FirstFT: Hunter Biden indicted on tax evasion charges

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The US Department of Justice has charged Hunter Biden with nine federal tax offences, including tax evasion, adding to the legal troubles of the president’s son ahead of the 2024 election year.

Prosecutors said Hunter Biden failed to pay at least $1.4mn of federal taxes for the years between 2016 and 2019, a period that covered Joe Biden’s last year as vice-president and the start of his 2020 presidential campaign.

“Between 2016 and October 15 2020, the defendant spent this money on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes,” the indictment said.

It also said Hunter Biden had included “false business deductions” on his 2018 tax return to “reduce the very substantial tax liability he faced as of February 2020”.

The indictment, handed down by a grand jury and filed in federal court in California yesterday, is the second to hit Hunter Biden this year. The DoJ charged the president’s second son from his first marriage with illegal gun possession in September.

The justice department said if convicted on the latest offences, Hunter Biden could face a maximum of 17 years in prison. Here’s more on the charges and Hunter Biden’s defence.

Here’s what I’m keeping tabs on today and over the weekend:

• Jobs report: The US government releases its November employment report while the University of Michigan publishes a preliminary reading of its latest Consumer Sentiment index.

• Javier Milei inauguration: Argentina’s president-elect takes over on Sunday and is facing one of the world’s toughest economic challenges. Latin America editor Michael Stott looks at his in-tray.

• Egypt: The country holds its presidential election on Sunday.

• Nobel Prizes: The awards ceremony will be held in Stockholm, Sweden, on Sunday.

How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz.

Five more top stories

1. Exclusive: Saudi Arabia shelved plans for Mohammed bin Salman to visit London in recent days, shortly before the crown prince hosted Vladimir Putin in Riyadh, according to UK officials. British and Saudi officials had been in discussions about a visit for months. MPs from the ruling Conservative party said the trip’s postponement represented a “snub”.

2. BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink has hit out at the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination over their attacks on the $9.1tn asset manager during Wednesday’s debate. Fink, who has become a punchbag for “anti-woke” Republicans in recent years, wrote in a LinkedIn post yesterday that the references were a “sad commentary on the state of American politics”. Here’s more on Fink’s defence against the attacks.

3. China has dismissed growing concern in Brussels over the country’s record €400bn trade surplus with the EU in 2022. The comments came as European Council president Charles Michel and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen met President Xi Jinping and his number two Li Qiang in Beijing yesterday for the first EU-China summit since the pandemic. Read more on what Beijing called “candid” talks.

• EU-Mercosur trade talks: Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva lashed out at French “protectionism” yesterday in response to President Emmanuel Macron’s sharp criticism of a pending trade deal between the two blocs.

4. CATL, the world’s biggest electric-vehicle battery maker, has hit back against accusations it poses a national security threat after the Chinese company’s technology was cut off from a US military base in North Carolina. Republican senator Marco Rubio and other lawmakers wrote to US defence secretary Lloyd Austin last week alleging the battery maker was close to the Chinese leadership and that its presence on Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune was “inexcusable”. CATL said the accusations were “false and misleading.

5. The decision by Mark Cuban to sell a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks and quit as a Shark Tank presenter has fuelled speculation of what the billionaire will do next. Cuban, 65, has flirted with politics in the past and also shown an interest in the fast-growing gambling market. Sara Germano assesses Cuban’s options.

News in-depth

Under the cover of an Israel-Hamas truce, a convoy of vehicles last week mounted one of the most unusual missions of the war: the retrieval of about 180mn shekels in cash. The stash of notes, weighing close to a tonne and worth about $50mn, was kept in two Bank of Palestine branches based in the devastated north of Gaza. Worried about a cash shortage in the south, bank officials saw the truce as a chance to retrieve the stranded money — and help stave off the collapse of the economy.

We’re also reading . . . 

• Google’s Gemini: With the release of its new generative AI system, Google is finally stamping its mark on a technology that its own researchers did much to pioneer.

• Danone’s Chechen takeover: When a warlord’s nephew seized control of the French dairy group’s Russian operations, there was fear among staff of the company’s fate. But so far Danone’s new bosses are “running it basically as an MBA case”, says a person familiar with the operations.

• Rising wages: Scrooge-like central bankers view wage increases for most people as a cause for concern, but how worrying is this really? Soumaya Keynes investigates.

Chart of the day

New research shows that while Americans recognise their country’s problem with inequality, they have less desire for something to be done about it than their counterparts elsewhere in the west, writes John Burn-Murdoch. Could this mean the American dream fosters inequality?

Take a break from the news

The mega galas of the 1980s may have gone but the culture of giving lives on. Meet the doyennes of American philanthropy.

Additional contributions from Gary Jones and Benjamin Wilhelm