The Daily Mail reports that Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz, profits from an investment with Teng Yue Partners, a Chinese investment management firm. According to Bloomberg, the most recent report of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) reveals that Teng Yue Partners “operates as an investment management firm focusing on equity investments in China” and requires at least a $5 million commitment. The amount invested by Teresa Heinz has not been revealed, but it should be at least $5 million or even more.
The Heinz family has also been criticized for possible Chinese influence campaigns involving the president’s son, Hunter Biden. In 2009, Kerry’s stepson Christopher Heinz and Hunter Biden formed Rosemont Seneca Partners, a private equity business named after the Rosemont Farm, the Heinz family's estate near Pittsburg. According to an email revealed as part of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, Rosemont described themselves as “a $2.4 billion private equity firm co-owned by Hunter Biden and Chris Heinz,” with Devon Archer as “Managing Partner.” Archer was convicted in Manhattan Federal Court in 2018 for the fraudulent issuance and sale of more than $60 Million of tribal bonds.
A multi-million dollar agreement with a Chinese oil giant and other deals with Chinese government-backed organizations followed in subsequent years, such as BHR Partners, organized in China just 12 days after Hunter joined his father aboard Air Force Two for a December 2013 trip to Beijing. Furthermore, a 2017 email chain involving Hunter Biden and associates brokering a proposed business deal with a Chinese energy company described 10% set-aside for the “big guy,” whom former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski publicly identified as Joe Biden.
John Kerry interacts with Chinese diplomats and leaders daily in his job as a climate change envoy. He is in a position of allegedly negotiating with the industrial giant to strike accords on cutting carbon emissions. A government ethics expert has expressed concerns that the Chinese government, which has a significant stake in many business ventures Kerry’s wife’s family trust has invested in, may use the prospect of personal investments being halted to exert pressure on Kerry.
Richard Painter, former senior White House ethics lawyer, told the Daily Mail that Kerry’s investments could be unethical. He stated, “As soon as anyone even hinted that the Chinese government would try to do anything to pull the rug from those companies if he didn’t do what they wanted, at that point, it would create a problem for him under US code 208 [a conflict of interest law for government officials].” Painter also said, “Whenever you’re negotiating with a country to try to get something done, and you have investments in that country, there is that risk that negotiators could try to threaten to hold those investments hostage in the course of the negotiations.”
He continued, “I think it would be reasonable for him to be asked on a periodic basis whether he has any awareness of any risk to any of those companies. If he does, either she (Teresa Heinz) sells the companies, or he stands down from climate negotiations. I think that’s absolutely critical.”
How can it be explained or justified that such murky irregularities that involve serious conflicts of interest are not openly investigated under the public eye? Why so much cover-up if those involved claim that those are legitimate operations? Law and order must prevail.
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