Biden, Hunter

Born February 4, 1970 in Wilmington, Delaware . The son of 47th US Vice President Joe Biden and his first wife, Neilia Hunter. In 1972, his mother and sister died in a car accident, and he and his brother were seriously injured. Big brother Bo Biden died in 2015.

He received a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University . Then he continued his education at Yale University School of Law , where he received a doctorate in law from .

Immediately after graduating from Yale in 1996, he got a job as a consultant at MBNA America Bank (banking organization that issues credit cards), receiving more than 100 thousand dollars a year. In less than two years, he became senior ( English executive ) vice president of the company. Even then, commentators noted the manifestation of nepotism : American Spectator in 1998 he wrote that “of course, many children of influential parents get a good job. But the situation with Biden is of concern ” ^[2] .

In 1998, through William Oldaker , a lawyer working for Biden-father’s election campaign, he was appointed director of e-commerce at the U.S. Department of Commerce. ) In 2000, again through Oldacre, Hunter began lobbying, specializing in “notes” (persuading the congressman to make a minor amendment to the general bill that is beneficial to a particular corporate client - usually in the form of non-competitive financing - as a condition for the legislator to support the entire bill). Hunter himself claims that an unspoken rule was established between him and his father: the father does not ask who his son is in clients, and the son does not speak ^[2] . In the early 2000s, Hunter began to have (inherited for the Biden) problems with alcohol ^[2] .

Hunter perceived himself as a “getter” for the family, even helping his older brother, Bo Biden, pay off his debts for education ^[2] .

In 2006, Hunter and his uncle, Jimmy Biden , allegedly acted at the request of Biden-father ) Participated in an attempt to buy a Paradigm hedge fund . Hunter was assigned a salary of $ 1,200,000 per year ^[3] . The purchase was unsuccessful and Hunter had to take a loan against his home to cover losses ^[2] . In 2007-2008, he participated in the campaign of Biden-father for the presidency, a joint English company with Oldacre . Oldaker Biden & Belair LLP received from the campaign funds 143 thousand dollars ^[3] . After Obama won the primary election, Biden became a vice presidential candidate; Obama’s campaign demanded that Hunter stop lobbying, which he did by setting up an English company instead . Seneca Global Advisors , which was supposed to help foreign companies to develop business in the USA ^[2] . Six months after the Obama-Biden bunch came to power, in June 2009, Hunter creates another company, Eng. Rosemont Seneca Partners , partners include Senator J. Kerry's adopted son Christopher Heinz , heir to the Heinz dynasty and Devon Archer, Heinz’s Yale classmate who used to be an Abercrombie and Fitch model ^[2] .

From 2006 to 2009, Biden was a member of the board of directors of the state railway company Amtrak , although he had no prior experience in the field of railways, except driving them as a passenger ^[1] .

In July 2013, Archer and Hunter organized a joint venture with Chinese entrepreneurs, BHR Partners, in , which in December of the same year received under the management of about a billion dollars from the State Bank of China, later the amount was increased to one and a half billion ^[3] . Two weeks before the payment, Hunter flew on his father’s official plane to Beijing , where he introduced his Chinese partner, Jonathan Lee, to his father ^[2] . It looked bad like “access trade” but Biden’s father’s employees were afraid to talk to him about Hunter, as the vice president was extremely negative about his family ^[2] . The Chinese company openly advertised the participation of the partner "Hunter Biden (second son of the current vice president Joe Biden)" ^[3] .

On May 12, 2014 he was appointed a member of the board of the Cypriot holding Burisma , which is engaged in gas production in Ukraine ^{[4] [5] [6]} . One of the owners of the company was N.V. Zlochevsky , a Ukrainian oligarch who worked in the Yanukovych’s government as an environmental minister who was accused of violating laws when issuing gas licenses for his own company. After the 2014 coup, the new government launched an investigation into the activities of Zlochevsky, who began to assemble an international board of directors in order to demonstrate transparency. Invited by Zlochevsky, Alexander Kwasniewski in early 2014 attracted Archer to the board of directors. By April, Archer brought Hunter ^[2] to the board of directors with compensation of $ 50,000 per month . At this time, Biden-father played a key role in US policy towards Ukraine, but in May 2014, J. Psaki, on behalf of the State Department, stated that there was no conflict of interest, since Hunter was an unofficial person. At the same time, several officials in the White House and the State Department were concerned about the situation and believed that Hunter should not have given consent, since even the appearance of inappropriate behavior should not be allowed at this level ^[2] . Again, Hunter’s only qualification for this position (which required only attending several meetings a year ^[3] ) was that he was the son of the current vice president, who was actively involved in US policy towards Ukraine ^[1] . In May 2014, the Guardian sarcastically remarks that "someone needs to improve corporate governance in Ukraine, why not a handful of American guys with strong connections and funny names." Commentator on the Washington Post notes that Hunter’s admission to the board of directors “at best looks like a manifestation of nepotism, and at worst it’s criminal.” In 2015, Heinz ceased business with Hunter ^[3] .

In 2015, Ukrainian Attorney General Viktor Shokin launched an investigation into the Burisma company, but, he claims, the US administration began to impede his investigation. First, in the summer of 2015, the American ambassador to Ukraine, Jeffrey Payette, told Shokin that the investigation should be carried out in “white gloves” (the prosecutor interpreted this as an instruction not to do anything). Then, in the spring of 2016, Joe Biden, in his own words, demanded that Poroshenko dismiss Shokin ^[7] within six hours, otherwise Ukraine would not receive a billion dollars in financial assistance. Shokin was fired and later suggested that the reason for his resignation was an investigation into the possible abuse of Burisma. In 2017, the investigation against Burisma was discontinued ^[8] .

On October 17, 2014, Hunter was expelled from the US Navy reserve for cocaine use ^{[9] [10]} .

• Jim Geraghty. Hunter Biden: The Most Comprehensive Timeline (Eng.) // National Review . - 2019 .-- 30 September.
• Adam Entous. Will Hunter Biden Jeopardize His Father's Campaign? (Eng.) // New Yorker . - 2019 .-- 8 July.

• R. Hunter Biden