19

Around May 2014, Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian oil company announced that it had added Hunter Biden (US Vice-President Joe Biden's son) to its board of directors.

This caused a small controversy in the media. The Federalist published a few reasons to be skeptical that it actually happened:

The company’s website is…rough, at best, and the domain does not appear to have even been registered until 2010 even though the company was allegedly founded in 2002 and incorporated in 2006. And as recently as July of 2013, the website was not even written in English.

Basic information about the business is also difficult to find. Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider noted on Twitter that the company lacked a profile in Bloomberg, an extensive database of business information, and had no Wikipedia presence whatsoever. Businessweek contained only a brief blurb about the company, stating that it was incorporated in 2006 and based in Cyprus.

Since then, the issue seems to have been forgotten in the media.

Is there any independent source (not from the company's own website) that confirms that Hunter Biden works in Ukraine for Big Oil?

Improve this question
4
  • 2
    Working for a Ukrainian Oil company is not the same as working in Ukraine for Big Oil. There are hundreds of small oil companies in the US I would guess there are some small companies in the Ukraine as well. It could also be that the VP's son is "working" from the US, or in Europe at a remote office.
    – Chad
    Commented Aug 13, 2014 at 20:56
  • 4
    @Chad - same way Chelsea Clinton "worked" for NBC? (or for more accurate comparison, the way Cooper "worked" for that lawyer in Eurotrip?)
    – user5341
    Commented Aug 13, 2014 at 22:25
  • 2
    Here is the official statement: burisma.com/hunter-biden-joins-the-team-of-burisma-holdings @DVK So from reading that it appears yes much like what Chelsea did for NBC...
    – Chad
    Commented Aug 14, 2014 at 13:10
  • 2
    Cyprus is an offshore tax heaven where a lot of Eastern European companies are registered to obfuscate their ownership. The fact that there isn't a lot of information about this company might be by design.
    – ventsyv
    Commented Sep 26, 2019 at 14:07

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
6

I was able to find a 2015 story by the New York Times' James Risen commenting on Hunter Biden's appointment to the Burisma Board of Directors. Burisma was a large Ukrainian natural gas supplier that went out of business in 2019.

Hunter Biden did not work in Ukraine for Big Oil. He made periodic trips to Ukraine and participated by telephone in meetings held in Ukraine by Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas provider. He was compensated for his work as a board member, so in that sense he "worked" for Burisma but not as an employee.

In response to the increased public attention given to Hunter Biden's role on the board of directors of Burisma, Mr. Risen wrote that his activity could potentially be abused by right wingers looking to attack the Bidens.

Note that The Federalist is a right-wing publication but they doubted that Hunter Biden was working for Burisma. They were wrong.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .