Chinese Firm Involved in Biden Deal Collapsed Just Before Biden Allowed Nord Stream 2 Project

CEFC China Energy, the large Chinese energy conglomerate that was among the 10 largest private companies in China and ranked 349th in the Fortune 500 with almost $35 billion in revenue a year, was implicated in a deal arranged by President Biden's son Hunter Biden in 2018 that would also include Joseph Biden prior to Biden's election as president.

The elder Biden was set to earn 10 percent of a deal through Sinohawk Holdings according to Senate testimony from Jim Bobulinksi, the CEO of Sinohawk, as well as details from a recovered laptop previously owned by Hunter Biden.

But on March 31, 2020, CEFC would collapse into bankruptcy. The downfall began in 2017 when bribery charges were brought against one of the company's lieutenants, Patrick Ho, related to oil contracts in Africa. Details brought about in the trial would eventually lead to the arrest of the company's president, Ye Jianming, who had courted numerous heads of state from Turkey and Israel to the Czech Republic and the U.S. with Biden. Around the time of the trials, CEFC would cancel an attempted investment in the major Russian oil producer, Rosneft.

According to a New York Post story on Jianming's connections to Biden, his task was to spend $1.5 billion in the Czech Republic as quickly as possible to ensure the country would become China's gateway to Europe, and the energy company bought up everything from breweries to football teams to airlines.

The company's bankruptcy exposed the financial house of cards underpinning the company based on inflated values that led to its astronomical growth in a short period of time.

A month after the company's demise, Biden abandoned sanctions on Russia related to the country's Nord Stream II natural gas pipeline, which would go from Russia to Germany and eventually connect with the Opal pipeline along the Germany-Czech border. Currently, most gas from Russia goes through Ukrainian pipelines to European countries like Belarus, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia.

Switched Stance on Sanctions

Previously, Biden was supportive of sanctions, some of which were originally enacted while he was vice-president, going so far as to push the Trump administration to keep them in place in 2017.

Biden reportedly received funds from a Russian lobbyist prior to his election but refunded the money in the midst of the decision to bypass the sanctions.

While Czech President Miloš Zeman has supported the Nord Stream pipeline project and criticized sanctions against Russia as “ineffective” in 2017, much of the Czech government is in the opposite camp. Times have changed and there was little contradiction three years earlier when Zeman made similar statements against sanctions and in support of the pipeline.