New details about the overseas fundraising efforts of Jim Biden, brother of US President Joe Biden, have come to light in a Kentucky bankruptcy court, where recent testimony indicates that Jim has collaborated with Qatari government officials in his push to find money for US healthcare, according to Politico.
Sworn testimony from manager Michael Lewitt, a former business associate of Jim Biden, confirms that two companies that assisted in these efforts were partially owned by “members of the Qatari government.”
One company, the Platinum Group USA, worked directly with Jim Biden in a multi-year fundraising effort. The other, Obermeyer Engineering Consulting, provided financial backing for a series of loans that the hospital chain paid Jim Biden to arrange, according to documents and testimony presented by Lewitt in the federal bankruptcy proceedings.
If confirmed, the alleged arrangements would be among the closest known financial ties between a relative of President Joe Biden and a foreign government.
Jim Biden is alleged to have raised money from Qatari sources for businesses in the US seeking circumvention of restrictions on international money movements. Transactions related to these efforts are also at the heart of a recently settled fraud case brought by the SEC and are being scrutinised in a federal criminal investigation in South Florida.
In June 2017, Qatar’s neighbours, led by Saudi Arabia, united to sever diplomatic relations with the country, citing its alleged support for terrorism. The ensuing financial and physical blockade plunged the country into a protracted crisis.
To raise money for the company, Jim Biden teamed up with the CEO of Platinum Group, a Florida businessman Amer Rustom, who had connections to officials in the Middle East, and Lewitt.
Jim Biden and his associates stated that Qatari officials had expressed interest in investing more deeply in the US healthcare sector, a former Americore executive, who was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue, recalled.
According to Politico, in August 2017, Jim Biden and Rustom discussed a draft letter to an official of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority.
My family could provide a wealth of introductions and business opportunities at the highest levels that I believe would be worthy of the interest of His Excellency […] On behalf of the Biden family, I welcome your interest here.
Meanwhile, Lewitt’s Third Friday investment fund has begun making a series of bridge loans to Americore to keep the cash-strapped company afloat until the $30 million comes in. The first bridge loan coincided with a $400,000 payment from Americore to Jim Biden.
In his interview with impeachment investigators in February, Jim Biden told them that about $600,000 he received from Americore around that time was related to his role in arranging the loans. In March 2018, Jim Biden transferred $200,000 of the payments in question to Joe Biden, who was then retired, in what he and the White House called a repayment of an unrelated loan between the brothers.
As internal Americore emails show, one of the ways Jim Biden was considering investing in Americore was to help payment processing company Billerfy gain access to the US banking system. At the time, Billerfy processed payments for Quadriga, Canada’s largest crypto exchange at the time, which has since gone bankrupt.
A draft presentation that was circulated internally by Americore described Billerfy as an “open network for global payments” and described Jim Biden as “chief global banking emissary.”
A former Americore executive said that Jim Biden and Levitt travelled to Qatar in mid-2018 as part of a fundraising effort, but it is unclear whether any meeting took place between Jim Biden and then-Qatari Finance Minister Ali Sharif Al Emadi.
Al Emadi left his post in 2021 after Qatar’s attorney general ordered his arrest on suspicion of corruption. Reuters reported in January that he was found guilty on charges of laundering more than $5 billion and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The Qatar-focused fundraising efforts of Jim Biden and his partners have also been the subject of legal controversy. In 2022, Third Friday investors sued Lewitt, claiming he misappropriated their money through Americore to Jim Biden and others. In April, Lewitt settled a fraud case brought by the SEC over the loans, receiving a five-year ban from working in the securities industry, according to court filings.
During the Americore bankruptcy trial, Lewitt produced documents that included an agreement between his fund and Delaware-based Obermeyer Engineering Consulting. The agreement provided that Obermeyer would buy Third Friday’s loans from Americore as well as a 35% stake in the hospital chain for $30 million.
