While federal prosecutors continue their criminal investigations into Hunter Biden’s tax and international business transactions, the president’s son, who transports between Washington DC and a sprawling house in the Hollywood Hills, lies low and consults lawyers, concentrating on his new career in the arts.
Biden, who turns 51 next week, is putting on a solo show with Soho art dealer Georges Berges, who currently represents Sylvester Stallone. Berges was once arrested for “terrorist threats” and assault with a deadly weapon in California and has strong ties to China.
Biden, who still holds business interests in a billion-dollar Chinese investment firm, moved into the 2,000-square-foot home in Los Angeles in January 2020, two months before the birth of their baby boy, with his wife Melissa Cohen.
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The home is linked to Shane Khoh, a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur and firm investor who is CEO of SXU Investment Holdings LLC, the California-owned $ 3.8 million property since 2011, according to public records. Khoh, a Chinese-speaking American, sits on the board of Siong Heng Realty Pte Ltd., a real estate holding company in Singapore, according to his LinkedIn profile. He is also mentioned as a ‘business partner’ of Diverse Communities Impact Fund, a private equity group that includes former Democratic government of New Mexico Bill Richardson in its board of advisers.
The house was featured in a New York Times profile of Biden last year as an emerging abstract painter. Last year, Khoh told The Washington Examiner that Biden was paying $ 12,000 a month for the property, with a pool house turning Biden into an art studio. Khoh denies any previous relationship with Biden with the newspaper.
But when asked by The Post this week about his arrangements with his tenant, Khoh snapped, “I have nothing to say about Hunter Biden. I have no comment.”
Others in Biden’s career were even more reluctant.
Calls to Lunden Alexis Roberts, a Arkansas stripper who sued Biden for paternity and child support after the birth of their 2-year-old daughter, declined to comment, as did her lawyer. It is not known how much Biden pays child support for ‘Baby Doe’ as referred to in court documents. The father of five initially argued that the child was not his, and repeatedly tried to postpone the case. Roberts, who met Biden at a strip club in Washington, DC where she previously worked, said in a court report in December 2019 that Biden did not provide any financial support to the child.
Although Biden has given up many of his old business interests, he does not seem to be cash hard. He was seen driving around in a Porsche Panamera in Los Angeles, which sold for more than $ 90,000. He retains control of a limited liability company that has a 10 percent stake in BHR Partners, a Chinese private equity firm with $ 2 billion in assets and partly owned by the Bank of China, according to reports.
Biden’s stake in the Chinese firm is owned by Skaneateles LLC, a company named after his mother Neilia Hunter Biden’s hometown of New York State. The company used the Hollywood Hills House as one of its addresses. Neilia, Joe Biden’s first wife, died in a car accident in 1972 in Delaware, which also killed Biden’s 1-year-old sister Naomi. Hunter Biden and his older brother Beau, who were toddlers, were injured in the crash.
“It’s like a lottery ticket he has in his hand with a ten percent stake in a company worth billions,” a source said. “Imagine Biden taking $ 2 billion home if the company is worth $ 2 billion.”
Biden’s complex international business operations have become a hotly debated political issue in the last months of the 2020 presidential campaign, after The Post unveiled a series of emails from Hunter’s laptop that raised questions about then – candidate Joe Biden with his son’s foreign businesses, including Burisma. The Ukrainian energy company reportedly paid Hunter $ 50,000 a month between 2014 and 2019 to sit on its board. Hunter Biden is also accused of promoting the interests of CEFC China Energy Co., a Chinese conglomerate that would pay more than $ 10 million a year for launches to officials in Washington.
Last year, a federal watchdog called on the Department of Justice to launch a “full investigation” of Hunter Biden, who they say is not registered under the Federal Government Act on Foreign Agent Registrations, which governs those for a foreign entity.
“Hunter Biden’s entangled web of shell companies, corporations, investment vehicles and option agreements makes it virtually impossible to know where he’s income from,” said Thomas Anderson, director of the National Legal Policy Center, adding that the FARA regulations are being circumvented , Biden and his associates operate under the radar.
Selling his abstract artwork to wealthy investors could also be a lucrative way to cash in, Anderson said. “However, we strongly doubt that a career as an artist can do anything but be a vehicle to further protect where that income comes from,” he said.
But Hunter Biden told The Times he has another reason to turn to art. Paintings “literally keep me healthy now”, he said, adding that it helped him in his battles with drug addiction and alcohol.
“If I did not know who it was and I saw it for the first time, I would think it was quite interesting stuff. He has talent,” artist Anthony Haden-Guest, New York, told The Post.
The paintings contain pastel flowers and other shapes made of low alcohol ink which he blows with a metal straw on Japanese Yupo paper, a smooth synthetic material of recycled paper.
Biden’s new retailer, which opened its Soho gallery in 2015, is tight-lipped about its galleries in New York and Berlin, which are reportedly regularly visited by Spike Lee, Dave Chapelle and Susan Sarandon as well as international titans of the industry.
“He had this Woody Allen look for him … He’s crazy in a good way,” one artist who worked with Berges told The Post.
Berges, 44, regularly features works by Chinese artists and told a Chinese network he would like to open other art galleries in Beijing and Shanghai in 2015. “The questions I have always had were how China is changing the world in terms of arts and culture. , “Berges told China Daily in 2014.
Berges is accused of defrauding an investor in a 2016 federal lawsuit. Ingrid Arneberg claims that she invested $ 500,000 in Berges’ gallery for a promised expansion, but instead used the cash to pay off old debts. Berges later questioned Arneberg, and the case was settled in 2018.
In 1998, he was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and ‘terrorist threats’ that were fired. According to Santa Cruz Superior Court documents, he was sentenced to 36 months probation and 90 days in prison – the only information available to the public about the case.
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Berges did not return multiple messages for comment. A worker in his gallery in Soho told The Post that he knows nothing about Hunter Biden’s solo exhibition, which is reportedly planned for later this year.
George Mesires, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, did not return the calls from The Post.