Miranda Devine

Miranda Devine

Opinion

Hunter Biden pitched himself as expert in Russian oligarch targeted by FBI: Devine

Hunter Biden boasted he could provide intelligence on the shady Russian oligarch whose Greenwich Village townhouse was raided by the FBI on Tuesday.

The president’s son said he could provide Alcoa, a giant US aluminium firm, with knowledge about the “elite networks” connected to Oleg Deripaska in a proposal from his company Rosemont Seneca, emails on Hunter’s laptop show.

Federal agents carried out “law enforcement activity” on Tuesday at the Gay Street townhouse and a Washington mansion tied to Deripaska, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Deripaska was investigated for money laundering and extortion and sanctioned by the US in 2018. A spokesperson for Deripaska told the Associated Press that the searches were “connected to U.S. sanctions” and that the homes didn’t belong to him but belonged to relatives.

Hunter Biden in 2011 offered to “provide Alcoa with statistical analysis of political and corporate risks, elite networks associated with Oleg Deripaska (OD), Russian CEO of Basic Element company and United company RUSAL,” reveal documents on the laptop he abandoned at a MacBook repair shop in Delaware in April 2019. RUSAL is a Russian aluminum company.

In an email to Daniel Cruise, Alcoa’s then-Vice President of Government and Public Affairs, on June 3, 2011, Hunter wrote: “Please see the attached proposal per our last conversation . . . we tried to provide a little better sense of the product by attaching some of the raw data that is produced through the elite mapping procedure.”

FBI agents block access to the street during the US law enforcement’s raid on Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska’s property in Manhattan. Carlo Allegri/REUTERS

Included in the proposal, was a “list of elites of similar rank in Russia, map of OD’s [Deripaska’s] networks based on frequency of interaction with selected elites and countries.”

Hunter wanted to charge Alcoa fees of “$25,000 for phase one of the project [and] $55,000 for refined analysis.”

In a June 8, 2011, email forwarded to Hunter, Cruise’s colleague at Alcoa, Pei Cheng, wrote to Cruise: “I don’t believe the data analysis is worth the full $55,000. I think the most valuable piece for us would be the list of Russian elites connected to OD [Deripaska] that would not otherwise be on Government Affairs team’s radar, including various Russian Committee Heads, Union leaders or Ministers.”

Cheng also noted Hunter’s political pedigree in her email: “Rosemont Seneca [has] Co-chairmen: Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden, and Christopher Heinz . . . stepson of Sen. John Kerry”.

Oleg Deripaska had two homes raided by federal agents. Maxim Shemetov/File Photo/REUTERS

Alcoa had just signed a two-year metal supply agreement with RUSAL.

In an email to Hunter from his business associate Eric Schwerin, Rosemont Seneca proposed to charge Alcoa just $25,000 for information about Deripaska.

“Not horrible feedback,” wrote Schwerin in the June 10, 2011 email. “Daniel’s guy [sic] missed the point that the price was $25k reduced from $55k.”Hunter Biden had deep connections with oligarchs close to Putin, as I detail in my upcoming book “Laptop From Hell” (out Nov. 30).

While his father was vice president, Hunter was paid $83,333 per month in board fees by the corrupt Ukrainian energy company owned by Russia-aligned oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, the former ecology minister under President Yanukovych.

The payment was cut in half shortly after Joe Biden left office. In the five years that he was on the Burisma payroll, to April 2019, Hunter earned $4 million in board fees.

Hunter also was involved with Moscow oligarchs in Putin’s inner sanctum, including Ara Abramyan, who was awarded one of Russia’s highest civilian honors by Putin, the Order of Merit to the Fatherland.

An FBI agent guides a tow truck as it arrives to remove a vehicle from the DC home of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. AFP via Getty Images

According to the diary on his laptop, Hunter flew to Russia in 2012 to meet Abramyan immediately after having lunch in Washington with his father, then vice-president Joe Biden, and then-Chinese vice-president Xi Jinping.

Hunter’s diary entry for February 16, 2012 shows “breakfast board of directors ‘troika dialog,’ lunch w Ara Abramyan his home” in the upscale Odintsovsky district of West Moscow.

Some junior staff of the Obama State Department were alarmed by Hunter’s connections to Russian oligarchs and role in Burisma.

Amos Hochstein, special envoy on energy policy, tried twice to raise concerns about Hunter’s role, including directly with Joe in the West Wing in October 2015.

“I wanted to make sure that he was aware that there was an increase in chatter on media outlets close to Russians and corrupt oligarch-owned media outlets [about] Hunter Biden being part of the board of Burisma,” Hochstein testified to the Senate Republican inquiry into “Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption” by the Finance and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committees, chaired by Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson.

Russian billionaire and businessman Oleg Deripaska seen in 2017. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

The US sanctions imposed against Deripaska in 2018 were part of a crackdown on seven Russian oligarchs and 12 companies they own. Deripaska “has been investigated for money laundering, and has been accused of threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official, and taking part in extortion and racketeering,” the Treasury Department said in a press release on April 6, 2018.

“There are also allegations that Deripaska bribed a government official, ordered the murder of a businessman, and had links to a Russian organized crime group.”

A spokesman for Alcoa Corporation, a spinoff of Alcoa Inc., said they were “not in a position to respond on behalf of our prior parent company.”

Cruise and Cheng, who are not associated with the new company, did not return requests for comment.