Vice President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden

By Mollie Hemingway, May 13, 2014, Thefederalist.com

Twitter is abuzz with questions about the involvement of Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter with a gas company in Ukraine. The company, Burisma, allegedly appointed Hunter Biden to its board of directors. In late April, around the time the vice president made an official trip to Ukraine, Burisma allegedly appointed Devon Archer, one of Hunter Biden’s business partners, to its board as well. Here’s a brief write-up on the story from the Moscow Times, an English-language news service based in Russia.

These dual announcements raise more questions than they answer. The prominence of the individuals involved — Hunter Biden is the vice president’s son, while Devon Archer was a major bundler for John Kerry and also his stepson’s college roommate — raises the question of whether the entire thing is a hoax.

1. What is Burisma?

Burisma appears to be a Ukrainian energy company with a focus on oil and gas exploration. However, independent information about the company is hard to find and even harder to verify. According to Businessweek:

Burisma Holdings Limited engages in oil and gas exploration and production. The company also engages in oil well drilling, production of liquefied natural gas, and undertaking geological studies. The company was incorporated in 2006 and is based in Limassol, Cyprus.

2. Is Burisma even a real company?

The company’s website is…rough, at best, and the domain does not appear to have even been registered until 2010 even though the company was allegedly founded in 2002 and incorporated in 2006. And as recently as July of 2013, the website was not even written in English.

Basic information about the business is also difficult to find. Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider noted on Twitter that the company lacked a profile in Bloomberg, an extensive database of business information, and had no Wikipedia presence whatsoever. Businessweek contained only a brief blurb about the company, stating that it was incorporated in 2006 and based in Cyprus.

3. Who is Hunter Biden?

Hunter Biden is Vice President Joe Biden’s son. He currently serves as the managing partner of Rosemont Seneca Partners, a financial and policy advisory firm. He was a long-time federal lobbyist, but left his old firm in September of 2008, before his father was elected as vice president.

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