#Ukraine busts $6M bribe scheme for gas company that hired Hunter Biden

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A pile of $6 million cash in plastic bags at a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, today.
AP

Ukrainian officials seized a $6 million cash bribe — the largest in the nation’s history — in a case linked to the founder of Burisma Holdings, the gas company that gave Hunter Biden a seat on its board of trustees.

The bribery case has no connection to Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Ukrainian investigators said Saturday at a press conference that revealed the scheme.

The millions in American $100 bills they put on display, wrapped in rubber bands and held in clear plastic bags, was intended as a payoff to two top anti-corruption officials, according to the Kyiv Post. Three people, including a current and a former tax official, have been detained.

The suspects, all associates of former ecology minister Mykola Zlochevsky, allegedly used the money as a bribe to stop a state probe of an embezzlement plot that has driven Zlochevsky into exile.

Zlochevsky, a crony of Ukraine’s scandal-scarred ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, is the founder of Burisma, which was at the center of the impeachment case against President Donald Trump earlier this year.

It also figures in an ongoing Senate probe into whether Hunter Biden profited off his father’s foreign-policy role during the Obama administration. Joe Biden was in charge of US policy toward Ukraine at the time his son was hired to sit on Burisma’s board.

“Let’s put an end to this once and for all. Biden Jr. and Biden Sr. do not appear in this particular proceeding,” Nazar Kholodnytsky, head of anti-corruption investigations at the prosecution service, said Saturday.