FACT CHECK: Was Hunter Biden Paid As Much As $50,000 A Month For His Work With Burisma?
Numerous media outlets have reported that Hunter Biden was paid as much as $50,000 a month for his work with the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings.
Verdict: Unsubstantiated
No available financial records show Burisma directly paid Hunter Biden. The $50,000-a-month figure stems from payments made to Biden by New York-based capital management firm Rosemont Seneca Bohai. Bank records show Rosemont Seneca Bohai received payments from Burisma, as well as dozens of other entities and individuals. It’s unclear why Rosemont Seneca Bohai was paying Hunter Biden.
Fact Check:
Hunter Biden served on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma while his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, oversaw policy regarding the Eastern European nation.
Hunter Biden, who served on the Burisma board of directors from April 2014 to April 2019, was paid a salary for his work with the company, according to a statement Burisma chairman Alan Apter gave to The Wall Street Journal. In his statement, Apter said Hunter Biden would receive a salary for his independent directorship, but did not specify how much Hunter Biden would be paid.
Numerous media outlets have stated Hunter Biden was paid as much as $50,000 a month for his work with Burisma, but available financial records show no direct payments from the company to him. The frequently cited figure stems from payments Hunter Biden received from Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a New York-based capital management firm owned and controlled by longtime business partner Devon Archer.
Rosemont Seneca Bohai Morgan Stanley bank records show Hunter Biden, while simultaneously serving on Burisma’s board, received $708,302 between June 2014 and October 2015 from Rosemont Seneca Bohai, for undisclosed reasons, in a series of payments that ranged from $10,000 to $150,979 per month. At the same time, Rosemont Seneca Bohai received over $3.15 million from Burisma for “consulting services.” (Rosemont Seneca Bohai was a capital management firm, not a consulting firm.)
Hunter Biden had no official role with Rosemont Seneca Bohai at the time of the payments, according to the company’s business filings.
“Hunter Biden was a Yale-educated lawyer who had served on the boards of Amtrak and a number of nonprofit organizations and think tanks, but lacked any experience in Ukraine and just months earlier had been discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine,” wrote New York Times journalist Kenneth Vogel. “He would be paid as much as $50,000 per month in some months for his work for the company, Burisma Holdings.”
Vogel was the first to report Burisma paid Hunter Biden $50,000 per month. It’s unclear how exactly Vogel calculated that figure, but it is possible he used an average of the payments regularly made to Hunter Biden from Rosemont Seneca Bohai over the period of 17 months shown in the available bank records.
However, the Daily Caller News Foundation could not confirm the accuracy of this figure, as there is no evidence the payments from Rosemont Seneca Bohai to Hunter Biden are necessarily for his work with Burisma. (RELATED: ‘Fun Times In Beijing’: Hunter Biden Received $700,000 From Company That Held Stake In Chinese Investment Firm)
During the same time Rosemont Seneca Bohai was receiving payments from Burisma, it also received nearly $27 million in payments from dozens of other entities and individuals. The money Hunter Biden received from Rosemont Seneca Bohai could possibly be for his work with any of these other entities or individuals, or for some other unknown reason.
When ABC News’s Amy Robach asked directly about the alleged $50,000 figure, Hunter Biden said, “Look, I’m a private citizen. One thing that I don’t have to do is sit here and open my kimono as it relates to how much money I made or make or did or didn’t.”
Rosemont Seneca Bohai, Burisma, Kenneth Vogel and Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
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