Biden admin blacklists same Chinese company Hunter Biden partnered with in failed railway deal

The Biden administration on Tuesday blacklisted the same Chinese shipping company over its ties to the Chinese military that Hunter Biden was set to partner with in a failed railway deal in Southern Europe. 

The Department of Defense added the China Ocean Shipping Corporation (COSCO), the largest shipping company in China, to the list identifying “Chinese military companies” in the United States along with other Chinese shipbuilders. Though listed companies do not face penalties, U.S. companies are discouraged from pursuing business relationships with them.

Hunter courted Chinese company

As a state-owned enterprise, COSCO has long faced scrutiny for its ties to the People’s Liberation Army and its participation is expanding the influence of the Chinese Communist Party across the globe, even as the United States’ own commercial maritime power is on the decline.

Yet, Hunter Biden, the president’s son, and his business partners in 2015 courted COSCO for funding in an acquisition deal. The project was a proposed acquisition of the Greek national railway TrainOSE which was set to be privatized. This was just one of many deals the younger Biden organized with Chinese partners while his father was Barack Obama’s vice president.

Evidence shows Hunter Biden also provided real access to his father to his business partners, despite the president having claimed repeatedly that “I have never spoken to my son about his overbusiness dealings.” This deal, emails show, was no different.

“The Biden Administration continues to be a day late and a dollar short,” Peter Schweizer, the investigative journalist who first reported the Greek railway deal in his "Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win," told Just the News.

“The fact that the Biden administration now after almost four years in office has gotten finally to this position is a reflection not only of its failure to see China as a serious threat but almost the consequence of the family’s corruption,” he said. “Hunter Biden not too long ago wanted to be partners with this same company.”

Hunter Biden’s group, which included several Greek and Greek-American partners, including Biden family friend Michael Karloutsos, sought to entice the Chinese shipping giant to, not only invest in the railway acquisition, but to cover all the costs. The partners believed, emails obtained from the Hunter Biden laptop show, that COSCO would be unable to turn down the financial benefits of the railway.

COSCO already owned the busy Greek port of Piraeus. The “new route of Chinese products via Piraeus port is 8 days faster than any other route to central Europe,” one Greek partner reportedly wrote to Hunter Biden and his associates in an email, according to Schweizer, who independently obtained the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop.

The group also planned for COSCO to cover “100%” of the financing costs. According to one email reviewed by Just the News, the Chinese “did not object.”

You can read that email below:

As was the case in other business deals, Hunter Biden would  send his Greek-American partner in the deal to his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden. Michael Karloutsos, the son of Greek Orthodox Priest Alex Karloutsos, a close friend to Joe Biden. Father Alex also attended the dinner. Hunter Biden told Michael Karloutsos that “the reason for the dinner is ostensibly to discuss food security.”

“Dad will be there but keep that btw us for now,” the younger Biden wrote to his guest, referring to the Vice President. “Everything is between us,” Karloutsos replied.

At the time, Hunter Biden and Michael Karloutsos were in the middle of planning the Greek acquisition deal and the meeting appeared to be important for that deal, according to emails obtained from the Biden laptop.

In another email, Hunter Biden explained to another acquaintance: “Michael was going to bring big Greek shipping guy who moves a lot of cargo in the region.”

The potential deal involving the son of the vice president also would have had significant geopolitical implications. Chairman Xi Jinping has previously described COSCO’s venture at the port of Piraeus as “the dragon’s head for China in Greece.”

COSCO was also hailed as a “Belt and Road Initiative success story” by Chinese state media for advancing Chinese economic interests in the European region. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a Chinese infrastructure investment program designed to expand China’s access to the world economy and political influence in the regions it invests in.

The deal between Hunter Biden and his partners and the Chinese shipping giant ultimately failed after the Italian National Railway outbid the consortium, but not until the vice president after appeared to meet with Karloutsos and Hunter Biden.

The proposed terms of the arrangement, however, serve as an example of the kinds of business deals Chinese companies and businessmen were seeking with Hunter Biden.

The pattern is mirrored in several other engagements, most notably with Chinese energy company CEFC, which had its own ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Hunter Biden ultimately received more than $ 5 million from that company, some of which, House impeachment investigators said, ended up in his father’s bank account.

Hunter Biden was later charged by special prosecutor David Weiss with tax evasion during the same period he received millions from the Chinese company. He was slated to undergo trial in the Southern District of California on the charges, before his father issued a sweeping pardon for during the Thanksgiving holiday last year.

President Biden also faced scrutiny over his son’s business dealings. House Oversight Chairman James Comer led the investigation into now-President Biden for what he and fellow Republicans alleged was an influence peddling scheme by the Biden family to abuse Joe Biden’s political connections and power that spanned from Ukraine to China.

When the pardon was announced, Comer said the Hunter Biden pardon is part of a wider effort by the Biden family to avoid accountability.

“Joe Biden has lied from start to finish about his family’s corrupt influence peddling activities. Not only has he falsely claimed that he never met with his son’s foreign business associates and that his son did nothing wrong, but he also lied when he said he would not pardon Hunter Biden,” Comer said in a statement.

“The charges Hunter faced were just the tip of the iceberg in the blatant corruption that President Biden and the Biden Crime Family have lied about to the American people,” he continued. 

“It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability.”