Hunter Biden retained his share in the Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP) private fund at least until 2017 despite earlier claims of exiting it sometime before late 2015, Fox News reported, citing new emails obtained from a Treasury Department records leak. The digital correspondence contained multiple signs that the US president's son still owned a stake in RSTP in 2016 and 2017.
This information contradicts claims made by Hunter's attorney, George Mesires, who in 2020 said that his client had exited RSTP at some point before late 2015. The attorney thus tried to establish distance between Hunter Biden and a controversial deal worth $3 million between "mbloom", the now-defunct technology startup co-owned by the fund, and a Ukrainian-Syrian businessman with alleged criminal ties in Russia - Hares Youssef.
The emails, obtained by Fox, show Hunter's business partner Eric Schwerin in 2017 breaking down the structure of his investments for him. In the message, Schwerin names several RSTP sub-funds designated RSTP I, RSTP II Alpha and Bravo.
An earlier email from 2016, cited by Fox, suggested that Hunter Biden owned RSTP indirectly via Owasco, LLC. In the same message, Schwerin gives a hint as to why the president's son could not actually sever his ties with RSTP, as his attorney had suggested he had done. Due to RSTP being a private investment company, it was hard to precisely estimate the value of Hunter's stake and there was a chance that its value was "negative" at that moment – making it difficult to sell.
Hunter Biden is also mentioned as an "RSTP investor" in several emails sent in 2017 and as a person involved with the fund in another message from 2017, Fox reported. The then vice president of Rosemont Seneca Advisors also wrote to Hunter in March 2017 describing his ownership structure, including a 14.4% stake in RSTP and a 15.2% stake in its two sub-funds. Hunter kept his ownership of RSTP shares at least until the end of 2017, according to another letter by his then-tax accountant, Bill Morgan, obtained by the Fox.
The emails cited by Fox News contradict claims by George Mesires about Biden cutting ties with RSTP before it engaged in the deals with Hares Youssef, which were flagged as "Suspicious Activity" by City National Bank in Los Angeles. The transactions were flagged due to reported ties between Youssef and Semion Mogilevich, who was in turn a suspected international arms trafficker.
At the same time, the trove of uncovered emails did not provide any evidence indicating that Hunter took part in organising the deal worth $3 million with mbloom, Fox News noted.
However, mbloom made payments to Devon Archer, a long-time business partner of Hunter Biden, financial records uncovered by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), suggested.
Hunter Biden has faced scrutiny over his numerous and sometimes controversial business dealings, such as securing a spot in a Ukrainian gas company following the 2014 coup supported by then Obama-Biden administration, and a non-transparent deal with a Chinese business tycoon with suspected ties in the Communist Party. A lot of information about these deals was discovered on a laptop that allegedly belonged to Hunter Biden and was purportedly forgotten by him at a repair shop. However, most mainstream US media outlets ignored the story when it first broke in 2020 in the New York Post.
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