(HorizonPost.com) – The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, was a shareholder and active participant in a subsidiary of Burisma Holdings chaired by Hunter Biden, the New York Post reported.
Based on emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop and interviews with a former associate, the New York Post alleges that Klitschko’s links to Hunter Biden could provide a new angle in the House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry against the president.
Klitschko, a former boxing champion, has been mayor of Kyiv since 2014. According to the New York Post, in August 2015, he helped establish Burisma Geothermal. Just two months before he was elected mayor, Klitschko met with then-Vice President Joe Biden in Kyiv.
The vice president’s son Hunter joined the board of Burisma in 2014 in the aftermath of a pro-Western uprising in February 2014 that ousted Kremlin ally Viktor Yanukovych.
In his new role on the board, Hunter proposed that Burisma Holdings form alliances with the pro-Western leaders who led the uprising.
In an April 2014 email to business associate Devon Archer, who also joined the Burisma board, Hunter suggested that Archer “reconnect” with Klitschko, whom he described as “a central leader” in the effort to oust Yanukovych.
In the same month that Hunter was promoting Klitschko, then-Vice President Biden met with Klitschko while on an official visit to the capital, even posing for a picture while grasping the former boxer’s biceps, according to a July 2014 article in the New Yorker.
The former boxer used his growing popularity to get elected mayor of Kyiv in June 2014.
The following year, Klitschko traveled to Washington, where he was warmly welcomed by then-Vice President Biden, who, just weeks earlier, had dinner at Café Milano with Hunter, two oligarchs from Russia and Kazakhstan, and Vadym Pozharskyi, an advisor to the Burisma board.
By August 2015, the relationship between Klitschko and Burisma was firmly established with the launch of the subsidiary Burisma Geothermal, which billed itself as an environmentally friendly fossil fuel company.
According to the New York Post, Klitschko has been floated as a possible challenger to President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine’s next election.
Copyright 2024, HorizonPost.com
