Ukraine, Burisma and Hunter Biden
I was out for a walk after the first snow of the season while listening to the podcasts. I’ve been listening to NPR for a long while but never figured it out how not to replay what I’ve heard. And have no idea which and when the past episodes reappear again. One of the Planet Money episodes (#868) Moneyland came up today. I was about to change then I stopped, dead in my track. I remembered this piece well from last October (2018), because of the subject matter and lavishly interesting anecdotes.
Ukraine is a gut-rotten corrupted country, even the government couldn’t do a thing without bribery.
The reason for the episode was to a British journalist Oliver Bullough’s book, under the same title. Moneyland is an imaginary country where ill-gotten money around the world is resting safely and peacefully. The 12 minutes long episode on Planet Money was aired on 2018.10.05, (the 37 minutes Fresh Air on 2019.5.01) opening with the downfall of Viktor Yanukovych in 2014’s Euromaidan revolution (wiki). The protest began small, as he decided to ditch the EU and cozy up to Putin. As the protest grew bigger, Yanukovych was toppled and he fled his palace, hunting lodge… etc. in a hast where the gates were left wide open. The Ukrainian protesters and British journalist Bullough went in and saw the unbelievable lavish lifestyle, vulgar, trashy, bling – the escaped president lived while the country was in ruin. There was the giant tv in front of the toilet, golf course, hunting lodge and sauna room where they dried the documents rescued from the bottom of the swimming pool. The docs showed Bullough the money trail. Having bitten by Yanukovych’s female press secretary once (on the shoulder, trying from stopping him asking touch questions) Bullough wrote, some the property isn’t even owned by Ukraine but England and layers of shell companies.
Ok, enough tidbits of the story to show how corrupted Ukraine was (or maybe is), which is what has stopped me dead in my track: it’s about the same time that Hunter Biden joined the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings. Hunter has no experience in Ukraine, except he’s the then Vice President’s son. Does it matter if Joe the VP has talked with his son Hunter about Ukraine? I don’t think Burisma’s boss Zlochevsky paid Hunter $50,000 a month cared if the father and son had talked. All he needed was the fact, the son of the VP of US was on his board and that simple fact, worth $50,000 a month.
As I’m writing this, US Senator Kamala Harris has dropped out of presidential race. Hmmm… IF president Trump has any legacy, I would like to think, he is very inspiring. He inspired twenty able and smart adults to believe they could become just like him, to live in the White House. And the fact that Michael Bloomberg is running at such late time, is because, even as the impeachment proceeding is going on, he feels none of the 20 comrades could NOT beat Trump. Just sad.
第一场小雪后出去走走，边听播客。收听这个台很久了，但一直不知道怎么设置不重复。 今天 Moneyland 金钱乐园 （？）又跳出来了。我正要删但是一听到
