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Post by Admin on Nov 21, 2019 18:52:48 GMT
An investment firm linked to Hunter Biden received over $130 million in federal bailout loans while his father Joe Biden was vice president and routed profits through a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, according to federal banking and corporate records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
Financial experts said the offshore corporate structure could have been used to shield earnings from U.S. taxes.
Rosemont Capital, an investment firm at the center of Hunter Biden’s much-scrutinized financial network, was one of the companies approved to participate in the 2009 federal loan program known as the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF.
Under the program, the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Bank issued billions of dollars in highly favorable loans to select investors who agreed to buy bonds that banks were struggling to offload, including bundled college and auto loans.
According to federal records, 177 firms participated in TALF, many of them well connected in Washington or on Wall Street. For investors, there was little risk and a high chance of reward. The Federal Reserve funded as much as 90% of the investments. If the bonds were profitable, the borrowers benefited. If not, the department agreed to take over the depreciated assets with no repercussions for the borrowers.
“It's very complicated to become qualified as a TALF borrower or as a TALF fund, if you will,” Carol Pepper, a wealth management specialist, told Forbes in 2009. “But that's an example of where, if you can get into a TALF fund, you can benefit from this government program.”
Under the terms for the program, any U.S. company looking to invest in select categories of bonds was eligible to apply for the loans. However, the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve maintained the “right to reject a borrower for any reason,” and the internal selection process was criticized by some lawmakers as opaque and open to corruption.
“How can my constituents in Vermont get some of that money? Who makes the decisions? Do you guys sit around in a room — do you make it? Are there conflicts of interest?” Sen. Bernie Sanders asked Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke at a March 3, 2009, Senate hearing. “Do you have to be a large, greedy, reckless financial institution to apply for these monies?”
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Post by Admin on Nov 23, 2019 23:28:25 GMT
Biden snaps at Fox News reporter for question about Hunter Biden's illegitimate son
Hunter Biden is the father; Raymond Arroyo breaks down his 'Friday Follies.'
Leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden snapped at Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, Friday, after he asked Biden if he had any comment on the report that his son Hunter Biden was confirmed to be the father of a child with a woman he denied having sex with.
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Post by Admin on Nov 24, 2019 21:43:25 GMT
To this day, Burisma’s connection to Hunter Biden has made it much harder for Ukrainian authorities to investigate the company for corruption, current and former officials in Ukraine tell TIME. In that sense, Burisma is still getting its money’s worth for the reported $50,000 per month it paid the younger Biden to sit on its board from 2014 until earlier this year.
Ukraine’s government insists that it has no evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden or his father. But Burisma, they say, is a different story. Since taking office in May, the government has sought to explore past claims of corruption against Burisma and its owners. Yet, as an unintended consequence of the impeachment inquiry, Ukraine has felt the need to treat the company with kid gloves.
“It’s too sensitive a topic,” says an official in Kyiv, who would only discuss the company’s case on condition of anonymity. “I think that we need to investigate Burisma. Not for Trump. And not against Biden. We need to do that because this is just a case of corruption,” says the official, who is familiar with the thinking of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But the impeachment inquiry has “changed the context” around alleged corruption at Burisma, adds the official. “And this is bad.”
The case of Burisma cuts to the heart of the Republican defense of Trump. The President and his allies have insisted that the Bidens acted corruptly to shield the company from prosecution in Ukraine. The former Vice President, his son and their supporters have strenuously denied these allegations, and there is no evidence that Joe Biden’s decisions were ever influenced by his son’s involvement with Burisma. But the treatment of that company in Ukraine suggests that the role of Hunter Biden continues to affect the handling the company’s case, prompting the new government of President Zelensky to weigh its approach to fighting graft with particular care, especially when it comes to the country’s notoriously corrupt gas sector.
“We don’t know how major players in the United States would turn any statement” on the issue of corruption, says Bohdan Yaremenko, a senior lawmaker in the ruling party of President Zelensky. “If we would try to make an emphasis on this issue right now, we would sound like we are trying to contradict President Trump and Republicans,”
The sensitivity around Burisma also came up during impeachment hearings this week. In his testimony on Tuesday, Kurt Volker, the Trump Administration’s former special representative in Ukraine, said he urged the Ukrainian government not to give Burisma any special treatment because of its connection to Hunter Biden. “What I was trying to do in working with the Ukrainians was to thread a needle,” Volker testified. He encouraged the government to investigate corruption at Burisma without getting tangled up in Trump’s allegations of corruption against Joe Biden and his son. “If there was a way to thread that needle, I thought it was worth the effort.”
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Post by Admin on Nov 29, 2019 17:49:38 GMT
In an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, Kwasniewski admitted that Biden was chosen to join the board because of his last name, but went on to explain that is how the business world works. "I understand that if someone asks me to be part of some project it's not only because I'm so good, it's also because I am Kwasniewski and I am a former president of Poland," he said. "And this is all inter-connected. No-names are a nobody. Being Biden is not bad. It's a good name." Kwasniewski then defended Biden by noting that he never used his father's name to get ahead on the advisory board, nor did any members ask him to use his connections with the Obama administration to curry favors for them. "He was a normal member of this group," he said. "We didn't ask him—and he never said anything—about his father." Sometimes members would ask Biden about how his father was doing during dinners, and once he discussed the death of his brother Beau, the former Polish president added. Kwasniewski said that Biden bought unique American skills and experience to the board and diligently researched for the company. "He collected information," he added. "He was useful for us because he knew something that we didn't know." Biden's role in Burisma has been a focus of the ongoing impeachment inquiry hearings into President Donald Trump in recent weeks. He served on the board from 2014 to 2019.
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Post by Admin on Dec 6, 2019 17:29:20 GMT
A former Ukrainian member of parliament who has claimed to have dirt on a company linked to the Bidens was arrested earlier this week in Germany, The Daily Beast has confirmed. Oleksandr Onyshchenko, who worked closely with Ukraine’s previous president before fleeing the country after being accused of embezzlement, has been living in Europe for several years. German authorities arrested him in Aachen on Friday. “We are analyzing information in particular about the fact and basis for the detention of our client,” Ishemko said in a text. “According to our information, Oleksandr was in the process of seeking international protection and could not be arrested in accordance with Article 33 of the international convention relating to the status of refugees. Attorneys for Oleksandr are doing everything so that his rights, both in Ukraine and outside, are upheld in the necessary manner.” Onyshchenko’s arrest comes as efforts by Trump’s American allies to find information about Burisma Group—where former Vice President Joe Biden’s son was once a board member—have reached a fever pitch. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, is currently in Kyiv, Ukraine, holding meetings on the subject. Efforts by Giuliani and other Trump administration officials to win political goodies from Ukrainian government officials—including an announcement of an investigation into Burisma—are a central focus of Democrats’ impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump. Democrats’ next impeachment hearing is scheduled for Dec. 9. German authorities arrested Onyshchenko based on a request from Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). According to a report from the UNIAN news agency, Ukrainian officials are awaiting a ruling from a German court on whether or not to extradite Onyshchenko.
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