Beautiful Things

by Hunter Biden

  Boies Schiller then hired Nardello & Co., another global investigator. Founded by a former federal prosecutor, Nardello specializes in looking into foreign companies for bribery and other corrupt practices. They poked into Burisma’s operations to make sure its assets were legitimately held and that the international community viewed it as a trustworthy enterprise. That’s how it would win the support of allies and wary investors, and how it would continue to expand.

  Burisma checked all the important boxes. There were questions about the propriety of awarding contracts to a company Zlochevsky owned while he was Ukraine’s ecology and natural resources minister. That’s the kind of situation where things can get gray. But the reality is that there weren’t many viable privately owned natural gas companies in Ukraine, like Burisma, at the time. The vast majority of production was state owned, but Burisma also had a much higher efficiency rate than the state.

  (I should note that none of the investigators knew of a probe into Zlochevsky that had just gotten under way in the United Kingdom. Officials there froze Zlochevsky’s London bank accounts containing $23 million while they looked into money-laundering allegations. The UK’s Serious Fraud Office eventually unfroze the assets in early 2015 and dropped the case three years later.)

  Like many others outside the region, I still didn’t fully comprehend how far and deep the tentacles of Russian corruption had reached in Ukraine. It astounds me to this day how involved Russia is in everything. It’s hard to disassociate anyone in the region who has had success in any way with the innately dirty hands of Russia.

  In my investigation before joining the board, I looked at whether or not Zlochevsky was a known criminal. I looked at whether or not he operated a business that was transparent and coherently linked to Western norms of corporate governance. I did not drill down to determine whether or not Zlochevsky acquired his wealth fairly during the decades of kleptocracy and corruption that dated back to when Ukraine was a former republic of the Soviet Union.

  In Zlochevsky, I saw someone who was attempting to break with Russian influence, whether out of self-interest or some form of patriotism. I know it was driven by much more than self-preservation. He was looking to the West at a critical time, when there was a need for this company, in particular, to exist independently and out of reach of Putin and the clutches of the Russian kleptocracy.

  Putin wants Ukraine for four very well-defined reasons: he wants natural resources, specifically natural gas; he wants the port in Crimea; he wants a land bridge between the Far East and Europe; and he wants a buffer between Russia and NATO to increase his sphere of influence.

  The reason Russia wanted to hijack Burisma was stupid-simple: natural gas. John McCain said it best: “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country.” Without oil and gas, the Russian economy, in terms of GDP, would rank just ahead of that of Illinois among the fifty states. Putin’s power comes from his control over natural assets, particularly energy—along with Russia’s estimated 6,800 nuclear warheads.

  It would be easy to look at Zlochevsky and say that he’s part of the problem. But you have to start somewhere. It was a time of crisis in Ukraine. No matter how imperfect the entity I was asked to champion, I knew one thing, which Kwasniewski had underscored so forcefully: Burisma was opposed to the direct interests of the most dangerous person in the world—Vladimir Putin.

  If I was going to pick a side—and if I was going to get paid to pick a side—I’d choose the same way again, rather than back the person President Trump has sided with.

  After gathering all that background, Boies Schiller recommended that Burisma go even further in following Western standards of corporate transparency and governance and that it look to diversify, in partnership with international companies around the globe.

  Besides Kwasniewski, the board included other respected heavyweights. Alan Apter, an American investment banker based in London, had advised companies throughout Eastern Europe. Joseph Cofer Black, who would join the board in 2016, was director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center during the George W. Bush administration.

  There’s no question my last name was a coveted credential. That has always been the case—do you think if any of the Trump children ever tried to get a job outside of their father’s business that his name wouldn’t figure into the calculation? My response has always been to work harder so that my accomplishments stand on their own.

  Still, I was absolutely qualified to do what Burisma needed done. As is true with many boards, I wasn’t brought in to give expert advice in areas where the company already had experts—in this case, natural gas. My charge instead was to do what Boies Schiller recommended: make sure Burisma further implemented corporate practices that were up to accepted ethical snuff. Burisma wasn’t starting from zero; it didn’t appear to be some idle oligarch’s plaything. It’s an incredibly well-run company.

  Am I an expert in corporate governance? Did I have experience and contacts around the world?

  While an unpaid chair of the World Food Program USA, which the U.S. supported through six different agencies, I helped increase funding 60 percent in five years—to more than $2 billion. For my work there and at other nonprofits, including Catholic Charities and Bono’s One Campaign, I interacted with government and business officials in too many countries to count: Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Kenya, Djibouti—the list goes on. While at Amtrak, I helped spearhead the search for a new president, with the promise of negotiating a union contract for the first time in eight years. As a director in the Department of Commerce during the late 1990s, focusing on e-commerce, I traveled often with then-secretary William M. Daley, everywhere from Uruguay to Cairo to Vietnam to Ghana. I traveled so much for my own consulting business and had contacts in places so wide-ranging that my elevator pitch to clients was that we could help build their portfolio “from Baltimore to Beijing.”

  So, yes, I brought something besides my name to the Burisma board’s table.

  My association was transparent and widely reported on from the start. Burisma put out a press release about my appointment, and within a week the Wall Street Journal ran a news story. That’s when Dad called and said, “I hope you know what you’re doing,” wanting to make sure I’d done the due diligence and legwork necessary to make certain I was on the right side of things.

  I assured him I had. I’d been involved in overseas enterprises throughout his two terms as vice president—since I had to stop lobbying for the interests of Jesuit universities and others—and no one at Burisma had even hinted at wanting me to influence the administration. The fact is, there was almost nowhere in the world that didn’t somehow cross my father’s spheres of influence.

  The executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit government watchdog group, told a reporter at the time, “It can’t be that because your dad is the vice president you can’t do anything.”

  The irony, of course, is that my name’s weight in Ukraine came from my dad’s position as point man for the administration’s push to get the country to clean up its act. Both U.S. and international support for Ukraine, and for the pro-Western president who replaced Yanukovych, was pegged to rooting out corruption. In many instances, that corruption was tied directly to Putin’s growing influence.

  A priority for my dad was the ouster of the country’s prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, for his failure to adequately investigate corruption. It was a view shared widely by European allies. Among the high-profile companies that Shokin was criticized for not pursuing: Burisma.

  What came into focus for me after looking into Burisma was just how high a priority the takeover of Ukraine’s energy sector had become for Russia. As Kwasniewski had detailed to me during his initial pitch, Russia appeared to be attacking Burisma as much as it was assailing Ukraine.

  That assessment has since been validated by any number of revelations.

  It came to light that Russian military spies attempted to hack Burisma in the fall of
2019, in search of dirt on me and my father. Their raid on Burisma’s servers and emails coincided with last November’s congressional impeachment inquiry into Trump, which centered on whether he strong-armed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing a probe of Burisma and me. Trump backed that threat by withholding nearly $400 million in approved military aid and putting Ukrainian lives at risk. The Russian culprits belonged to the same spy agency that hacked the Democratic Party servers and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, in 2016.

  Meanwhile, Giuliani’s rogue dirt-finding mission on behalf of the president unraveled almost daily. Texts and documents supplied by Giuliani’s Ukrainian American point man, Lev Parnas, revealed just how low and compromised those overseas dealings have been—and underscore why Trump adopted my name as a rallying cry to divert attention from his own. These include notes Parnas took while speaking to Giuliani by phone in a hotel in Vienna. One was an almost comically clear reference to their effort to get “Zalensky” (as Parnas spelled his name in the note) to announce investigations into my dad. In fact, it said almost exactly that: “Get Zalensky to Announce that the Biden case will Be Investigated.”

  Among Parnas’s many blockbuster revelations, one of the most damning was Giuliani’s connection to Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch whom U.S. federal prosecutors have described in court papers as an associate of Russian organized crime (which he denied). More charitable descriptions of Firtash include a “Kremlin influence agent” and, from a Ukrainian parliamentarian who investigated him, “a political person representing Russian interests in Ukraine.” It has also been reported that Firtash is attached to Semion Mogilevich, believed to be the Russian Mafia’s “boss of bosses.” He sat on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

  Firtash also appears to be the person with whom Giuliani reportedly tried to cut a deal, promising to get the U.S. Department of Justice to drop its attempt to extradite him to the United States on bribery charges.

  Whether or not everything Parnas alleges turns out to be true is hardly the point. In the words of one New York Times columnist, “The very fact that a person like Parnas was carrying out high-level international missions for the president shows how mob-like this administration is.”

  That’s why Burisma considered my last name gold. As Kwasniewski has since said: “I understand that if someone asks me to be part of some project it’s not only because I’m so good; it’s also because I am Kwasniewski and I am a former president of Poland. And this is all interconnected. No-names are a nobody. Being a Biden is not bad. It’s a good name.”

  To put it more bluntly: having a Biden on Burisma’s board was a loud and unmistakable fuck-you to Putin.

  * * *

  I joined the board in April 2014.

  Every organization’s board dynamics differ. They can be combative during times of crisis, leadership upheavals, or a looming takeover. Boards can act as referees or change agents. In the case of Burisma, we were largely guardrails, there in case operations veered off track, agendas diverted from the norm—or events blew up again with Russia.

  Burisma ran like a machine, with the palpable confidence of a business that had plenty of room to grow. The board gathered twice a year for meetings or energy forums, in various locations around Europe. Concerns or disagreements that might arise about organizational decisions were worked out ahead of time. We received regular communications about hires, ongoing and potential projects, and other company matters, then signed off on them as needed. At meetings, we approved resolutions required by the charter and assisted in initiating ideas for expansion.

  The company culture is both accomplished and nerdy. That springs from Zlochevsky. There is no not noticing him: he’s pure mass wrapped in tailored suits and gentlemanly manners. His jowly face holds an almost permanent smirk, which would be disconcerting if it didn’t so often seem directed at himself. He doesn’t suffer fools lightly.

  He speaks primarily Russian and Ukrainian, not English. At board meetings, a translator sat behind soundproof glass while members wore headphones like those you see in the General Assembly of the United Nations. Yet during our board dinners, with his translator always seated beside him, Zlochevsky was not a big conversationalist or storyteller. He was a listener. Kwasniewski, who spoke Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, and English (and probably six other languages as well), regaled us with behind-the-scenes insights and colorful political histories from bygone days in Poland. Apter elucidated for us the reality of Brexit and the sustainability of the EU. Zlochevsky, meanwhile, merely leaned forward in rapt attention. He zeroed in on everybody like that—right down to the waiters.

  Zlochevsky is an energy wonk. He’s most animated when talking about the geology, engineering, and heavy machinery behind Burisma’s drilling operations. He’s meticulous about details associated with his processing plants: their systems, their cleanliness. He loves to show off videos, filmed with drones, that give a bird’s-eye view of how the vast network of pipes used to extract gas fits together. His closest friends are the company’s young engineers and others at Burisma who do the actual hands-on work.

  He isn’t just a cold technocrat, however. When he was ecology minister, Zlochevsky championed the end to the longstanding practice in Ukraine of chaining bears held in captivity in open pits. It was a politically unpopular stance, but he persevered and won reforms.

  He was incredibly kind to me when Beau died. Two months after the funeral, Zlochevsky moved Burisma’s board meeting to a fishing lodge at the top of Norway, where the continental shelf breaks. The move was prompted by an offhand comment I’d once made about how Beau’s son loved to fish. Zlochevsky told me to bring little Hunter along, and I did, along with my daughter Maisy, who’s always up for an adventure.

  It was during summer and the endless white nights. For three days we’d drop a line thirty meters down with nine hooks at different levels and pull out nine fish. Little Hunter and Maisy jumped off a dock into the ice-cold water, then got out and jumped into hot-spring baths. I mostly kept to myself—more, I think, than Zlochevsky would have liked—but we all had an enormous amount of fun together, up there at the top of the world. I appreciated his thoughtfulness.

  My work for Burisma centered on monitoring corporate practices and suggesting improvements whenever they seemed necessary. As an additional responsibility, I took on business development and expanding the company’s operations. I wanted the rest of the world to see that Burisma could operate responsibly outside of Ukraine.

  I advocated for a geothermal project in Italy and efforts to be part of the pipeline and drilling operations in Kazakhstan. When Pemex, the state-owned petroleum company in Mexico, opened the door for partners to privatize drilling operations in the Eagle Ford rock formation in the northern part of the country, I supplied connections in Mexico City from my previous business dealings there, then flew down to arrange meetings.

  Burisma was good at what it did and getting better at doing more. That’s what I tracked, encouraged, and promoted.

  And for that, my name became a Trump campaign rallying cry that brought in millions in T-shirt sales.

  Where’s Hunter?! Twenty-five bucks! Sizes small to 3XL!

  * * *

  Did I make a mistake by taking a seat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company?

  No.

  Did I display a lack of judgment?

  No.

  Would I do it again?

  No.

  I did nothing unethical, and have never been charged with wrongdoing. In our current political environment, I don’t believe it would make any difference if I took that seat or not. I’d be attacked anyway. What I do believe, in this current climate, is that it wouldn’t matter what I did or didn’t do. The attacks weren’t intended for me. They were meant to wound my dad.

  He understands that, of course, far better than I do. Whenever I apologized to him for bringing so much heat onto his campaign, he responded by saying how sorry he was for putting me o
n the spot, for bringing so much heat onto me, especially at a time when I was so determined to get well.

  That’s the biggest political debate my dad and I had for months: Who should apologize to whom?

  My only misjudgment was not considering, back in 2014, that in three years Trump would sit in the White House, where he would employ every scorched-earth tactic at his disposal to remain there.

  Knowing all of that now: No, I would not do it again. I wouldn’t take the seat on Burisma’s board. Trump would have to look elsewhere to find a suitable distraction for his impeachable behavior.

  There was, however, a more unintentional consequence to my stint with Burisma. The fallout was far darker, in its way, than any of the nonsense Giuliani dreamed up.

  Burisma turned into a major enabler during my steepest skid into addiction. While its robust compensation initially gave me more time and resources to look after my brother, it played to the worst aspects of my addictive impulses after his death. Burisma wasn’t my sole source of income during that period. I was a mostly functional addict until near the very end; I kept clients for longer than one might think possible, and I had money from investments made elsewhere over the years.

  But by that mad, bad end, the board fee had morphed into a wicked sort of funny money. It hounded me to spend recklessly, dangerously, destructively.

  Humiliatingly.

  So I did.

  CHAPTER SEVEN CRACKED

  About four months after I got back from Esalen, I dove into the kind of next-level bingeing few addicts see coming.

  I’d stayed sober since shortly after that drunken barricade in my apartment. I was a steadfast outpatient at a rehab clinic in Washington, where the staff tested me regularly for alcohol and drugs. I was getting my health back, ate well, and attended a yoga class every day, all while rejoining the real world by consulting for five or six major clients.