allegedly told the informant over the phone that he had been an “oracle” for warning against partnering with the Bidens due to political controversy in the U.S.

“CHS mentioned Zlochevsky might have difficulty explaining suspicious wire transfers that may evidence any (Illicit) payments to the Bidens,” the file says.

“Zlochevsky responded he did not send any funds directly to the ‘Big Guy’ (which CHS understood was a reference to Joe Biden). CHS asked Zlochevsky how many companies/bank accounts Zlochevsky controls; Zlochevsky responded it would take them (Investigators) 10 years to find the records (i.e. illicit payments to Joe Biden).”

The “big guy” reference was also used to describe a tentative 10% cut for Joe Biden in 2017 as part of a partnership with Chinese-government-linked CEFC China Energy. The reference wasn’t publicly known until October 2020 — months after the informant file was created.

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