Report: Firm co-founded by Hunter Biden helped secure Chinese ownership of lucrative cobalt mine

A new report from The New York Times has unveiled some damning revelations about Hunter Biden’s business ties to communist China.

Writing Saturday, a trio of Times reporters said: “An investment firm where Hunter Biden, the president’s son, was a founding board member helped facilitate a Chinese company’s purchase from an American company of one of the world’s richest cobalt mines, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

Here’s what we know

According to the Times, the Shanghai-based investment firm that Biden helped to create in 2013 is Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) Equity Investment Fund Management Company. The president’s son was joined in the firm by two other Americans and a number of Chinese individuals.

At the time, Americans controlled about 30% of the company, the Times reported.

The deal for the cobalt mine reportedly took place in 2016, when BHR helped to facilitate the acquisition of the facility by China Molybdenum, a Chinese company, from Freeport-McMoRan, an American company. The purchase price was said to have been $2.65 billion.

But, significantly, BHR facilitated the deal by buying out around $1.14 billion worth of shares from Lundin Mining of Canada, another company that owned a portion of the Congo cobalt mine. And about two years after BHR bought those shares, China Molybdenum bought the shares from BHR.

At the end of it all, China Molybdenum was left with 80% ownership of the cobalt mine, with Congo owning the remainder.

Worse still: While this was all going on, reports indicate that Biden was at least a 10% shareholder in BHR.

White House plays dumb

Both Biden, through his lawyers, and his father’s White House have been working to downplay the developments, with an attorney for the president’s son claiming Biden no longer holds any stake in BHR or any associated company. But Fox News cited Chinese business records that reportedly showed Biden still held a 10% stake in BHR as of April 2021.

Pressed by reporters, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that Hunter Biden “has been working to unwind his investment, but I would certainly point you — he’s a private citizen. I would point you to him or his lawyers on the outside on any update.”

But try as she might to deflect, there’s no hiding that this is just one of many transactions involving Hunter Biden that don’t smell right.

Maybe it’s time federal authorities start taking a closer look.

The post Report: Firm co-founded by Hunter Biden helped secure Chinese ownership of lucrative cobalt mine first appeared on Conservative Institute.