In 2009, Hunter established a series of small investment vehicles with his friend and business partner Devon Archer. Biden and Archer had been at Yale University together. They launched Rosemont Seneca Partners in partnership with Rosemont Capital, an investment vehicle backed by the Heinz family. Chris Heinz, stepson of then-senator John Kerry, had been roommates with Archer at Yale.41 Clearly, this would be an extremely well-connected firm in Washington, D.C.
As I recounted in my previous book, Secret Empires, on December 4, 2013, Hunter was riding on Air Force Two with his father to Beijing, China. For Vice President Joe Biden, effective diplomacy was about forming personal relationships with foreign leaders. “It all gets down to the conduct of foreign policy being personal.”42 The vice president had a series of important and tense meetings with Chinese officials on a variety of critical matters in the bilateral relationship. The trip coincided with an enormous financial deal that Hunter Biden’s firm, Rosemont Seneca, was arranging with the state-owned Bank of China. What Hunter did during the official visit to Beijing we cannot know for sure. Other than a few photo ops with his father, he was nowhere to be seen.43 After the publication of Secret Empires, Hunter Biden, through an attorney, claimed to ABC News that he did no business during his visit to Beijing aboard Air Force Two.44 However, a Beijing-based company representative later claimed that Hunter had introduced his Chinese business partner, Jonathan Li, to his father during the visit.45
Approximately ten days after the Beijing trip, Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca Partners finalized a deal with the Chinese government worth a whopping $1 billion. The deal was later expanded to $1.5 billion.46 As of this writing, the fund’s website says its investments amount to more than $2 billion.47
It is important to note that this deal was with the Chinese government—not with a Chinese company, which means that the Chinese government and the son of the vice president were now business partners.
What they created was a joint venture called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). The name reflected who was involved: the “RS” was a reference to Rosemont Seneca; the “T” was the Thornton Group, a small U.S. investment firm that did business in China. It was a very unusual arrangement: the most powerful financial institution in China, the Bank of China, was setting up a joint venture with Rosemont Seneca Partners. BHR touted its “unique Sino-U.S. shareholding structure” as well as the fact that it was backed by the Chinese government.48
Hunter Biden actively cultivated these deals. He had visited China twice before, in 2010 and 2011, to meet with senior Chinese government officials in finance.49 But he had no background in China, and other than a very brief and unsuccessful attempt to run a hedge fund with his uncle, no background in private equity.50
When the Chinese government’s BHR was established, Hunter Biden was given a slot on the board of directors—supposedly unpaid while his father was vice president.51 His actual compensation cannot be known; it is confidential.
Since Secret Empires was released in 2018, Hunter has claimed that he only received compensation from the Chinese after his father left the vice presidency in January 2017. He further claimed it came in the form of a 10 percent equity stake in the Bohai Harvest Financial Management Company.52 Whether his claim is accurate or not is impossible to know—it cannot be independently verified. Furthermore, he has misled reporters about the Chinese deal in the past. Even if his account is accurate—that his compensation was deferred—it does not really make a difference. Deferred compensation from a Chinese government entity is still direct compensation from a Chinese government entity. He has never explained why he got this great opportunity from them in the first place.
BHR, with Hunter Biden on the board of directors and Devon Archer as the vice chairman and Investment Committee member, engaged in a series of financial deals that served the strategic interests of Beijing. In one of their first deals, the firm took an ownership stake in China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN), a nuclear energy company. The company was charged in 2016 with espionage against the United States. Also charged was an engineer who stole nuclear secrets from the United States. BHR also helped buy out the American precision machining company Henniges. They bought the company in a joint deal with Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), a military contractor owned by the Chinese government. Because Henniges’s technology has military application, and therefore national security implications, the deal had to be approved by an interagency committee made up of Obama-Biden administration officials.53 BHR also invested in military-related technology companies closer to home: they bought a stake in Face++, a major developer of facial recognition software commonly used in a phone application made by the Chinese government for surveillance of its own population.54
BHR was the first of a series of business relationships that Hunter Biden established with the Chinese government or Chinese government–connected entities. Another Hunter Biden–linked firm called Rosemont Realty struck a deal with a Chinese government–connected company in 2014. Hunter was an advisor and the “cofounder” of the company, which owned commercial real estate properties around the United States.55
Just as he had little or no background in private equity, Hunter also had no background in real estate.56 Rosemont Realty openly touted its ties to Vice President Joe Biden. In a Rosemont Realty company prospectus for investors watermarked “CONFIDENTIAL,” there was the “key consideration” that “Hunter Biden (son of Vice President Biden) is on the advisory board.”57
Better yet, Rosemont Realty had other political connections beyond Hunter Biden.
Rosemont Realty was headed by Daniel Burrell, a Yale grad who had worked on the John Kerry 2004 presidential campaign. A major investor in Rosemont Realty was an entity called Rosemont Real Estate GP, LLC.58 Who exactly owns Rosemont Real Estate GP is unclear; however, in Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, the firm lists its address as that of the Heinz family office in Pittsburgh and shares a phone number with Rosemont Capital in New York City.59 At the time of Rosemont Realty’s arrangement with the Chinese firm, John Kerry, married to Heinz heir Teresa Heinz Kerry, was the U.S. secretary of state.
Just about a year after the massive deal with the Chinese government’s Bohai Harvest, another Hunter Biden firm struck a pact with another Chinese government–linked firm called Gemini Investments. This deal involved a multibillion-dollar investment with Rosemont Realty.60
Who exactly is Gemini Investments? While Gemini is a publicly traded stock in Hong Kong, it is ultimately an “indirect subsidiary” under the control of a Chinese conglomerate called Sino-Ocean Group (formerly Sino-Ocean Land). Gemini Investments’ director and honorary chairman is Li Ming. His corporate and political ties in Beijing go to the highest levels of the Communist Party. Indeed, he served several terms running as a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s elite People’s Political Consultative Conference. Before the name change, Sino-Ocean Land was “one of the largest real estate companies in Beijing,” and it is directly connected to a company called China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO). Formed in 1961, COSCO is a state-owned company with strong organizational links to the Chinese navy.61
By December 2014, Gemini Investments inked the new partnership with Rosemont Realty, under which they would acquire an interest in the company and its underlying properties.62 Eight months later, the newly christened Gemini-Rosemont announced its plans for $3 billion worth of new acquisitions.63
In short, Hunter Biden was involved in two billion-dollar deals with Chinese government–connected firms in a twenty-month period while his dad was vice president of the United States. Hunter was apparently eager to strike other deals with the Chinese—business implicitly leveraged on who his father was.
Consider the case of Patrick Ho, who was arrested in late 2017 by federal agents in New York for money laundering and violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Ho was an assistant to Chinese oil tycoon Ye Jianming, who ran the energy company CEFC. The company has strong ties to the Ch
inese military.64 Hunter Biden would later admit Ye sent him a “large diamond” after one of their meetings. Biden says that he did not keep it.65 Ho was also the secretary-general of the nonprofit China Energy Fund Committee, which many observers view as a government-directed entity.66 In March 2019, Ho was jailed in the U.S. on bribery charges stemming from oil deals in Africa.67 According to the New York Times, it appears that Ho’s first phone call while in the custody of U.S. officials was an attempt to reach Hunter Biden.68
CEFC officials had met multiple times with Hunter Biden beginning back in 2015. In May 2017, Hunter met with Ho in Miami, where they reportedly discussed joint energy and infrastructure deals in the United States. The night of his arrest, Ho called James Biden, Joe’s brother. Why Ho had James Biden’s number is not clear. According to James Biden, the call was a surprise; he believed Ho was trying to contact Hunter so he gave him his nephew’s number.69
During Ho’s trial, prosecutors presented evidence that he was an arms dealer on the side, running guns to conflict zones around the world.70 He was sentenced to three years in jail. If in fact Ho did intend for his first call while in custody to reach the son of the former vice president, it speaks volumes about how juiced in Hunter Biden was with some Chinese officials.
With Hunter’s deals in China, Joe Biden’s attitude toward China seemed to soften. In 2011, the Obama administration announced a strategic shift called the Asia Pivot.71 Based on the idea that the main military and strategic challenges facing the United States are emanating from China, the Obama administration shifted military resources toward Asia.72 Yet Biden continued to strike a relatively soft posture toward Beijing, much to the chagrin of U.S. allies in the region.73 He continued to minimize the challenges posed by China in the spring of 2019 while on the campaign trail. “Come on, man,” Biden said. “They’re not bad folks, folks, but guess what. They’re not competition for us.”74
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Hunter Biden’s foreign deals were not limited to China, as strategically generous as that country was to the vice president’s son. Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and even Russia offered him other wealth opportunities.
Ukraine boasts an abundance of energy resources, especially oil and natural gas. Burisma, a top Ukrainian natural gas producer, has deep political ties in the country. It was created in 2006 by Mykola Zlochevsky and has a Cypriot registration. He became the ecology and natural resources minister under the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych. As natural resources minister, Zlochevsky conveniently gave himself licenses to develop abundant natural gas fields. His oversight allowed Burisma to become the second-largest private natural gas company in the country. They currently rank first.75
As previously noted in Secret Empires, on April 16, 2014, Devon Archer made a private visit to the White House for a meeting with Joe Biden. The day prior, Burisma had deposited more than $112,000 into a Rosemont bank account marked “C/O Devon Archer.” Six days later, on April 22, it was announced that Archer was joining the board of directors of Burisma. In short succession, on May 13, it was announced that Hunter Biden would join the Burisma board, too. Neither one had any background or experience in the energy sector, or in Ukraine for that matter.76
We now know based on financial records that each man appears to have been paid $83,333.33 per month by Burisma, or a total of $1 million a year.77
The timing of their appointment to the Burisma board and the payments is more than interesting. The day before Archer’s official appointment, on April 21, Vice President Biden landed in Kyiv for meetings with Ukrainian officials, bringing with him terms for a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) program to assist the Ukrainian natural gas industry.78
Even in a country abounding with corruption, Burisma stands out. Burisma founder Zlochevsky was in legal crosshairs when Biden and Archer joined the company board. By February 2016, Ukrainian authorities seized Zlochevsky’s property on suspicion that he was engaged in “illicit enrichment.”79 Zlochevsky found himself on Ukraine’s wanted list and fled the country.80 The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office seized Burisma’s gas wells. Tax authorities began investigating him for suspicion of tax evasion.81
Hunter Biden used his contacts in Washington to help Zlochevsky in his corruption case. Burisma hired a former Obama Department of Justice lawyer named John Buretta and Blue Star Strategies, a consulting firm run by former Clinton administration officials, to help.82
Buretta would later recount how he interacted directly with Ukrainian prosecutors with the expressed purpose of getting the charges dropped. According to Buretta, the charges were dismissed in September 2016.83
Under pressure from Joe Biden, Ukrainian officials fired the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. Joe Biden later bragged that he had the prosecutor fired by threatening to withhold one billion dollars in U.S. aid assistance to Ukraine.84
On January 16, 2017, Air Force Two descended toward Boryspil International Airport, just southeast of Kyiv. It was Joe Biden’s last foreign trip as vice president. Under Biden’s direction, the Obama administration had poured some $3 billion into the country.85 Four days before Biden arrived, Burisma announced that the Ukrainian government prosecutors had ended the criminal investigations into the company and its founder Zlochevsky.86
There is no complete public record of Hunter Biden’s foreign financial deals while his father was vice president, because neither he nor any other members of the Biden family, beyond Joe and Jill, had any federal disclosure requirements of their finances. However, court documents, including financial records from a trial involving Hunter’s business partner Devon Archer, offer some tantalizing clues involving other deals Hunter Biden made around the world during the time his father was vice president.
A Morgan Stanley investment account from which Hunter regularly received funds shows money arriving from mysterious sources around the world. There is a $142,300 deposit in April 2014 from Kazakh oligarch–controlled Novatus Holdings. Kenges Rakishev, whose father-in-law is the former vice prime minister of Kazakhstan and a close ally of Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev, runs the offshore firm.87 In August 2014, $1.2 million arrived into the account from an anonymous LLC via a small Swiss bank called BSI S.A. In 2016, BSI was one of several companies that were part of an embezzlement and money-laundering investigation spanning ten countries and at least $4.2 billion in irregular transactions.88
The financial documents also demonstrate that someone in the Biden family has other LLCs set up to receive payments. In August 2015, for example, $150,000 was transferred into an account controlled by something called MFTCG Holdings LLC Biden. It is unclear what that account is or who controls it.89
In another corporate record released as part of the court trial, Devon Archer describes a financial relationship with Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina. A billionaire with extensive political connections in Moscow and notorious links to Russian organized crime, Archer said Baturina invested $200 million into “various investment funds” with which he was involved.90
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Not all of Hunter Biden’s wealth accumulation during his father’s vice presidency was international. Some deals occurred within the United States and benefited from taxpayer dollars steered by his father’s closest aides.
Consider the case of something called mbloom, a joint venture that Hunter Biden and Devon Archer set up in Hawaii. Mbloom was a “public-private partnership” in which Hunter’s firm invested $5 million and the other half came from the Hawaii Strategic Development Corporation (HSDC).91 But where did HSDC get its money for mbloom? It came from a program back in Washington, D.C., called the Treasury Department State Small Business Credit Initiative. Three million dollars of the HSDC money came from the program, which was run by a longtime Biden aide named Don Graves.92
It is hard to find someone tighter in the Biden orbit than Graves. Over the course of his career, he has served as counselor to Vice President Biden, his domestic and economic policy director,
and as his traveling chief of staff. After Joe Biden left the White House, he appointed Graves to the policy advisory board of the Biden Institute.93
The bottom line is that Hunter Biden’s joint venture with mbloom was partly funded by taxpayer dollars through a program run by his father’s longtime aide.
Things ultimately did not go well for mbloom. Almost immediately, the company became embroiled in an ethics scandal when it was revealed that the two men running the fund were steering dollars to their own companies.94
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Beyond his numerous Rosemont-branded entities and ventures like mbloom, Hunter was also deeply involved with a troubling entity called Burnham Financial Group, where his business partner Devon Archer also sat on the board of directors.95
As they had with Rosemont, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer used Burnham to make foreign deals with governments and oligarchs, including Nurlan Abduov, an associate of Kazakh oligarch Kenges Rakishev.96 As mentioned, Rakishev is the son-in-law of the former vice prime minister of Kazakhstan. His father-in-law, Imangali Tasmagambetov, was also formerly the defense minister of the country and is now the Kazakh ambassador to Russia.97 Kazakhstan is an important country not only for its vast energy resources but also because of its geostrategic position.
The financial ties between this foreign government and Biden appear to go deeper than just the investment in Burnham. As one business associate put it in an email released at the court trial, “Rosemont is deeply involved in Kazakhstan. The SWF [Sovereign Wealth Fund] of Kazakhstan is involved with Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners, Rosemont’s technology investment vehicle.”98
Profiles in Corruption Page 6