Vadym Pozharskyi, one of the top executives in the Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, who purportedly met with then-US Vice President Joe Biden in 2015, actually works as a "fixer" for one of that country's most powerful and purportedly most ruthless oligarchs - Igor Kolomoisky, the New York Post reported citing several anonymous sources, who know the man.
"Pozharskyi's the kind of guy who greases the wheels, shakes the hands, and gets the trains to run on time. He is not spending that much time on yachts like the boss. He's out hustling and networking", an anonymous Moscow-based fixer told the NYP.
The same sources claim that Pozharskyi is one of the toughest and most experienced people in his craft, which is reportedly in high demand in a country that has been struggling to end corruption for decades. They claim the services of people like Pozharskyi are invaluable in the country, which is largely run by oligarchs, who can even afford to have their own private armies.
"Pozharskyi is a technocrat of the reformer generation whose work on behalf of oligarchs is unavoidable because the oligarchs dominate key industries and hire the best fixers money can buy", an American think tank specialist shared with the New York Post on condition of anonymity.
Pozharskyi's official boss is oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, the formal owner of Burisma, which entered the limelight due to an investigation into its alleged involvement in money laundering and to the son of then-US Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter, being on its board. Zlochevsky himself is reportedly holed up in Monaco as authorities in Kiev seek to prosecute him over the "theft of government funds on an especially large scale".
However, according to Moscow-based writer and investigator John Helmer, cited by the NYP, both Pozharskyi and Zlochevsky actually work for a bigger fiish in the Ukrainian oligarch pond – Kolomoisky, who purportedly owns Burisma via the Privat Group. Kolomoisky himself denies these allegations, as well as a multitude of others, such as embezzlement of funds from the PrivatGroup Bank, which he controls, and even involvement in several murders.
How is Pozharskyi Connected to the Bidens?
Pozharskyi was a long-time colleague of Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of Burisma between 2014 and 2019, but he only gained public attention recently with the revelation of files from the so-called "Biden laptop" – a trove of documents and correspondence from a computer abandoned at a repair shop and obtained by Rudi Guliani, who later sent it to the New York Post.
Two letters, uncovered from the drive of the laptop, purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden, and published by the NYP, suggested that Pozharskyi had asked the son of the then-US vice president to use his "influence" in the company's interests and later, in 2015, thanked Hunter for organising a meeting with his father Joe Biden.
"Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It's realty [sic] an honor and pleasure", Pozharskyi purportedly wrote to Hunter Biden in April 2015.
The revelation strongly contradicted the Democratic contender's claim that he never discussed such matters with his son Hunter. Joe Biden's staffers at first dismissed the findings, saying that the former vice president's schedule contains no sign of a meeting with Pozharskyi in 2015, but later admitted they could not completely rule out the possibility of it actually taking place.
The scandal then continued to develop, with new evidence emerging from both the laptop and from the statements of Hunter Biden's alleged former business associate, Tony Bobulinski, which suggested that the Biden family had business dealings with people allegedly connected to China's Communist Party and the former vice president himself receiving "kickbacks" from it. Joe Biden dismissed all the allegations of misconduct and corruption as a "smear campaign" targeting him on the eve of the election. He also went as far as to suggest that Russia was behind the matter, while presenting zero evidence in support of his hypothesis and claiming that "every major outfit, every serious investigator" had called the story a "smear".