vrijdag 23 oktober 2020

Report Reveals How Biden Family Was Compromised By China

 

Blockbuster Report Reveals How Biden Family Was Compromised By China

In a day when half the US population remained transfixed by the ongoing revelations about the contents of Hunter Biden's "laptop from hell" and the other half was doing everything in its power to ignore the news which the socials have conveniently been desperate to censor, a far less noticed but perhaps just as important investigative report authored by the unknown Typhoon Investigations, was released by Christopher Balding, Associate Professor at Peking University HSBC School of Business Shenzhen, China and also Bloomberg contributor  (which is odd considering the clear anti-Trump bias of the Bloomberg media empire) exposing Biden activities in China which "the press has simply refused to cover", and which reveals "how Biden was compromised by the Communist Party of China."

In a series of tweets around noon on Thursday, Balding said that he had really "not wanted to do this but roughly 2 months ago I was handed a report about Biden activities in China the press has simply refused to cover. I want to strongly emphasize I did not write the report but I know who did."

Some more background on the origins of the report from Balding's website:

For two months I have worked on behalf of my colleague to ensure that this report helped others report on the documented evidence of Biden activities with regards to China. I want to emphasize a couple of things about my own involvement.

  • First, I did not write the report and I am not responsible for the report. I have gone over the report with a fine tooth comb and can find nothing factually wrong with the report. Everything is cited and documented. Arguably the only weakness is that we do not have internal emails between Chinese players or the Chinese and Bidens that would make explicit what the links clearly imply.
  • Second, I will not be disclosing the individual who did write this report. They have very valid reasons to fear for both their personal safety and professional risks. Throughout the years that I have known this individual we never discussed politics. I have never heard them criticize any political party other than the CCP. They are not a Republican.
  • Third, it was my very real wish that the press would have reported on the documented evidence in this report and left me and the author entirely out of this situation. I did not vote for Trump in 2016 and will not vote for him in 2020. This information however is entirely valid public interest information that the press has simply refused to cover due to their own partisan wishes. I have serious policy differences with President Trump. I am pro-immigration. I would like to see more free trade efforts to shift trade away from China and into partner countries from Mexico to Vietnam and India. I believe that institution building in Asia is vital and America needs to take that lead. However, I cannot in good conscience allow documented evidence of the variety presented here go unreported by partisans who are simply choosing to hide information.
  • Finally, I will not be answering any questions about the report. I had no wish to be involved in Presidential politics. I do not want to be on the news. I will not be answer any questions about who wrote the report. We need to return the focus to the known documented facts.

Upon review, this is how Balding summarized the report's contents in his series of tweets:

Hunter Biden is partnered with the Chinese state. Entire investment partnership is Chinese state money from social security fund to China Development Bank. It is actually a subsidiary of the Bank of China. This is not remotely anything less than a Chinese state funded play.

Though the entire size of the fund cannot be reconstructed, the Taiwanese cofounder who is now detained in China, reports it to be NOT $1-1.5 billion but $6.5 billion. This would make Hunters stake worth at a minimum at least $50 million if he was to sell it. 

Disturbingly, everyone on the Chinese side are clearly linked with influence and intelligence organizations. China uses very innocuous sounding organization names to hide PLA, United Front, or Ministry of Foreign Affairs influence/intelligence operations. This report cannot say Hunter was the target of such an operation or that China even targeted him. However, based upon the clear pattern of individuals and organizations surrounding him it is an entirely reasonable conclusion.

Finally, the believed Godfather in arranging everything is a gentleman named Yang Jiechi. He is currently the CCP Director of Foreign Affairs leading strategist for America, Politburo member one of the most powerful men in China, and Xi confidant. Why does this matter?

He met regularly with Joe Biden during his stint as Chinese ambassador the US when Biden chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Later he was Minister of Foreign Affairs when the investment partnership was made official in 2013. Importantly, the Taiwanese national listed MOFA institutions as the key clients in helping to arrange everything. Yang would clearly have known the importance of Hunter Biden and undoubtedly would have been informed of any dealings. Given that he is now the point person in China for dealing with the US this raises major concerns about a Biden administration dealing impartially with an individual in this capacity. These are documented facts from Chinese corporate records like IPO prospectuses and media. They raise very valid concerns about Biden linkages to China.

Turning to the report itself, here is the 10-point summary of its findings:

Joe Biden’s compromising partnership with the Communist Party of China runs via Yang Jiechi (CPC’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission). YANG met frequently with BIDEN during his tenure at the Chinese embassy in Washington.

Hunter Biden’s 2013 Bohai Harvest Rosemont investment partnership was set-up by Ministry of Foreign Affairs institutions who are tasked with garnering influence with foreign leaders during YANG’s tenure as Foreign Minister.

HUNTER has a direct line to the Politburo, according to SOURCE A, a senior finance professional in China.

Michael Lin, a Taiwanese national now detained in China, brokered the BHR partnership and partners with MOFA foreign influence organizations.

LIN is a POI for his work on behalf of China, as confirmed by SOURCE B and SOURCE C (at two separate national intelligence agencies).

BHR is a state managed operation. Leading shareholder in BHR is a Bank of China which lists BHR as a subsidiary and BHR’s partners are SOEs that funnel revenue/assets to BHR.

HUNTER continues to hold 10% in BHR. He visited China in 2010 and met with major Chinese government financial companies that would later back BHR.

HUNTER’s BHR stake (purchased for $400,000) is now likely be worth approx. $50 million (fees and capital appreciation based on BHR’s $6.5 billion AUM as stated by Michael Lin).

HUNTER also did business with Chinese tycoons linked with the Chinese military and against the interests of US national security.

BIDEN’s foreign policy stance towards China (formerly hawkish), turned positive despite China’s country’s rising geopolitical assertiveness.

To simply the various opaque Chinese intermediaries, the report shows the transfer of Chinese state money to Hunter, via major Chinese financial SOEs.


BHR’s current shareholders are Bohai Capital (30%), Shanghai Ample Harvest Financial Services Group Co Ltd (上海丰实金融服务(集团)有限公司) (30%), Angju Investment (10%), Thornton (10%), Ulysses Diversified Inc (10%), Skaneateles LLC (10%). According to Chinese corporate records, the original owner of the US stake in BHR was Rosemont, Seneca Thornton, LLC with a 30% shareholding. This was split just under two years later into what is believed to be 20%/10% holding between Rosemont, Seneca, Bohai LLC and Thornton LLC. This was later changed again splitting Rosemont, Seneca, Bohai into Skanletes and Ulyssees. As Rosemont is the HEINZ KERRY vehicle and Seneca is the Biden vehicle, it is believed that the final split allowed HEINZ to exit the partnership divesting to ARCHER.

In summary, the Chinese government funded a business that it co-owned along with the son of a sitting US vice president and Secretary of State who was with high probability directly or indirectly invested in the holding company.

But if China funded a business, what was the value for Hunter? Here the report goes into detail calculating that the entity likely had $6.5BN in AUM, generating $100-$150MM in annual revenue, and if one day the business was sold, it could do so for ~$300 million (see page 14-15).

This returns the entire partnership to the fundamental problem: two sons of the Vice President of the United States and the Secretary of State willingly entered into a financial partnership with a government their fathers were supposed to deal with in an impartial manner.

Evidence indicates that the Secretary of State was directly or indirectly financially invested in his sons firms and benefitted from asset purchases made by firms directly linked to his son. HUNTER invested in a firm that by his own words has had almost nothing to do with, managed by state government with departments dedicated to elite capture, focusing on state enterprise deals in a foreign country, but has grown to manage $6.5 billion in assets and likely realize yearly revenue of $100-150 million. The ultimate sale price for his stake or the partnership would be whatever the Chinese Communist Party decides his partnership stake is worth.

And this is where the Typhoon Investigations report, the Biden presidential campaign, and Hunter's "laptop from hell" all converge:

On May 2, 2019 BIDEN remarked, “They can't figure out how they're going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, you know, they're not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they're not, they're not competition for us.”

On May 3, it was reported that BHR [where Hunter was an investor] invested in Face++, a Chinese surveillance company which develops facial-recognition software for law enforcement in China, including targeting ethnic minority Muslims Xinjiang.

In September 2019, BIDEN said this of HUNTER’s business deals:

“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,”

Still, while Hunter benefiting monetarily from deals with China may be unethical, it's hardly illegal (all else equal). Where things get dicey is if to curry favor with China, and continue the freeflow of China-sourced cash, Hunter or his father, is betraying his fellow Americans. Is this what happened? Read on and decide:

Hunter Cultivated by Chinese Intelligence 

Our research shows that for more than decade, HUNTER has been personally targeted by China’s intelligence apparatus and its various ‘foreign relations agencies’. A U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs <HSGAC> published on September 23, 2020, details HUNTER’s recent payoffs from a PLA linked tycoon, Ye Jianming <YE>, chairman of Chinese energy company CEFC China Energy Company Limited <CEFC>.

YE’s first break came when he purchased a small piston factory that supplied the Chinese army, after which he was a proxy for PLA officials, based on a New York Times article, and our proprietary research of the PLA’s logistics network. In the early 2000s, YE was the deputy secretary of CAIFC, according to his CEFC biography. As explained, the CAIFC is a PLA front organization that has dual roles of intelligence collection and propaganda work, and worked with LIN and the SLLF a few years after YE left the organizationYE also knows Xu, who was a CAIFC special advisor, and arranged for LIN and HUNTER’s access to the highest levels of government.

In line with his intelligence role, YE arranged events that brought together retired American and Chinese military officers. In 2015, YE arranged for an aide to meet with HUNTER and in May 2017, YE met privately with HUNTER at a Miami hotel. The purpose of the meeting was for HUNTER to use his contacts to help “identify investment opportunities for Ye’s company CEFC China Energy,” and afterwards YE gave HUNTER a 2.8-carat diamond.

According to HSGAC’s Confidential Document 9, YE and his associate Dong Gongwen, applied to a bank and opened credit lines for a business named Hudson West III LLC, giving HUNTER, his brother James (and James’ wife Sarah Biden), credit cards which the Bidens used to buy extravagant items. The HSGAC report details a series of transfers and transactions worth millions of US dollars between CEFC, Hudson West and the Bidens. This – 11 years after HUNTER and James denied selling their political connections to foreigners for personal gain.

In March 2018, YE was detained and put under investigation on suspicion of economic crimes. CEFC was then declared bankrupt in March 2020 alleged to have faked deals and bribed foreign governments for oil rights. Some of these were facilitated by Patrick Ho <Ho>, CPPCC member and the former Hong Kong Secretary for Home Affairs in Tung’s administration. On November 18, 2017, Ho was arrested at the John F. Kennedy International Airport on bribery and money-laundering charges, and called HUNTER for legal assistance.132 HUNTER later told The New Yorker that he doesn’t see Ye as a “shady character at all,” and he characterized the outcome as “bad luck.”

The report's conclusion:

Whether he understands it or not, it is apparent that HUNTER has been compromised by Chinese intelligence, who most likely have detailed files on HUNTER’s time spent in China, encompassing his personal meetings and any other activities. Furthermore, YE is associated with the PLA’s General Political Department, which directly opposes the US military in Asia, creating a serious conflict of interest for his father BIDEN.

Putting it all together, the report concludes that the Chinese influence operation targeting Biden and Heinz, the two most important people in US foreign policy under the Obama administration, and their children can now be tied between a small group of organizations and individuals. 

"Dating back to Biden’s time in the Senate meeting with Yang, this was never from the Chinese perspective anything less than an official influence operation. Everything surrounding HUNTER took place with official Chinese organizations known to engage in and tasked with influence operations.

Of course, in exchange for funneling tens of millions to Hunter (and, indirectly according to recent allegations, his father)China also got something: this:

Over time BIDEN’s approach to China changed significantly. Under the Clinton and early part of the Bush administrations he could be considered moderately hawkish on China. However, during his time in the Obama administration as one of the key people tasked with China policy, his views became very dovish. Interestingly, BIDEN repeatedly is using preferred CCP language in describing approaches to relations or specific issues. The CCPIT specifically works with businessmen to convince their home governments it is in their best interest to avoid damaging measures such as sanctions to China. Other organizations mentioned work specifically to engage in elite capture or influence politicians or governments. The presence of all these institutions collectively strongly imply this was an influence operation by the Chinese state and whether directly or indirectly, BIDEN shifted his view from hawkish to dovish after HUNTER began receiving entrée into Chinese elite political and financial institutions.

Finally, going back to Chris Balding who originally published the report, here is his own brief summary of everything laid out in the 64 page report:

Beginning just before Joe Biden's ascendancy to the Vice Presidency, Hunter Biden was travelling to Beijing meeting with Chinese financial institutions and political figures would ultimately become his investors.  Finalized in 2013, the investment partnership included money from the Chinese government, social security, and major state-owned banks a veritable who’s who of Chinese state finance.

It is not simply the state money that should cause concern but the structures and deals that took place. Most investment in specific projects came from state owned entities and flowed into state backed projects or enterprises. Even the deals speak to the worst of cronyism. The Hunter Biden investment firm share of a copper mine in the Congo was guaranteed with assets put at risk by the larger copper company to ensure deal flow to Hunter’s firm.

In another instance, Bank of China working on an IPO in Hong Kong gave its share allocation to the BHR investment partnership. They were able to do this because even though the Hunter Biden firm completed no notable work on the IPO, it is counted as a subsidiary of the Bank of China. The Hunter Biden Chinese investment partnership is literally invested in by the Chinese state and a subsidiary of the Bank of China owned by the Chinese Ministry of Finance.

The entire arrangement speaks to Chinese state interests. Meetings were held at locations that in China speak to the welcoming of foreign dignitaries or state to state relations. The Chinese organizations surrounding Hunter Biden are known intelligence and influence operatives to the United States government. The innocuous names like Chinese People’s Institute for Foreign Affairs exist to “…carry out government-directed policies and cooperative initiatives with influential foreigners without being perceived as a formal part of the Chinese government.”

Interestingly the CPIFA is under the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When the investment partnership was struck in 2013, the Minister of Foreign Affairs was Yang Jiechi. Yang would have been very familiar with Hunter Biden from his days in Washington as the Chinese Ambassador to the United States from 2001 to 2005 during which he met regularly with Joe Biden chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Today the same individual who oversaw institutions helping shepherd Hunter’s investment partnership as the Minister of Foreign Affairs is Xi Jinping’s right hand man on foreign affairs and member of the powerful Politburo.

Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family.  Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion.  While this number cannot be completely replicated, given that two deal alone were worth in excess of $1.6 billion this number is not unrealistic at all.  A 2% annual fee on assets under management would generate $130 million annually. Add in the 20% fee on capital gains the firm would recognize and it is not difficult to see Hunter’s stake being worth in excess of $50 million.

According to Hunter’s attorney, he did not invest his $400,000 in the company until 2017. Even assuming the veracity of this statement, this raises a major problem. Founded in 2013, the firm had large amounts of revenue and assets under management by 2017. In other words, his $400,000 stake would have already been worth far more than what he paid for it. This paltry $400,000 investment worth more than $50 million now would have realized a gain of more than 12,400% in three years.

The difficulty in eluding these concerns is their documentability by anyone who cares to look.  There is no potential for hacking because it is all public record in China. Any journalist who wishes to look can go review IPO prospectuses, news reports, or corporate records. There is no secret method for discovering this data other than actually looking. There is simply no way to avoid the reality that Hunter Biden was granted a 10% stake worth far in excess of what he paid for a firm that is literally operated and owned by the Chinese state.

I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 and have significant concerns about his policies in areas like immigration. Having lived in China for nine years throughout the Xi regimes construction of concentration camps and having witnessed first hand their use of influence and intelligence operations, the Biden links worry me profoundly.

Whether Joe Biden personally knew the details, a very untenable position, it is simply political malpractice to not be aware of the details of these financial arrangements. These documentable financial links simply cannot be wished away.

And this is why Beijing is desperate to get Joe Biden - whose son got extremely wealthy thanks to China's influence peddling operation for the past a decade- into the White House.

You can read the full report here (pdf link)

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/blockbuster-report-reveals-how-biden-family-was-compromised-china?utm_campaign=&utm_content=Zerohedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter




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