Jim Biden, the brother of the president, reportedly was enlisted to help settle a business dispute between a U.S. construction company and the Saudi government because of his relation to then–vice president Joe Biden.
The negotiations, involving the Philadelphia-based Hill International and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, took place in 2012 and yielded a $132 million settlement, according to May 2021 affidavits obtained by the Daily Mail that revealed Biden’s brother’s role.
Jim Biden became engaged after Hill and its attorneys got into a legal disagreement over the payout from the Saudis. Three law firms, R.L. Walker & Co., Lankford & Reed, and Poblete Tamargo, were originally hired by Hill to help collect the massive sum of money in “damages arising out of a construction project claim” in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government owed Hill the money for its work building desalination plants in the country in the 1980s.
One firm, Lankford & Reed, alleged that Hill recruited Jim Biden in 2011 to broker a secret agreement with the Saudis to settle the dispute and renege on its 40 percent payment promise to Lankford that was stipulated in their contract. A February 2011 contract obtained by the Daily Mail details the terms of the firm’s fees, stating that Lankford would be entitled to “40% of the recovery.” It was signed by Thomas Lankford of the law firm and Hill CEO Irvin Richter.
Then in July 2017, a disgruntled Lankford hired Thomas Sullivan, a former Treasury Department official, to take a deeper look at the services Jim Biden provided to Hill.
In an interview, Jim Biden told Sullivan that he was hired to help with Hill’s business interests in Saudi Arabia, according to Sullivan’s affidavit. Sullivan said the president’s brother said he “was often sent to meetings to represent Hill because ‘of course, the name didn’t hurt,'” suggesting the “Biden” name carried considerable influence.
“I asked specifically if he had attended a meeting with the Saudi Ministry of Trade in mid-February 2012 to receive the final payment for the work Hill had performed,” Sullivan said of his conversation with Jim Biden. “He answered that, to the best of his memory, he had been at such a meeting, and that the reason he had attended was ‘because of his position and relationship’ with his brother.”
After Sullivan’s discussion with Jim Biden, his wife, Sara Biden, allegedly told the private investigator that her husband and Joe Biden were very close and “told each other everything.”
In a separate affidavit, Lankford claimed Richter told him he had hired Jim Biden because the Saudis “would not dare stiff the brother of the Vice-President who would be instrumental to the deal.” Biden led multiple delegations to Saudi Arabia during his vice-presidential tenure. Lankford said the law firms were “excluded” from Jim Biden’s meeting with the Saudi government in Riyadh.
Jim Biden’s bargaining with the Saudi regime is likely to invite the scrutiny of the House Oversight Committee, now led by the GOP, as it probes how the Biden family potentially abused its political clout in overseas dealings.