Category Archives: Citizens Duty

Two New Items on Biden and Burisma

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Due to two recent testimonies, a few fascinating items have surfaced. Burisma was considered a money-laundering operation and in order to clean up the image of the company, they hired Hunter considering his last name would point to credibility and a boost in reputation.

George Kent, a top U.S. State Department official, told lawmakers Tuesday he warned the Obama administration that the Ukrainian company that employed then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son was corrupt.

Kent’s comments came during his deposition in the House Democrats’ impeachment probe.

Near the end of an article on his testimony, NBC News noted:

During his nearly 10 hours of testimony, Kent also told members of Congress and their staff that Burisma, the energy company where Hunter Biden was a board member, was corrupt, according to a separate person who was present in the room. Kent said he told the Obama administration in 2016 that they should not hold an event with Burisma because of the company’s extensive corruption in Ukraine. More here.

Then…

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent testified that he worried Ukrainian officials would use Hunter Biden’s position at the company, Burisma Holdings, as an opportunity to influence his father. Kent said he tried to convey his opinion to Joe Biden’s office, but that a staffer told him the vice president didn’t have the “bandwidth” to address the issue because his other son, Beau, was battling cancer.

This is the first known instance in which a career diplomat tried to raise concerns regarding Hunter Biden’s business holdings in Ukraine. Several of Joe Biden’s former advisers also reportedly had discussions about whether his son’s business dealings could be seen as a conflict of interest.

Old School by ni-kit-a

Then…

Hunter Biden worked for the Boies Schiller Flexner law firm that consulted for Burisma. Biden was in charge for the company’s legal affairs with international companies, according to a press release, but Biden has disputed that characterization. At the time, Burisma’s founder faced multiple investigations into alleged tax evasion and money laundering.

Hunter Biden later stepped down from the board in April 2019 when his term expired. More here.

Rudy Giuliani claimed Monday that he's learned that a Ukrainian laundered $3 million through Joe Biden's son, and the Obama administration had a prosecutor fired to cover the scandal up

Coming from NPR in part:

Burisma is registered in Cyprus and is invisible in Kyiv. Lucian Kim of NPR: That’s Alexander Paraschiy, the chief of research at the Ukrainian investment bank Concorde Capital. After the bloody revolution on Kyiv’s streets five years ago, Mykola Zlochevsky, like many other government officials, fled the country. Burisma was facing a money laundering investigation and questions over how it had obtained its licenses.

PARASCHIY: Hiring some reputable guys with recognition in the world is one of the easiest and maybe cheapest ways to protect your business in Ukraine.

KIM: Burisma appointed Hunter Biden, son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, to its board of directors. A former president of Poland also joined the board.

DARIA KALENIUK: I believe the only reason Burisma and Zlochevsky were inviting people with such names was to whitewash their reputation and to present themselves as the company which is doing legitimate business in Ukraine.

KIM: In other words, the appearance of a conflict of interest arose because Hunter Biden’s father, Joe Biden, was responsible for U.S. policy on Ukraine as vice president. But Joe Biden, like many other Western leaders, was criticizing Ukraine exactly because it failed to convict a single high-level official for corruption, including Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma.

As for Burisma, the company has continued to try burnishing its reputation. In 2017, it added another American to its board, Cofer Black, a former CIA official and a foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

KIM: But for a company with global ambitions, it’s hardly transparent. Burisma is registered in Cyprus, keeps a low profile in Kyiv and has ignored NPR’s repeated requests for comment. Nobody knows where its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, lives. But behind the scenes, he’s continuing to buy influence.

Burisma supports the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, and hosts an annual energy conference on the French Riviera attended by the prince of Monaco and former European and U.S. government officials. Hunter Biden, for one, no longer works at Burisma. He left the company earlier this year as his father was launching his presidential campaign. More details and context here.

Burisma was founded in 2002. Consolidation of Burisma Group took mainly place in 2006–2007. It became a major shareholder of Sunrise Energy Resources, a Delaware Corporation, which in 2004 acquired Ukrainian companies Esko-Pivnich and Pari, which owned natural gas exploration licenses.

What is really weird about Sunrise Energy, while being a registered Delaware corporation, the official address is 5353 Memorial Drive, Houston, Texas suite 4012. This is NOT an office building but rather a luxury high rise residential building. This is noted to be the address of the principal executive offices.

5353 Memorial Dr, Houston, TX 77007 photo

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, 570 7th Ave., New York is also listed as an address. Well this is a tall building that is also multi-use condos.

There will likely be more….stay tuned.

Abolishing Columbus Day is Based on Lies

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Roughly 10 states and 100+ U.S. cities observe some version of Indigenous Peoples Day this month.
• Native American advocates have been working since the early 1990s to get states to make the swap, the AP reports.
From today: Columbus statues in San Francisco and Providence, Rhode Island, were vandalized with red paint, CNN reports.
• “Vandals had chained a sign to the base of the statue that said ‘Stop Celebrating Genocide’ and spray painted the word ‘Genocide’ on the monument.”

***

You can be sure this all began within the education system where U.S. history was taught using Howard Zinn’s book titled A People’s History of the United States. This book was full of lies and distortions that educators and faculty including higher education administrators never bothered to validate any claim he made. Now we have legislators at the state level that have bought into the same falsehoods.

In part from the Federalist:

Zinn died in 2010, but his work continues on through the Zinn Education Project that in September collaborated with the Smithsonian in offering credit-bearing “teach-in” classes on abolishing Columbus Day for teachers. On October 8 they mailed out a newsletter that lauded two states, Maine and New Mexico, and cities, such as Columbus, Ohio, and Alexandria, Virginia, that in the past year replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day. Also just joining the list are Washington, D.C. and Princeton, New Jersey.

The newsletter urged teachers to purchase and download their materials to lead students in lobbying their schools and cities to join the effort to “Abolish Columbus Day.”

“Celebrating Columbus means celebrating colonialism, celebrating racism, celebrating genocide,” the newsletter announced. Instead, “tribute” should be paid “to the people who were here first, who are still here, and who are leading the struggle for a sustainable planet.”

The political agenda is clear. Like Zinn himself, the project presents the American Indian as one amorphous mass embodying the stereotype of communistic pacifist feminists. It’s the “Usable Indian,” which at one time embodied the “savage,” but then in the 1960s the hippie. The Indian serves as proxy in the never-ending “struggle.”

Truth be told, as an explorer, Columbus made four trips, never reaching what is known as America or any part of the mainland. In 1492, Columbus reached the Bahamian islands, arriving in San Salvador.

Whose History Matters? Students Can Name Columbus, But ... photo

He sailed around the islands such as Hispaniola and Dominican Republic. He soon departed leaving behind a handful of crew members. Arriving back in Spain, he had very little to offer the Queen. In 1493, he sailed again reaching Hispaniola finding the settlement destroyed and ordered it rebuilt. He did gift the Queen about 500 slaves and she was horrified ordering them to be returned. In 1498, sailing again reaching Trinidad and the South American mainland. Here there was a bloody revolt and Spanish authorities sent a new governor to take over.

There was one more trip in 1502. This time he reached what is known as Panama. Due to major storms there was such damage to two of his four ships, two had to be abandoned. He returned once again to Spain, for the most part again empty handed and he died in 1506.

He kept a journal which he gifted to the Queen.

Christopher Columbus Diary Quotes. QuotesGram photo

In all of the travels and in the end, the result was in fact more open trade between Spain and Latin America in goods such as wheat, coffee, sugar, corn, tomatoes and potatoes.

Ever wonder if the part about successful trade entered any part of the studies of Columbus?

Two Formal Challenges to Pelosi’s Impeachment Inquiry Mission

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You read it here, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is creating an off ramp to the early launch of the impeachment inquiry of President Trump. In previous months, Gerald Nadler, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has been on a quest to impeach listing all kinds of reasons to do so. Nothing was really sticking as far as Pelosi was concerned. But then came this phone call President Trump had with Ukraine that gave us a whistleblower and before all the facts and the complaint was released, Pelosi lit the impeach inquiry candle. Turns out all along, she knew about the call details and the whistleblower all due to Congressman Adam Schiff office secret work with authoring the whistleblower complaint in the first place. Deep state is getting deeper….
Meanwhile…..

Image result for congressman kevin mccarthy
Enter House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. He sent a letter to Pelosi challenging telling her to halt the whole inquiry thing because she is clearly not following rules, procedures and protocol. (I think she is doing that on purpose, read ‘off ramp)
In the McCarthy letter to Pelosi he demands answers to the following questions, which prove so far that Pelosi is not following procedures.

Those questions were as follows:

Do you intend to hold a vote of the full House authorizing our impeachment inquiry?
Do you intend to involve the full House in each critical step of this inquiry, including defining its scope and establishing its rules and procedures?
Do you intend to grant co-equal subpoena power to both the Chair and Ranking Member at the committee level?
Do you intend to require that all subpoenas be subject to a vote of the full committee at the request of either the Chair or Ranking Member?
Do you intend to provide the President’s counsel the right to attend all hearings and depositions?
Do you intend to provide the president’s counsel the right to present evidence?
Do you intend to provide the president’s counsel the right to object to the admittance of evidence?
Do you intend to provide the president’s counsel the right to cross-examine witnesses?
Do you intend to provide the president’s counsel the right to recommend a witness list?
Do you intend to refer all findings on impeachment to Chairman Nadler and the Judiciary Committee, as prescribed by Rule X of the Rules of the House, or is Chairman Schiff in charge of leading the inquiry as reported in the press?

“By answering ‘no’ to any of the above, you would be acting in direct contradiction to all modern impeachment inquiries of a sitting president,” McCarthy wrote.

Okay, hold on because here comes Congressman Doug Collins.

Image result for congressman doug collins

Collins is the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, is telling a federal judge that the Democrats’ impeachment investigation has no legal basis per his amicus brief.

The amicus brief: doug.collins.amicus

(in part)

That part of the text of the amicus brief echos that of Minority Leader’s letter to Pelosi.

All the while, the whole Ukraine phone call thing the House Democrats are using to pull the trigger on impeachment inquiries is also falling apart. The whole Biden scandal continues to fester.

Stay tuned…

SF: Spy, Leave the Room Key at the Front Desk

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This is a movie thing for sure not only that happened in San Francisco but went to Columbus, Georgia. China is operating with hired spies in the United States and Beijing is overtly stealing and buying from the United States.

Northern California Resident Charged with Acting as an Illegal Agent

American Citizen Arrested for Acting as an Illegal Foreign Agent of the People’s Republic of China

The Department of Justice unsealed charges today in a criminal complaint charging Xuehua Peng, also known as Edward Peng, 56, for acting as an illegal foreign agent in delivering classified United States national security information to officials of the People’s Republic of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS).

“According to the allegations, Peng conducted numerous dead drops here in the United States on behalf of Chinese intelligence officers and delivered classified information to them in China.  His arrest exposes and disrupts an operation by those Chinese intelligence officers to collect such information without having to step foot in this country,” said Assistant Attorney General of National Security John C. Demers.  “Coming on top of our many recent Chinese espionage cases—involving both national defense and intellectual property information—this case illustrates the seriousness of Chinese espionage efforts and the determination of the United States to thwart them.”

“The conduct charged in this case alleges a combination of age-old spycraft and modern technology,” said U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson for the Northern District of California.  “Defendant Xuehua (Edward) Peng is charged with executing dead drops, delivering payments, and personally carrying to Beijing, China, secure digital cards containing classified information related to the national security of the United States.”  U.S. Attorney Anderson further stated, “The charges announced today provide a rare glimpse into the secret efforts of the People’s Republic of China to obtain classified national security information from the United States and the battle being waged by our intelligence and law-enforcement communities to protect our people, our ideas, and our national defense.”

“The FBI, along with our partners, will aggressively pursue foreign agents operating illegally in the United States attempting to steal our country’s most sensitive information.” said Assistant Director John Brown of the Counterintelligence Division. “This case should serve as a warning to the government of China as well as any other foreign adversary looking to replicate this activity. The FBI, and our intelligence and law enforcement partners, will not waiver.  We will bring all of our resources to bear to defeat hostile foreign intelligence services and protect our nation’s security. I would like to thank FBI counterintelligence personnel throughout the country who tirelessly worked this investigation over the course of many years, particularly those personnel in our Counterintelligence and San Francisco Divisions.”

“Putting an end to Mr. Peng’s alleged actions are an important and significant step in dismantling the PRC’s overall efforts against our country,” said Special Agent in Charge Bennett of the FBI San Francisco Division.  “Our message is clear: the FBI, along with our intelligence community partners, will pursue foreign adversaries -at any level of an operation- and disrupt their malicious activity when it is detected.”

According to the complaint filed Sept. 24, 2019, and unsealed this morning, Peng, 56, a U.S. citizen living in Hayward, California, acted at the direction and under the control of MSS officials in China in retrieving classified information passed to him by a confidential human source (the source), leaving money behind for the source, or both.  His activities included one dry run and at least five successful “dead drops” between October 2015 and July 2018.  The dead drops occurred in the Bay Area and in Columbus, Georgia.

The table below summarizes the allegations in the complaint about each successful dead drop, including the date of the dead drop, the location of the dead drop, what Peng left in the hotel room, and what Peng retrieved from the hotel:

Date

Location

Peng Left in the Hotel

Peng Retrieved from the Hotel
6/23/2015 Newark, CA n/a Empty package (dry run)
10/24/2015 Newark, CA n/a SD card
4/23/2016 Oakland, CA $20,000 SD card
7/1/2017 Columbus, GA $20,000 n/a
9/9/2017 Columbus, GA $10,000 SD card
6/30/2018 Columbus, GA $20,000 SD card

In the June 23, 2015, “dry run,” no information or money was exchanged.  Instead, an empty package was left by the source for Peng at the front desk of a hotel, and Peng later retrieved it.  In the first successful dead drop, Peng retrieved a package containing an SD card from the front desk of a hotel.  In each of the other four successful dead drops, Peng booked hotel rooms and left a room key to be picked up by the source.  Peng then left envelopes of cash in the room, retrieved a secure digital card left there by the source, or both.

In each instance in which he retrieved an SD card from the hotel room, Peng then traveled to Beijing, China, shortly thereafter.  The complaint further alleges that Peng was told by an MSS handler, in coded language, where and when to conduct the dead drops, how much money to leave in exchange for the SD cards, and when to return to China to deliver them.  As alleged in the Complaint, the FBI secretly filmed Peng conducting some of the dead drops, and intercepted Peng’s telephone conversations with his MSS handlers in China.

On Friday, Sept. 27, 2019, Peng was arrested at his residence in Hayward and made his initial appearance in federal court in San Francisco before U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero. Magistrate Judge Spero ordered Peng held without bond pending further proceedings. Peng’s next hearing has been scheduled for Oct. 2, 2019, at 10:30 am before the Honorable Jacqueline Corley, 450 Golden Gate Ave., 15th Floor, for a detention hearing and identification of counsel.

A complaint merely alleges that crimes have been committed, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If convicted, Peng faces a maximum sentence of 10 years, and a fine of $250,000 for acting as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the United States Attorney General in violation of 18 U.S.C. §  951.  However, any sentence following conviction would be imposed by the court after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 3553.

This case is being prosecuted by the Special Prosecutions Section of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California and the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the Department of Justice, National Security Division.  The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the FBI.

 

The Ukraine Thing will Soon Lead to Cyprus, Meanwhile

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It is a must to fully comprehend how far and wide the choreography was on the Russian collusion thing. Still much of that is unresolved, hence the reason for AG Barr spending a good deal of time in Europe, while John Durham is working his side of the case.
Then there was the massive anti-Kavanaugh Supreme Court thing such that two books were published describing that epic yet failed campaign with hundreds of players inside and outside of government.
Now we have Ukraine percolating while other embers are burning larger that include many of the usual players and others not so well known. This will eventually lead to Cyprus which is a well know hub for money laundering and shell companies.

The players and choreography here as well is a nasty monster.

Meanwhile…
Meet Karen Greenaway.

Recovery of assets stolen by Yanukovych regime: FBI admit they could not return even single ... She lived in Russia before becoming an FBI agent.

Lil miss Karen was a long-timer at the FBI as a case agent and supervisor managing and investigating crimes of money-laundering, financial crimes and international corruption. For context, she worked on Transnational Organized Crime in the former Soviet Union, Middle East, Africa and Asia. She speaks fluent Russian.
Having now left the FBI, she has been still quite busy. In 2018, she was a keynote speaker on those topics at a conference in Copenhagen. She was also included in the panel at the IACC in Seoul in 2020. Here she even mentions a ‘trail of blood that lead to the knife for the murder investigation’. Humm okay.

She must have impressed in her work at the FBI, as later she was also a top investigator on all things Paul Manafort. It is important to go back to 2013 when Viktor Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine fled to Russia. It is thought he and his team, some that also successfully fled, while others did not pilfered billions in corruption schemes. Ms. Greenaway, at the FBI during that time, has the goods, but to what end is uncertain.

As John Soloman of The Hill published due to his stellar work, the Obama administration sent an envoy to Ukraine with an interesting list of people and companies that were not to be investigated, one of them being Burisma. But there is yet another operation that is much more influential and important and that is AntAC. Karen was investigating the Firtash case in Austria back in 2016 as she explained at a AntAC conference in December of 2016.

Now it gets even more interesting. Seems AntAC did not appreciate Solomon’s reporting. Oh, it must be noted that AntAC is a George Soros operation well know by the Obama White House and Victoria Nuland from the State Department.

Just this past February, there was an interesting briefing in the Dirksen Senate Office building dealing with ‘asset recovery’ in Eurasia. Karen Greenaway was there too. A large part of the matter was not only Ukraine but monies in the realm of an estimate trillion dollars, some of which belong to the U.S. government (read, taxpayer).

Greenaway recently retired, and Soros’s AntAC soon after announced she was joining its supervisory board.

It is all complicated and it really is complicated if you read the summary below. But….this was all going on during the Obama administration with John Kerry as Secretary of State.

This is long, but a must read:

The opinion article, which was published on March 26 on The Hill media platform, contained a number of allegations regarding AntAC. We would like to offer our fact check and explanations.

Quote from the opinion article: “While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC).

The focus on AntAC was part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted.

The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, where the Obama administration took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and the group.”

The criminal case into alleged embezzlement of U.S. technical assistance of 4 million USD  of the US taxpayers money which had to be spent on the PGO’s reforms was opened on March 16, 2016 by the Prosecutor General’s Office under the leadership of the previous Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

On April 4, 2016 the PGO received the letter from the U.S. Embassy.

Yuriy Lutsenko, who was appointed to the position of the Prosecutor General in May 2016, fully agreed that the allegations were groundless, he even said that they ‘simply dishonor the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine’.

As soon as Lutsenko was appointed, the case was closed in May 2016 by the PGO.

“Yuri Lutsenko, widely regarded as a hero in the West for spending two years in prison after fighting Russian aggression in his country, was named prosecutor general and invited to meet new U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.”

Firstly, Yuri Lutsenko is widely regarded in the West as “hero” for his drunken and disorderly conduct in Frankfurt airport, where he was detained by the police in 2009 while serving as a Minister of Interior Affairs of Ukraine.

Secondly, Yuri Lutsenko was sentenced to four years in prison in early 2012, this was two years before Russian aggression that started in 2014. Allegations against Lutsenko were for embezzlement of funds of the Ministry of Interior under his leadership and abuse of office resulting in illicit allocation of state-owned apartment to his former driver, facilitating illicit social security payments to this person and illicit allocation of funds for the celebration of the Militia (police) day in 2008-2009. He was charged with causing damages of $125,000 to the state. Lutsenko submitted a claim to the European Court of Human Rights and in 2012 the court ruled that Lutsenko’s arrest and subsequent detention violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

“Lutsenko told me he was stunned when the ambassador “gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute.” The list included a founder of the AntAC group and two members of Parliament who vocally supported the group’s anti-corruption reform agenda, according to a source directly familiar with the meeting.”

During the first possible meeting of Madam Ambassador with Lutsenko, which could not have happened earlier than late August 2016, there were no ongoing criminal prosecutions against AntAC Head of Board Vitaliy Shabunin.

The criminal case against AntAC on alleged embezzlement of the U.S. taxpayers money was already closed for around 3 months.

The criminal investigation into Shabunin’s punch of a bully-provocateur, which took place on June 8, 2017, was triggered in summer 2017. There is an ongoing trial in this case in the court.

“It turns out the group that Ukrainian law enforcement was probing was co-funded by the Obama administration and liberal mega-donor George Soros.”

AntAC was founded in the end of 2011 by Vitaliy Shabunin and Daria Kaleniuk, who formerly were activists of youth NGO “Foundation of Regional Initiatives”. In 2012 AntAC was functioning without any financial support as a volunteer project of its founders.

In 2013 the NGO received first funding as a subgrant from the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDs supported by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the public monitoring of public procurement of medications in Ukraine.

“In the end, no action was taken against AntAC and it remains thriving today.”

This is not true. The action was taken in May 2016 – the PGO closed the criminal case “due to the absence of criminal offence.” However, no-one from PGO officers who abused the power triggering criminal investigation on AntAC was punished disregarding organization’s requests. Information PGO obtained through the course of the investigation (banking statements) was later repeatedly leaked to media with the goal to discredit the organization.

“After the Obama Justice Department launched its Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative a decade ago to prosecute corruption in other countries, the State Department, Justice Department and FBI outsourced some of its work in Ukraine to groups funded by Soros.”

In December 2013 in the middle of the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine AntAC launched a campaign on freezing foreign assets of Ukraine’s former President Yanukovych and his associates. AntAC was running a webpage yanukovich.info, which gathered all publicly available facts about corrupt assets of Yanukovych’s allies and mapped the role of Western lawyers, banks and companies in covering and enabling grand corruption. The campaign was funded via crowdfunding from concerned citizens and was not financially supported by neither government of the U.S. nor Soros foundation.

Within the campaign AntAC reached out to the law enforcement agencies in the EU, Switzerland, the U.S. with request to investigate foreign assets of Yanukovych and his associates. DoJ Kleptocracy Asset Recovery initiative was part of a long list of foreign law enforcement agencies AntAC reached out in December 2013 – February 2014.

“One key U.S. partner was AntAC, which received 59 percent (or $1 million) of its nearly $1.7 million budget since 2012 from U.S. budgets tied to State and Justice, and nearly $290,000 from Soros’s International Renaissance Foundation, according to the group’s donor disclosure records.”

Apart from the projects, funded by abovementioned donors U.S. government and Open Society foundations, since 2013 AntAC was funded by a wide range of other donors, including:

  • The Global Fund via All-Ukraine Charitable Organization “All-Ukraininan Network of People living with HIV/AIDS”
  • The Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands via Matra program
  • The Embassy of the United Kingdom
  • The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic
  • European Union
  • Donations from individuals/legal entities

“The U.S.-Soros collaboration was visible in Kiev. Several senior Department of Justice (DOJ) officials and FBI agents appeared in pictures as participants or attendees at Soros-sponsored events and conferences.”

Right after the victory of the Revolution of Dignity and runaway of former President Yanukovych from Ukraine, AntAC activists were invited to the meetings with law enforcement officers from various countries willing to help Ukraine in tracing proceeds of corruption of ousted president Yanukovych. AntAC also met with representatives from DOJ and shared with them all publicly available information the organization gathered on corrupt officials under Yanukovych regime.

Recovery of proceeds of corruption of Yanukovych and his associates was one of the key priorities of work of AntAC, which was organizing specialized asset recovery conference in Ukraine in 2014, 2015, 2016. Law enforcement officers from Ukraine and abroad were invited to these conferences, including Karen Greenaway. Apart from DOJ officials  there were Ukrainian (including PGO), Italian, British, Swiss law enforcement officers speaking and participating at AntAC asset recovery conferences.

“Greenaway recently retired, and Soros’s AntAC soon after announced she was joining its supervisory board.”

In February 2019 Karen Greenaway agreed to join AntAC Supervisory Board after she will finish her other professional obligations.

AntAC Supervisory Board membership is a non-paid commitment from distinguished professionals who care about Ukraine and countering grand political corruption. Among AntAC Supervisory Board members there are Francis Fukuyama from Stanford University, Giovanni Kessler, former head of the EU Anti-Fraud Office, Oliver Bullough, British author and investigative journalists, Oleksa Shalayskyi, head of Nashi Groshi investigative project in Ukraine.

“Senior U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed to me that the early kleptocracy collaborations inside Ukraine led to highly visible U.S. actions against the oligarch Dmitri Firtash, a major target of the Soros group, and Manafort. Firtash is now represented by former Hillary Clinton lawyer Lanny Davis and former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb.”

Dmitri Firtash was never a major target of the Anti-corruption Action Centre.

AntAC collects publicly available evidence of alleged corruption and money laundering of all oligarchs in Ukraine, as well as all top corrupt officials. AntAC has been doing this under the regime of ousted president Yanukovych and continues to do that under the new government leaded by President Poroshenko since spring 2014.

“Ukrainian NGO Anticorruption Action Centre (AntAC) petitioned the United States Justice Department on behalf of Ukrainian civil society to dedicate the nearly $3 million in forfeited and seized assets allegedly laundered by former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, to creating an anti-corruption training facility,” a 2015 foundation document stated.

In 2013 AntAC submitted a petition to the DoJ with request to repatriate $250mln proceeds of corruption of Pavlo Lazarenko, a former Prime Minister of Ukraine, convicted in the US for money laundering back in 2006. Since 2004, the U.S. government started in rem forfeiture procedure aiming at recovery of proceeds of crime. The procedure is still pending.

In the petition supported by more than 10 civil society organizations AntAC called the US government to refrain from repatriation of stolen assets back to the corrupt government of Ukraine at that time headed by Yanukovych, which could steal them again. AntAC called the US Government to consider the success story of repatriating proceeds of corruption to Kazakhstan, where  independent BOTA foundation was set up for the repatriation of proceeds of corruption. In 2015, AntAC updated the petition given the abrupt changes in the country and emerged news in media claiming that Lazarenko’s funds were about to be confiscated by the DoJ.

“Spokespersons for AntAC and Open Society Foundations did not respond to repeated requests for comment.”

AntAC did not receive any requests for the comments by John Solomon following recent Lutsenko’s interview. The only request from him to provide answers to the questions was received back in October 2018 (six months before publication of Lutsenko’s interview). At that time, AntAC did not provide any response to Solomon after the background checks on him. AntAC became aware of John Solomon’s controversial reputation in American media for spreading manipulative and biased messages. For instance, last year, the staffers of the Hill expressed their concerns over Solomon’s biased reporting. AntAC was rightfully concerned that our answers would be misused and manipulated by Solomon.