Burisma’s founder and CEO is Mykola Zlochevsky. The CHS, a businessman, first dealt with him indirectly in the 2015-16 time frame. The CHS was introduced to Burisma executives by an associate, identified as Oleksandr Ostapenko, who accompanied the CHS to a meeting at Burisma headquarters to discuss the company’s acquisition of an American energy firm that would allow them to IPO in the U.S.
During the meeting, Burisma CFO Vadim Pojarskii listed the company’s board of directors, which included the former president and prime minister of Poland as well as
Hunter Biden who, he said, was brought on “to protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.”
The CHS then asked why Burisma needed his assistance with the acquisition of a U.S. energy company given Hunter Biden’s involvement, prompting Pojarskii to concede that
the younger Biden’s limited intelligence meant he was of little value outside of the influence he could exercise over his father.
It has
previously been
reported that Hunter Biden’s laptop stored emails from Pojarskii (sometimes spelled Pozharskyi) explicitly discussing the understanding that
Hunter would “use your influence” to assist Burisma, including in arranging for U.S. government officials to help Zlochevsky’s company fend off Ukrainian government pressure.
At a subsequent meeting two months later, the CHS expressed concern that Shokin’s investigation of Burisma would damage the company’s prospective IPO in the U.S. Zlochevsky, the Burisma CEO, replied something to the effect of,
“don’t worry Hunter will take care of all of those Issues through his dad.” He allegedly went on to say that
he had paid $5 million each to Hunter and Joe Biden, an admission the CHS said was not at all unusual in Eastern European circles, where businessman enjoy bragging about their influence.
“Zlochevsky made some comment that although Hunter Biden ‘was stupid, and his (Zlochevsky’s) dog was smarter,’ Zlochevsky needed to keep Hunter Biden (on Burisma’s board) ‘so everything will be okay,’” the document reads.
The CHS also recalled a 2019 phone call in which he mentioned that Zlochevsky might have difficulty explaining suspicious wire transfers that could prove illicit payments to the Bidens.
Zlochevsky, he said, responded that he did not send funds directly to “the big guy” (a reference to Joe Biden), and that the payments to the Bidens had been routed through so many companies and bank accounts that it would take investigators ten years to trace the payments to Joe Biden.