In a surprising turn of events, lawmakers from the Republican party have claimed that Mykola Zlochevsky, a one-time Ukrainian oligarch and ex-minister, handed out $5 million to both President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. Lawmakers also hint that Zlochevsky kept sound bites of their chats as a safety net for an alleged trade-off plot.
Chuck Grassley, the Senator from Iowa, declared that the clues for these accusations popped up from an FBI source document tagged as form FD1023. Three of his fellow Republican politicians, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Anna Paulina Luna from Florida, and Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, all backed up that the foreign individual mentioned in the report is indeed Zlochevsky.
Zlochevsky is no stranger to questionable actions. He set up Burisma Holdings in 2002, a company that was on the radar of Ukrainian investigator Victor Shokin in 2016 for potential public corruption and money laundering. However, the inquiry was abruptly halted after Vice-President Joe Biden flexed his political muscle, risking a $1 billion dollar US aid cut if Shokin wasn’t removed – a move Biden later publicly boasted about.
Hunter Biden and his colleague Devon Archer were part of the Burisma Holdings board starting in 2014. Over time, they pocketed millions from the Ukrainian tycoon for their involvement, a cause for concern as Ukraine was counting on financial backing from the US.
Besides, Zlochevsky once held the office of Ukraine’s Minister for Natural Resources and Ecology and was Deputy Secretary of the Defense and National Security Council from 2012 to 2014. During his stint as an environment minister, accusations surfaced of him misusing his power to grant gas licenses to his political friends.
Zlochevsky hinted that Hunter Biden’s role on the board opened the doors for Ukrainian politicians to capitalize on US financial aid, shaping US-Ukraine policy. Meanwhile, he was allegedly tangled in various corrupt practices, which led him to leave Ukraine in 2019 to dodge embezzlement charges. Where he’s hiding now is a mystery.
