John Kerry’s Wife Has Over $1 Million Investment In Hedge Fund With Ties To China, Records Show

Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry’s wife has an over $1 million investment in a hedge fund with close ties to Chinese state-owned companies, financial disclosures show.

Kerry’s latest filing with the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) in March shows his wife, Teresa Heinz, has an investment of “over $1 million” through her family trusts in Teng Yue Partners, a New York hedge fund that focuses on equity investments in China. Heinz is the heiress to the food processing company H.J. Heinz, and has an estimated net worth of over $750 million.

The OGE filing notes Kerry’s wife is the beneficiary of the H.J. Heinz III Marital Trust. The Heinz family is also connected to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and his business dealings with Chinese companies. Kerry’s stepson, Christopher Heinz, co-founded the firm Rosemont Seneca Partners with Hunter Biden in 2009.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in March, Teng Yue Partners disclosed that 67% of its clients are “non-United States persons.” The SEC filing also revealed 97% of the roughly $10.1 million managed by the hedge fund is from “non-United-States persons.”

The firm’s founder and managing partner, Tao Li, is a Chinese national, according to the Daily Mail, which first reported the investments Monday.

Teng Yue Partners’ holdings include the Chinese biotech company Transcenta, which was recently backed by two Chinese state-owned private equity firms. Teng Yue Partners participated in a $105 million financing project for the biotech company in Dec. 2020 with the state-owned China Structural Reform Fund and CCT China Merchants Fund, a subsidiary of the state-owned China Merchants Group.

Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics counsel for former President George W. Bush, told the Daily Mail in a statement that the investment in Teng Yue Partners could create an ethical problem for Kerry. (RELATED: Kerry Family Jet Emitted 30 Times More Carbon So Far In 2021 Than Average Vehicle Does In A Year)

“Whenever you’re negotiating with a country to try to get something done and you have investments in that country, there is that risk that negotiators could try to threaten to hold those investments hostage in the course of the negotiations,” he said.

Kerry indicated during an April interview that the Biden administration should pursue greater cooperation with China on climate change, even if that meant pushing aside “differences on human rights” between the two countries.

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