Hunter Biden’s firm helped China get control over vast Cobalt mine in Africa: Report

The Hunter Biden's investment company assisted a Chinese firm in purchasing one of the world's vast African cobalt mine from an American corporation, citing a report by The New York Times, Fox News reported. Biden's company which was involved in a 2016 agreement, granted the Chinese firm to have control over the cobalt mine, a mineral required for the creation of electric vehicle batteries, as per the New York Post.

In the year 2013, Hunter Biden started the company named, Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) Equity Investment Fund Management Company along with two other Americans and a few Chinese associates. The American members owned 30% of the Shanghai-based firm and joined as the board of directors.  

China Molybdenum now owns 80% of the total Cobalt mine

Further, in 2016, Biden's firm signed a deal of $2.65 billion transactions to transfer a Congo cobalt as well as copper mine from American-based mining company ‘Freeport-McMoRan’ to a Chinese company ‘China Molybdenum’. Later, BHR acted as a minority shareholder in the $1.14 billion purchase of shares from Lundin Mining of Canada, which controlled a piece of the Congo mine, Fox News reported.  As per Hong Kong documents, China Molybdenum then purchased BHR's mining shares two years later with a total worth of $3.8 billion. China Molybdenum now owns 80% of the mine, with Congo's government mining firm holding the remaining 20%. 

In addition to this, according to The Times, Biden owned 10% of BHR via Skaneateles LLC, a Washington-based firm. Meanwhile, Biden's lawyer, Chris Clark, claimed Hunter Biden no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly, in either BHR or Skaneateles," and Chinese documents showed Biden was not on the board of directors as of April 2020, Fox News reported. 

As per the New York Post, during the time when the agreement was inked, Hunter Biden's father, President Joe Biden, was the vice president in office. The Times even reported that a White House spokeswoman claimed Joe Biden was unaware of his son's role in the transaction. Moreover, the mine is considered to be the major source of cobalt in the world, and Biden's White House noted in June that China's dominance of the mineral "presents a critical vulnerability to the future of the U.S. domestic auto industry." 

Meanwhile, the media continues to focus on Hunter Biden's business links, notably his activities with China. President Biden specifically mentioned China's rising cobalt supremacy as a tripping barrier to America's plans to switch from gasoline to electric vehicles, as cobalt is a vital component of electric car batteries, Fox News reported.  

(Image: AP)