According to The New York Times, Hunter Biden, the US president Joe Biden's son, was a founding board member of an investment business that helped a Chinese company buy one of the world's richest cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo from an American corporation.

According to it, the US president’s son was part owner of a venture involved in the $3.8 billion purchase by a Chinese conglomerate of one of the world’s largest cobalt deposits. The metal is a key ingredient in batteries for electric vehicles.

In the year 2013, Hunter Biden started the company named, Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) Equity Investment Fund Management Company along with two other Americans and a few Chinese associates. The American members owned 30% of the Shanghai-based firm and joined as the board of directors.

According to the New York Times, a White House spokesman stated Joe Biden was ignorant of his son's involvement in the deal.

In 2016, BHR signed a deal of $2.65 billion transactions to transfer a Congo cobalt as well as copper mine from American-based mining company 'Freeport-McMoRan' to a Chinese company 'China Molybdenum'.

Later, BHR acted as a minority shareholder in the $1.14 billion purchase of shares from Lundin Mining of Canada, which controlled a piece of the Congo mine.

As per Hong Kong documents, China Molybdenum then purchased BHR's mining shares two years later with a total worth of $3.8 billion.

China Molybdenum now owns 80% of the mine, with Congo's government mining firm holding the remaining 20%.

According to Fox News, President Biden particularly referenced China's developing cobalt dominance as a stumbling block to America's aspirations to transition from gasoline to electric vehicles.

Image courtesy: Reuters