HUNTER’S UKRAINE GANG
The thugs and oligarchs behind family deal
Trim, prone to sharp suits and with a Jason Statham vibe, Vadym Pozharskyi is the mysterious “adviser” to the head of Ukraine’s notorious Burisma oil and natural gas company — and the man at the center of the latest Biden family scandal.
As operatives for Ukrainian oligarchs go, Pozharskyi, 41, is one of the toughest, trained in the trenches of one of the world’s most corrupt countries, say sources familiar with him.
He’s been linked to Hunter Biden, 50, since Biden joined the company’s board in 2014. The son of then-Vice President Joe Biden was useful to Pozharskyi as a $50,000-a-month liaison to the powerful in Washington, DC.
Since 2014, four journalists have uncovered links between the myriad offshore companies that are part of Burisma Holdings and Ukraine’s most powerful, ruthless oligarch, Igor Kolomoisky. Shrouded in secrecy, Burisma has been described as “a big shell company network of a classic British kind, with ownership and control completely obfuscated.”
According to e-mails obtained by The Post, Hunter allegedly introduced his veep dad to Pozharskyi less than a year before Joe Biden leaned on government officials in Ukraine to fire a prosecutor probing the $400 million company.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent some time together,” Pozharskyi allegedly wrote to Biden on April 17, 2015. An alleged e-mail from May 2014 shows Pozharskyi asking Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.
The missives — which seem to directly contradict Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” — were found on a laptop computer Hunter Biden allegedly left with a Delaware repairman. A copy of the hard drive was later given to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who provided a copy to The Post.
The Biden campaign has denied that Joe Biden ever had an “official” meeting with Pozharskyi but admitted it couldn’t rule out that the two men had ever met.
Hunter left Burisma in 2019 but Pozharskyi, the No. 3 executive at the company, is believed to have remained. Pozharskyi did not return e-mails from The Post, and calls to Burisma’s offices in Kiev, Cyprus and London went unanswered.
Pozharskyi forged his career in post-Soviet Ukraine when, analysts say, ruthless businessmen like Kolomoisky used their own private armies to wrest control of other companies. Because the military was so weak, the mercenary battalions often operated with impunity — both fending off Russian separatists and strong-arming energy companies they wanted to take over.
His boss, the oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, once Ukraine’s powerful minister of ecology and natural resources, established Burisma in 2002. Last year, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said Zlochevsky was suspected of “theft of government funds on an especially large scale.”
Less well known, but potentially more sinister, are Pozharskyi’s reported ties to Ukraine’s most thuggish billionaire, Kolomoisky. The Bond villain-like Kolomoisky, 57, reportedly kept a live shark in a tank in his office to intimidate visitors and once called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “schizophrenic dwarf.”
But his bloodthirstiness reportedly matched his bravado. He crushed Russian separatists with his private armies, according to numerous reports, and ordered contract killings, the Daily Beast reported.
Kolomoisky has never been charged with murder. He has refuted such allegations and denied involvement with Burisma. His lawyer did not return Post messages.