Hunter Biden is coming under fresh scrutiny over his Chinese investment firm’s teaming up with a Beijing military company to make a controversial business deal in 2015.
The BHR Partners investment firm, which counted President Joe Biden’s son as a board member and 10% stakeholder, worked with AVIC Automotive — a subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China, or AVIC — to purchase Michigan-based Henniges Automotive in September 2015.
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AVIC is a Chinese military company considered to be perhaps the largest defense company in the world. It was known to support the People’s Liberation Army at the time that BHR did business with it, and it publicly touted its role in building jets for China’s air force. Multiple AVIC subsidiaries had been sanctioned by the United States prior to Hunter Biden teaming up with it.
A key AVIC subsidiary known as the China National Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation, or CATIC, has also been considered a U.S. national security threat since 1990.
“The government has long been aware of the national security concerns posed by AVIC and its subsidiaries. We’ve known since at least the early ‘90s that this organization is controlled by the Chinese communist regime and is not friendly to America’s security interests,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told the Washington Examiner. “This transaction should have triggered serious alarm bells at the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. And any upstanding American businessperson who does any due diligence would know that partnering with AVIC is choosing money over country.”
President George H.W. Bush issued an order in January 1990 that concluded CATIC “might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States of America.”
The House select committee on China warned in 1998 about AVIC and its subsidiary CATIC, and the Government Accountability Office in 1996 detailed a scheme by CATIC to get U.S.-based McDonnell Douglas to “co-produce 40 MD-80 and MD-90 aircraft in China for the country’s domestic ‘trunk’ routes”.
CATIC was charged by the Justice Department in 1999 with violating the Export Administration Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act “regarding details of a 1994 sale of American machining equipment, some of which was diverted to a Chinese military site.”
The New York Times reported that Chinese state-run TAL Industries, owned by CATIC, “pleaded guilty to a felony charge in 2001 for violating the U.S. export laws.” CATIC had been sanctioned under the Arms Export Control Act in 1999 and was sanctioned in 2004, 2005, and 2006 for violations of the Iran Nonproliferation Act.
Ahead of the Hunter Biden team-up, the AVIC website in 2015 made it clear that its business units included “defense” as well as aviation. The “AVIC Evolution” section said the company was the successor to the Chinese government’s Ministry of Aerospace Industry.
Nevertheless, BHR said in September 2015 that it was “delighted to announce” the purchase of Henniges. The data research firm Rhodium Group said in 2015 that “the $600 million acquisition” of Henniges by AVIC and BHR “marks the biggest Chinese investment into U.S. automotive manufacturing assets to date.”
A report from BHR in 2016 touted the firm’s “historical relationships with China’s State-Owned Enterprises advising them on their overseas strategies” and said AVIC Auto was a key “strategic partner.”
Business records from China’s National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System accessed in March 2023 continue to identify Hunter Biden’s Skaneateles as a 10% owner in BHR, and U.S. business records continue to list Hunter Biden as the only beneficial owner of Skaneateles.
Washington’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs informed the Washington Examiner in March 2022 that there have been no filings submitted for Skaneateles since October 2021, when a two-year report for the entity was filed that listed Hunter Biden as the sole “governor” of the company.
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Skaneateles is listed as “revoked” in the DCRA’s online business registry because a $300 “reinstatement fee” has not yet been paid for the LLC, a representative for the DCRA told the Washington Examiner.
In November 2021, Chris Clark, a lawyer for Biden, told the New York Times that his client “no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly, in either BHR or Skaneateles,” the LLC wholly owned by Hunter that held his 10% ownership stake in the Chinese investment firm. Clark declined to provide more clarity on this in 2022, including what money Hunter may have made from BHR.
