Exclusive: 1) While Hunter Biden served on Burisma board, his employer secretly kept a Crimean oil business, despite Joe Biden’s demands for sanctions over Crimea 2) Bank account used to pay directors, including Hunter, received funds from Belize company linked to embezzlement.

7 min readMay 4, 2020

Part 1: During Hunter Biden’s time on the Burisma Holdings board, Burisma’s Crimean oil & natural gas subsidiary KrymTopEnergoServis was re-registered in Russia and kept operating. While this was happening, VP Joe Biden was demanding tough sanctions on Russia over Crimea.

Little has been said about Burisma’s Crimean subsidiary KrymTopEnergoServis, since Hunter Biden joined Mykola Zlochevsky’s Burisma Group in 2014 as an independent director.[1] At the time, a group spokesman said the Crimea firm was not operating.[2]

In fact, KrymTopEnergoServis was re-registered as a Russian company. It kept two minority shareholders, Mikhail Kokush and Ivan Lutsenko. But 50% of its shares now belong to the mysterious Russian company OOO Ladova.[3]

But who owns OOO Ladova? Its ownership is obscured by a Cyprus offshore company: Arlestena Ventures Ltd, that is itself a dead-end. But OOO Ladova shares a director with the same name and unique Tax Identification Number as one other company: OOO Almansa Group.[4]

Records show that in 2016, OOO Almansa Group imported over one ton of luxury leather goods into Russia.[5] The supplier was Ametosa Investments Ltd, the holding company of Mykola Zlochevsky’s Zlocci boutique in Kiev: where one pair of shoes and matching belt cost $2800 USD.[6]

Additionally, OOO Ladova (which owns 50% of KrymTopEnergoServis) was registered in 2014 by Maria Zyuzya.[7] Zyuzya is currently a legal consultant at Andreas M. Sofocleous & Co LLC[8] — one of Burisma Group’s partners.[9] The eponymous Andreas Sofocleous is also a Burisma director.[10]

Moreover, OOO Ladova links to Mykola Zlochevsky through job ads for Moscow’s Zlocci boutique posted on Russian websites. The text of the ads says OOO Almansa Group is recruiting salespeople, but they placed under the name “OOO Ladova”.[11]

Therefore, the evidence shows Hunter Biden’s employer Mykola Zlochevsky remained the majority owner of the (now-Russian) KrymTopEnergoServis. The company also continued operating: KrymTopEnergoServis reported a turnover of over half a million USD in 2018.[12]

Additionally, in 2015, OOO KrymTopEnergoServis appeared on a Russian State registry as the holder of two exploration and extraction licenses in Crimea. These were approved by the Russian Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources.[13]

It is also awkward that one of the other KrymTopEnergoServis shareholders, Ivan Ivanovich Lutsenko, is currently a member of the State Council of Crimea for United Russia — the ruling party of Russia.[14]

When Hunter Biden started his $50,000-a-month[15] job at Burisma in spring 2014, he said “I believe that my assistance in consulting the Company on matters of transparency, corporate governance and responsibility… will contribute to the economy and benefit the people of Ukraine.”[16]

But since 2014, Burisma Group has made no mention about its former subsidiary KrymTopEnergoServis, which remains operational and is still linked to Burisma’s owner Mykola Zlochevsky.

Part 2 — Embezzled funds. Bank records show that on October 8th, 2015 a Burisma Holdings bank account received $89,370 USD from the Belize-registered[17] company RVD EXPRESS LTD.[18] These records were released in 2019 by the Ukraine Prosecutor Generals’ Office.

But it can now be reported that RVD EXPRESS LTD appears in a September 25 2018 Ukrainian Court decision as final recipients of embezzled funds through a complex scheme involving multiple companies and transactions.[19] This information was provided by Latvian authorities.

This suspected embezzlement of public funds has been an ongoing case (number 42014000000000181) since 2014.[20] It relates to a government contract from 2011, when Mykola Zlochevksy headed Ukraine’s Ministry of Ecology.

Zlochevsky’s Ministry procured satellite imagery of Ukrainian territory and accepted 49.38 million Ukrainian hryvnia as the winning bid from an Austrian company. It rejected an offer from Ukrainian State scientists who were prepared to do the work for a mere 250,000 hryvnia.[21]

RVD EXPRESS LTD, which appears to have illicitly ended up with Ukrainian public funds, transferred $89,370 USD to a bank account of Burisma Holdings. The same Burisma Holdings owned by Mykola Zlochevky, the former Minister of Ecology responsible for the contract.

To make things more uncomfortable, just days after the October 8th 2015 payment from RVD EXPRESS LTD to Burisma, the Burisma account transferred funds to a Morgan Stanley account used to make frequent payments to Hunter Biden.[22]

These payments match records from the Morgan Stanley account of Rosemont Seneca Bohai[23], which were used as Government Exhibit 301 in United States v. Archer, et al., 16 Cr. 371.[24] This also confirms the Burisma Holdings account ledger is genuine.

Robert Hunter Biden received a payment of 6,333.40 on October 19th 2015, days after the Morgan Stanley account received transfers from Burisma, which in turn received $89,370 USD on October 16 from RVD EXPRESS LTD — a company believed to hold funds embezzled from Ukraine.[25]

When Hunter Biden was asked by ABC News about his decision to serve on board of Burisma Holdings last year he said: “Did I make a mistake? Well maybe in the grand scheme of things, yeah…But did I make a mistake based upon some ethical lapse? Absolutely not.”[26]

In 2015, Joe Biden threatened the US would withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees from Ukraine unless it removed Ukraine’s chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin.[27] At the time, the prosecutor’s office had opened serval investigations into Burisma and Mykola Zlochevsky.[28]

Joe Biden’s campaign have insisted that the Vice President successfully called to have Shokin removed because he was “the embodiment of the corruption that has been hurting Ukraine’s government for a very long time.”[29]

In a video in January published by Joe Biden’s team, they claim “Shokin’s investigation of Burisma was dormant — he wasn’t investigating” “the fact is that getting him out of office meant it was more likely that Burisma would face any scrutiny.”[30]

Yet, Shokin’s successor Yuriy Lutsenko cleared Burisma and Mykola Zlochevsky of all charges within 10 months of becoming chief prosecutor.[31] In June 2018, the investigations have been reopened but it is unclear if there has been much progress.

The Biden team’s claim that getting Shokin out of office “meant it was more likely that Burisma would face any scrutiny” does not reflect the reality of what happened to Burisma investigations after Shokin was forced out.

In the Biden team video, rapid response director Andrew Bates said that “the investigation into Burisma had to do with things that happened years before Hunter Biden had any kind of relationship with that company.”[32]

This may have been true till now, but as I have revealed, a Burisma oil subsidiary based in Crimea has continued to operate (from Russia) during Hunter Biden’s time on the Burisma board. There are also questions Burisma directors benefiting from funds linked to embezzlement.

Ukraine is a country facing many difficulties, and it does not help that its Oligarchs are able to benefit from reputation-laundering with the help of politically connected figures, who themselves profit handsomely from their bosses’ corruption.

[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5980032-Burisma-Announces-Hunter-Biden-s-Appointment-to.html

[2] https://apnews.com/e0fcdbc44348491d926a7bfb20281de3

[3] https://www.dropbox.com/s/dr3soith6z0lora/%D0%A1%D0%9F%D0%90%D0%A0%D0%9A-%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%BB%D1%8C_%D0%9E%D0%9E%D0%9E_%D0%9A%D0%A0%D0%AB%D0%9C%D0%A2%D0%9E%D0%9F%D0%AD%D0%9D%D0%95%D0%A0%D0%93%D0%9E%D0%A1%D0%95%D0%A0%D0%92%D0%98%D0%A1_9102169620_20200428_153309.pdf?dl=0

[4] http://archive.is/kA9Ku

[5] https://www.importgenius.com/russia/suppliers/ametosa-investments-ltd-c-o, http://archive.is/323m1

[6] https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-zlocevskiy-zlocci-shoe-store/27163483.html

[7] https://www.dropbox.com/s/gao2yauf7qbzfaw/%D0%A1%D0%9F%D0%90%D0%A0%D0%9A-%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%BB%D1%8C_%D0%9E%D0%9E%D0%9E_%D0%9B%D0%90%D0%94%D0%9E%D0%92%D0%90_7718990389_20200428_162357.pdf?dl=0

[8] http://archive.is/buafv

[9] http://archive.is/wUvgM

[10] http://archive.is/arveO

[11] http://archive.is/knnxz, http://archive.is/9D2mh

[12] https://www.dropbox.com/s/dr3soith6z0lora/%D0%A1%D0%9F%D0%90%D0%A0%D0%9A-%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%BB%D1%8C_%D0%9E%D0%9E%D0%9E_%D0%9A%D0%A0%D0%AB%D0%9C%D0%A2%D0%9E%D0%9F%D0%AD%D0%9D%D0%95%D0%A0%D0%93%D0%9E%D0%A1%D0%95%D0%A0%D0%92%D0%98%D0%A1_9102169620_20200428_153309.pdf?dl=0