REPORT: Hunter Biden’s firm helped China gain control of electric-car mineral in 2016

In 2016, Hunter Biden’s investment firm helped broker a deal that handed a Chinese state-backed company control of a large African mine rich in cobalt. The mineral is an essential part of the production of electric car batteries.

The deal was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon during the 2020 presidential campaign and was highlighted on Saturday by the New York Times. When the deal was made, President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden’s father, was the sitting vice president under former President Barack Obama.

Biden had no knowledge of his son’s involvement with the sale, according to a White House spokesman. Congress is moving closer toward approving President Biden’s $2 trillion social spending plan; the plan earmarks billions of dollars to promote electric vehicles. 

The Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) Equity Investment Fund Management Company, founded by Hunter Biden and several Chinese partners, was cut into a $3.8 billion transaction in 2016 that transferred 80 percent of Congo’s Tenke Fungurum mine to Beijing-backed China Molybdenum from an American company. The mine is one of the largest sources of cobalt in the world.

Now that China has control of the mineral, the Biden administration said in June that the control “presents a critical vulnerability to the future of the U.S. domestic auto industry.”

Chris Clark, a lawyer for the younger Biden, says Biden “no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly, in either BHR or Skaneateles,” but Chinese records showed that he still held a 10 percent stake in Chinese private equity firm Bohai Harvest RST Equity Investment Fund Management GO. Through his company, Skaneateles LLC. A spokesman for China Molybdenum, Vincent Zhou, said, “We don’t know Hunter Biden, nor are we aware of his involvement in BHR.”