While US President Joe Biden’s scandal-prone son Hunter Biden has recently agreed to work as the lobbyist for Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), his ex-wife Kathleen Buhle said, Hunter spends major segment of his illegal income towards drugs, alcohol and prostitutes. Meanwhile, Fox News in a report said, “divorce lawyers for Hunter Biden and his ex-wife Kathleen Buhle were aware of money hitting Hunter’s bank account from a Romania deal, emails show, appearing to contradict Buhle’s previous claims she had her ‘head buried in the sand’ when it came to Hunter’s finances’”. And what was is the ‘Romanian deal’ that Hunter Biden had?
BNP’s lobbyist Hunter Biden earlier met with State Department official on behalf Gabriel Popoviciu, a corrupt Romanian real estate tycoon in exchange for US$1 million when Joe Biden was vice president in 2016.
According to media reports, a review of emails and documents on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop reveal a March 2016 meeting with then-US ambassador to Romania Hans Klemm on the topic of a corruption case against Gabriel Popoviciu. According to information, Popoviciu made more than US$1 million in wire payments to Hunter Biden from November 2015 to June 2017 as he battled corruption charges in his home country. Being a paid lobbyist of Gabriel Popoviciu, Hunter Biden met twice with Ambassador Hans Klemm, first in November 2015 and again in March 2016.
Emails show, at that time, Hunter Biden was a consultant for a law firm named Boies Schiller Flexner and worked with lawyers from the firm to lobby the US embassy in Bucharest to intervene in Gabriel Popoviciu’s case. Law firm Boies Schiller partner Christopher Boies told Biden in a September 1, 2015 email that his law partner – whom he never identified—was “best friends” with the newly appointed ambassador to Romania, Hans Klemm.
According to US Congress Oversight report, Gabriel Popoviciu’s first wire payment amounting to US$59,900 was sent to Hunter Biden on November 9, 2015. Four days after that, Hunter Biden and Boies Schiller partner Michael Gottlieb discussed a meeting with Ambassador Hans Klemm and provided him reports about the Popoviciu case, which they said showed the corruption charges were bogus. The emails indicate that Biden attended the meeting, and Biden’s calendar shows a meeting with Klemm at Lapis restaurant in Washington, DC, on March 30, 2016.
Emails show that Hans Klemm was receptive to the reports and arranged meetings for the Biden consortium with Romanian officials. On May 17, 2016, Gottlieb contacted Klemm to seek help in meeting with Romania’s anti-corruption service, the DNA. Gottlieb wrote to Hunter Biden and others that “the USEMB [US Embassy] has primed this for us”.
Neither Hunter Biden nor Boies Schiller registered as lobbyists for Gabriel Popoviciu, who was ultimately convicted of bribery in 2017 and sentenced to seven years in prison.
It may be mentioned here that the Lobbying Disclosure Act requires individuals to disclose their lobbying activity to Congress, and the Foreign Agents Registration Act requires them to disclose lobbying on behalf of foreign nationals to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Commenting on this Republican Congressman Darrell Issa who is a member of the House Judiciary Committee said: “the Justice Department’s disinterest in Hunter Biden’s lobbying shows there is one set of rules for the president’s family and one for everyone else”.
Earlier the Washington Free Beacon in a report said that Hunter Biden and lawyers from Boies Schiller hatched a plan in 2014 to meet with State Department officials on behalf of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company whose owner was accused of bribery. A Boies Schiller partner wrote to Biden that she would arrange State Department meetings and conduct other activity “right up to the line” where the firm would have to register as a lobbyist.
While BNP has been frantically trying to hire Hunter Biden as its lobbyists, it finally has succeeded in reaching an agreement with him through William B Milam. Milam is an influential figure of the Democratic Party and a retired diplomat who runs an organization named ‘Right to Freedom’ jointly with an individual named Mushfiqul Fazal Ansarey – a former Assistant Press Secretary of then Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.
For several years, Hunter Biden has connections with a consulting-cum-lobbyist firm named Blue Star Strategies, which had earlier registered its work for the Ukrainian company Burisma under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Through the same company Hunter Biden also crafted a plan to lobby the State Department on behalf of the Chinese private equity firm BHR Partners.
On January 17, 2022, Bangladesh’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs M Shahriar Alam told reporters that Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has spent US$3.75 million for a US lobbyist firm as part of their anti-Bangladesh campaign.
The BNP hired US lobbyist firms called Akin Company Associates, Blue Star Strategies and Rasky Partners while Jamaat signed agreements with an organization named ‘Peace and justice’.
