Ex-CIA Veteran: Ukraine's Burisma Could be Used to Fund Covert Ops Under Biden's Watch
18:58 GMT 10.04.2024 (Updated: 19:09 GMT 10.04.2024)
© AP Photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta
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The Russian Investigative Committee has singled out Ukrainian gas company Burisma as an apparent vehicle to fund terrorist activities on the Russian territory. Could the allegation spell trouble for US President Joe Biden, given his son's ties to the company?
Funds received through commercial organizations, in particular the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings, have been used over the past few years to carry out terrorist acts in Russia, according to the Russian Investigative Committee.
Burisma's role in the alleged scheme turns the spotlight on US President Joe Biden and his son Hunter who served on the company's board of directors between 2014 and 2019.
It's potentially very dangerous for Joe Biden, according to Larry Johnson, a retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official. The CIA veteran noted, however, that there's more to this story than just the Biden family's apparent influence peddling.
He drew attention to the fact that besides Hunter, a former top-level CIA official and ex-Blackwater vice chairman named Joseph Cofer Black also served on Burisma's board.
On February 15, 2017, Ukrainian press reported that Black, a former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center and ambassador-at-large for counter-terrorism, joined Burisma's board as an independent director. In an interview with the Kiev Post, Black said that he was invited to join the board by Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky to provide guidance with respect to the company’s "security and strategic expansion."
"Prior to joining the board at Burisma, Mr. Black was also on the board of a Latvian bank, and they put him on the board, allegedly for what he described as his expertise with counter-terrorism finance, in other words, tracking money that goes to terrorists," said Johnson. "Two years later that Latvian bank was sanctioned for its role in failing to put in proper procedures to prevent terrorist financing."
Black became a new council member at Baltic International Bank (BIB) in November 2016, while on December 6, 2019, Latvia's financial regulator, the Financial and Capital Market Commission (FKTK), slapped a €1.5 million fine on the bank having conducted an onsite inspection.
According to the regulator, the bank's control system did "not fully comply with the regulatory requirements governing the prevention of money laundering and terrorism and proliferation financing." In 2019 the bank received a $2 million fine. It was eventually closed in 2022 over the failure to prevent chronic money laundering.
As per Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), BIB’s majority owner and chairperson Valerijs Belokons met with Hunter Biden in New York in 2014, according to emails from the younger Biden's 'laptop from hell.'
Remarkably, Burisma has also repeatedly come in the crosshairs of Western and Ukrainian regulators over non-transparent murky financial schemes and alleged money laundering. In 2023 the company ceased operations.
"One of the things to point out is that when investigators in the US Congress try to talk to a lawyer who works with Hunter Biden, they were prohibited from talking to him by the CIA," Johnson said. "That's unheard of. So, clearly, Hunter Biden's activities with Burisma alongside Cofer Black means that Burisma probably was being used by the CIA as one means of at least moving money."
According to Johnson, the latest revelations from the Russian Investigative Committee could take the Bidens' Ukraine saga into a "dramatically new direction."
Follow the Money to Find the Culprit
The CIA veteran pointed out that global companies and financial organizations are routinely used to conceal grey money transferals.
"Usually, false invoicing or one big way to pass money is to use trade," Johnson explained. "So, for example, I know that with tobacco companies, Philip Morris in particular. They would sell containers and sell master cases of cigarettes to Colombian drug traffickers and frankly, the criminal organizations in Russia and Ukraine as well. And, they would sell it to them at a higher price. And then the criminal organizations would resell it at a lower price. And that way they would be able to claim that the source of the money that they received came from the sale of cigarettes, and not from the sale of narcotics."
Johnson explained how traces connecting terrorist operators and global companies and financial institutions could be established.
"You have to work backwards. So for example, the rifles, the firearms that were used - I'm sure those have serial numbers on them, or they should. And if they have a serial number, then you can trace back where that gun was manufactured. And then once you established where it was manufactured, then you can start tracking down who bought it. Who was it sold to?"
If a terrorist suspect was spotted making frequent trips abroad, investigators usually look into who paid for their tickets, and how the payment was arranged. When it comes to cyber currency such as Bitcoin, the source could still be established by tracking blockchain operations, according to the CIA veteran.
"I guess Burisma [was used] to pass money to a contractor, to somebody who was providing services to the company, and then that money that gets passed from that individual to the actual terrorists. So I doubt that they were directly passing it to these people. I'm pretty sure they were using a cutout," he suggested.
All eyes are now on Russia's investigation into the financing of terrorist activities, according to Johnson. Ample evidence connecting the dots and shedding light on high-profile perpetrators could become a disaster for some representatives of the US political elite.
