A Chinese investment firm in which Hunter Biden was a part owner held a stake likely worth millions in a surveillance company that helped Beijing spy on Uyghur Muslims, the U.S. government revealed Thursday.
President Joe Biden's son long held a 10% ownership stake in Chinese investment firm Bohai Harvest, which invested in several controversial Chinese companies. One, Megvii, was sanctioned in 2019 for its alleged participation in China's repression and high-technology surveillance in Xinjiang, and again on Thursday by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Megvii was among eight Chinese tech firms accused of “actively support[ing] the biometric surveillance and tracking of ethnic and religious minorities in China, particularly the predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang,” the Treasury Department said. The public is now prohibited from buying or selling certain securities connected to the groups, all newly labeled part of China's "military-industrial complex."
Hunter Biden's lawyers said in November his solely owned LLC Skaneateles no longer holds a stake in Bohai Harvest, though available public records are inconclusive.
The Treasury Department said Megvii operates in China's "surveillance technology sector” and controls another company that “created customized software designed to conduct surveillance activities of ethnic minorities, including Uyghurs.” The United States said that “one such AI software could recognize persons as being part of the Uyghur ethnic minority and send automated alarms to government authorities."
Both the Trump and Biden administrations have declared the Chinese government is conducting a genocide against the Uyghurs and other religious and ethnic minorities in western China.
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