The complicated business ventures included an effort by Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter Biden for a board position, to buy up parts of a Mexican-owned energy conglomerate that was looking to privatize.The Mexican ventures have received less attention than Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine and China, in large part because it’s unclear if the largest deals came to fruition or ever netted Hunter Biden and his business partners significant earnings.
Miguel Aleman Velasco and Miguel Aleman Magnani also appeared to develop close business relationships with Hunter Biden and his business partners, particularly Jeff Cooper, one of Hunter Biden’s closest business associates at that time. Aleman Velasco was a former high-ranking Mexican politician, and his son, Aleman Magnani, was the president of Interjet, at the time a Mexican airline.
Joe Biden met with both Aleman Velasco and Aleman Magnani, along with Cooper, at the White House for lunch and posed for pictures with them. Aleman Magnani appeared to help Hunter Biden and his associates make connections at Pemex and in the Mexican government. “Maybe a call from your or your dad to his dad? Maybe that shakes things loose?” Cooper wrote in an email.But by March 2015, Aleman Magnani appeared to have made a $1 million investment in a business in which Hunter Biden had a small stake. Separate from the Pemex deal involving Burisma, Cooper and Hunter Biden had been pushing for the expansion of the other company, ePlata, in Mexico.
Hunter Biden appeared to coordinate a call or meeting with Slim and Joe Biden’s government office for Oct. 30, 2015, emails show.In February 2016, Joe Biden brought Hunter Biden and Cooper to Mexico with him on Air Force Two.