Washington, Oct 13 (efe-epa).- Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President – and front-running Democratic presidential contender – Joe Biden, promised on Sunday to step down from his position as a board director for a Chinese investment firm this month and to cut his ties with foreign companies if his father wins the 2020 presidential election amid the controversy that has erupted over his position on company boards in Ukraine and China.
“Hunter makes the following commitment: Under a Biden Administration, Hunter will readily comply with any and all guidelines or standards a President Biden may issue to address purported conflicts of interest, or the appearance of such conflicts, including any restrictions related to overseas business interests,” Biden’s attorney, George Mesires, said.
In that document, released by several US media outlets, the attorney said that the younger Biden “will agree not to serve on boards of, or work on behalf of, foreign owned companies.”
In addition, the lawyer announced that Biden will step down from a board position he currently holds with a Chinese firm, this announcement coming amid attacks on him by President Donald Trump.
Although Mesires said Biden “intends to resign” from the Chinese company’s board by Oct. 31, he did not say whether Biden would sell his stake in the company, noting only that “he still holds” that stake in a Chinese private equity fund called Bohai Harvest RST Partners, or BHR.
At a Minneapolis political rally on Thursday, Trump claimed that the younger Biden “walks out of China with $1.5 billion in a fund, and the biggest funds in the world can’t get money out of China, and he’s there for one quick meeting and he flies in on Air Force Two. I think that’s a horrible thing.”
Mesires, however, said that Biden has not made any money whatsoever from the Chinese firm.
Trump claimed to a receptive audience at the rally that Biden knows nothing about energy or about China or, in fact, about anything at all, and is a “loser.”
Two weeks ago, it became public that Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens’ activities in their country, a move that motivated Democratic lawmakers to launch an investigation into the possibility of impeaching the president, a process that could lead to his ouster.
Trump wants Ukraine to probe the fact that Hunter Biden in 2014 accepted a board position in the country’s largest private gas firm, Burisma, receiving more than $50,000 per month, while his father was still vice president and was attempting to mediate the conflict in the Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine.
In addition, Trump publicly called on China to open an investigation into the younger Biden’s possible involvement in corrupt activities in the Asian nation.
In the statement issued on Sunday, Mesires said that Hunter Biden was undertaking his business activities independently and did not think that it was appropriate to discuss those activities with his father.