An investment firm founded by Hunter Biden assisted a Chinese company in purchasing one of the world’s richest cobalt mines from an American company for $3.8 billion – helping the conglomerate gain a massive share of the key metal used to make electric car batteries.
The president’s son was one of three Americans who joined Chinese partners in establishing the Bohai Harvest RST Equity Investment Fund Management Company, or BHR, in 2013.
The Americans controlled 30 percent of the company and made successful investments that culminated in aiding China Molybdenum purchase the Tenke Fungurume cobalt mine in the Congo from the American company Freeport-McMoRan in 2016, the New York Times reported.
The news comes after President Joe Biden had warned that China could use its dominance of mined cobalt to disrupt America’s development of electric vehicles.
It also adds to the scrutiny Biden and his father have faced for his dealings with Chines and Ukrainian companies while Joe was vice president and later running for president.
BHR slowly made its way into an investment powerhouse after helping finance an Australian coal-mining company controlled by a Chinese state-owned firm, the paper reported.
The investment company’s big break came in 2016 when it bought and sold a stake in CATL, a Chinese company that is now the world’s biggest maker of batteries for electric vehicles.
That same year, China Molybdenum – one of the world’s leading producers of the precious metals molybdenum and tungsten – announced it would purchase the Tenke Fungurume cobalt mine from Freeport-McMoRan, an American mining company.
But in order to purchase the mine, the Chinese company needed a partner to buy out one of the stakeholders, Lundin Mining of Canada.
That’s when BHR came in to buy out Lundin with $1.14 billion raised entirely from obscure Chinese state-backed companies, according to the Times.
Biden still controlled 10 percent of BHR when its shares of the mines were sold to China Molybdenum in 2019.
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