of 2015 then ambassador to ukraine geoffrey pyatt called for an investigation into zlochevsky, the president of burisma. this was the ambassador appointed by president obama in ukraine. i wasn t aware of that, no. you were not aware of it. no. so you would not be the first one to be mentioning that investigations should be done on burisma because it happened during the obama administration. did you know that financial records show burisma routed more than $3 million to the american accounts tied to hunter biden? i did not know that. did you know that burisma s american lawyers tried to secure a meeting with the new state prosecutor the same day as predecessor viktor shokin who the vice president wanted fired was announced? i did not know that. well, we re not going to the
went away, and essentially nothing has been forever done with regard to burisma. during your tenure in ukraine, has there ever been any focus on re-examining allegations to mark it s at burisma or other powerful interests, like zlochevsky, re-examining? is not on the part of the ukrainian government, is that what you re talking about? yeah, trying to lean on the various prosecutors general to clean up the oligarchical syst system. yes, i think there have been some efforts. as i mentioned earlier in my testimony, the u.s. was welcoming. mr. lutsenko s nomination to the position of prosecutor general. we were hoping he would clean that up. that, in fact, is not what
happened. it s kind of hard to explain to a u.s. audience, but in ukraine and in the former soviet union more broadly, including in russia, the justice system whether it s cops on the beat, whether it s investigators, whether it s prosecutors, whether it s judges are used as a tool of the political system to be used against your political adversaries. i think, going back to your question about burisma and zlochevsky, my understanding this was, as i told you earlier, in the previous deposition, this did not loom large when i arrived. i arrived in 2016, august 2016. but over time my understanding was that the case was basically sort of on a pause.
that was a big part of mr. kent s initiative when he was there. that a bribe was. tto the prosecutors, and zlochevsky was let off the hook. this was in 2014. is this something you re familiar with? i ve heard about it. this was before my arrival. i would just say my understanding please correct me if i m wrong is that the u.s. money that you are referring to was the money that we used to fund an fbi team that was embedded with the prosecutor general s office to go after not to go after, but to do the investigation of burisma and zlochevsky. mr. kent testified that this bribe was paid, that prosecution
it wasn t an active case, but it also was not fully closed. that is a way, as i mentioned before, for those in power to keep a little hook into burisma and mr. zlochevsky. right around the time the bribe was paid, burisma undertook an effort to spruce up their board, the president of poland and some other luminaries? are you familiar with that? i don t exactly know what the timing of all this was. okay. but yes, to the elements. one of the folks they added to the board was the vice president s son, hunter biden, which raises questions. is he a genius on the corporate governance front? is he a genius with the ukrainian oligarchical systems and cleaning that up? or was he just added to the board because he is the vice president son? was that ever a concern, or at