A high-ranking Chinese businessman was charged by the Justice Department with global corruption and bribery in 2017, and the first call he made after his arrest was to Vice President Joe Biden’s brother, James Biden, who thinks the call was meant for Joe’s son, Hunter.

Patrick Ho, the lieutenant to the founder of the multibillion-dollar Chinese conglomerate CEFC China Energy, was indicted under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the Southern District of New York for his role in a global money laundering and bribery scheme aimed at government officials in Africa. The Justice Department also accused Ho of helping with Iranian sanctions evasion and working to use the Chinese company’s connections to sell weaponry to Chad, Libya, and Qatar.

Ho immediately tried reaching out to the younger Biden for help because that summer, as investigators circled, Hunter agreed to represent Ho as part of Hunter’s efforts to work out a liquefied natural gas deal worth tens of millions of dollars with CEFC China Energy’s leader Ye Jianming.

The vice president’s financier brother said he was surprised by the call from Ho but told the Chinese businessman how to get in touch with his nephew.

“There is nothing else I have to say,” James Biden told the New York Times in 2018. “I don’t want to be dragged into this anymore.”

The lucrative deal Hunter Biden set up with CEFC China Energy fell apart when Ye disappeared after being detained by Chinese authorities in 2018, and Ho was sentenced to three years in federal prison in March.

Although much of the scrutiny of Hunter Biden’s global business dealings focuses on his controversial $50,000-per-month position with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings at the same time then-Vice President Joe Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, his dealings with Chinese businessmen could cause the 2020 Democratic front-runner serious headaches, too.

Kathleen Biden, the younger Biden’s now-ex-wife, accused him in divorce filings of “spending extravagantly on his own interests (including drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs, and gifts for women with whom he has sexual relations), while leaving the family with no funds to pay legitimate bills.” The filing also discusses a "large" diamond, worth $80,000, he claimed he no longer had. In a later interview, Hunter said the diamond — which he claimed was only worth $10,000 — was a gift from Ye.

Ye, who had ties to the Chinese Communist Party and told Caixin Global that his company “aims to serve the [Chinese] state’s strategy,” was on a mission to make inroads among powerful Democrats and Republicans, setting his sights on the former vice president's son, who served on the board of World Food Program USA, a nonprofit organization that raises money for the United Nations World Food Programme. Biden said he hoped Ye would make a major donation to the fund but also offered to help Ye find investment opportunities inside the United States.

Hunter Biden says he met Ye for the first time in Miami and that two of Biden’s associates surprised him when they gave Ye Scotch valued at thousands of dollars. Ye sent a thank-you card and a 2.8-carat diamond to Hunter’s hotel room. Hunter says he handed the diamond off to his associates and doesn’t know what happened with it but denies it was meant as a bribe.

“What would they be bribing me for? My dad wasn’t in office,” Hunter Biden told the New Yorker. “I knew it wasn’t a good idea to take it. I just felt like it was weird.”

Hunter negotiated a $40 million investment deal with Ye related to a liquefied natural gas project on Monkey Island in Louisiana.

At the same time, Ye told Hunter that one of his business associates, Ho, was being investigated in the U.S., and Hunter agreed to represent him. The deal between Hunter and Ye crashed almost immediately when Ho was arrested by U.S. law enforcement at John F. Kennedy Airport in 2017. A few months later, the deal was officially dead when Ye was detained by Chinese authorities, reportedly at the orders of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“Patrick Ho schemed to bribe the leaders of Chad and Uganda in order to secure unfair business advantages for the Chinese energy company he served,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in March. “His actions were brazen, including offering the president of Chad $2 million in cash, hidden in gift boxes. Foreign corruption undermines the fairness of international markets, erodes the public’s faith in its leaders, and is deeply unfair to the people and businesses that play by the rules.”

Biden said to the New Yorker this summer he didn't think Ye was "a shady character at all" and attributed the situation to "bad luck."