Complicated Web Of Payments Behind Hunter Biden’s $700K Ukraine, China Dealings Untangled
For months it has been reported, here and elsewhere, that Hunter Biden ‘made $50,000 per month sitting on the board Ukrainian gas giant Burisma.’
The truth behind that statement is much more complicated, as revealed by the Daily Caller‘s Andrew Kerr who reviewed bank records submitted in an unrelated criminal case involving Biden’s friend and business partner, Devon Archer in which Archer was found guilty of defrauding an American Indian Tribe (a conviction which was later overturned).
So – Burisma did not directly pay Hunter, although the firm’s chairman, Alan Apter told the Wall Street Journal in 2014 that Biden (and Archer) would receive a salary for their independent directorship.
The entity which actually paid the younger Biden was New York-based capital management company Rosemont Seneca Bohai – owned and controlled by Archer. According to the Caller, “in each month between June 2014 and October 2015, Rosemont Seneca Bohai wired between $10,000 and $150,979 to Hunter Biden for undisclosed purposes,” which totaled $708,302.
During the same time period, Burisma paid Rosemont Seneca Bohai $3.15 million for an unknown purpose while Hunter and Archer sat on the board (alongside career CIA spook Joseph Cofer Black – Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-UT) 2012 pick for national security adviser in his failed presidential run against Barack Obama.).
It should also be noted that Hunter’s father, Joe Biden, used his position as then-Vice President to pressure Ukraine into firing their top prosecutor, who was leading a wide-ranging investigation into Burisma and its owner.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0_AqpdwqK4?start=3128]
Further complicating matters is that Burisma was just one of more than 30 entities and individuals who wired approximately $30 million to Rosemont Seneca Bohai in 2014 and 2015.
The China connection
Over the 17-month period that Hunter made the $708,302, Rosemont Seneca Bohai took a 20% stake in Bohai Harvest RST (BHR)- a Chinese private equity firm with close ties to the Bank of China that Hunter Biden has sat on the board of since inception in 2013, and has vowed to resign from by the end of October.
This is where the $1.5 billion billion figure comes from; the amount BHR aimed to raise in 2014 – which was announced two weeks after Joe and Hunter Biden flew to China together on Air Force Two.
It gets even more complicated…
Just four months prior, in February 2015, Archer’s associate, investment banker Dan McClory, said he, Archer and BHR Partners CEO Jonathan Li, were pictured meeting with a leader of the Chinese State Assets Commission (SASAC), which as of 2017 managed $26 trillion in Chinese state assets.
“Group shot with the Director General of Chinese State Assets Commission. He’s the short guy at center,” McClory emailed his associates after the meeting. “Sasac is the largest controlling shareholder in the world … I brought them to BHR. Jonathan Li of BHR is third from right.”
“Fun times in Beijing,” McClory added. “Devon was stellar.”
McClory’s email was received as evidence in Archer’s trial. A witness testified that Archer was the individual third from the left in the photo attached to McClory’s email.
Rosemont Seneca Bohai held onto its 20% equity in BHR Partners until October 2017 when its stake was split in half between two companies, according to Chinese business records. One of the entities that took a portion of Rosemont Seneca Bohai’s equity in BHR Partners was Skaneateles LLC, where Hunter Biden is one of two co-directors, according to business records.
Skaneateles still holds its 10% equity stake in BHR Partners, according to Chinese business records. The other director of Skaneateles is Eric Schwerin, a longtime business partner of Hunter Biden.
On the same day Skaneateles obtained equity in BHR Partners, Schwerin was appointed as supervisor of BHR Partners, a role that grants him the power to oversee the firm’s financial affairs. Schwerin still holds the role of supervisor of BHR Partners, according to Chinese business records.
Hunter Biden announced Sunday that he would resign his position on the board of BHR Partners, but he did not say whether Skaneateles would divest its equity stake in the firm, nor did he say whether Schwerin would step down as the firm’s supervisor.
BHR Partners currently manages the equivalent of $2.1 billion in assets and boasts having the support of the Bank of China, according to its website. –Daily Caller
Read the rest of Kerr’s report untangling the complicated Biden business ties here.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/18/2019 – 16:45
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