Widow of former Moscow mayor paid $40Mln to Hunter Biden firm
US President Joe Biden's son is in very hot waters once again after reports said he was found to be involved in shady business deals with Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina.
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Hunter Biden at the White House Easter Egg Roll on April 18, 2022, Washington, DC, the United States (The Washington Post)
A real estate company linked to US President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, received a $40 million investment from Yelena Baturina, the widow of former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, British newspaper the Daily Mail reported on Monday.
Rosemont Realty, a company linked to Biden-founded investment fund Rosemont Seneca Partners, received an "investment" of $40 million from Baturina, which made for around three-thirds of a larger $69.7 million plan drawn up by the company with the aim of investing in office spaces in seven US cities, according to the report, which cited newly-obtained documents and mail.
Baturina made her $40 million investment through a Swiss company she owns, INTECO Management AG, a document showing Rosement Realty's investors said.
Biden was on Rosemont Realty's advisory board starting in 2010 and left in 2014. Months later, he became a board member of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.
Biden was found guilty of helping finance military research into dangerous pathogens at Biolabs in Ukraine, and that was proven to be true via emails from his infamous laptop.
Emails recovered from Hunter's laptop showed that he played a major role in the acquisition of millions of dollars in funding for Metabiota, a Department of Defense contractor specializing in research on pandemic-causing diseases that could be used as bioweapons, which proved the Russian allegations.
Baturina's investment was a payment to enter the US market, according to her brother, Viktor Baturin. Baturina, once the richest woman in Russia, has a net worth of approximately $1.4 billion, according to Forbes.
The financial ties between Biden and Baturina have raised some questions among US lawmakers previously, including the House Oversight Committee.
Republicans on the panel wrote a letter to the White House in March, requesting information on Hunter Biden's business deals, including the $3.5 million he received from Baturina to Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC for "consulting services".
Federal agents investigating Hunter Biden believe they have evidence of tax crimes and it will be up to a prosecutor to decide whether to bring any charges, The Washington Post reported earlier in the month.
The newspaper, citing people familiar with the matter, said investigators also believe they have sufficient evidence to charge the younger Biden with making a false statement in connection with a gun purchase.
Hunter Biden has been pursued by a series of scandals and accused of corruption and abuse of his father's influence.
Biden has business ties to Ukraine, China, and Russia, and they have been subject to much political controversy since there was a leak of information from one of his laptops ahead of the 2020 US presidential election, which saw his father becoming President.
The FBI and Mark Zuckerberg came under fire on social media after Meta CEO unveiled that the FBI ordered the social networking site to censor news about Biden's scandalous laptop contents, claiming it was Russian propaganda.
The Meta CEO told Joe Rogan's podcast that the FBI contacted Facebook and asked them to "be on high alert" about claimed "Russian propaganda" before the Hunter Biden laptop story was out. Zuckerberg added that the story's "distribution on Facebook was decreased," and "fewer people saw it than would've otherwise."
Several senior US intelligence officials, including former CIA Directors Mike Hayden, Leon Panetta, and John Brennan, signed a letter that saw the three voicing their suspicions that emails recovered from Hunter Biden's laptop were part of a Russian disinformation campaign aimed at the then-Democrat candidate's son.
Republicans criticized the Bidens for their alleged misconduct in Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, which came into the public spotlight after the emails' release.
Emails from the laptop detail Hunter Biden's involvement in a number of foreign business ventures, including multimillion-dollar deals in China and an alleged scheme to arrange funding for a Pentagon contractor to study hazardous biological agents in Ukraine.
