Bad Optics: Chinese Wheeler-dealer Patrick Ho’s Company, Briber of Ugandan Dictator Museveni, Paid Millions To Joe Biden’s Son, Hunter
[Commentary]
President Biden’s son Hunter Biden received millions of dollars in payments from the company that Patrick Ho, the Chinese wheeler dealer who bribed Ugandan dictator Gen. Yoweri Museveni, worked for. The payments to Hunter Biden have been under scrutiny by media and Republican members of Congress.
According to the Washington Post, the payments to a company controlled by Hunter Biden totalled $3.8 million. After Ho was arrested for bribing Museveni and his then foreign minister Sam Kutesa $1 million and for trying to bribe the then president of Chad $2 million, Ho paid Hunter Biden $1 as retainer to represent him in his criminal case. Hunter Biden, who is a lawyer, never represented Ho in the court case, according to media reports and documents from the trial.
A wide segment of the Ugandan public is outraged that Gen. Museveni, the country’s corrupt military dictator since 1986, when Ronald Reagan was U.S. president, was invited to the so-called U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit being hosted in Washington, D.C., from December 13 to 15 by President Biden.
Gen. Museveni’s regime has been characterized by massacres, election rigging, kleptocracy, and militarism. He’s in the past ordered his army to invade three of Uganda’s five neighbors — Rwanda in 1990, Congo multiple times since 1996, and South Sudan in 2013. The invasions have led to the deaths of millions of Africans. Ugandan’s point out the hypocrisy of the U.S. lecturing Vladimir Putin and condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the one hand while ignoring the blood of Africans spilled by Museveni’s militarism in Uganda and in neighboring countries. In 2016 his soldiers committed a massacre of more than 150 people in Uganda’s Kasese region, mostly women and children, and the dictator has rejected calls for an independent investigation.
In Congo alone, the subsequent wars and displacements have led to the deaths of more than six million people and the country became the global epicenter of mass rapes of both women and men. The International Court of Justice ruled in favor of Congo and had initially ordered $6 billion in reparations to what amounted to the war crimes before the amount was reduced to $325 million.
Gen. Museveni’s invasion of Rwanda on October 1, 1990, seeking regime-change, exacerbated the historical ethnic tensions between the country’s minority Tutsi population and the majority Hutu.
In 1994, when a plane carrying the presidents of both Rwanda and Burundi, Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira — both Hutus — was shot down, it immediately triggered genocidal killings of hundreds of thousands of both Tutsis and Hutus. The New York Times carried an article on April 7, 1998, about allegations made by a former French minister that the missile that shot down the plane was given to the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), the rebel group that emerged in power, by Gen. Museveni, who acquired them from the United States. The U.S. denied the allegations. There have been other reports that the missiles first reached Museveni from other sources.
If the Biden administration was serious about the goals of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, as outlined on the website of the State Department — promoting democracy, the rule of law, and human rights — then Gen. Museveni would be the last man in the world one would think of inviting.
Museveni has remained in power by rigging elections. In November 2020, more than 100 Ugandans — supporters of the main opposition candidate — were massacred in the run-up to the 2021 elections that many believe the dictator stole from the main challenger Robert Kyagulanyi, a.k.a. Bobi Wine. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced the vote as “neither free not fair” and announced sanctions including travel bans against Ugandan officials involved in the election rigging and the violence before, during, and after the elections.
Yet, it turns out these were hollow words meant strictly for public relations purposes since Museveni, who is the principal character responsible for the massacres and election rigging, is on his way to Washington where he’ll hobnob with Biden officials and other African presidents and U.S. business executives.
He’ll also get a photo-op with President Biden in the White House as is the case with the other invited African presidents. The Ugandan dictator will likely present this as an endorsement of his brutality when he returns to Uganda.
Since stealing the election from Bobi Wine, Museveni’s launched a campaign of terror against opposition supporters. His security agents have abducted and tortured hundreds of Ugandans, many of whom have been killed or haven’t been seen in two years. One of the most prominent torture victims is Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, the 2021 PEN Pinter International Writer of Courage honoree.
The U.S. even sanctioned Ugandan military intelligence chief Gen. Abel Kandiho for directing and participating in the campaign of torture — Museveni responded by promoting Kandiho. So it turns out that the sanctions was also a scam since after thumbing his nose at Washington Museveni still gets to visit the White House.
Now, in his mind, Museveni believes he has license to kill, from President Biden, based on the invitation.
The optics also don’t look good that Biden invited Museveni who was bribed by Patrick Ho on behalf of CEFC China Energy, a company that also paid as much as $3.8 million to a firm controlled by his son, Hunter Biden, and the $1 million retainer as reported by The Washington Post.
Patrick Ho was arrested by the FBI in 2017. Ho was later tried in federal court and convicted in December 2018. He’d offered to bribe Idriss Debby, the late president of Chad $2 million, delivered to him in cash “wrapped” as a gift, according to the evidence that emerged at trial. President Debby rejected the bribe, according to U.S. prosecutors. Ho was seeking concessions in Chad’s oil industry.
Giving up a bribe was not an option for Ugandan kleptocrat Museveni. According to U.S. prosecutors Ho had warmed his way into Gen. Museveni’s good graces through Sam Kutesa, who was then Uganda’s minister of foreign affairs. (Kutesa’s daughter is married to Museveni’s son Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba referred to as Uganda’s “deputy dictator” and “chief torturer” — he was accused by Rukirabashaija of supervising his torture).
Ho met Kutesa while he was in New York between 2014 and 2015 serving as President of the United Nations General Assembly.
Ho negotiated for concessions in Uganda’s oil industry and other business rights. Ho paid a bribe of $500,000 to Kutesa and $500,000 to Museveni as an initial bribe. More money was to come once a joint venture company was created between Ho’s company CEFC China and the families of Kutesa and Museveni, according to evidence presented by U.S. prosecutors at trial.
The U.S. gained jurisdiction over the case because Kutesa was impatient. He demanded that Ho wire his $500,000 cut to an account in Uganda from a New York City based bank. Kutesa even created a letterhead for a fake “charity” that would ward off suspicion over the wiring of such a huge sum. The FBI had tapped Ho’s and Kutesa’s phone and overheard their conversations and those with Museveni. When an FBI agent followed the trail and went to Uganda, he found that no such charity existed and Kutesa ate the money.
Museveni was smarter than his foreign minister. According to U.S. prosecutors Museveni invited Ho to come with business executives from CEFC China Energy to his May 2016 swearing in after he’d stolen the vote from then candidate Dr. Kiiza Besigye. Ho flew into Uganda on a Gulf-stream jet. His cargo included $500,000 wrapped Mafia-style as a “gift” to Museveni, according to evidence presented at Ho’s trial.
However, Ho was worried about how he’d walk past Customs with the special gift. So Kutesa sent his wife Edith to walk Ho and his delegation past security checks, according to U.S. prosecutors.
After his conviction in 2018 Ho was sentenced to three years in prison.
This is where the optics look terrible for President Biden. When Ho was arrested at JFK Airport, according to a report in The New York Times, the first person he called was James Biden, brother to Joe Biden who at the time was former vice president. The Times reported that James said he was surprised by Ho’s call and that Ho probably wanted to reach his nephew, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son.
Separately, The Washington Post’s reporters Matt Viser, Tom Hamburger and Craig Timberg reported on March 30, 2022, that, “While many aspects of Hunter Biden’s financial arrangement with CEFC China Energy have been previously reported and were included in a Republican-led Senate report from 2020, a Washington Post review confirmed many of the key details and found additional documents showing Biden family interactions with Chinese executives.”
“Over the course of 14 months, the Chinese energy conglomerate and its executives paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and his uncle, according to government records, court documents and newly disclosed bank statements, as well as emails contained on a copy of a laptop hard drive that purportedly once belonged to Hunter Biden,” The Post reported.
The article continued: “The Post did not find evidence that Joe Biden personally benefited from or knew details about the transactions with CEFC, which took place after he had left the vice presidency and before he announced his intentions to run for the White House in 2020. But the new documents — which include a signed copy of a $1 million legal retainer, emails related to the wire transfers, and $3.8 million in consulting fees that are confirmed in new bank records and agreements signed by Hunter Biden — illustrate the ways in which his family profited from relationships built over Joe Biden’s decades in public service.”
One would have thought that the optics alone would have precluded an invitation by the Biden administration to Museveni to the U.S.-Africa Leaders summit: He is a confirmed recipient of a bribe from ex-convict Patrick Ho, the same character whose company made millions of dollars in payments to Hunter Biden that is now the subject of review.
The tone-deaf invitation to Museveni was reportedly made by Linda Thomas-Greenfield the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
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