BUSTED: $6M Cash Seized, Suspects Arrested For Bribing Ukrainian Officials To End The Investigation Of Burisma

Ukrainian investigators have seized $6 million in cash in an alleged plot to bribe Ukrainian prosecutors to stop all investigations into the Burisma Group. This is the same group where Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was on the board of directors.

The person behind the bribes was Nikolai Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, who had his right-hand man send the bribe to the Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Office of the Special Prosecutor (SAP). NABU has confirmed this on their official Facebook page.

Ukraine’s local news agency, Obozrevatel reports the following:

The first deputy head of the Kiev tax Nikolay Ilyashenko tried to bribe the leadership of NABU and SAP for closing criminal proceedings against the largest Ukrainian gas producing private company Burisma, which was owned by former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Nikolai Zlochevsky.

This was announced on Facebook by journalist Yuri Butusov. According to him, among the detainees Ilyashenko himself and Andrei Kicha, director of legal affairs at Burisma.

Here’s the strange part; The guy in charge of NABU is Artem Sytnyk. Remember him? He was the guy caught on tape saying how he would like to help Hillary beat Trump during the 2016 campaign using a non-authenticated ‘black ledger’ against Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.

More on this ‘Black Ledger’ from the House.GOV:

In reviewing an administrative case filed by lawmaker Boryslav Rozenblat, the court concluded that Artem Sytnyk, director of the National AntiCorruption Bureau of Ukraine, and parliamentarian Serhiy Leshchenko acted illegally when they revealed that Manafortʼs surname and signature were found in the so-called “black ledger” of ousted President Viktor Yanukovychʼs Party of Regions.

The “black ledger” is alleged to be a secret accounting book showing suspicious payments by the party to a range of individuals and officials. It became a key document implicating Manafort in corruption in Ukraine, and helped to end his tenure as Trumpʼs campaign chair.

In a statement on its website, the court also appeared to describe the two menʼs actions as constituting interference in the 2016 United States presidential election. The release of information about the “black ledger,” which was part of a pre-trial investigation, “led to interference in the electoral processes of the United States in 2016 and harmed the interests of Ukraine as a state,” the courtʼs press service wrote.
[…] In January 2017, the news site Politico published an article suggesting that Ukrainian government officials attempted to use the “black ledger” to interfere in the U.S. presidential election in favor of Trumpʼs rival for the presidency, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Was this so-called ‘Black Ledger’ even real? Speculations about its authenticity go way back. From the Hill:

There’s just one problem: The FBI’s public reliance on the ledger came months after the feds were warned repeatedly that the document couldn’t be trusted and likely was a fake, according to documents and more than a dozen interviews with knowledgeable sources.

For example, Ukraine’s top anticorruption prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytsky, told me he warned the U.S. State Department’s law enforcement liaison and multiple FBI agents in late summer 2016 that Ukrainian authorities who recovered the ledger believed it likely was a fraud.

“It was not to be considered a document of Manafort. It was not authenticated. And at that time it should not be used in any way to bring accusations against anybody,” Kholodnytsky said, recalling what he told FBI agents.

Likewise, Manafort’s Ukrainian business partner Konstantin Kilimnik, a regular informer for the State Department, told the U.S. government almost immediately after The New York Times wrote about the ledger in August 2016 that the document probably was fake.

This report isn’t about the ‘Black Ledger’, but we felt we needed to include it to give context to the corruption of the actual head of the corruption bureau, Artem Sytnyk.

We find it strange that the bribe was directed at the head of NABU (Mr. Sytnyk), and yet, NABU is the one investigating this bribe.

Was Sytnik being monitored? Did he know and decided to come forward when Burisma tried to bribe him? Was Hunter Biden involved? We don’t know the full story yet, but this is definitely something we’ll be keeping an eye on.