OCT. 5, 2019 KYIV, Ukraine …The vice president had planned to announce $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees for Ukraine. But en route to Kyiv on Air Force Two, Biden changed his mind. Poroshenko was dragging his feet building the institutions needed to take on corruption, aides said. Biden and his staff rewrote the speech, removing the loan guarantees. In Kyiv, Biden privately informed Poroshenko of the decision and the demand: fire Shokin, or you lose the loan guarantees. “Poroshenko was clearly disappointed,” said Colin Kahl, Biden’s national security advisor at the time.
In an interview Poroshenko recalled “heated” but cordial discussions with Biden. He said the loan guarantees were contingent on meeting International Monetary Fund benchmarks, including replacing the prosecutor general. Biden was not alone in his demands, Poroshenko said.
“Pressure on us came from everywhere: the activists, political forces, embassies, international organizations,” he said, adding that the names of Hunter Biden and Burisma never came up.
In the eight days before
Shokin was fired in March 2016 Biden phoned Poroshenko four times to reiterate the U.S. position, former aides said. The Ukrainian leader finally relented and Shokin was sacked. Western diplomats saw Shokin, who still sometimes wore his old Soviet-style uniform, as a relic of a stultified system and a “pay-to-play” prosecutor. Shokin, who declined to be interviewed for this story, blames his ouster on an illegal foreign intervention in Ukraine’s domestic affairs. “My actions as General Prosecutor did not suit the interests of the U.S. Vice President Biden and the persons connected to him,” Shokin said in an affidavit filed Sept. 4 in an Austrian court on a separate case. He said Biden was motivated by his son’s connection to Burisma but offered no evidence.
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A batch of newly released documents, including court filings as well as notes from interviews conducted by Rudy Giuliani, have put the spotlight back on Biden family dealings in Ukraine--even as House Democrats' impeachment probe zeroes in on President Trump’s push to convince Kiev to investigate them.
And they've raised more questions about how much money
Joe Biden's son Hunter made while serving on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas firm at the center of the controversy, with one estimate putting the figure in the "millions."
Among the documents Trump attorney Giuliani conducted with fired Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin earlier this year in which he claimed he was told by former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt to back off investigation involving that firm, Burisma Holdings, and its founder. According to interview notes Shokin claimed Pyatt--currently the ambassador to Greece--told him to handle that investigation “with white gloves.” Shokin said his “investigations stopped out of fear of the United States.” In that interview Shokin also claimed that former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told him he should not investigate Burisma “as it was not in the interest of Joe and/or Hunter Biden.” Shokin claimed Poroshenko told him that due to his investigation, Joe Biden held “up to one billion dollars in U.S. aid to Ukraine.” Poroshenko eventually removed Shokin.
Biden's campaign and congressional Democrats reject these allegations, maintaining that Biden was only involved due to corruption concerns surrounding Shokin and casting Giuliani's claims as "debunked conspiracy theories."
The interview notes, though, align with a European court affidavit from Shokin, which was published by The Hill last week. The affidavit came as part of an Austrian extradition case involving another wealthy Ukrainian businessman, Dmitry Firtash. The sworn affidavit states that Poroshenko asked him to resign “due to pressure from the U.S. Presidential administratton, in particular from Joe Biden.”
“On several occasions President Poroshenko asked me to have a look at the criminal case against Burisma and consider the possibility of winding down the investigative actions in respect of this company,” he continued. “But I refused to close this investigation.” Shokin went on to state he was “forced to leave office, under direct and intense pressure from Joe Biden and the US administration. In my conversations with Poroshenko at the time he was emphatic that I should cease my investigations regarding Burisma. When I did not, he said that the US (via Biden) were refusing to release the USD$ 1 billion promised to Ukraine. He said that he had no choice therefore but to ask me to resign.”
Despite his claims, Shokin, on both sides of the Atlantic, had been widely accused of corruption. “His reputation for investigating corruption in Ukraine--whether it had to do with Hunter Biden’s firm or the broader plague of deep, embedded and systematic corruption in Ukraine--he didn’t have a shining reputation,” John Hannah, former national security adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney, told Fox News Thursday. “He wasn’t simply opposed by the U.S. administration at that time...but by the entire trans-Atlantic alliance in Europe.” Hannah added that if Shokin has “real evidence” that “intense pressure was brought on him to go easy on Hunter Biden,” he should come forward. “But knowing this guy’s reputation, I’m a little skeptical of the charges he’s making at this point in time, but we need to get the facts, obviously,” Hannah said. Poroshenko has also told reporters that Biden never asked him to open or close any cases.
Yet Fox News has obtained notes from another interview Giuliani conducted--with Yuriy Lutsenko, the former Ukrainian prosecutor who replaced Shokin and eventually closed the Burisma probe. According to the notes of the interview, conducted in New York City in January 2019, Lutsenko said he “believes Mr. Viktor Shokin ... is honest.” Lutsenko, in the interview notes, did not weigh in on why the investigation into Burisma was closed or Biden’s involvement but did say he “believes Hunter Biden receives millions of dollars in compensation from Burisma.”
It is unclear how much money Hunter Biden made while serving on the board of the firm, but reports have estimated he made up to $50,000 per month. With reports indicating he served for about five years he could have made millions at that rate.
Allies of Biden have maintained that his intervention prompting the firing of Shokin had nothing to do with his son but rather was tied to the corruption concerns….
The notes from Giuliani’s interviews were shared with Fox News by sources familiar with the “urgent” briefing held by State Department Inspector General Steve Linick on Wednesday with aides from top congressional committees. A State Department spokesman confirmed that Linick shared “relevant” files with Congress.
Linick told aides in the meeting that he received the files in the spring but did not know the sender. has learned that the original sender was, in fact, Giuliani. Linick forwarded the files to the FBI for further investigation in June but last week was given permission by the FBI to share the files with Congress and said they were relevant to congressional interviews being conducted, according to sources. But Democrats are casting the documents as a disinformation campaign to distract from Trump controversies….The new documents surfaced amid the uproar surrounding Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he sought an investigation into the Bidens’ Ukraine dealings. That phone call sparked an impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives and has the Trump administration facing a new round of subpoenas. The inquiry was touched off by anonymous whistleblower's complaint.
Democrats have claimed that the call revealed a quid pro quo, saying Trump tied his request to investigate the Bidens to military aid. Trump reportedly ordered his staff to freeze nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine a few days before the phone call with Zelensky, a detail that fueled impeachment calls. However the call transcript did not show Trump explicitly mentioning the aid as a bargaining chip, and Trump has denied doing so. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/documents-heighten-scrutiny-on-biden-ukraine-dealings-indicate-hunter-may-have-made-millions
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During a 2018 speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, he said he withheld $1 billion in loan guarantees for Ukraine in order to force the government to address the problem with its top prosecutor. "I looked at them and said: 'I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time," he said. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/03/what-really-happened-when-biden-forced-out-ukraines-top-prosecutor/3785620002/
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12-19-18 $3.9 billion https://www.rferl.org/a/imf-ukraine-loan/29664278.html
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9-14-19 $5 biilion https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-14/ukraine-poised-to-seal-three-year-imf-loan-of-about-5-billion
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The IMF granted Ukraine a $16.4 billion loan in October 2008,[3] of which the government had received $10.6 billion in May 2010.[4][5] Further payments were frozen in late 2009 after Ukraine raised minimum wages and pensions contrary to IMF recommendations.[6]
In May 2010, Ukraine was the third largest borrower of the IMF, following Romania ($12.5 billion) and Hungary ($11.6 billion).[4]
On 28 July 2010, the IMF approved a 29-month $15.15 billion loan to Ukraine.[7] Among others this led to a 50 percent increase on household natural gas utility prices in July 2010 for Ukrainian consumers (a key demand of the IMF in exchange of the loan).[8][9]
The IMF granted Ukraine a $16.4 billion loan in October 2008,[3] of which the government had received $10.6 billion in May 2010.[4][5] Further payments were frozen in late 2009 after Ukraine raised minimum wages and pensions contrary to IMF recommendations.[6]
In May 2010, Ukraine was the third largest borrower of the IMF, following Romania ($12.5 billion) and Hungary ($11.6 billion).[4]
On 28 July 2010, the IMF approved a 29-month $15.15 billion loan to Ukraine.[7] Among others this led to a 50 percent increase on household natural gas utility prices in July 2010 for Ukrainian consumers (a key demand of the IMF in exchange of the loan).[8][9]
On 11 March 2015 IMF approved a four-year EFF worth $17.5 billion for Ukraine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_the_International_Monetary_Fund
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