As calls for the impeachment of President Donald J. Trump have continued to rise up from democrats in Congress, emerging facts have began to detail that it is infact the Obama administration that may introduced Nigerian style corruption to the White House in America.
You will recall that President Obama during his 8 year tenure in office, did not visit Nigeria, even once. Many political pundits opined on the reason for this refusal to visit, stating that it was as a result of the corruption and mismanagement of Nigerian wealth by the incumbent and previous administrations. However it seems Obama would have fit in as a typical Nigerian leader if the corrupt activities which happened under his watch are any indicators to go by.
For instance, it has been alleged that Joe Biden, Obama’s vice-president and a 2020 U.S presidential aspirant, used his position of power to enrich his son to the tune of many millions of dollars, by threatening to withhold over a $1 billion of funding to Ukraine unless a senior federal prosecutor was sacked. It just so happens that the prosecutor had been investigating Mr. Biden’s son for corruption.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Soon after Moscow invaded the country in 2014 and annexed its peninsula of Crimea, Mr. Biden took a lead role in U.S. efforts to support the fragile government in Kiev. He shuttled back and forth to the Ukrainian capital, coordinating U.S. aid packages and cajoling the officials to enact reforms even as the country fought off Russian-backed rebels in the country’s east.
Mr. Biden’s son Hunter took a board position with a Ukrainian natural gas extraction company, Burisma Holdings Ltd., in May 2014, months after the vice president took on his role in the country, which some anticorruption advocates feared would undermine the elder Mr. Biden’s work. According to one official with ties to the company, Hunter Biden’s compensation was around $50,000 a month. His position at the company expired in April 2019.
The White House said at the time there was nothing wrong with Hunter Biden’s work, and that it didn’t create a conflict of interest since he was a private person.
The owner of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, has been under the scrutiny of prosecutors. A minister of natural resources until 2012, Mr. Zlochevsky was accused of improperly granting gas extraction licenses to firms affiliated with him, and at times was investigated for alleged abuse of power, illegal enrichment and money laundering. Mr. Zlochevsky was never convicted of any crimes and denied any wrongdoing. His lawyer also denied that Mr. Zlochevsky ever benefited from his position in government.
Mr. Shokin had dragged his feet on those investigations, Western diplomats said, and effectively squashed one in London by failing to cooperate with U.K. authorities, who had frozen $23.5 million of Mr. Zlochevsky’s assets. In a speech in 2015, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, called the Ukrainian prosecutor “an obstacle” to anticorruption efforts, and mentioned the U.K. case, which he said led to the escape of illicit assets.
But Ukraine’s government was slow to fire Mr. Shokin, despite warnings from the International Monetary Fund and others that Western aid to the country would be cut off if it didn’t act. Mr. Biden, in one of his trips to Ukraine in 2016, pressured the government, telling them the U.S. would withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees. At an event at the Council on Foreign Relations two years later, Mr. Biden said he told Ukraine officials: “If the prosecutor is not fired you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”
Former Mayor of New York and personal lawyer to President Trump, Rudy Guiliani has also been a front-line whistle blower of corruption acts in the Obama administration.
He tweeted recently,
“We know corrupt Ukrainian oligarch laundered $3 million to the Biden Family, but $3 to $4m more was laundered to Biden. So release all the financial records of all businesses involving Biden, Kerry’s stepson and notorious mobster Whitey Bulger’s nephew.”
Another American news outlet reports,
“In 2013, Hunter Biden flew with his father to China aboard Air Force 2 before he secured a $1.5 billion deal from a subsidiary of the Bank of China.
“You want to know why the secretary of state (Kerry) wasn’t particularly upset about it? Because his son was getting money too. Isn’t it a coincidence that China sends $1.5 billion to a private equity fund? There were only three owners: Biden’s son, Kerry’s son, and Whitey Bulger’s nephew,” Giuliani told the Examiner.
Guiliani also recently alleged that the corruption practises allegations stretches beyond the Biden and also impacted the Clinton’s and the Kerry’s. Both Clinton and Kerry served as Secretary of State under President Obama.
Hillary Clinton is also known to have taken money from Nigeria through the Chagoury family, a Lebanese multi-billionaire family who made their wealth mainly through the evil Nigerian military dictator, General Sani Abacha.
Eze. O, a political analyst writes in from Lagos.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the view or official policy of The Herald.
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