WaPo | Hunter Biden’s relationship with CEFC took root during a time of financial strain and turmoil for his family, according to court filings and Hunter Biden’s accounts. The Bidens were reeling from the May 2015 death of Hunter’s older brother, Beau, and Hunter was struggling with drug use.
“I was in the throes of addiction,” Hunter wrote in a memoir published last year.
During divorce proceedings with his wife Kathleen, a court filing in the case described “outstanding debts [that] are shocking and overwhelming,” with the couple carrying maxed-out credit cards, double mortgages on both properties they owned and a tax debt of $313,970. Three checks to their housekeeper had bounced, and they owed money to medical providers and therapists, according to a February 2017 filing in D.C. Superior Court.
An intermediary from CEFC initially reached out to Hunter Biden in December 2015 to set up a meeting between the then-vice president’s son and Ye Jianming, the founder and chairman of the Chinese firm, according to verified emails from a purported copy of the laptop hard drive reviewed by the outside experts for The Post.
Vuk Jeremic, a Serbian politician who had recently served as president of the U.N. General Assembly, wrote in an email to the younger Biden that he was hosting a small private dinner in Washington with Ye — whom he called “one of the 10 wealthiest Chinese businessmen” — and wanted Hunter to attend.
“He’s young and dynamic, with the top-level connections in his country,” Jeremic wrote in the Dec. 1, 2015, email.
Hunter Biden was unable to attend the dinner and Jeremic said in an email to The Post that while he knew both men, he was “not involved in their mutual introduction” and found out from media reports that the two had eventually connected.
CEFC, a massive oil and gas company founded in 2002, had financing from government development banks and ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army, according to people who studied the firm. Ye’s official biography said he was once deputy secretary of the China Association for International Friendly Contact, an organization that a 2011 U.S. congressional report called “a front” for the People’s Liberation Army.
While CEFC was ostensibly private, experts on the Chinese economy say it is unlikely that it operated independently of the government.
The Chinese Embassy declined to comment on CEFC ties to the Chinese government or Hunter Biden’s involvement with the firm.
Shortly after Joe Biden left the vice presidency, Hunter Biden and Ye met over dinner in Miami.
The two discussed business opportunities for CEFC in the United States, including a $40 million joint venture to produce liquefied natural gas in Louisiana, according to a July 2019 New Yorker report based on extensive interviews with Hunter Biden.
That deal failed. But Ye was so pleased with his initial meeting with Hunter Biden that after dinner he sent a 2.8-carat diamond to Hunter’s hotel room with a card thanking him for the conversation, according to the New Yorker.
In divorce proceedings, Hunter’s wife would claim the diamond was worth $80,000. Hunter Biden told the New Yorker the value was closer to $10,000, that he gave the diamond to his associates, and that he doesn’t know what they did with it.
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