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A lán aer te: Cé atá ag insint na fírinne i scannal gáis Burisma

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A ground-breaking and highly controversial documentary, A lot of hot air: who’s telling the truth in the Burisma gas scandal?, had its first screening in front of an international audience of journalists and other interested parties at The Press Club, Brussels on 2 June, scríobhann Gary Cartwright.

Produced by UK-based media consultant Tim White, and presented by James Croskell, the video sought to take “ fresh look” at the scandal surrounding Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company, in the light of the recent publication of U.S. President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden’s autobiography, Beautiful Things: A Memoir (Aibreán 2021).

Burisma was founded in 2002 by Mykola Zlochevsky, an ally of ousted former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled for his life to Russia following the 2014 Maidan Revolution that resulted in the killings of 100 civilians by Ukrainian security services, allegedly with the active support of Russian special forces.

166 persons simply “disappeared” during the events of 18–23 February, their fates remain unknown to this day.

Burisma is currently owned by the Cyprus-based offshore company Brociti Investments Limited, which records show is owned Zlochevsky, who himself fled Ukraine shortly after Yanukovych, under suspicion of tax evasion and money laundering. 

Company documents show that Hunter Biden became a member of the board of directors of Burisma Holdings on April 18th 2014, two months after the tragic events of Maidan.

Biden Sr. was himself the White House's main interlocutor with Yanukovych while the latter was president of Ukraine.

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During the documentary, journalists present documents showing the transfer of funds to offshore companies that may be related to Hunter Biden. They also say that the cases against Burisma in Ukraine led to the dismissal of top officials after a phone call from the US presidential administration.

Rudy Guiliani upsets Kyiv.

In April of this year, the FBI carried out searches at the home and office of Rudy Giuliani, as part of the probe into Mr Giuliani's dealings with Ukraine. Warrants against him included an allegation that the former Mayor of New York City failed to register himself as a foreign agent. The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires people to notify the State Department if they are acting as a foreign agent on behalf of another nation.

Giuliani played a central role in the effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. He was also instrumental in the ousting of the former US ambassador to Ukraine, witnesses at Trump's impeachment trial testified.

Before the 2020 presidential election Mr Giuliani led an effort to find incriminating information about Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine.

Giuliani’s activities in Ukraine on behalf of his former boss have not gone down well in Kyiv:  “If I get an official request from Southern District of New York, or any other non-partisan effort, such as potential disbarment of Rudy Giuliani, I would be open to helping them,” Igor Novikov, who served as a close adviser to Zelensky during Trump’s first impeachment, was reported as saying in February of this year.

“That is because I believe Mayor Giuliani’s actions in Ukraine threatened our national security,” he added. “It is our responsibility to make sure that any effort to drag our country into our allies’ domestic politics does not go unpunished.”

Novikov also said he was willing to assist in efforts to strip Giuliani of his license to practice law, and on Thursday 24 June, Giuliani’s licence was indeed suspended.

In their decision, judges in a New York appeals court said Giuliani, who had worked with Donald Trump to overturn the result of the 2020 US Presidential election, had made several false statements about voting in the states of Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania - including claims that hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots and other votes had been improperly counted.

The court suggested Giuliani’s suspension may become permanent.

Hunter Biden, and that laptop

Giuliani was behind efforts to persuade Ukrainian officials to open investigations into allegations that Hunter Biden had intervened to arrange access for interested parties to his father.

In 2019 the FBI took possession of a laptop purported to belong to Biden Jr. Investigators subpoenaed the laptop in 2019 from a computer shop in Delaware, after, allegedly, Giuliani had been tipped off about the existence and location of the device. The laptop contained documentation that appeared to confirm the allegations although it could never be proven, and Biden himself claimed to have no idea whatsoever if the laptop was his or not.

In his April 2021 autobiography, Beautiful Things: A Memoir by Hunter Biden, he brags that his intake of vodka and crack was "astounding – even death-defying”.

He openly confesses to spending months spent drunk in a Washington D.C. apartment and more months binging cocaine in hotel bungalows in Hollywood. While his father was Vice President, he was cohabiting with a female drug dealer.

Is this a man one would appoint to the board of directors of a major energy company on a reported salary of $80,000 a month? A man who according to witnesses, as reported by Reuters in October 2019, never once visited Ukraine for company business during his 5-year tenure?

Unless of course the man in question is the son of the Vice-President of the United States, and who at the time of Hunter Biden’s appointment to the board of Burisma appeared well-positioned to become the next President.

As for the documentary: it has been well received, and has attracted a good deal of attention for Messrs. White and Croskell, this being their first collaboration. Concerning Hunter Biden, and Rudy Giuliani, there remain more questions than answers.

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