TWO of Hunter Biden’s closest business associates lined up a potential billion-dollar payout from a highly controversial lawsuit that threatens to destroy Nigeria’s economy, The U.S. Sun can exclusively reveal.
Bombshell leaked documents suggest that Jeffrey Cooper, 53, and convicted fraudster Devon Archer, 48, personally stand to gain hundreds of millions of dollars in one of the biggest international arbitration cases of all time.
And secret records show that Cooper and Archer were in direct contact with President Joe Biden, 80, and his scandal-hit son Hunter, 53, after they became embroiled in the case.
Currently being fought in the UK, the extraordinary legal battle has pitted an engineering firm registered in the British Virgin Islands against the government of Nigeria.
Process & Industrial Development (P&ID) is seeking a massive multibillion-dollar payout from the African nation over a failed January 2010 gas supply and processing deal.
A London arbitration tribunal in January 2017 found in P&ID’s favor and ordered Nigeria to pay $6.6billion, which has now ballooned to $11billion with interest, but the country refused to do so and challenged the decision.
The breach of contract case went to trial at London’s High Court earlier this year, and a judgment is expected in the coming weeks or months.
If P&ID is awarded the full amount, it would force Nigeria – Africa’s most populous nation and the sixth in the world – to hand over what is thought to be the equivalent of almost one-third of its total foreign currency reserves.
Furious Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari described the case as a “scam” in a speech at the United Nations in 2019.
And lawyers for the country argued in court that the 20-year gas deal was a “sham” and that P&ID had later bribed Nigeria’s legal team in the arbitration to sabotage its strategy.
P&ID strongly denies that the original deal was a “sham” and described Nigeria’s claim of bribery as “manifestly false” and “a pure piece of invention, with no evidence to support it.”
Now, previously unseen documents leaked to investigative group Marco Polo by a whistleblower and seen by The U.S. Sun show that Archer and Cooper – who both have deep business ties to the Bidens – are directly involved in trying to secure the payout for P&ID.
The records show that Cooper was hired by P&ID as a consultant in April 2017 through a company that he founded in Delaware called 1800 Industries LLC.
In that deal, P&ID agreed to retain the services of 1800 Industries in exchange for 10 percent of any payout it helps obtain from Nigeria in excess of $200million.
An email from Archer in May 2017 shows that he was already involved in trying to secure the reward at that stage.
Archer says in the email: “Jeff and I have been engaged by the Client to help facilitate the collection of the Award.”
Then in May 2018, 1800 Industries entered into a confidential assignment of proceeds agreement with high-powered law firm Boies Schiller Flexner and Archer, who has been a longstanding Boies client.
In that agreement, 1800 agreed to hand Boies half of its 10 percent of the reward after notifying the law firm and Archer of its receipt.
A side note from 2019 emailed to Archer by one of his advisors in the P&ID matter states that Archer “will enjoy 5 percent” of the eventual settlement.
Archer is believed to owe substantial fees to Boies for representing him in a fraud case he was convicted for, which may help explain why his five percent of the settlement would go to the law firm.
Boies also employed Archer’s business partner Hunter Biden from 2010 up to at least 2016.
The court battle over the payout was brought to the US in March 2018 when P&ID sought to have the District Court of Washington, DC, enforce the U.K. arbitration ruling.
That U.S. case remains open pending the upcoming decision of England’s High Court.
When Nigeria disputed the Washington, DC, court’s jurisdiction over the matter, the Court of Appeals asked the Department of Justice to file a brief on the issue.
The brief was written by Biden Administration-appointed Acting Assistant General Attorney Brian Boynton in January 2022.
In it, Boynton and the DOJ sided with P&ID, and within two months, the Court of Appeals ruled in P&ID’s favor.
The litigation in Washington, DC, may help explain what Archer and Cooper are bringing to the table, which would justify such a huge potential payday for them.
Former Abercrombie & Fitch model Archer’s career has been defined by his top-level political connections in Washington, DC.
His closeness to the Bidens is apparent in an August 2014 picture obtained by Tucker Carlson Tonight that shows him playing golf with Joe and the then-Vice President’s son in the Hamptons.
And in a text message from March 2019 found on Hunter’s “laptop from hell”, Hunter tells Archer: “You are a Biden.”
Archer also served as the co-chair of finance for John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004 and was scheduled to visit Kerry at the State Department in March 2016 when his former boss was serving as America’s top diplomat.
He boasted in one of the emails in the cache of secret documents that he was friends with Jide Zeitlin, who, according to his LinkedIn, was the chairman of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority at that time.
Archer’s only previous experience in the energy sector seems to have come when he and Hunter were controversially appointed to the board of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma in 2014.
According to a Senate Finance Committee report from 2020, Hunter and Archer “were paid millions of dollars from a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch for their participation on the board.”
Archer was also convicted along with other Hunter associates in a bond fraud scheme that stole $43million and left a Native American tribe $60 million in debt.
Aside from the legal fees he owes to Boies Schiller Flexner, he is still on the hook for almost $44million in restitution to the fraud scheme’s victims and a personal forfeiture order of $15million.
Meanwhile, Illinois-based Cooper had previously been an asbestos litigator who worked in that line of business alongside Hunter’s late older brother Beau.
His law firm SimmonsCooper also invested $1million in hedge fund Paradigm, which Hunter and Joe Biden’s brother Jimmy took control of in 2006.
Cooper later went into venture capitalism and created an online gambling business in Latin America with Hunter, which a whistleblower told the Daily Mail that Joe participated in too.
A previously unseen picture from November 2006 which Cooper sent to Hunter in January 2019 shows the President’s son dressed in traditional Indian wedding garb and posing next to Cooper while both men grin and hold flower bouquets.
Another picture from November 2015 shows Cooper posing with Joe, Hunter and Carlos Slim, who at the time was the richest man in the world.
In text messages, Joe sent Hunter in June 2018 – just three months after P&ID first brought its case to court in Washington, DC – the now-president told his son that he was with Cooper and added: “Jeff asked for you. Wants to do some work with you.”
That same day Cooper sent an email to Archer and others reminding them of an invite to attend an event at the Irish ambassador’s home where Joe was the guest of honor.
Aside from his own connections to the Bidens, a May 2017 email from Archer found in the cache of documents claims that Cooper is a former colleague of outgoing Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
Osinbajo was a key figure in the Nigerian government’s investigation into the alleged corruption, which led to the P&ID deal in the first place.
Cooper’s involvement in the P&ID case may also be explained by the fact that he has longstanding ties to London-based lawyer Seamus Andrew.
Andrew was the lead counsel in P&ID’s efforts to secure the payout from Nigeria and won the 2017 arbitration case for them.
He later bought a 75 percent stake in the company through his Lismore Capital litigation funding business and reportedly stands to make $2.2billion from the payout.
‘EMBARRASSINGLY WEALTHY’
In one email from Cooper to Andrew in response to a series of questions Andrew had sent over, the Illinois businessman joked: “In the event, you answer the above questions in a satisfactory manner and we all become embarrassingly wealthy, will you also facilitate the search for the meaning of life?”
Aside from Lismore’s 75 percent, the remaining 25 percent stake in P&ID was bought by hedge fund VR Capital, which was previously involved in the bankruptcy of now-defunct Russian oil giant Yukos.
It is not clear from the cache of documents if 1800 now stands to gain 10 percent of Lismore’s share or of the total settlement, including VR Capital’s stake.
After they were hired by P&ID, Archer and Cooper also brought in two more men as advisers – Jarrod Patten and Arthur Maxwell.
Documents suggest that Patten and Maxwell stand to receive a 10 percent cut of the payout to be obtained by Archer.
They also show that Patten scheduled a dinner with Archer on April 25, 2017, just a day before Patten was photographed sitting very close to Joe Biden at a Washington Wizards basketball game.
Meanwhile, emails show that, for his part, Maxwell brought high-level political connections in Nigeria to the table.
In an email he sent to Patten and Archer on May 6, 2017, Maxwell wrote: “I know I can get to (Nigerian President) Buhari directly and I think that’s the most practical approach.”
In another email he sent to Seamus Andrew in April 2018, Maxwell boasted: “I continue to maintain very deep relationships in Nigeria.”
He went on to explain that one of his contacts “in country” was a man known as “Godfather,” who Maxwell claimed was a key adviser to previous Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan and a “significant influencer” to outgoing President Buhari.
Non-profit organization Marco Polo has made headlines by investigating and producing a report on the infamous laptop Hunter Biden left abandoned in a Delaware repair shop in 2019.
Marco Polo and its founder, Garrett Ziegler, are currently being sued by Hunter Biden’s lawyer Kevin Morris, who accuses them of civil harassment, doxing, invasion of privacy, criminal impersonation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Ziegler denies the allegations.
A Boies Schiller Flexner spokeswoman declined to comment.
The U.S. Sun reached out asking for comment from Devon Archer, Jeffrey Cooper, lawyers for Hunter Biden, the White House, Jarrod Patten, Arthur Maxwell, Seamus Andrew and Jide Zeitlin but received no response.
