[SNN] Biden’s Son, Polish Ex-President Quietly Sign On To Ukrainian Gas Company

['ANTIC.org-SNN' antic.miros...@gmail.com [SerbianNewsNetwork]]

 

  

It is much more clear now, isn't it?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/bidens-son-polish-ex-president-quietly-sign-on-to-ukrainian

Biden’s Son, Polish Ex-President Quietly Sign On To Ukrainian Gas Company

Revelations that Hunter Biden and Aleksander Kwasniewski serve on the
board of a company controlled by a Yanukovych ally raise serious
conflict of interest questions for Western countries’ Ukraine policy.
posted on May 13, 2014 at 6:22pm EDT

Max Seddon BuzzFeed Staff

DONETSK, Ukraine — U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s youngest son has
joined the board of a gas company owned by an ally of Ukraine’s
fugitive ex-president Viktor Yanukovych and a key European
interlocutor with Kiev who was previously president of Poland.

The move raises questions about a potential conflict of interest for
Joe Biden, who was the White House’s main interlocutor with Yanukovych
while the latter was president and has since spearheaded Western
efforts to wean Ukraine off Russian gas.

Company documents in Cyprus show that Joe Biden’s son, R. Hunter
Biden, became a member of the board of directors of Burisma Holdings,
which describes itself as Ukraine’s largest private natural gas
producer, on April 18. Burisma announced Hunter Biden’s appointment in
a press release Monday on its website which was quickly picked up by
Russian state media.

“Burisma’s track record of innovations and industry leadership in the
field of natural gas means that it can be a strong driver of a strong
economy in Ukraine,” Hunter Biden said in the statement on Burisma’s
website. “As a new member of the Board, I believe that my assistance
in consulting the Company on matters of transparency, corporate
governance and responsibility, international expansion and other
priorities will contribute to the economy and benefit the people of
Ukraine.”

Hunter Biden could not be immediately reached for comment. An
assistant at Rosemont Seneca Partners, the investment firm where he is
partner, said he was out of the office. A woman who answered the phone
at the London number listed for Burisma on its website appeared to
have no idea who either Biden was. By late Tuesday, however, Burisma
had reacted quickly enough to remove a link to a New York Times story
from April, when Biden visited Kiev and urged it to reduce its
dependence on Russian gas, from a prominent position on the homepage.

Kendra Barkoff, a spokesperson for Joe Biden, denied to comment on the
vice president’s son’s appointment. “Hunter Biden is a private citizen
and a lawyer,” she said. “The Vice President does not endorse any
particular company and has no involvement with this company.”

It proved difficult to discern at first whether the Burisma website
carrying the press release was even real. Its photos of Hunter Biden
and Rosemont co-founder Devon Archer, who is listed as a member of the
Burisma board, are lifted from Rosemont’s website. The company site
carries a bizarre interview with Archer — apparently first published
in the Ukrainian newspaper Kapital, then translated badly into English
with Slavic syntax left intact — in which he tacitly acknowledges his
connections to the Biden family and says Burisma “reminds [him] of
Exxon in its early days.” The Burisma site was registered anonymously
through the domain service GoDaddy in 2010, according to the who.is
service.

Company registration documents for Burisma show, however, that both
Hunter Biden and Archer joined its board of directors in April.
Burisma is completely owned by another Cypriot offshore company,
Brociti Investments Limited, which, records show, belongs to Mykola
Zlochevsky, who was energy minister and deputy national security
council chair under Yanukovych, deposed in February. While in
government, Zlochevsky claimed that he had sold his energy assets,
though an investigation in Ukrainian Forbes later showed this was
untrue.

As well as the other directors listed on Burisma’s website, Cypriot
records list a man named Aleksander Kwasniewski — the name of Poland’s
president from 1995 to 2005 — as having become a director Jan 2.
Kwasniewski was a key figure in the European Union’s attempts to draw
Ukraine closer to Brussels during Yanukovych’s presidency: he and
former European Parliament president Pat Cox visited Kiev 27 times in
failed attempts to secure the release of Yanukovych’s rival, former
prime minister and current presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko,
from prison.

While it was not immediately possible to confirm that the Burisma
director was the same Kwasniewski, the address provided in the company
documents, Wilanowska 5/2 in Warsaw, matches addresses provided for
Kwasniewski’s wife Jolanta’s real estate company, Royal Wilanow
Agency, according to Polish media reports. Other Polish media reports
list the address as the Kwaniewski family’s private apartment. Jolanta
Kwasniewska left the firm while her husband was in office, but
returned to manage it after his term ended.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told BuzzFeed that Russia saw no
conflict of interest in Joe Biden working to wean Ukraine off Russian
gas - which makes up about 60 percent of the country’s energy supply -
while his son worked in the Ukrainian gas industry.

“Anyway, as everyone knows, there’s no gas in Ukraine,” he added. “The
gas in Ukraine is Russian.”

Rosie Gray contributed reporting from Washington, DC.