Two Russian billionaires who have managed to dodge US sanctions over Moscow\u2019s year-old invasion of Ukraine went property shopping with Hunter Biden, dined with then-Vice President Joe Biden, and discussed \u201cfavors\u201d they might swap, sources tell The Post.
\nNew details of Joe and Hunter Biden\u2019s association with Yelena Baturina and Vladimir Yevtushenkov flesh out tantalizing clues from the first son\u2019s abandoned laptop. The sources spoke with The Post this week after the duo was yet again spared a fresh batch of sanctions announced by the Treasury Department Friday.
\n\u201cI think it\u2019s very fishy,\u201d said one source who had firsthand knowledge of the business relationship between Hunter Biden and Yevtushenkov \u2014 who is sanctioned by the UK and Australia but not by the US.
\n\u201cI think he should be sanctioned,\u201d Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, told The Post of Yevtushenkov \u2014 estimated by Forbes to be worth $1.7 billion. \u201cI don\u2019t understand why he has not been.\u201d
\nYevtushenkov, whose Sistema business empire until recently included Russian rocket and radar-maker RTI and drone-maker Kronstadt, admitted last year he met with Hunter Biden for breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton in Manhattan on March 14, 2012 \u2014 but denied any further contact.
\nHowever, emails and calendar entries from Hunter\u2019s former laptop show that they were set to meet again on Jan. 27, 2013, for dinner at DC\u2019s Cafe Milano before looking at a commercial real estate development the next day near Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia.
\n\u201cI asked [Yevtushenkov], \u2018Why are you doing this?\u2019 on the front end \u2014 before I understood that they were going to buy some real estate,\u201d the source told The Post. \u201c\u2018Why are you even doing this? Why would you be paying the son of the vice president to meet at a public restaurant in New York City?\u2019
\n\u201cHe made it very clear to me that, you know \u2026 \u2018I think it would be good to have a good relationship with this guy \u2026 maybe he can do a favor for us and we can do a favor for him,\u2019\u201d the source continued. \u201cIt was a complete quid pro quo that he was going in for.\u201d
\n\u201cI told him that\u2019s not the way it works in America, [but] he basically laughed at me and told me I was so na\u00efve,\u201d the source recalled of Yevtushenkov, whose holdings also include Russia\u2019s largest cellphone provider, MTS \u2014 which faced a long-running investigation into nearly $1 billion in bribes paid to Uzbekistani officials between 2004 and 2012. MTS, which was listed on the New York Stock Exchange before trading in its shares was suspended in July of last year, ultimately settled the case with the Trump Justice Department in 2019, agreeing to pay an $850 million fine.
\nA different source, meanwhile, told The Post he vividly recalled Baturina and her husband, ex-Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, looking \u201clike an odd couple\u201d at a now-infamous, intimate dinner with Hunter and his father, the then-vice president.
\nIt\u2019s long been uncertain whether Baturina, estimated by Forbes to be worth $1.4 billion, and Luzhkov actually attended the April 16, 2015 dinner at Cafe Milano \u2014 the same Georgetown restaurant where Hunter and Yevtushenkov set a date more than two years prior.
\n\u201cThey could have played themselves on \u2018Saturday Night Live,\u2019\u201d said the source, who attended the dinner and was able to identify the couple in part because he met Luzhkov \u2014 who died in 2019 \u2014 on several other occasions. (Another source previously told The Post that a pair matching Baturina and Luzhkov\u2019s general appearance was there.)
\nLuzhkov, who was Moscow\u2019s mayor for 18 years until 2010, \u201clooked a lot older\u201d than Baturina \u2014 27 years her husband\u2019s junior \u2014 who \u201cwent overboard\u201d on her appearance and ended up resembling Jennifer Coolidge\u2019s comedic portrayal of an insecure heiress in HBO\u2019s \u201cThe White Lotus,\u201d the source recalled.
\n\u201cIt was an odd dinner because there was [then-Kazakhstani Prime Minister Karim] Massimov, Luzhkov and his wife, and it was not a big table and then there was somebody there from some food charity making a pitch for support,\u201d they added. \u201cI mean, it was, was \u2014 it was a little odd, the whole thing.\u201d
\nIn an email at the time, Hunter wrote that the meal would be \u201costensibly\u201d about his role a chairman of the World Food Program (WFP) USA.
\nHis father, the sitting vice president, arrived at the dinner and stayed for about 40 minutes, the second source told The Post, even sitting down to eat and then posing for a photo with the Kazakhstani group.
\nThe gathering also featured Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive at Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which paid Hunter up to $1 million per year beginning in 2014 while his VP dad controlled the Obama administration\u2019s Ukraine policy.
\nA source told The Post that Yelena Baturina and her husband ex-Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov were seen having dinner with then-Vice President Biden and Hunter.Photo by Mikhail Svetlov\/Getty Images
\nPozharskyi\u2002emailed Hunter the next day to thank him for \u201cgiving an opportunity to meet your father\u201d \u2014 forming the basis of The Post\u2019s first October 2020 bombshell from Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop.
\nJoe Biden called the report a false \u201cRussian plant\u201d at the time and social media platforms Twitter and Facebook initially censored it.
\nBaturina would have been familiar with Hunter Biden, having met with him and his then-business partner Devon Archer for a drink in April 2014 at the Villa d\u2019Este \u2014 a well-known haunt of Russian oligarchs overlooking Italy\u2019s Lake Como. On the same trip, Hunter also met the Ukrainian-Russian oligarch owner of Burisma, Mykolai Zlochevsky.
\nTwo months earlier, on Feb. 14, 2014, Baturina had wired $3.5 million to a bank account held by Rosemont Seneca Thornton, the investment firm Hunter had co-founded.
\nSen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who co-authored a September 2020 report by GOP-led Senate committees revealing the wire, told The Post: \u201cIt is clear that Hunter Biden\u2019s questionable business dealings with individuals from Russia and China have compromised President Biden and continue to raise conflicts of interest concerns.\u201d
\n\u201cOur work on this matter remains ongoing, and we will continue to provide the American people with transparency and\u2002evidence of the Bidens\u2019 extensive financial connections with foreign nationals with questionable backgrounds,\u201d Johnson added.
\n\u201cIt is extremely concerning that Biden-linked Russian nationals are avoiding sanctions. If this happened under a Republican White House, the mainstream media would be up in arms,\u201d added Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). \u201cThis latest report is further proof of the deep level of corruption occurring with Hunter Biden and Biden Inc.\u201d
\nAnna Rose Layden\/Bloomberg via Getty Images
\n\u201cIt\u2019s alarming that Hunter Biden\u2019s Russian oligarch pals are missing from the Treasury Department\u2019s public sanctions list of Russian elites and oligarchs,\u201d said House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), whose panel is leading investigations into the Biden family\u2019s overseas influence-peddling.
\nYevtushenkov, contacted by The Post through Sistema\u2019s press department, declined to comment \u2014 including about whether he bought property in cooperation with Hunter Biden. The Post\u2019s first source said he had heard second-hand that three properties may have been purchased in the US as part of the partnership.
\nBaturina, contacted through her BE OPEN think tank, did not immediately respond to questions, nor did an attorney for Hunter Biden or spokespeople for the White House.
\nA Post reporter asked President Biden Wednesday on the White House lawn for an explanation of the non-sanctioning of his son\u2019s Russian oligarch associates, but Biden didn\u2019t reply and it\u2019s unclear if he heard the question as he walked to his Marine One helicopter.
\nBiden allies previously sought to downplay his association with Baturina and the $3.5 million. An anonymous source told the Washington Post last year that Archer was supposed to dissolve the corporate entity that received the funds, but secretly kept it in existence for his own use.
\nHowever, emails from Hunter\u2019s laptop show he was actively engaged in courting Baturina. About a month after the transfer, Archer wrote to Hunter to say he was \u201c[w]ith Yelena\u201d and an April 26, 2014, email from Hunter to Archer said \u201cwe should ask Yelena to fund a short-term development team to scope projects\u201d after an attempted real estate deal in Manhattan fell through.
\nThe Biden campaign in 2020 vaguely denied that the April 2015 Cafe Milano meetup even occurred, saying, \u201c[W]e have reviewed Joe Biden\u2019s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.\u201d After Biden won the presidency, WFP USA\u2019s former president Rick Leach told the Washington Post that Joe Biden did attend \u2013but only briefly to meet with Greek Orthodox leader Alex Karloutsos.
\nJoe Biden\u2019s interaction with his son\u2019s post-Soviet associates at the meal is a pillar of Republican arguments that Biden misused his official roles to financially benefit his family.
\nThey also point to Hunter joining his dad aboard Air Force Two for trips to China and Mexico while the younger Biden sought business, as well as a White House arrangement developed in 2021 for Hunter to secretly sell his novice artworks to undisclosed buyers.
\nHunter Biden said in communications retrieved from his former laptop that he paid\u2002as much as \u201chalf\u201d of his income to his father and a 2017 email described 10% of a financial windfall being held for the \u201cbig guy\u201d as part of a business deal being negotiated in China.
\nTwo former Hunter Biden associates have identified Joe Biden as the \u201cbig guy\u201d.
\nMeanwhile, Biden\u2019s administration touted last week that it had enacted \u201cmore than 2,500 sanctions\u201d meant to cripple Russia\u2019s economy and halt the war in Ukraine.
\n\u201cThe greater story is that the US has sanctioned very few oligarchs,\u201d Swedish economist and sanctions expert Anders \u00c5slund told The Post. \u201cIt is quite difficult to follow now since each of [the] seven different Western communities have sanctioned on average 1,200 Russians.\u201d
\n\u00c5slund, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, said he felt certain powerful Russians were more deserving of US sanctions, such as billionaire Roman Abramovich, the former owner of English Premier League soccer club Chelsea.
\n\u201cI agree that Yevtushenkov should be sanctioned, but he is in the fourth row of oligarchs,\u201d he said.
\nYevtushenkov had a dustup with Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s administration about nine years ago when the Kremlin effectively seized Sistema\u2019s large oil subsidiary. One of The Post\u2019s sources described him as being more closely linked to Putin ally and former Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev than with Putin himself.
\nMcFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia, declined to comment specifically on Baturina, but did say: \u201cEvery billionaire in Russia should be sanctioned unless they do something to clearly distance themselves from Putin and the war.\u201d
\nDaniel Fried, the Obama administration\u2019s coordinator for sanctions policy following the Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014, said that he believes the Biden administration was being \u201cprudent\u201d in reviewing the possible collateral effects of sanctioning billionaires with international holdings.
\nYevtushenkov, who has denied reports that he\u2019s Baturina\u2019s brother-in-law, \u201cis not someone we had squarely in our sights\u201d during the Obama administration, Fried added.
\n\u201cI\u2019m not going to tell you he\u2019s a good guy, but he wasn\u2019t a primary target\u201d because \u201che wasn\u2019t particularly close with Putin,\u201d the ex-official went on. \u201cRemember, the Trump administration continued the sanctions in 2017 and they didn\u2019t go after him either.\u201d
\nFried, who also was US ambassador to Poland during the Clinton administration, said his sense was that sanctions will continue to expand against Russia\u2019s elite and that he doubts Joe Biden or even high-level deputies with deep ties to his family, such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken or national security adviser Jake Sullivan, are making decisions on individual names.
\n\u201cIf you\u2019re a sanctions person and you\u2019re doing your due diligence, you want to make damn sure that there are not going to be unintended consequences,\u201d Fried said. \u201cI sniffed around a little bit and my sense is people are doing due diligence [and] not hesitating \u2014 they\u2019re not shying away, they\u2019re doing the proper due diligence.\u201d
\nYevtushenkov, who Hunter also\u2002reportedly met in Moscow in February 2012, has taken steps to avoid attention amid the Ukraine war. One source who spoke to The Post recalled him ruling like an all-powerful czar over Sistema\u2019s board, while another called him a decent person and Russian \u201cpatriot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nypost<\/p>\n
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Two Russian billionaires who have managed to dodge US sanctions over Moscow\u2019s year-old invasion of Ukraine went property shopping with Hunter Biden, dined with then-Vice President Joe Biden, and discussed \u201cfavors\u201d they might swap, sources tell The Post. New details of Joe and Hunter Biden\u2019s association with Yelena Baturina and Vladimir Yevtushenkov flesh out tantalizing clues from the first son\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6769,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[1169,1768,1563],"class_list":["post-6768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-biden","tag-hunter","tag-joe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6770,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6768\/revisions\/6770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}