July 14, 2023

Notwithstanding Hunter Biden’s moral deficiencies in other matters, based on what has been publicized so far, legally, he may have done nothing wrong being part of his father’s Ukrainian enterprise. Joe Biden’s shenanigans and his son’s role in it need to be understood in the context of Ukraine’s corrupt political culture.

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Corruption is deeply embedded into the Ukrainian DNA. It is the blood of the Ukrainian economy – the stimulus for government officials and employees to perform their duties. Corruption is a fundamental necessity, a precondition for functioning governance.

Never-ending redistribution and re-division of assets is a defining characteristic of the Ukrainian business environment. People in business are constantly threatened by corporate raiders that attack businesses with guns, forged ownership documents, or new laws and regulations. To protect themselves from these realities, businesses hire “roof.” In criminal jargon, it means protection. Various entities offer protection: organized crime, police, high-ranking government officials, etc. The necessity for a “roof” is built into the cost of doing business.

In 2002, during President Viktor Yanukovych’s tenure, his ecology minister Mykola Zlochevsky registered Burisma Holding Limited in Cypress. Burisma secured lucrative government licenses for gas field exploration and production to become Ukraine’s second-largest private gas company. And not by accident. De jure, the licenses for the exploration of natural resources are drafted as bilateral agreements between the government entities and private enterprises, but de facto, they are unilateral and revocable grants of privileges by a president and high-ranking government officials to their cronies and supporters. As long as President Yanukovych was in power, Mr. Zlochevsky’s assets were secured from a hostile takeover. President Yanukovych was his “roof” and benefactor.

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But nothing is permanent in the wicked Ukrainian world.

In February 2014, Yanukovych was overthrown in an America-sponsored coup and fled the country. Zlochevsky followed him shortly after. In a dramatic reversal of fortunes, Burisma overnight changed from one of the strongest to one of the weakest. The recourse of the weakest was to find a new “roof” before the newly-elected Petro Poroshenko’s government was sworn in during June 2014.

It is unknown when and who approached Joe Biden or John Kerry, Secretary of State at the time, and what was offered in exchange for lobbying and political support. But on April 22, 2014, Devon Archer, a managing partner of Rosemont Seneca Partners, a $2.4 billion private equity firm co-owned by the stepson of John Kerry, Christopher Heinz, was put on Burisma’s board.

On May 13, 2014, Hunter Biden himself joined the board.

On the same day, Christopher Heinz rushed to distance himself and the firm from what looked like an unscrupulous endeavor. He sent emails to Matt Summers and David Wade, two of his stepfather’s top aides at the State Department, “I can’t speak why they decided to, but there was no investment by our firm in their company,” wrote Heinz. Whether Christopher Heinz intended to dissociate his firm from the activity or to create plausible deniability, the passage revealed that the State Department was aware of the arrangement and exposed Christopher Heinz’s concern regarding, if not the legality, the ethics of the undertaking.

For Burisma, the impact of having Hunter Biden and Devon Archer on its board could not be overstated. It had acquired an ultimate “roof” — the Vice President of the United States of America. We must not be naïve; Burisma did not hire good-for-nothing drug addict Hunter Biden for his expertizes or business acumen. It did not hire obscure Devon Archer for his administrative genius either — they were simply messengers. There was no other way to interpret the assignments of Hunter Biden and Devon Archer to the board of Burisma.