Hunter Biden has been under investigation for his business dealings for quite some time. Many of his business partners have been as well, with a few of them being arrested for corruption charges. This was the case for Patrick Ho, a businessman that worked with Ye Jianming and his prominent Chinese energy company CEFC.
On Tuesday, an appeals court ruled to uphold Ho’s bribery conviction he received in late 2018. The businessman was charged with multiple counts from the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act after offering bribes to the presidents of Uganda and Chad in an attempt to secure oil rights on behalf of CEFC. During the first trial and the appeal, his lawyers insisted that $2 million in gifts to Chad’s president were, in fact, charitable donations and that there is not enough evidence for a proper conviction.
The ruling passed down by Circuit Judge Richard Sullivan stated “We conclude that the evidence introduced at trial was more than sufficient to prove that Ho acted on behalf of the U.S. NGO to assist it in obtaining business for CEFC Energy.”
According to emails obtained by the New York Post, Hunter Biden had allegedly been financially involved with the CEFC, with released emails containing correspondence between its owner Jianming and Hunter Biden asking the chairman to send him $10 million for a business venture. The email between the two also extended “best wishes from the entire Biden family” to Jianmi.
The CEFC, which was at one point China’s biggest private energy company, has since gone bankrupt while Jianming was taken into custody by Chinese Authorities in 2018, he has not been seen since.
