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The Biden Family’s Strange Business History
BY BEN SCHRECKINGER, Politico
AUGUST 3, 2019

Over his decades in office, the self-described ‘Middle-Class Joe’s’ family fortunes have closely tracked his political career. Ironically, Joe Biden presents himself as a “corrective” to a system ge sees as “rigged by financiers and networked corporate elites.”

Many Bidens surface in hjgh paid, make-work government jobs, and are hired by Fortune 500 companies in privileged jobs that exploit Joe Biden’s legislative interests.....jobs that are off-limits to non-Biden everyday Americans.

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Hunter had more success pursuing business in Asia and Europe. After buying Paradigm, he went into business with former Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson, Christopher Heinz, and Heinz’s friend, Devon Archer. They formed a variety of investment-focused firms under the name Rosemont Seneca.

As they set about searching for deals, Hunter and Archer were eager to land business in China.

In late 2013, Hunter traveled with his father to Beijing, where the vice president was set to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

While there, Hunter introduced one of his business partners, Jonathan Li of the Beijing-based private equity firm Bohai Capital, to his father, according to The New Yorker. Hunter and Archer had just concluded a large real estate deal with Bohai. In May of 2019, The Intercept reported that Hunter’s Chinese investment vehicle, Bohai Harvest RST, was invested in a firm that developed facial-recognition technology used in Chinese state-backed surveillance efforts.

In 2014, as Joe Biden led the administration’s response to the annexation of the Crimean peninsula in southern Ukraine, Hunter and Archer received appointments to the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma Holdings. Hunter’s monthly pay from Burisma was reportedly as high as $50,000 in some months.

Last June, Archer was convicted in federal court in New York for an unrelated fraud targeting a Native American tribe and pension funds. In November, a judge granted Archer a retrial.

A spokesman for Heinz, Chris Bastardi, said the ketchup fortune heir had nothing to do with Hunter’s foreign dealings. “Neither Mr. Heinz, nor any business in which he had an interest, was involved in Burisma or Bohai Harvest RST.”

Biden and his wife, Jill, have set about providing for themselves, earning more than $15 million in the two years following the end of his vice presidency in early 2017.

Since his father left office, Hunter has cultivated a relationship with the Chinese billionaire Ye Jianming. Hunter told The New Yorker the pair had partnered on a natural gas venture in Louisiana and that Ye had once gifted him a large diamond.

Hunter also dealt with Ye’s deputy, Patrick Ho. In November 2017, federal agents in New York arrested Ho on suspicion of bribing government officials in Chad and Uganda. Ho’s first call, according to The New York Times, was to James Biden, who told the paper Ho had been trying to reach Hunter.

Ho was convicted on seven counts in December. Ye has disappeared from public view, and his name has surfaced in a corruption case in China.

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In 2017, Joe Biden told a Vanity Fair writer that he sometimes wished that one of his children had gotten rich in order to provide for him in his old age.

Yet Biden and his wife, Jill, have amply provided for themselves, earning more than $15 million ...... just in the two years following the end of his vice presidency in early 2017.

Hunter recently told The New Yorker that he lives on $4,000 a month and that he offered to pay his ex-wife $37,000 a month in alimony and child support for 10 years.

In 2012, Fox Business pegged James Biden’s net worth at $7 million. In 2013, James and Sara Biden bought a vacation house on Keewaydin Island in Florida for $2.5 million. While the house served for several years as a family getaway amid beautiful surroundings, it did not pay off as an investment. After James and Sara put it on the market in early 2016 with an initial asking price of $5.9 million; it sold for just $1.35 million in 2018.

long read here

https://www.politico.eu/article/joe-biden-presidential-bid-family-business-history-democrats/