Ukraine closes criminal case against Joe Biden

Ukrainian police have closed criminal proceedings against former Vice President Joe Biden, originally brought by former Ukrainian Attorney General Viktor Sokin, Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform said on Tuesday.

The news agency cited an unnamed source from the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office as well as a formal decision to close the case. Biden was prosecuted by the Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation (DBR) for interfering in the work of an official, following an order in April by Sergei Vovk, a judge in the Pechersk district of Kiev.

The DBR then referred the case for investigation to the Pechersk District Police, which closed the case against Biden on September 23.

Sokin was the Attorney General of Ukraine from February 2015 to April 2016. He was replaced by the then Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, on the grounds that he had shown too little progress in the fight against corruption. However, many are convinced that he was removed from office because of his investigation into the company Burisma.

Burisma is the privately owned Ukrainian gas company whose board of directors at the time included Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Sokin accused Biden of having initiated his removal as Attorney General. Sokin based his accusation on sound recordings made public by Andriy Derkach, a pro-Moscow Ukrainian MP, in which Poroshenko and Biden are allegedly speaking.

Derkach claimed that the recordings were made by Poroshenko himself. According to Biden’s campaign office, the sound recordings were edited, and Poroshenko also called them fakes, adding that their creators aimed to undermine Ukrainian-American relations. However, the recordings were attached by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office to materials found in the investigation of Poroshenko for suspected treason and abuse of power.