HMM: Russian network that ‘paid European politicians’ busted, authorities claim.
Investigators claimed it used the popular Voice of Europe website as a vehicle to pay politicians.
The Czech Republic and Poland said the network aimed to influence European elections.
Voice of Europe did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
Czech media, citing the countries [sic] intelligence agency BIS, reported that politicians from Germany, France, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Hungary were paid by Voice of Europe in order to influence upcoming elections for the European Parliament.
The German newspaper, Der Spiegel, said the money was either handed over in cash in covert meetings in Prague or through cryptocurrency exchanges.
Pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk is alleged by the Czech Republic to be behind the network.
And there’s this from 2020:
Over the past year, Telizhenko has repeatedly aired his claims about corruption in the Biden family while appearing on Giuliani’s YouTube channel and podcast. The claims are drawn from Telizhenko’s past work as a diplomat in the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, his employment with a DC lobbying firm and his stint in the office of the prosecutor general of Ukraine. While serving in these positions, Telizhenko claims to have witnessed signs of corruption and conflicts of interests involving the Biden family and other Obama Administration officials.
With help from Giuliani, these claims also found their way to the U.S. Senate, where Johnson and his staff have had repeated contacts with Telizhenko for over a year. The Wisconsin Senator first met with Telizhenko in July 2019, a month before Johnson teamed up with Senator Grassley to investigate allegations of corruption against the Biden family.
As that probe got underway in the U.S. Senate, Russian allies in Ukraine made repeated efforts to lend credibility to these claims of corruption against Biden. Some of these efforts involved Medvedchuk, a personal friend of the Russian President.
Hopefully, Kissinger’s formula doesn’t apply here and they can all lose.