An FBI informant file said that Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of natural gas company Burisma Holdings, claimed he was “coerced” into paying $5 million apiece in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for Shokin’s ouster. AP

The European Commission praised Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin for his efforts to fight corruption in a December 2015 progress report published nine days after then-VP Joe Biden demanded his ouster.

The report flies in the face of Biden’s claims that the European Union joined his demands that Shokin be removed for being corrupt and obstructing anti-corruption reforms.

In fact, the Dec. 18, 2015, progress report, obtained by the New York Post, says that the European Union was satisfied that Ukraine had achieved “noteworthy” progress, including in “preventing and fighting corruption,” and thus was eligible for visa-free travel in Europe.

The European Commission noted that Shokin had just appointed the head of a specialized anti-corruption prosecution office, which it described as “an indispensable component of an effective and independent institutional framework for combating high-level corruption.”

The new office would help the newly established National Anti-Corruption Bureau combat corruption, the report noted, and urged Ukrainian leadership to ensure that both bodies were “fully operational” by the first quarter of 2016.

But Shokin was gone by March 29, 2016, forced out by Biden’s threats to then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that he would withhold $1 billion in US aid unless the prosecutor general was fired.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin says that then-VP Joe Biden and his son Hunter received bribes in exchange for forcing him out of office. (Screenshot)

Despite Biden’s claim, Europeans WEREN’T trying to oust Ukraine prosecutor targeting Hunter’s firm | New York Post