The Ukrainian prosecutor who Joe Biden boasted about getting fired has filed an official criminal complaint against the former vice president, a report said.
Viktor Shokin on Tuesday filed the complaint with Ukraine’s interim director of the National Bureau of Investigation against Biden for interference in Ukraine’s legal proceedings, the French media outlet Les Crisis reported.
After leaving office in 2017, Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations that he had threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Shokin.
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’ ” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.
“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden said, insisting that Obama was in on the threat.
Interviews with several senior Ukrainian officials confirm Biden’s account, though they claim the pressure was applied over several months in late 2015 and early 2016, not just six hours of one day.
Biden did not mention that Shokin, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, had been investigating Burisma Holdings for corruption. Joe Biden’s son Hunter had landed a high-paying position at Burisma while Joe Biden was serving as President Barack Obama’s point man on Ukraine.
Les Crisis published the criminal complaint filed against Biden, in which Shokin says:
During the period 2014-2016, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine was conducting a preliminary investigation into a series of serious crimes committed by the former Minister of Ecology of Ukraine Mykola Zlotchevsky and by the managers of the company “Burisma Holding Limited “(Cyprus), the board of directors of which included, among others, Hunter Biden, son of Joseph Biden, then vice-president of the United States of America.Free Press International
The investigation into the above-mentioned crimes was carried out in strict accordance with Criminal Law and was under my personal control as the Prosecutor General of Ukraine. Owing to my firm position on the above-mentioned cases regarding their prompt and objective investigation, which should have resulted in the arrest and the indictment of the guilty parties, Joseph Biden developed a firmly hostile attitude towards me which led him to express in private conversations with senior Ukrainian officials, as well as in his public speeches, a categorical request for my immediate dismissal from the post of Attorney General of Ukraine in exchange for the sum of U.S. $ 1 billion in as a financial guarantee from the United States for the benefit of Ukraine.
The facts I have described above are confirmed, among other things, by the official interview of Joseph Biden published in the media (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHoXh42BraI), where he declares that Ukraine will not receive money if I remain in my post as Attorney General.
Throughout the last months of 2015 and the first months of 2016 Joseph Biden, taking advantage of his position, came several times on official visits to Ukraine in order to negotiate with the leaders of the country my eviction and, consequently, the closing of the objective investigation into the offenses committed by persons associated with the company “Burisma Holding Limited” (Cyprus), including the son of the aforementioned U.S. official. Due to continued pressure from the Vice President of the United States Joseph Biden to oust me from the job by blackmailing the allocation of financial assistance, I, as the man who places the State interests above my personal interests, I agreed to abandon the post of Prosecutor General of Ukraine.
After my resignation caused by illegal pressure, no active investigation into the offenses concerning the company “Burisma Holding Limited” (Cyprus) was carried out and, therefore, the persons implicated in these offenses were not identified, nor arrested or charged. According to the conclusions of the International Law Association of 18.04.2017, made by the doctor of law, Professor O.O. Merezhko, at the time vice-president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the request of the Vice President of the United States Joseph Biden concerning my ousting from the post of the Attorney General of Ukraine as a condition for the granting of financial (economic) assistance is qualified as pressure, which represents interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine on the part of a foreign power in violation of one of the principles of international law.
Moreover, the facts of pressure on me as Prosecutor General of Ukraine from Joseph Biden in the circumstances described above are confirmed by an independent journalistic investigation under the name “UkraineGate” conducted and published by the French online media “Les-Crises.fr” available at this link https://ukrainegate.info/part-2-not-so-dormant-investigations/
