“The thing that surprises me about the whole Ukraine situation is that they’re not focusing on [former Vice President Joe] Biden. They’re focusing on Trump. It’s really quite surprising,” said Mobius.
The storied investor is referring to impeachment proceedings, now in their fourth day in the U.S. House of Representatives, which are investigating allegations that Trump threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine until it investigated allegations of corruption regarding his likely Democrat presidential challenger, Biden.
In contrast, Biden is on video bragging that he threatened to withhold a billion dollars in U.S. from the country if an anticorruption prosecutor there wasn’t fired. Ukraine obliged, firing the prosecutor who was investigating, among other matters, leading energy company Burisma Holdings, which had hired Biden’s son Hunter as a board member earning more than $800,000 at a time when Biden was supposed to be leading the Obama administration’s efforts to curb Ukrainian corruption.
“I think at the end of the day, from what I see … I don’t think anything is going to come of it. There is no legal reason for impeachment. [The] Senate won’t go for it. From what I see a lot of people are losing interest,” Mobius said.
The greatest foil to corruption, according to Mobius, is smartphones and their ability to provide instantaneous news—which amounts to a system of risk management over companies and even countries.
“Each year, about 1 billion smartphones are sold,” he said. “It enables millions of people to communicate with each other and organize. That’s what you’re seeing in Hong Kong, Iran and Chile. This is a global pattern because of the internet.
“People are getting more information about government and corruption everywhere and can create demonstrations at the drop of a hat. Even dictatorships that think they can control communication or the internet are being thwarted,” he said.
“I came from a world where you believe in the New York Times, the Economist, CNBC. Now you’re looking at your smartphone,” Mobius said.