Hunter Biden, son of 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden, has come under scrutiny for his business links to Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma while his father was vice president.
Now, a new book by author Peter Schweizer reveals Hunter Biden forged other business deals with individuals and entities tied with the governments of Russia, China, and Kazakhstan, that reportedly scored him hundreds of millions of dollars.
The book, titled Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite., lays out how Hunter Biden and his business partners, in addition to his numerous Rosemont-branded entities and ventures, was deeply involved with an entity called the Burnham Financial Group.
Hunter and his business partner, Devon Archer, used Burnham to make foreign deals with governments and oligarchs, according to a copy of the book viewed by Breitbart News.
One of those oligarchs included Nurlan Abduov, the associate of another Kazakh oligarch, Kenges Rakishev. Rakishev is the son-in-law of the former vice prime minister of Kazakhstan, Imangali Tasmagambetov. Tasmagamvetov was also formerly the defense minister, and is now the Kazakh ambassador to Russia.
According to the book, an account Hunter regularly received funds from showed money arriving from a firm run by Rakishev in 2014:
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.
While Burnham received funds from Kazakh oligarchs, Archer acted as a backchannel between Kazakhstan to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, according to the book. (Kerry’s stepson Chris Heinz was a business partner with Biden and Archer in some of their ventures).
In a July 11, 2013, email, Kerry’s chief of staff David Wade wrote to Archer:
Devon: understand you spoke to the Secretary re having him call [Kazakh] Foreign Minister Idrisov today, can you let me know topics Idrisov wants to talk about/any requests he’ll have of the boss, so we can get paper prepared for a call. Hopefully, the situation on the home front will leave him time to do it.
Burnham also had business deals with two mysterious Chinese companies — Kirin Global Enterprses Limited and Harvest Global Investors, according to the book.
Kirin Global Enterprise Limited was an investment vehicle run by Xiangyao (or Yaojun) “Larry” Liu and Guo Jianfeng, according to Schweizer. “Very little is known about Kirin or its two principals, other than the fact that they invest heavily in mainland Chinese real estate,” he writes. Harvest Global Investors was a Chinese investment firm linked to the government in Beijing.
Burnham also had a financial relationship with Russian Oligarch Yelena Baturina, a billionaire with extensive political connections in Moscow and links to Russian organized crime, according to Schweizer. Archer said Baturina invested $200 million into “various investment funds” with which he was involved.
Burnham also got wrapped up in a $60 million fraudulent bond scheme to rip off union pension funds and the poorest Indian tribe in America, the Oglala Sioux, Schweizer writes.
In May 2016, Archer was arrested in New York and charged with “orchestrating a scheme to defraud investors and a Native American tribal entity of tens of millions of dollars.”
Some of the targeted were government employee or labor union organizations that had supported Joe Biden in the past. Biden has long described himself as a “union man.”
Although Hunter Biden was not charged, Schweizer writes, “his fingerprints were all over Burnham.” The legitimacy that his name and political status as the vice president’s son lent to Burnham was brought up repeatedly during the trial, he writes.
That status was used as a means of both recruiting pension money into the scheme and alleviating investors’ concerns, he writes. In an August 2014 email, Jason Galanis, who was convicted in the bond scheme, agreed that Burnham had “value beyond capital” because of their political connections.
Hunter Biden had an office at Burnham’s New York City offices on Fifty-Seventh Street, and during the trial, numerous witnesses came forward describing Hunter’s involvement with the firm, according to the book.
Schweizer writes these deals have long been a pattern with the Biden family, to include Hunter Biden:
With the election of his father as vice president, Hunter Biden launched businesses fused to his father’s power that led him to lucrative deals with a rogue’s gallery of governments and oligarchs around the world. Sometimes he would hitch a prominent ride with his father aboard Air Force Two to visit a country where he was courting business. Other times, the deals would be done more discreetly. Always they involved foreign entities that appeared to be seeking something from his father. Often, the countries in question, including Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan, had highly corrupt political cultures.
In short, Hunter Biden was not cutting business deals in Japan or Great Britain, where disclosure rules and corporate governance might require greater scrutiny. These were deals in the truly dark corners of the world.
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