Ukraine point-by-point
In 2002, Mykola Zlochevsky and a partner founded a gas production and storage company.
From 2010 to 2012, Zlochevsky served as natural resources minister under Viktor Yanukovych—the pro-Russian Ukrainian president who was helped into office by Paul Manafort. Zlochevsky resigned his position in 2012.
In 2013, Zlochevsky sold Burisma’s gas storage business to Yanukovych associate Serhiy Kurchenko, the owner of a number of gas companies.
Yanukovych was forced from the country in 2014 and is currently in exile in Russia. Following his departure, Ukraine conducted a number of investigations into potential corruption. They created a Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office that followed up on all members of Yanukovych’s administration, including Zlochevsky.
Following the 2014 Maidan revolution, Zlochevsky sought to build bridges with the West. Hunter Biden was offered a seat on the company’s board. Biden was one of several prominent Americans or Western Europeans added to the board as Burisma was seeking to raise its profile.
Soon after, the sale of the gas storage business became the subject of a probe by the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office, which suspected the sale was part of a money-laundering scheme. They asked the new Ukraine prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, to assist in that investigation. Shokin began a probe into Bursima … then stopped.
At the end of the year, Zlochevsky left Ukraine ahead of claims that he had enriched himself while acting as a minister (this investigation was separate from the investigation into the gas storage sale). It eventually ended with no finding against Zlochevsky, and he returned to Ukraine.
By 2015, the U.K. became frustrated with prosecutor Shokin. He was not investigating Zlochevsky, or Burisma, or Kurchenko. They believed that he was not just stalling, but actively thwarting their investigation. They expressed their displeasure to both the Ukraine government and the U.S. government.
In 2016, Biden paid a visit to Ukraine and threatened put a hold on up to $1 billion in U.S. loans if Ukraine did not address issues of rampant corruption. Biden specifically mentioned Shokin and his failure to cooperate with U.K. investigators. The International Monetary Fund also threatened to withhold funds unless Shokin cooperated in investigations.
A few weeks later, Shokin resigned his office ahead of new elections after the Ukrainian parliament voted to censure him. A new prosecutor took over following Shokin and did initiate an investigation into Burisma. He found some tax violations, which the company settled by the end of 2016.
In 2017, the last of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office investigations involving Zlochevsky was closed after finding no wrongdoing.
In 2018, new accusations were lodged that Zlochevsky had given himself oil and gas leases during his two years as minister. A district court reopened the investigation, based on recordings between Zlochevsky and the president of an oil company that suggested graft.
In April 2019, Hunter Biden completed his five-year term, and left the Burisma board.
On May 1, 2019 The New York Times ran a story sourced from Guiliani that said Shokin had been investigating Burisma, and claimed the Ukrainian prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, had reopened an investigation into Burisma in March.
On May 7, Bloomberg followed up and discovered that not only was there no new investigation into either Burisma or Zlochevsky, there had never been an open investigation by Shokin, as Giuliani claimed.
On the same day, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled, after both Trump and Giuliani indicated she wasn’t sufficiently loyal to Trump and Donald Trump Jr. tweeted complaints about her.
On May 9, Giuliani said he was going back to Ukraine to pressure the recently elected president to investigate the Bidens. “There’s nothing illegal about it,” Giulani said. “Somebody could say it’s improper. And this isn’t foreign policy—I’m asking them to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”
In another interview that same day, Giuliani said, “We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do.”
On May 11, Giuliani announced that he was canceling his trip to Ukraine. Giuliani blamed “spin” from Democrats, but incoming president Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly was not interested in meeting.
On May 13, Giuliani went on Fox to claim that Hunter Biden “took millions of dollars out of the Ukraine and over a billion dollars out of China while Joe Biden is vice president,” and that it is a case “crying out to be investigated.”
On May 16, Bloomberg reported on a their own visit to Ukraine in which prosecutor Lutsenko admitted he had “no evidence of wrongdoing by U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden or his son,” and that there was no open investigation of Burisma.
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