that s where you are posted today. georgetown students are lucky to have you and lucky to have you. i want to thank you for your tremendous service. shifting gears into corruption in ukraine, you described quote, we have long understood the long effort must form an essential part of our policies in ukraine, why is this important to us is that still your testimony? yes. at a critical time in 2014 after the elections, you testified that the ukrainian people had made clear in that election that they were done with corruption. correct? yes. and you also testified that the ukrainians thought it would be a good idea to set up architecture of a special investigative office that would be about all the crimes of
corruption, correct? yes. you are aware that the first case that the u.s./u.k. and ukrainian investigators worked on was not against the owner of burisma. yes. that was during tr obama administration. yes. and your testimony, you said today that the investigation was never formally closed because it is frankly useful to keep that company hanging on a hook, right? yes. the ukrainian investigation. yes, although because we did not see the ukrainians moving forward, we no longer partner with them on that case or in that way. let s take a first step. a step back, the first time you personally became aware of burisma, was that actually when you are being prepared by the obama state department for your senate hearings. this is in a form of practice, question as and answers.
thank you, chairman. madame ambassador, returning of the topic of corruption, we heard evidence that you were successful to promoting efforts to address corruption. on wednesday testifying of your career, george kent said you can t promote it seems that your efforts as ambassador to essentially reform a powerful prosecutor general office in ukraine exactly that. madame ambassador, what concerns you when you were the ambassador of ukraine? what concerned us was that there didn t seem to be any progress of the three overall objectives that mr. lutsenko had laid out. most important for the ukrainian people but also the international community. the first thing was reforming the prosecutor s general office.
white house dinner with the president. and then later in may made a contribution of over $325,000 illegally to the president s re-election campaign. are you aware of that? i m aware of the press about those things. does that help you understand a little bit more why this smear campaign was underway? yes. i mean all right. you made some very riveting comments in your statement this morning that i just want to repeat because i think we should have you expand on it. you said, i ve always understood that i served at the pleasure of the president. i still find it difficult to comprehend that foreign and private interests were able to undermine u.s. interests in this way. individuals who apparently felt stymied by our efforts to promote state u.s. policy against corruption, that is to
i do, as well. it may be imperfect. there may be times when it s not used perfectly, but i agree with you. it is the right policy. i don t think that we should change that. now i d like to read from some previous statements including one of your own, as well as others, regarding the appropriateness of investigating corruption in the uk. from miss fiona hill, again, the fact that there are investigations into corruption in the energy sector in ukraine, as well as the russian and many other countries, is not a surprise. from yourself, your previous testimony, question, was it the general understanding that barisma was a company that suffered from allegation of corruption? your answer was yes. from ambassador sondland, i just am generally aware that barisma s considered a potentially corrupt company. would you agree then that it s appropriate to investigate corruption? i think it s appropriate if