LOS ANGELES (CN) — A former FBI informant faces charges of lying to investigators when he told them that he had heard from executives with an Ukrainian industrial conglomerate that they had paid $5 million in bribes to both President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Alexander Smirnov, 43, is accused of making false statements and creating a false and fictitious record, according to the indictment unsealed Thursday. He was arrested at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas on Wednesday after his arrival in the U.S. from overseas, according to a statement by special counsel David Weiss who has been leading the federal investigation of Hunter Biden.
Smirnov made the false statements in 2020, after Joe Biden had become the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee challenging Donald Trump, because of his bias against Biden, according to indictment. Both Weiss' statement and the grand jury indictment only refer to the president as "Public Official 1" and to his son as "Businessperson 1."
The informant had initially told his handler in 2017 that he had been on a call with the owner of the Ukrainian company, Burisma Holdings, and had learned they were interested in buying a U.S. oil company with a market cap of about $50 million to $100 million and use this as a vehicle to list Burisma on a U.S. stock exchange.
During this exchange with his handler, Smirnov noted Hunter Biden was on Burisma's board, which was public information, and didn't say anything about bribes being paid to him or his father, according to the indictment.
In June 2020, however, the informant first told his FBI contact about purported meetings and phone calls in 2015 and 2016, when Joe Biden was vice president, during which Burisma executives told him that they were paying Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.”
Smirnov also told the FBI agent the Burisma executives had told him at the time that they had specifically paid $5 million each to Joe Biden, while he was in office, and to Hunter Biden so that the younger Biden "will take care of all those issues through his dad.” This according to the indictment was a reference to a criminal investigation being conducted by the Ukrainian prosecutor general at the time into Burisma.
"No such statements were made to the defendant because, in truth and fact, defendant met with officials from Burisma for the first time in 2017, after Public Official 1 left office in January 2017, and after the then-Ukrainian prosecutor general had been fired in February 2016," prosecutors say in the indictment.
Information about whether Smirnov has an attorney wasn't immediately available from the federal district court in Los Angeles where Weiss brought the case.
Hunter Biden's legal troubles and Weiss' investigation have been fodder for Republican lawmakers and pundits trying to discredit his father's administration and put Trump back in the White House.
After a plea agreement fell apart last year, Hunter Biden was indicted on federal weapons charges in Delaware and with tax evasion in Los Angeles.
He pleaded not guilty in January to charges he failed to pay taxes for millions of dollars in income he received working for Burisma and a Chinese private equity fund.
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