Markk wrote:honorentheos wrote:On the one hand, I'm cool with there being investigations across the board into nepotism and grift across party lines. On the other hand, it smacks of the French revolution and I can't imagine it happening in our current political climate in a way that avoids becoming a form of the reign of terror. For Markk, it's almost guaranteed to not happen under a Trump because he isn't going to the guillotine or watch his kids go so don't expect him to kick that off in a meaningful way. Nor would it happen under most Democrats. I suspect it would take a true non billionaire populist or social Democrat to see it happen, and likely as a result of massive civil unrest brought on by inequality.
I have no problem getting them all oath...that would have been the only "fair trial " scenario, but both side would avoid that to no end in that their are so many lies flying around being under oath would be suicide for these folks.
Do you honestly believe that there is not enough evidence against the Biden's to raise a concern, have you hnestly looked at all the evidence?
I wasn't talking about the impeachment hearing. The issue of politicians getting rich, or their associates getting rich, off of their offices is a bi-partisan issue and one I'm behind finding a fix within the orderly workings of government. There are certainly questionable issues around Biden's extended family leveraging their connections to Biden to make money that, while hardly unique, cheapen the ideal of democracy. Trump and his businesses are so explicitly profiting off of his office it's almost a perfect crime because it's happening right in front of our faces without effort to hide it. So when someone talks like it's just an issue with Biden I tend to shut them off because they aren't engaging the issue so much as playing up the issue for partisan politic BS.
As to Burisma, yeah, from what I've read on this board I have no reason to doubt I'm one of the better informed people on the subject here. The corruption issue in Ukraine was something I wrote about on this board before the July phone call. That Guardian article I linked to is valuable precisely because it pre-dated the politicizing of the issue into Republicans v. Democrats, White House v. Pelosi and Shiff posturing. The issue is far bigger than the accusations against Trump and quite frankly are part of perhaps a fatal rot undermining modern society. As the Guardian article put it:
For decades, hundreds of billions of dollars have vanished from the world’s poorest countries, finding their way – via the tax and secrecy havens of Europe, south-east Asia and the Caribbean – into the banking system, real estate and luxury goods markets of the west. According to the World Bank, between $20bn and $40bn is stolen each year by public officials from developing countries. Rich countries returned only $147.2m worth of these assets between 2010 and 2012 – far less than one cent out of every misappropriated dollar. And that may even understate the scale of the problem. Some lawyers involved in asset-recovery cases estimate the volume of money embezzled globally at around $1tn a year, which makes the tiny amount of money recovered look even feebler.
It's also part of the inequality problem here and throughout the west, and it's undermining democratic means of reversing it without voluntary recognition of the problem by many of those benefiting from it, or revolution. One's unlikely and the other is terrible for what it would mean. You don't want to live in a country where violent revolution is happening. Even more so, not a world where there is wide-spread violence and upheaval. But economic inequality combined with the effects of climate changes are moving the world almost inevitably in that direction. It's...well. Anyway. Ukraine.
So the article's value is it isn't focused on Trump or Biden but on the actually issue of corruption in Ukraine. It explains how the British government was trying to go after the president of Burisma in the first attempt to claw back a very small part of the stolen wealth of Ukraine to return it to the citizens of the country but the PG in Ukraine obstructed it in typical fashion leading to the prosecution failing.
There are clear good guys and bad guys when one is looking at the post-Yanukovich era and attempts to right the wrongs against the people of Ukraine. Zlochevsky, the president of Burisma, is clearly one of the bad guys. As the Guardian noted:
Burisma’s website makes clear that the periods when it has performed best have consistently coincided with the high points in its owner’s political career. During a previous Yanukovich government, in 2003-5, Zlochevsky chaired the State Committee for Natural Resources, and companies under his control won licenses to explore for oil. Then Yanukovich fell from grace, and the new government tried to strip Zlochevsky’s companies of their oil exploration rights – and he had to sue the government in order to keep them. Yanukovich won the presidency in 2010 and Zlochevsky became a minister. The good times returned: Burisma gained nine production licenses and its annual production rose sevenfold. After the revolution, Zlochevsky left the administration.
There are also a couple of names on the Ukrainian side that are almost certainly clean from corruption and attempting to make things better. Those being Vitaly Kasko and David Sakvarelidze. Claiming that any other person was attempting to honestly uncover corruption becomes a red flag you don't know what you're talking about.
The long and short of it is that Joe Biden's presentation of the White House position the loan guarantees would be withheld if then-President Poroshenko didn't get rid of PG Viktor Shokin was not helpful to Bursima, Hunter Biden's client. Shokin was part of the corruption problem blocking efforts to return the Ukraine's stolen wealth, as was Poroshenko as the Panama Papers revealed.
So, to help, here's a brief timeline so that you can see how it fits.
February 22, 2014: Viktor Yanukovych, President of Ukraine, is overthrown in a revolution and flees to Russia after a crackdown on protests resulting on over a hundred people being killed. See Euromaidan.
February 27, 2014: Russian troops capture strategic points in Crimea and support the installation of a pro-Russian local government, effecting the annexation of Crimea for Russia on March 18th.
March 1, 2014: Beginning of the violent Russian-backed unrest in Eastern Ukraine. Still ongoing today.
April 2014: Western nations vow to support Ukraine's government in recovering the stolen wealth taken by Yanukovych and others during his regime.
April 14, 2014: $23 million dollars, the proceeds from the sale of an oil facility, being transferred between accounts was frozen as the first sign of this support. The money was tied to Mykola Zlochevsky, president of Bursima. From the Guardian article - the money was frozen at a special court hearing in London requested by the Serious Fraud Office. As described in the later court judgment, the SFO argued that “there were reasonable grounds to believe that the defendant [Zlochevsky] had engaged in criminal conduct in Ukraine and the funds in the BNP account were believed to be the proceeds of such criminal conduct”.
May 2014: Hunter Biden is hired onto the Burisma board of directors.
20 May, 2014:Gould had obtained 6,170 electronic documents from BNP Paribas related to Zlochevsky’s money, and assembled a special team to examine them. He also wanted evidence from Ukraine, so he wrote to the head of the international department of the general prosecutors’ office, Vitaly Kasko, in Kiev.
Kasko: "The investigation began but, no matter how much we pushed the investigators (in the general prosecutor's office), it was not effective,”
June 19, 2014: Vitaly Yarema is voted by parliament to become the new PG, replacing Voktor Pshonka who had been PG since 2012 under Viktor Yanukovych.
Roughly November-December 2014: Eventually, six months after Gould first wrote to him, Kasko stepped decisively outside his area of responsibility, and wrote to his boss in the prosecutor’s office to demand action.
“I said I wanted this to be investigated properly, that the Brits be told about it, and they get what they wanted,” recalled Kasko. “He said, ‘If you want, get on with it.’” It was hardly the most enthusiastic of endorsements, but it was enough for Kasko. He forced investigators to work evenings, and weekends. They put together a dossier of evidence that Kasko felt supported the SFO’s argument “that the defendant’s assets were the product of criminal wrongdoing when he held public office”, sent it to the SFO, and announced officially that Zlochevsky was suspected of a criminal offence in Ukraine.
It was only thanks to Kasko that the SFO had received any useful documents from Ukraine at all. “I asked the Brits, ‘What else do we need to do?’” Kasko remembered. “And they said: ‘That’s fine, that’s more than enough to defend the freezing order in court’.”
December 2, 2014: Unbeknownst to Kasko, the Ukraine PG office sent a letter to the lawyers defending Zlochevsky stating, among other things, Zlochevsky "was never named as a suspect for embezzlement or indeed any other offence, let alone one related to the exercise of improper influence in the grant of exploration and production licenses." This contradicts the fact Kasko was actively aiding the British in the investigation.
January 15, 2015: Justice in the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales rejects the case, referencing the letter multiple times as cause for the ruling. From the article - "The case remains a matter of conjecture and suspicion,” he wrote in his judgment. To confiscate assets, prosecutors have to prove that the frozen money related to a specific crime and, he ruled, the SFO had totally failed to do so.
February 10, 2015: Victor Shokin replaces Vitaly Yarema as Prosecutor General. Victor Shokin had previously blocked prosecution against those responsible for shooting protestors during the 2014 revolution.
February 15, 2016: Kasko resigns from the Ukrainain PG office as Deputy Prosecutor General, at least in part as protest against Shokin's appointment.
March 8, 2015: David Sakvarelidze publicly accuses Ukrainian prosecutors of having "taken a ($7 million) bribe to help Zlochevsky".
May 2015: Spokeswoman for the Serious Fraud Office comments to the reporter: “We are disappointed we were not provided with the evidence by authorities in the Ukraine necessary to keep this restraint order in place”.
September 2015: US ambassador to the Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, publicly states the Ukrainian prosecutors, "were asked by the UK to send documents supporting the seizure” of the $23m, but “instead sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys attesting there was no case against him”. “Those responsible for subverting the case by authorizing those letters should – at a minimum – be summarily terminated,” he said.
September/October 2015: In retaliation, Ukrainian prosecutors begin investigations against Kasko.
2 November 2015: Assassination attempt is made on PG Viktor Shokin following multiple protests in October against corruption in the PG office.
December 2015: In a speech to Ukraine's parliament, Joe Biden states, “It’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption. The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.” It was in route to leaving back to the US that he "urged Poroshenko to fire a corrupt prosecutor general or see the withdrawal of a promised $1 billion loan to Ukraine. “‘Petro, you’re not getting your billion dollars,’” Biden recalled telling him. “‘It’s OK, you can keep the [prosecutor] general. Just understand—we’re not paying if you do.’”
March 16, 2016: PG office, under Viktor Shokin, raids frequent critic of his corruption activities, the Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC), claiming that it had misappropriated aid money.
March 2016: Biden calls President Poroshenko multiple times to reiterate that the US will not provide the loan guarantees as long as Viktor Shokin remains PG.
March 29 2016: Sakvarelidze is fired by PG Viktor Shokin from his job tasked to ferret out corruption . Kasko later says of this, “I didn’t want to stay there like the Queen of England and watch,” he said. “The biggest problem in the prosecutor’s office is corruption. Sakvarelidze and I went in to fight against it, and they threw us out.”
March 29, 2016: An hour after firing Sakverelidze, PG Viktor Shokin is removed from office by the Ukrainian parliament.
January 19, 2017: The day before Trump’s inauguration, Zlochevsky’s gas company announced it was becoming a funder of the Atlantic Council, a prominent Washington thinktank. The Atlantic Council declined to say exactly how much money the tycoon had offered, only that his donation had been between $100,000 and $249,000. A month later, Burisma hired a new director. Joseph Cofer Black does not appear to have any more experience of Ukraine than his colleague Hunter Biden but – as an ex-ambassador and a former director of the CIA’s counterterrorism centre under George W Bush – he is likely to have lots of useful contacts in Washington.