While federal prosecutors continue their criminal investigations into Hunter Biden’s international taxes and business, the president’s son – traveling between Washington DC and an extensive Hollywood Hills home – is hiding, consulting lawyers and focusing on his new career in the art.
Biden, who turns 51 next week, is preparing a solo show with Soho dealer Georges Berges, who currently represents Sylvester Stallone. Berges has already been arrested for “terrorist threats” and deadly gun aggression in California and has strong ties to China.
Biden, who continues to have commercial interests in a billion-dollar Chinese investment firm, moved into the 2,000-square-foot hilltop Los Angeles home with his wife Melissa Cohen in January 2020, two months earlier of your child’s birth.
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The home is linked to Shane Khoh, a Los Angeles businessman and real estate investor who is CEO of SXU Investment Holdings LLC, the California company that has owned $ 3.8 million since 2011, according to public records. Khoh, an American fluent in Chinese, serves on the board of Siong Heng Realty Pte Ltd., a Singapore-based real estate holding company, according to his LinkedIn profile. He is also listed as a “risk partner” of the Diverse Communities Impact Fund, a privately held group that introduces former Democratic governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, on its advisory board.
The house was featured in a New York Times profile of Biden as an emerging abstract painter last year. Last year, Khoh told The Washington Examiner that Biden was paying $ 12,000 a month for the property, which has a pool house that Biden turned into an art studio. Khoh denied any previous relationship with Biden for the newspaper.
But when The Post asked this week about his deals with his tenant, Khoh was silent: “I have nothing to say about Hunter Biden. I have no comment.”
Others in Biden’s orbit were even more reticent.
Calls to Lunden Alexis Roberts, an Arkansas stripper who sued Biden for paternity and alimony after the birth of her 2-year-old daughter, declined comment, as did her lawyer. It is not known how much Biden is paying child support for “Baby Doe”, as she is mentioned in court documents. The father of five initially argued that the son was not his and tried several times to postpone the case. Roberts, who met Biden at a strip club in Washington, DC, where she worked, said in a lawsuit in December 2019 that Biden had not provided any financial support for the child.
Although Biden got rid of many of his former business interests, he doesn’t seem to be in trouble for money. He was seen driving around Los Angeles in a Porsche Panamera, which sells for more than $ 90,000. He remains in control of a limited liability company that has a 10 percent stake in BHR Partners, a privately held Chinese company with $ 2 billion in assets and partially controlled by the Bank of China, according to reports.
Biden’s stake in the Chinese company is owned by Skaneateles LLC, a company named after his mother’s hometown, Neilia Hunter Biden, in upstate New York. The company used the Hollywood Hills home as one of its addresses. Neilia, Joe Biden’s first wife, died in a car accident in Delaware in 1972, which also killed Biden’s one-year sister, Naomi. Hunter Biden and his older brother Beau, who were children, were injured in the accident.
“It’s like a lottery ticket he has in his hands with a 10 percent stake in a company worth billions,” said a source. “Imagine if this company is worth $ 2 billion, Biden takes home $ 200 million.”
Biden’s complicated international trade negotiations became a heated political issue in the final months of the 2020 presidential campaign, after the Post revealed a collection of emails from Hunter’s laptop that raised questions about then-candidate Joe Biden’s ties to the your son’s foreign business ventures, including Burisma. The Ukrainian energy company paid Hunter $ 50,000 a month between 2014 and 2019 to serve on its board of directors. Hunter Biden is also accused of promoting the interests of CEFC China Energy Co, a Chinese conglomerate that would pay him more than $ 10 million a year for presentations to employees in Washington.
Last year, a federal watchdog asked the Justice Department to launch “a full investigation” of Hunter Biden, which they claim did not register under the federal rules of the Foreign Agent Registration Act that govern those who do. lobbied by a foreign entity.
“Hunter Biden’s tangled web of shell companies, LLCs, investment vehicles and options deals makes it virtually impossible to know where he’s getting revenue from,” said Thomas Anderson, director of the National Legal Policy Center, adding that bypassing the regulations of FARA is allowed Biden and his associates to operate under the radar.
Selling your abstract art to wealthy investors can also be a lucrative way to make money, said Anderson. “We highly doubt, however, that a career as an artist does anything more than act as a vehicle to further protect where this revenue is coming from,” he said.
But Hunter Biden told The Times that he had another reason to turn to art. Painting is “literally keeping me sane now,” he said, adding that it helped him in his battles with drug and alcohol addiction.
“If I didn’t know who it was and saw it for the first time, I would think it was a very interesting thing. He has talent,” New York art critic Anthony Haden-Guest told the Post.
The paintings feature bursts of flowers in pastel colors and other shapes made with layers of alcoholic paint that he blows with a metallic straw on Japanese Yupo paper, a soft synthetic material made from recycled paper.
Biden’s new dealer, who opened his gallery in Soho in 2015, is silent about his galleries in New York and Berlin, which are reportedly frequented by Spike Lee, Dave Chapelle and Susan Sarandon, as well as international industry titans.
“He has this Woody Allen look … He’s crazy in a good way,” an artist who worked with Berges told The Post.
Berges, 44, regularly presents works by Chinese artists and told a Chinese chain that he was looking forward to opening other art galleries in Beijing and Shanghai in 2015. “The questions I always had were how China is changing the world in terms of art and culture, “Berges told China Daily in 2014.
Berges was accused of defrauding an investor in a 2016 federal lawsuit. Ingrid Arneberg claims he invested $ 500,000 in the Berges gallery for a promised expansion, but instead he used the money to pay off old debts. Berges later denied Arneberg, and the case was resolved in 2018.
In 1998, he was accused of assault with a deadly weapon and of making “terrorist threats”, which were dismissed. He claimed “not to contest” the assault and received 36 months probation and 90 days in prison, according to documents from the Santa Cruz Superior Court – the only publicly available information on the case.
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Berges did not return several messages asking for comment. A worker at his Soho gallery told The Post that he knew nothing about Hunter Biden’s solo show, which is scheduled for later this year, according to reports.
George Mesires, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, did not return calls from the Post.