House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) said that U.S. sanctions applied by the Biden administration on several Russian oligarchs do not apply to two who paid the Biden family business.
Breitbart News reported that Yelena Baturina and Vladimir Yevtushenkov, two members of the Russian Oligarchy, were not impacted by the sanctions of the Biden administration on the Russian “elites” over the Ukrainian war.
According to Politico, the U.S. State Department has restricted the visas of nearly 900 Russian Federation members and 31 foreign government officials who have supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Since the beginning of the Ukrainian war in February 2022, the Biden administration has enacted approximately 1,500 new and 750 amended sanctions against Russia.
Baturina and Yevtushenkov, however, were immune to the administration’s actions. Interestingly enough, they shopped for properties with Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son.
“Mysteriously, those were the two oligarchs that weren’t listed in the sanctions,” Comer told Fox News. “Joe Biden put sanctions on just about every oligarch in Russia after Russia invaded Ukraine except the two that paid the Bidens.”
In 2014, Baturina, with an approximate net worth of $1.4 billion, sent $3.5 million to a bank account held by Rosemont Seneca Thornton, an entity associated with Hunter’s investment company.
In 1991, Baturina established a company that focused on construction. By 2012, Hunter negotiated a $40 billion deal with Baturina while his father was vice president. According to Breitbart, the negotiation related to a previously reported $3.5 million fee Baturina paid Hunter’s real estate entity.
Yevtushenkov partnered with Baturina, searching for real estate investments in the U.S. He was worth an estimated $1.7 billion. His business was associated with information technology and cell phone companies.
In 2022, Yevtushenkov admitted to meeting Hunter Biden at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Manhattan, New York.
According to the New York Posts source, Yevtushenkov wanted to invest with Hunter to be on the “good side” of the Biden family.
“I asked [Yevtushenkov], ‘Why are you doing this?’ on the front end — before I understood that they were going to buy some real estate,” a source told The Post. “Why 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?”
“He made it very clear to me that you know … ‘I think it would be good to have a good relationship with this guy … maybe he can do a favor for us and we can do a favor for him,’” the source continued. “It was a complete quid pro quo that he was going in for.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to answer a reporter’s question regarding Biden’s refusal to sanction the Russian oligarchs.
“I’m just not speaking to anything that’s related to his son from here,” Jean-Pierre said. “If you want to ask a question about Hunter Biden specifically, I would refer you to his family. And as it relates to any sanctions, I’m not speaking to individual persons from Russia.”
Karine Jean-Pierre refuses to say why Biden has not sanctioned Russian billionaires Vladimir Yevtushenkov and Yelena Baturina — business associates of his son, Hunter — nor if Biden dined with Baturina in Georgetown while he was VP. pic.twitter.com/trzfN9ilMK
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 6, 2023
Joe Biden is using his capacity as president of the U.S. to protect his family’s business by choosing who gets sanctioned and who doesn’t.
