Friday, September 27, 2019

“Come on, man,” Biden said. “I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks."

3-21-2018  The Biden family's dealings with this Ukrainian company involved getting one of the country's most notorious mob bankers, Ihor Kolomoisky, off the U.S. government visa ban list.  Under Biden's leadership, $3 billion in aid went to Ukraine, and his son's company was implicated in the disappearance of $1.8 billion of that money….
  The vice president's presence helps explain a conundrum.  Burisma hired his son and Archer despite the fact that neither of them had any experience in the energy sector.  Schweizer notes "The choice of Hunter Biden to handle transparency and corporate governance of Burisma is curious, because Biden had little if any experience in Ukrainian law or professional legal counsel, period.”…
  Zlochevsky founded Burisma in Cyprus in 2006.  He served as natural resources minister under Yanukovych and gave himself the licenses to develop the country's abundant gas fields.  He also had a flare for lavishness, running a super-exclusive fashion boutique named after himself.
  Burisma's major subsidiaries ended up sharing the same business address as the natural gas firm controlled by Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky.  He controlled the country's largest financial institution, ProvatBank, through which the Ukrainian military and government workers got paid.  He also owned media companies and airlines.  In violation of Ukraine law, he maintained Ukrainian, Israeli and Cypriot passports.
   Kolomoisky gained a reputation for violence and brutality, along with lawlessness.  Rival oligarchs have sued him for alleged involvement in "murders and beheadings" related to a business deal.  He also allegedly used "hired rowdies armed with baseball bats, iron bars, gas and rubber bullet pistols and chainsaws" to take over a steel plant in 2006.  He built his multibillion-dollar empire by "raiding" other companies, forcing them to merge with his own using brute force.
  For these and other reasons, the U.S. government placed Kolomoisky on its visa ban list, prohibiting him from entering the country legally.  In 2015 however, after Hunter Biden and Devon Archer had joined Burisma's board, Kolomoisky was given admittance back into the U.S.
  Archer and the younger Biden brought other benefits to Burisma, however.  Archer represented the company at the Louisiana Gulf Coast Oil Exposition in 2015.  Biden addressed the Energy Security for the Future conference in Monaco.  The vice president's son brought much-needed legitimacy to the shoddy gas company.
  Less than a month after Archer joined Burisma's board, the company hired another Kerry lackey, David Leiter, as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C.  He successfully lobbied for more aid to the country.  Both Biden and Kerry championed $1.8 billion in taxpayer-backed loans to be given to Ukraine, courtesy of the IMF.  That money would go directly through Kolomoisky's PrivatBank and then it would disappear.
  According to the Ukrainian anticorruption watchdog Nashi Groshi, "This transaction of $1.8 billion ... with the help of fake contracts was simply an asset-siphoning operation.”   https://pjmedia.com/trending/did-biden-save-this-ukraine-firm-responsible-for-1-8b-in-missing-aid-his-son-is-on-the-board/
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3-21-2018    When Vice President Biden went to China in December 2013 amid the South China Sea aggression, his son Hunter went with him.  Hunter Biden was negotiating a major deal between Rosemont Seneca and the state-owned Bank of China.  As the vice president discussed China's trade with the United States, his son was putting these economic ties into practice, and the U.S. effectively caved in the conflict over the South China Sea….
  Ten days after the Bidens visited China, the Bank of China--which is embedded in a complex network involving state ministries, security forces, and the Communist Party, and which provides capital for China's economic statecraft--created an investment fund with Rosemont Seneca called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR).  "In short, the Chinese government was literally funding a business that it co-owned along with the sons of two of America's most powerful decision makers," Schweizer explains….In August, Rosemont Realty (another branch of the Rosemont Capital tree run by Hunter Biden, Chris Heinz and Devon Archer) announced that Gemini Investments, run from the COSCO (5th arm of Peoples Liberation Army-Navy) headquarters, was buying a 75 percent stake in the company, including a $3 billion commitment from the Chinese….
  Schweizer notes that "Chinese companies have a long history of stealing American nuclear secrets. ...This time, of course, family members of America's most powerful political figures had exclusive financial interests in the rogue Chinese company stealing American secrets."
  Chillingly Schweizer adds that even after guilty pleas in the case, "Rosemont did not change its relationship with its Chinese partners, nor did BHR divest from the state-owned Chinese company that had been stealing America's nuclear secrets."
  Finally the Biden-and-Kerry-connected BHR made another investment with a Chinese state-owned company in 2016.  The company China Molybdenum aims to acquire molybdenum and other rare-earth minerals that have a military and nuclear application. The company also has deep ties to the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party.
In 2012 the Obama-Biden administration filed a complaint against China with the World Trade Organization, charging Beijing with attempting to control the world rare-earth minerals market.  The WTO ruled against China in March 2014.
  Two years later in May 2016 China Molybdenum announced it was buying more than half of the Tenke Fungurume copper mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo for $2.6 billion.  A few months later BHR announced it would buy another 24 percent stake in the mine for $1.5 billion.  China Molybdenum helped the Biden-and-Kerry-connected BHR to make this purchase.
  “So while the Obama administration was laying out the challenge posed by China in the global minerals race, the son of the vice president and a confidant of the secretary of state were invested in deals that would help Beijing win that resource race," Schweizer concludes.     https://pjmedia.com/trending/as-biden-and-kerry-went-soft-on-china-sons-made-nuclear-military-business-deals-with-chinese-govt/
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  In the late summer of 2006 Joe Biden’s son Hunter and Joe’s younger brother, James, purchased Paradigm Global Advisors.  On their first day on the job, they showed up with Joe’s other son, Beau, and two large men and ordered the hedge fund’s chief of compliance to fire its president, according to a Paradigm executive who was present.
  After the firing, the two large men escorted the fund’s president out of the firm’s midtown Manhattan office, and James Biden laid out his vision for the fund’s future.   “Don’t worry about investors,” he said, according to the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation. “We've got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden.”
  At the time the senator was just months away from both assuming the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and launching his second presidential bid.  According to the executive, James Biden made it clear he viewed the fund as a way to take money from rich foreigners who could not legally give money to his older brother or his campaign account.  “We've got investors lined up in a line of 747s filled with cash ready to invest in this company,” the executive remembers James Biden saying.
  At this, the executive recalled, Beau Biden who was then running for attorney general of Delaware turned bright red.  He told his uncle “This can never leave this room, and if you ever say it again, I will have nothing to do with this.”
  A spokesman for James and Hunter Biden said no such episode ever occurred.  Beau Biden died in 2015, at 46.  But the recollection of an effort to cash in on Joe’s political ties is consistent with other accounts provided by other former executives at the fund.   https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/08/02/joe-biden-investigation-hunter-brother-hedge-fund-money-2020-campaign-227407
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  When prominent Americans leverage their global reputations for financial gain they attract almost no attention today.  How many of us who consider ourselves well versed in U.S. politics and international relations know that alongside her consulting firm, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright started an emerging-markets hedge fund, run by her son-in-law? In 2011, Albright Capital took a voting stake in APR Energy, specializing in pop-up electricity plants for developing countries. APR promotes itself to the mining industry in Africa, where resource extraction enriches a handful of kleptocratic elites and leaves locals mired in pollution and conflict.  Some of APR’s business comes via the U.S. Agency for International Development, which works closely with the State Department once led by Albright.  Scratch into the bios of many former U.S. officials who were in charge of foreign or security policy in administrations of either party and you will find “consulting” firms and hedge-fund gigs monetizing their names and connections.
  Some of these gigs require more ethical compromises than others.   When allegations of ethical lapses or wrongdoing surface against people on one side of the aisle they can always claim that someone on the other side has done far worse.  But taken together all of these examples have contributed to a toxic norm.  Joe Biden is the man who, as a senator, walked out of a dinner with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.  Biden was one of the most vocal champions of anticorruption efforts in the Obama administration.   So when this same Biden takes his son with him to China aboard Air Force Two, and within days Hunter joins the board of an investment advisory firm with stakes in China...https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/hunter-bidens-legal-socially-acceptable-corruption/598804/   
..........................................-J. Biden with son, sister
     “Come on, man,” Biden said.  “I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks.  But guess what, they’re not competition for us.”  Perhaps Biden’s insouciant attitude toward the Chinese government has to do with the fact that his family does not consider them competitors but business partners.
In 2013 then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden flew aboard Air Force Two to China.  Less than two weeks later Hunter Biden’s firm inked a $1 billion private equity deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China.  The deal was later expanded to $1.5 billion.  In short the Chinese government funded a business that it co-owned along with the son of a sitting vice president.
  If it sounds shocking that a vice president would shape US-China policy as his son--who has scant experience in private equity--clinched a coveted billion-dollar deal with an arm of the Chinese government, that’s because it is.  Until the publication of my book, “Secret Empires,” no one knew the deal took place.  Indeed, it took me and a team of seasoned investigators nearly two years to unearth and report the facts.  -Schweitzer      https://nypost.com/2019/05/11/the-troubling-reason-why-biden-is-so-soft-on-china/

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