Posted on 03/24/2022 7:59:41 PM PDT by NoLibZone
A senior Biden administration official, handling global energy policy, recently held a high-level position at a Ukrainian state-run natural gas firm but resigned citing corruption.
Amos Hochstein, who President Joe Biden appointed to be the State Department’s top adviser for energy security over the summer of 2021, was a member of the energy company Naftogaz’s supervisory board. Hochstein took the position in 2017 after he said government officials persuaded him to accept the offer.
“When fears abounded in late 2017 that Ukraine’s efforts to dismantle corruption were weakening, U.S. and foreign officials encouraged me to accept the (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s) request, and join the Naftogaz board to reinforce, and help protect, the progress that CEO Andriy Kobolyev and his team had made, and continue with additional critical reforms,” Hochstein wrote in an editorial published by the Kyiv Post in October 2020.
Since 2014, the U.S. has led an effort to reduce corruption in Ukraine’s government from within, he wrote. His role at Naftogaz was a part of this effort, Hochstein said.
But Hochstein eventually resigned from the board in 2020, writing in the Kyiv Post editorial that the attempt to fight corruption at the state-run energy giant “was resisted at every step of the way.”
“I can no longer stand by and be used to endorse this negative trend, and it’s why I must voluntarily leave the board,” he wrote. “I do so with regret but also with pride for what has been accomplished.”
Then, in August 2021, Biden appointed Hochstein to serve as the Department of State’s senior adviser for energy security.
In his statement announcing the appointment, Secretary of State Antony Blinken didn’t mention Hochstein’s previous position at Naftogaz. Instead, Blinken noted that Hochstein’s decades of experience in the U.S. government, academia and the private sector would help him fortify global energy security “especially in Central and Eastern Europe.”
Since entering the Biden administration, Hochstein, who served at the State Department under the Obama administration, has engaged in energy diplomacy around the world, making several trips to the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
In September 2021, a senior administration official said Hochstein would “continue working with the Ukrainians, as well as with the Germans and other regional partners, on the importance of maintaining Ukraine’s transit role and the security of supply during this period of energy transition” during a media briefing.
Meanwhile, President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, has faced criticism in recent years for his involvement in a separate Ukrainian natural gas firm, Burisma. Hunter Biden was appointed to the company’s board in 2014, according to a report published in 2020 by two Senate committees.
The report went on to cite Hochstein, who told the committee that he told then-Vice President Joe Biden in 2015 that his son’s involvement with Burisma “enabled Russian disinformation efforts and risked undermining U.S. policy in Ukraine.”
An email originally obtained by the New York Post in October 2020 suggested that Joe Biden met with Hunter Biden and a top Burisma executive in 2015.
The State Department and White House didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Victoria Nuland....
I’ve seen some of his work. Painting “STOP” signs is right up his alley.
Saying that Biden is tied to Ukraine is like saying the Anwar Awlaki, the Yemeni terrorist, is tied to the US. The relationship is completely incidental. Biden’s real relationship is to Russia - Burisma’s owner is a pro-Moscow oligarch tied indirectly to Putin.
Yanukovich ran to Moscow because he was Putin’s man. Who was Yanukovich’s man, who left Ukraine when Yanukovich scuttled away to his master in Russia? Zlochevsky, who *co-incidentally* owned Burisma, the outfit that bribed Biden through Hunter.
Why hasn’t the media made the connection? For the same reason it’s completely uninterested in Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Some previous articles mentioning Naftogaz:
* * *
Nov 28, 2017,03:36pm EST
Ukraine’s Naftogaz Hires DC Lobbyist To Fight Russia’s Gazprom
Ukrainian energy giant Naftogaz has hired a small DC lobbying firm called Yorktown Solutions to help them counter what they say is a Russian war chest armed against them.
The little-known consultancy is run by Daniel Vajdich, a Republican political operative who has worked on both Ted Cruz and Scott Walker campaigns and served as a staffer for Eurasian Affairs on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Vajdich is also a senior fellow at The Atlantic Council, an independent think tank known for pushing official Washington’s interests abroad. Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk is one of its biggest donors.
That Naftogaz even bothered to announce this deal is unusual because it just cost them around $37,000, according to Ukrainian government records. By comparison, Naftogaz claims that Gazprom spent upwards of $1 million in the third quarter alone lobbying — unsuccessfully one might add — for Washington lawmakers to leave their Nord Stream II pipeline off the new sanctions bill, passed this summer.
Naftogaz said that it was “enhancing its activities in the U.S.” following the demands of 16 members of the Ukrainian parliament who requested international action to counter Gazprom abroad.
* * *
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-zelenskiy-cohen-lobbyist-washington/30100141.html
Exclusive: Enigmatic Attorney Says He Hired D.C. Lobbyists For Zelenskiy ‘Out Of Good Will’ — And Out Of His Own Pocket
August 08, 2019 16:57 GMT
By Christopher Miller
The enigmatic American attorney who hired a Washington lobbying firm to elevate the profile of Ukraine’s newly elected president during his campaign has broken his silence, telling RFE/RL in an exclusive interview that he paid nearly $70,000 for the work out of his own pocket – and out of good will toward Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“It was my initiative…and I was happy to do it,” Marcus Cohen said of the lobbying work in an August 7 phone interview with RFE/RL from Washington.
For more than six weeks this spring, the Washington lobbying firm Signal Group Consulting, LLC, worked for Cohen, who claimed to be a representative of then-presidential candidate Zelenskiy. The firm’s task, according to a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filing made public in April, was to “to elevate the profile” of the former comedian in the U.S. capital.
On July 17, Signal Group filed a disclosure report with the U.S. Justice Department outlining the work it did for Cohen on Zelenskiy’s behalf. That included facilitating meetings for the candidate’s then campaign chief-of-staff and an adviser with officials on Capitol Hill, the Trump administration, members of the news media, and the think tank and policy community in Washington. There was also a pricey dinner at a restaurant inside the Trump International Hotel.
For its work, Signal Group said it was paid almost $70,000 by Cohen.
The only problem is Zelenskiy vehemently denied knowing anything about the work, and Cohen, who has a small online presence and is self-employed, was nowhere to be found. . .
* * *
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3784180/posts
AP sources: Trump allies pressed Ukraine over gas firm
AP ^ | 10/06/19 | DESMOND BUTLER, MICHAEL BIESECKER and RICHARD LARDNER
As Rudy Giuliani was pushing Ukrainian officials last spring to investigate one of Donald Trump’s main political rivals, a group of individuals with ties to the president and his personal lawyer were also active in the former Soviet republic.
Their aims were profit, not politics. This circle of businessmen and Republican donors touted connections to Giuliani and Trump while trying to install new management at the top of Ukraine’s massive state gas company. Their plan was to then steer lucrative contracts to companies controlled by Trump allies, according to two people with knowledge of their plans.
Their plan hit a snag after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko lost his reelection bid to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose conversation with Trump about former Vice President Joe Biden is now at the center of the House impeachment inquiry of Trump.
But the effort to install a friendlier management team at the helm of the gas company, Naftogaz, would soon be taken up with Ukraine’s new president by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, whose slate of candidates included a fellow Texan who is one of Perry’s past political donors.
It’s unclear if Perry’s attempts to replace board members at Naftogaz were coordinated with the Giuliani allies pushing for a similar outcome, and no one has alleged that there is criminal activity in any of these efforts. And it’s unclear what role, if any, Giuliani had in helping his clients push to get gas sales agreements with the state-owned company. . .
* * *
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4038477/posts
Biden Administration Kills Israel-to-Europe Gas Pipeline
Gatestone Institute ^ | 02/15/22 | Soeren Kern
. . .The demise of the EastMed pipeline project appears to be — in large measure — the handiwork of Amos Hochstein, a political operator in the American Democratic Party and an acolyte of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and former U.S. President Barack Obama. Hochstein, a confidant of U.S. President Joe Biden, currently serves as Senior Advisor for Energy Security at the U.S. Department of State.
In January 2022, Turkish state television channel TRT aired a documentary — “The Pipe Dream” (Part 1 and Part 2) — in which Hochstein repeatedly criticized the EastMed pipeline because it excludes Turkey. He also decried the Trump administration’s support of the project:
“I don’t see the need for the United States to come in and support this project. This is a project that probably should not happen because it’s too complicated, too expensive, and too late in the arc of history.
“Today in the Biden administration I would be extremely uncomfortable with the United States supporting this project. Why would we build a fossil fuel pipeline between the East Med and Europe at a time when our entire policy is to support new technology, new developments, and new investments in going green and going cleaner?
“So, by the time this pipeline is built, we will have spent billions of dollars of taxpayer money, probably, on something that is obsolete. And not only obsolete but against our collective interest between the United States and Europe.”
Hochstein’s comments reek of hypocrisy: he has long been a proponent of fossil fuels. In 2017, during a speech to the GE Oil and Gas Annual Meeting, Hochstein praised fossil fuels as creating “so much job growth and economic prosperity in the United States and around the world.” He added that natural gas “will continue to be the backbone of a cleaner energy future.” That same year, Hochstein joined the supervisory board of Naftogaz, the largest state-owned gas and oil company in Ukraine. . .
https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/press-conference/631015.html
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3806651/posts
Money laundering in Ukraine has Biden involvement
Interfax-Ukraine ^ | December 17, 2019
MP Derkach says Naftogaz CEO Kobolev, Favorov ‘naftogazed’ $1.5 bln from Ukrainians with Biden’s full knowledge
KYIV. Dec 17 (Interfax-Ukraine) – NJSC Naftogaz Ukrainy’s top management would sell Russian gas in Ukraine as the European one with former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s full knowledge, having thus earned $1.5 billion, Member of Parliament (independent) Andriy Derkach has said.
He says that Ukrainian companies affiliated with Naftogaz’s top management rather than European firms most often trade in Russian gas in Ukraine.
“The scheme they earn on Ukrainians is as follows: Naftogaz’s top managers sell Russian gas to Ukrainians, calling it European. And this ‘renaming’ has brought them $1.5 billion in revenue. The originators of the Naftogaz reform, including Mr. [Amos] Hochstein, who is fully accountable to Biden, could not help but know about the scam with Russian gas. And judging by the fact that part of the stolen money was wired to American companies, they also covered up that scheme,” Derkach said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine in Kyiv on Tuesday, December 17.
The MP stressed that Ukraine had overpaid almost $1.5 billion for the so-called European gas in the past five years.
“Most of this sum has settled in the pockets of representatives of the Ukrainian company and, presumably, officials of Naftogaz. To put it simply: Ukrainians’ money has been ‘naftogazed.’ The largest importer is the Energy Resources of Ukraine (ERU) Group of Companies, registered both in Ukraine and in tax havens, which was headed by Andriy Favorov. He is currently in charge of the Naftogaz Integrated Gas Business Division,” Derkach said.
According to him, part of the company’s profit was siphoned into offshore accounts.
“For example, the company transferred almost UAH 348 million to ERU MANAGEMENT SERVICES LLC’s bank account from July 21, 2016, to June 23, 2017, and almost UAH 274 million from May 25, 2017, to July 25, 2017. In total, this is over UAH 620 million. These are only the numbers that investigative journalists were able to trace. It is clear that the total siphoned sum is higher,” he said.
Derkach claims the scheme was covered up by Biden’s appointee, member of Naftogaz’s Supervisory Board Hochstein.
.
Now Hunter’s company is involved with the Ukraine BIOLABS that WE PAY FOR!
Biden Administration = Abuse of Office
Or his turn to be the head of the good old boy club?.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
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