The statement aims to set the record straight on Biden’s past work in Ukraine and China, which Trump and Giuliani have fixated on as the 2020 campaign heats up. He served a five-year term on the board of Burisma, one of Ukraine’s biggest private gas companies, whose owner had been under investigation for alleged money laundering and abuse of power. The allegations predated his joining the board in April 2014. He stepped down earlier this year.
At the time he joined the Burisma board, Hunter was “of counsel” at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, a U.S. law firm, and had been advising the company on “its corporate reform initiatives,” it said. He urged Boies Schiller to hire Nardello & Co., a consulting firm specializing in investigations, to assess Burisma’s “corporate structure and governance practices.” >So Hunter is some sort of corporate reform adviser with loads of experience, urged them to hire a company to help Burisma get its shit together, then joined Burisma board!
Aleksander Kwasniewski, the former president of Poland, sat on the board of Burisma at the time and recruited Hunter as a non-executive director because of his advisory work for the gas company, the statement said. “At no time was Hunter in charge of the company’s legal affairs,” it said.
Hunter Biden also sought to counter increasing Trump campaign attacks on his ties to China. He denied Trump’s repeated allegations that he procured $1.5 billion from China for a private equity fund after he flew on Air Force Two with his father in December 2013 to Beijing.
He serves on the board of BHR (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company, which was set up in 2013 to invest Chinese capital outside China. He previously acknowledged meeting with Jonathan Li, a Chinese banker and partner in the fund, during the 2013 trip but has said it was a social visit and they didn’t talk business.
BHR has the backing of several Chinese state-owned companies. Trump’s claim that Hunter walked away with $1.5 billion from China appears to be based on a fundraising target that BHR announced in 2014. But BHR never raised a discreet pool of capital, Mesires said, and instead raised money deal by deal. BHR now says it manages about $2.1 billion in investments.
Biden denied he played a role in forming the company or having any equity in it while his father was vice president. The board position was unpaid, he said. After his father’s term ended in 2017, Biden bought 10% of the management company for about $420,000. He hasn’t made money from the venture to date, the statement said.
