The Biden family and its business associates created a complicated web of more than 20 companies to launder money received from foreign nationals, according to bank records obtained by the House Oversight Committee.
Sixteen of the companies were limited liability companies formed during Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president, the committee said in a press conference on Wednesday. The Biden family, their business associates, and their companies received more than $10 million from foreign nationals’ and their related companies, the records show. These payments occurred both while Biden was in office as vice president and after his time in office ended.
In what Representative Nancy Mace called an act of “financial gymnastics,” many payments were routed from foreign companies to the Biden family’s business associates’ companies which then doled out payments to the Bidens in incremental payments to different bank accounts in an alleged attempt to hide the source of the funds.
Much of the money came from Chinese nationals and companies with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Multiple Biden family members received money after it passed through an associate’s account.
The committee revealed Wednesday that records suggest the Biden family and its associates business dealings in Romania “bear clear indication of a scheme to peddle influence” from 2015 to 2017.
At the time, then-Vice President Biden spoke out against Romanian corruption while the Biden family received more than a million dollars from a company controlled by a Romanian national, Gabriel Popoviciu. Popoviciu, who has been accused of corruption, sent the money through a Biden family associate, according to the committee. Sixteen of the seventeen payments involved in the deal occurred while Biden was still in office. The money “stops flowing from the Romanian national soon after Joe Biden leaves the vice presidency,” Comer said.
The Bidens also received “millions of dollars from China,” with committee chairman James Comer saying it is “inconceivable that the president did not know” about the payments.
In March, the committee previously revealed that Hunter Biden, James Biden, Hallie Biden and an unknown fourth Biden received a total of $1.3 million in payments from accounts related to Biden family business associate Rob Walker in 2017, shortly after Walker received a $3 million wire from a Chinese energy company.
The subpoenaed bank records show that State Energy HK Limited, a firm affiliated with CEFC China Energy, wired $3 million to Robinson Walker, LLC on March 1, 2017 — less than two months after then-vice president Joe Biden left office. The following day, Robinson Walker, LLC wired $1,065,000 to European Energy and Infrastructure Group in Abu Dhabi, a company associated with James Gilliar, another business partner to Hunter Biden.
The Biden family members and their companies then began “receiving incremental payments over a period of approximately three months,” the committee’s memo from March states. “The recipients of the money included Hallie Biden, companies associated with Hunter Biden and James Biden, and an unknown bank account identified as ‘Biden.’”
The unknown “Biden” account received $70,000 from Robinson Walker, LLC between March and May of 2017, according to subpoenaed bank records obtained by the committee.
Robinson Walker LLC sent Hallie Biden $25,000 on March 20, 2017, according to the memo. One month earlier, she received a $10,000 transfer from Robinson Walker LLC shortly before it received the $3 million payment.
Meanwhile, an account belonging to Hunter Biden received $500,000 during that time frame, while an account belonging to James Biden received $360,000.
The memo also revealed that Walker’s account sent money to Biden family members in 2015 while Joe Biden was still in office.
“On November 5, 2015, Robinson Walker, LLC received a wire from a company (the Committee continues to investigate the identity of the account holder for this company) that had an overseas bank account in the amount of $179,836.86,” the memo adds. That amount appears to have been split between Walker, Gilliar and the Biden family. Hunter Biden’s account received $59,000 on November 2015.