Clinton Cash
by Peter Schweizer
9
Rainforest Riches
HILLARY, BILL, AND COLOMBIAN
TIMBER AND OIL DEALS
In early June 2010 Bill Clinton met Frank Giustra in Colombia to launch a $20 million fund for small
businesses.1 The two had visited Colombia together numerous times: for paid speeches, to look in on
Giustra’s growing investments there, and to launch a Clinton Foundation project in the country.
Giustra was invested in natural resources in Colombia. And he was looking to expand his holdings
in oil, natural gas, coal, and timber. The country had been plagued by violence and narco terrorism for
decades and was slowly coming out of it, thanks in part to a large infusion of American foreign aid.
(Colombia was the fourth largest recipient of US foreign and military aid in the world.) It was also
desperate to get a free-trade agreement passed in the United States to jump-start its economy.
What that meant was that Hillary, as secretary of state, held much of the country’s future in her
hands. And as some unseen power of timing would have it, Hillary was set to arrive in Colombia the
very next day. In her memoirs, Hillary called the fact that she and her husband were both in the
country “a happy coincidence in our hectic schedules.”
2
It was the waning weeks of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe’s tenure in office. The thin,
bespectacled Uribe had first been elected in 2002 on a platform of fighting terrorism and violence.
When he took office, he later wrote, “Vast swathes of Colombia were under total dominion of the
narco terroristas.”
3 For Uribe the fight was personal: his father had been killed by Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) terrorists in the 1980s. During his eight years in office, he had
achieved an impressive record of success. But term limits prevented him from running again. (He
tried holding a popular referendum that would get him another term, but Colombian courts rejected
it.) He would be out of office by August 2010 but still had substantial powers until the next election.
Hillary was popping over to Bogotá from nearby Ecuador aboard a US government plane. After
her aircraft touched down at Colombia’s Catam Military Airport, she was greeted by US ambassador
William Brownfield and Colombian foreign minister Jaime Bermudez. Hillary expressed her strong
support for the Uribe government and closer ties with Colombia. “The United States will continue to
support the Colombian people, the Colombian military and their government in the ongoing struggle
against the insurgents, the guerrillas, the narco-traffickers who would wish to turn the clock back,”
she said.
4
These were not meaningless niceties. Only a couple of months earlier, three influential Democratic
senators—who were also Hillary’s friends—had written to her about cutting aid to Colombia. Russ
Feingold of Wisconsin, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, and Patrick Leahy of Vermont had penned a letter
saying it was time to back away. “Given U.S. record budget deficits, we cannot afford to continue
assistance that is not achieving sufficient results,” they wrote. They also dinged Uribe on human
rights. “In particular,” they said, “human rights abuses by Colombian military personnel supported by
the U.S. continue, and those responsible are rarely brought to justice.”
5
Nor were they alone. Foreign aid for Colombia was never a popular subject among Democrats,
who were worried about human rights and labor rights conditions in the country.
6
From the airport Hillary headed into Bogotá and met Bill at a restaurant in the northern part of the
city. With a few friends (it is unclear if Giustra was also there) they enjoyed cappuccinos and a steak
dinner.
The next morning, June 9, Bill headed to Casa de Nariño, the presidential palace, for a quiet
meeting with President Uribe. They met for approximately an hour and had what the media called an
“animated dialogue.”
7
Bill left Casa de Nariño before noon. Hillary arrived for lunch with the president, after which they
signed a series of science and technology agreements. Most importantly for Uribe, Hillary also lent
her vocal support to a trade agreement between the United States and Colombia. “First, let me
underscore President Obama’s and my commitment to the Free Trade Agreement,” she told RCN
Television. “We are going to continue to work to obtain the votes in the Congress to be able to pass
it. We think it’s strongly in the interests of both Colombia and the United States. And I return very
invigorated . . . to begin a very intensive effort to try to obtain the votes to get the Free Trade
Agreement finally ratified.”
8
Uribe could not have been more pleased. It is also worth noting that her support for this agreement
represented a complete reversal of her position—and Obama’s—from the 2008 campaign.
Days after Hillary left Bogotá, Prima Colombia Properties, which Frank Giustra has ownership
interest in through a shell company called Flagship Industries, announced that it had acquired the right
to cut timber in a biologically diverse forest on the pristine Colombian shoreline. The International
Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) calls this property “one of the world’s largest untapped
hardwood timber supplies.”
9 Through its Colombia-domiciled subsidiary REM International CISA,
Prima entered into an exclusive agreement with the Colombian government giving it the right to
“harvest 1,050,000 cubic meters of hardwood” on the west coast of Colombia.
10 The timber would
be cut along picturesque Huaca Beach in Choco and shipped to China.
11
Days later, Pacific Rubiales Energy, a company for which Giustra was the Canadian face,
announced that the Uribe government was giving the company the right to drill for oil on six lucrative
plots.
12 Pacific Rubiales acquired the largest exploration acreage in the Putumayo Basin, which sits at
the center of Colombia’s oil belt. The other plots were in the giant reserves east of Ciusiana Cupiagua, and three blocks in the Llanos Basin, a prolific oil-rich area at the foot of the Andes
mountains.
It was a stunning success, given that Pacific Rubiales was a relatively new company with little
track record in the country. But these lucrative concessions helped the company grow quickly. As
German Hernandez, who oversees business operations for the company, explained in 2011, “[A few
years ago] we were fewer than 20 people, practically living in tents with mosquito netting. . . . Today
we are the number one project in the petroleum industry in Colombia.”
13 By the end of 2010 the
company was producing a net of seventy thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day in Colombia, and
boasted a market cap of over $8.3 billion.
14
According to Pacific Rubiales co-chairman Serafino Iacono, Giustra’s role at the company is to
provide “valuable financial capital and political capital [emphasis added] along the way.”
15
Pacific Rubiales signed up as an early contributor to the Clinton Foundation.
16 Pacific Rubiales
and underwriters contributed over $4 million to the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative
(CGSGI).
17 And as we have seen in several other cases, the company’s decision to give to a charity
thousands of miles away to fund work in Colombia struck local charities as odd. They, along with
labor-backed social welfare organizations, had been clamoring for the company to provide donations
for several health and welfare initiatives. They also wanted the company to raise the salaries of
employees. These efforts were rebuffed. Instead of flowing to local charities, the bulk of the
company’s charitable contributions were given to the Clinton Foundation.
18
Pacific Rubiales, despite its announced commitment, does not appear on the Clinton Foundation list
of donors. Repeated phone calls and e-mails to Pacific Rubiales to determine whether it honored
their commitment have not been returned as of this writing.
Giustra’s run of good business news in the summer of 2010 was not finished. Less than two weeks
after Hillary left, yet another of Giustra’s companies, Petroamerica, announced that Colombian
regulators had designated the company a “restricted operator,” which meant it was eligible to explore
for and produce oil.
19 Petroamerica had been founded only a few months earlier, in late 2009, by
what a Canadian business journal called “a group of part-time managers and directors.”
20 Now,
courtesy of the Uribe government, it was sitting on some very big prospects in Colombia. “Of all the
resource projects that I am involved with, this is the one I am most excited about,” Giustra told one
business publication.
21
The Clinton Foundation was integrated into US State Department energy initiatives in Colombia.
According to a leaked State Department memo, on November 8, 2009, a US government delegation
arrived in Colombia to explore the rapid expansion of energy and mining loans backed by the US
government in Colombia. “The energy sector in Colombia has big plans to expand and the ExportImport Bank (ExIm) and the U.S. Trade Development Agency (TDA) want to be a part of this
expansion by providing financial backing and trade capacity building assistance.” When TDA
representative Patricia Arriagada arrived in Colombia, she met with mines and energy minister
Silvana Giaimo. According to a leaked State Department cable, in that meeting Arriagada was
“accompanied by Manuel Olivera, local director of the Clinton Foundation.”
22 The memo mentions
no other nonprofit organization involved in these discussions.
As a result of that delegation, the US government expanded energy and mining loans in Colombia.
23
One of the big projects funded by the US Export-Import Bank was a $280 million liquid natural gas
(LNG) barge that was to be used to transport LNG from Colombia to China. The barge was being
built for Giustra’s company, Pacific Rubiales.
24
Giustra had other projects in Latin America that received US taxpayer money. Giustra’s Endeavour
Mining arranged for Export-Import funding in September 2010 as part of an $858 million package of
loans for a copper mining project in Mexico called Baja Mining.
25
(According to an Endeavour
PowerPoint marketing presentation, it “closed” the deal.) The project involved developing an
underground copper-zinc mine near the Mexican town of Santa Rosalia. Endeavour was an adviser on
the deal, but Baja Mining was also a “core investment” for the firm, according to one investment
document.
26 US taxpayers were on the hook for approximately $420 million.
27
The Baja investment didn’t go well—at least for American taxpayers. According to the Office of
the Inspector General at the Export-Import Bank, the project was plagued with cost overruns. The
report also suggested that “corporate malfeasance” had taken place. As the report put it, “Our
inspection revealed evidence of inappropriate conduct by several parties including the Borrower’s
failure to make timely disclosure of significant cost overruns, inaccurate representations, allegations
of fraud related to one of the project’s local vendors, management impropriety, and an over-arching
lack of governance.” The report noted further that the Export-Import Bank had failed to perform
proper due diligence when approving the deal. The project apparently fell into default within six
months of financial closing.
28
The full extent of taxpayer funds spent and US government power exerted that helped Giustra
cannot be fully known. In Colombia, as in other countries, he uses a web of companies, shell
companies, foreign affiliates, and offshore entities that make tracking his investments extremely
difficult. In addition to the investments mentioned in this chapter, he also controls a private company
called Blue Pacific, which “owns ports under construction in Cartagena and Barranquilla, as well as
power plants, farms, mines, and other infrastructure assets” in Colombia.
29
Colombia had long been a focus of interest for the Clintons. During his presidency, Bill won praise
from the Colombians for pouring aid into the country to fight both drug cartels and a revolutionary
insurgency. In 2000 he had initiated Plan Colombia, an ambitious program to escalate the war on
drugs that came with more than $1.3 billion in aid.
30
Once he was out of office, his attention shifted from the war on drugs to Colombia’s ambitions to
sign a free-trade agreement with the United States. The Colombian government wanted a free-trade
agreement so that it could sell its products, including natural resources, in the US market tariff free.
President George W. Bush and Republicans in Congress generally favored the deal. Opposition
mostly came from Democrats (and organized labor) who felt the move would hurt wages for US
workers. Democrats also argued that Colombia’s human rights record was poor.
31
For Colombians themselves, it was clear that, as the leading Colombian newspaper, El Pais, put it
in 2006, “The support of Senator Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, will
be decisive.”
32
The story began, as it often does, with a lucrative speech. In June 2005 a South American business
group called Gold Service International offered Bill $800,000 to deliver four speeches in South
America. Gold Service was a keen supporter of the proposed US-Colombia free-trade agreement,
because it would boost Colombian exports to the United States.
This was a lot of money at that time. Though Bill’s fee would go up appreciably when his wife
became secretary of state, his average payment through 2010 was $150,000.
Giustra loaned Bill his jet, and Bill made stops in Mexico City and Bogotá, and then gave two
speeches in São Paulo, Brazil.
33 As Andres Franco, the group’s chief operating officer, explained,
“he was supportive of the trade agreement at the time that he came.” And Bill spoke openly about his
support for it.
34
Meanwhile, Bill made efforts to bring Giustra and Uribe together so that the Canadian investor
could expand his operations in Colombia. Thus, in September 2005 Bill hosted a “philanthropic
event” with Uribe. And as he often did, he mixed philanthropy with business. According to the Wall
Street Journal, the purpose of the meeting was to introduce the two men. As the Journal reported,
Uribe and Giustra “put up two chairs in a hallway and talked for about ten minutes. . . . Later in the
day, a top Clinton aide told Mr. Giustra that he heard the meeting with Mr. Uribe went well.”
35
In January 2007 Giustra’s new company, Pacific Rubiales, signed a pipeline deal with Ecopetrol,
the state-owned Colombian energy company. One month after the deal was sealed, Bill, Giustra, and
Uribe met at the Clintons’ home in Chappaqua, New York. In March, they met again, this time in the
Colombian port city of Cartagena.
36
All along, Democrats remained opposed to military assistance to Colombia as well as the
Colombian free-trade agreement.
37 But Senator Hillary Clinton’s views on the matter remained
ambiguous. As one Latin American financial publication put it, when it came to her positions on trade
“we find a bit of everything.” She was in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) and supported trade deals with Chile, Peru, and Singapore. But she was against the Central
American Free Trade Agreement and extending trade preferences with other South American
countries.
38
So the Colombians continued their courtship by various means.
In June 2007 President Uribe arrived in New York City to headline a dinner event at a posh hotel.
The event was titled “Colombia Is Passion.” In fact, the night was largely about Bill. Uribe presented
him with the “Colombia Is Passion” award for “believing in our country and encouraging others to do
the same.”
39
As Newsweek reported,
Eager to repair its image in the United States and help boost support for a controversial United States-Colombia free-trade
agreement, the beleaguered government of Alvaro Uribe came up with a clever PR move: give Clinton an award at a banquet,
where the popular former president would say nice things about the country.
The dinner included a video depicting Bill as a Colombian hero. Uribe even praised him as the
country’s unofficial minister of tourism. Bill praised Uribe in turn and declared that, while there was
currently a debate in Washington about the free-trade agreement, “[w]e need to remember that we are
friends.”
40 Then he invited Uribe to be a “featured attendee” at the annual Clinton Global Initiative
meeting in New York that September.
As it happens, publicity for the awards ceremony had been handled by Burson-Marsteller
Worldwide, a PR firm then headed by Mark Penn, a longtime political adviser and pollster for the
Clintons.
41 Penn, who was also serving as Hillary’s campaign manager for the 2008 run, was
advising the Colombians on how to get the free-trade deal through Congress. Uribe paid Penn’s firm
$300,000.
42
Penn’s ties to the Colombians proved too embarrassing and he resigned as Hillary’s campaign
manager. For good measure, the Colombians let Burson go, too.
43
Also on the Colombian payroll was Hillary’s campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson’s lobbying
firm, Glover Park. The firm was paid $40,000 a month. While Wolfson didn’t work directly on the
Colombia account, he did have an equity stake in the firm.
44
The trade deal and Penn’s consulting arrangement soon became issues in the Democratic primary.
Courting the labor vote, Barack Obama had come out strongly against a free-trade deal with
Colombia. So did Hillary. In the sort of overheated rhetoric we often hear on the campaign trail, she
was uncompromising. “As I have said for months, I oppose the deal. I have spoken out against the
deal, I will vote against the deal, and I will do everything I can to urge the Congress to reject the
Colombia Free Trade Agreement.”
45
Uribe, sensing the trade pact was imperiled by American politics, lashed out at Obama—but not at
Hillary. “I deplore the fact that Senator Obama, aspiring to be president of the United States, should
be unaware of Colombia’s efforts,” he said. “I think it is for political calculations that he is making a
statement that does not correspond to Colombia’s reality.”
46
Given that both Hillary and Obama were publicly opposed to the trade deal, either way it looked
ominous for Uribe. As one economic consultancy put it, “we are concerned that a Democrat win of
the presidency may stymie the FTA for even longer.”
47
Obama, of course, went on to win the nomination and the presidency. And Hillary, as his newly
minted secretary of state, was quick to change course on the trade pact. In early 2009, while the
Obama administration was reportedly still figuring out its trade policy, Hillary let Uribe know she
was “very proud to be working with Colombia” on the trade deal. As Colombian foreign minister
Jaime Bermudez Merizalde told the BBC after he met with Hillary in February 2009, “What we
talked about was that we have to work together to see how this issue can be handled in Congress.”
48
Hillary had come out swinging in favor of the trade pact when she met with Uribe shortly after Bill
in June 2010. By early 2011 she was helping lead the effort to pass the deal. “There are still
negotiations that are taking place,” she told reporters after meeting with Colombian vice president
Angelino Garzon. “We don’t want to send an agreement just for the sake of sending an agreement. We
want to send an agreement and get it passed.”
“Secretary Clinton’s remarks represent the clearest signal the administration has sent with respect
to its intentions to move the Colombia agreement forward in a specific time frame,” said National
Foreign Trade Council president Bill Reinsch.
49
It did not go unnoticed that this represented a complete policy reversal on Hillary’s part. She
justified the shift on the grounds that the human rights and labor situation in Colombia had improved.
Hillary claimed in a press conference that “[w]e have seen improvements in the human rights
situations in a number of countries,” and cited Colombia, among others.
But Hillary’s words concerning labor union conditions contradicted her own department’s most
recent human rights report.
50 The number of trade unionists killed had actually gone up in 2010.
51
Hillary also claimed that the trade agreement was now a good deal for everyone. “The U.S.-
Colombia Free Trade Agreement would allow our businesses to sell goods in Colombia duty-free—
the same way Colombian goods have entered the United States for many years—and it comes with
important new guarantees on labor and human rights.”
52
That view was not shared by the AFL-CIO, which declared in 2011, “Colombia remains the most
dangerous place in the world for union members.”
53 Human Rights Watch reported that there had been
“virtually no progress” since 2006 in obtaining convictions for union violence, and the press cited
thirty-eight recent murders of trade unionists in the few months after Colombian elections in 2010.
The trade pact with Colombia was approved by Congress and President Obama signed off on it.
The pact benefited US businesses trying to sell products in Colombia and also boosted Colombian
exports to the United States. The Colombian government and business community has hailed it as an
important victory for the Colombian people.
In February 2012 Bill and Giustra were back in Colombia together for meetings and some golf.
Bill was playing in a golf tournament (the Pacific Rubiales Open, no less), which was a fundraiser
for the Clinton Foundation. Bill met with President Juan Manuel Santos.
Since then, Giustra’s interests in Colombia have run into trouble. For instance, the manner in which
energy concessions were handed out has come under fire. There have been media claims of a “juicy
concession” for Giustra from the Colombian government obtained with the help of Bill Clinton.
54
Colombian senator Jorge Enrique Robledo claimed the Uribe government showed favoritism to
Pacific Rubiales during the process of granting Colombian oil concessions.
55
Pacific Rubiales has been the subject of repeated complaints about “deplorable conditions” for
workers. The complaints included “contracts, work hours, pay, democratic guarantees, housing,
hygiene, transportation and the right to organize.” When leaders from the country’s petroleum workers
union Unión Sindical Obrera (USO) tried to mediate, Pacific Rubiales reportedly blocked the public
highways in the region to prevent them from arriving.
56
Another of Giustra’s companies, Prima Colombia Hardwood, has also run into problems. In May
2011 the Ministry of Environment began monitoring the logging being done by Prima Colombia.
According to published reports, the company needed to answer for ten environmental violations,
including erosion of the natural wildlife habitat, shifting water currents in the area, and the alteration
of the vegetation cover. The National Environment Licensing Authority (ANIA) subsequently decided
to deny all environmental permits required by Prima Colombia.
57
10
Disaster Capitalism Clinton-Style
THE 2010 HAITIAN RELIEF EFFORT
On the afternoon of January 12, 2010, a devastating 7.0 earthquake shook the island nation of Haiti.
In less than a minute, the violent tremors leveled an estimated 25,000 government and commercial
buildings, more than 100,000 homes, and killed approximately 230,000 people.
When the earth stopped quaking, more than 1.5 million people were left living in makeshift tent
camps. “In 30 seconds, Haiti lost 60 percent of its GDP,” said Haitian prime minister Jean-Max
Bellerive. For a country whose history was plagued with natural disasters, corrupt leaders, and
abject poverty, it must have seemed like the exclamation point on some sort of cruel natural joke.
The international charitable response from groups like the Salvation Army and the Red Cross was
generous, as millions of people around the world wrote checks or donated via their cell phones.
Foreign governments committed funds, too.
Days after the earthquake, Hillary Clinton was en route to Port-au-Prince to inspect the damage. To
accommodate her, all flights to and from the island were halted for three hours. Hillary arrived on a
Coast Guard C-130, along with American relief workers and a supply of toothpaste, mustard, and
cigarettes her staff had purchased from US supermarkets the night before. She did not leave the
airport, to avoid impeding rescue efforts, but declared her deep sympathy for the people of Haiti and
offered assurances that America would be Haiti’s “friend, partner, and supporter,” with the State
Department and USAID taking a front and center role in the relief effort.
Bill Clinton was soon on the ground in Haiti, too. He had been appointed a United Nations special
envoy to the island in 2009 and traveled to Haiti regularly. With a cluster of cameras around him, Bill
teared up as he described what he saw.
The Clintons’ close friend and confidante, Cheryl Mills, who was Hillary’s chief of staff and
counselor at the State Department, was assigned responsibility for how the taxpayer money, directed
through USAID, would be spent.
1 Within days, the State Department conceived and created a funnel
that would direct the aid and relief money that would soon flood into the country. The Interim Haiti
Recovery Commission (IHRC) was given the task of executing an action plan developed with the help
of Haitian authorities and countries that were donating funds to the rebuilding effort. It was supposed
to prioritize the rebuilding of Port-au-Prince, with a focus on restoring the economy and government
services.
2
Bill was promptly appointed co-chair, along with Bellerive. Together, they constituted IHRC’s
Executive Committee, giving them concentrated decision-making power. In this role Bill was
ultimately responsible for the approval of any projects that would be funded by US taxpayer dollars
or international organizations. Clinton and Bellerive would prove to work effectively together. As we
will see, Bellerive would later go into business with members of the Clinton family in Haiti.
In public statements, Bill waxed romantic about how they would rebuild Haiti, like a phoenix from
the ashes, in a grand vision of social engineering. “I want them to close their landfills,” he told
Esquire magazine, “recycle everything and use the rest for energy. Wouldn’t it be great if they
become the first wireless nation in the world? They could, I’m telling you, they really could.”
3
It is hard to underestimate the role that IHRC would play in the disbursement of funds. As the State
Department itself noted, in addition to reviewing project applications and deciding if those projects
would be funded, “IHRC is the planning body for the Haitian recovery.” In particular, as the US
Government Accountability Office (GAO) put it, IHRC was supposed to “coordinate donors, conduct
strategic planning, approve reconstruction projects, and provide accountability.”
4
With the massive expenditure of US taxpayer money, some things have improved in Haiti. Some
roads are considerably better than they were before. A large amount of debris has been removed. But
beyond that, by the measure of promises made by the Clintons, the efforts to rebuild Haiti, which
were largely controlled by Bill and Hillary Clinton, have been a massive failure.
Five years after the earthquake, Haiti is not a “wireless nation.” Billions of dollars have indeed
been poured into the country, with Hillary and Bill having much of the say in how the funds were
allocated. But according to GAO, IHRC ignored the action plan and funding priorities that had been
set up by the Haitian government and donor countries.
5 Moreover, much of the taxpayer money
intended for practical rebuilding was squandered.
6 Funds for reconstruction have ended up in
worthless projects—while in several cases Clinton friends, allies, and even family members have
benefited from the reconstruction circumstances.
Natural disasters often create enormous opportunities for politically connected contractors to make
money courtesy of the rebuilding effort. Author and critic Naomi Klein calls it “disaster capitalism.”
Disaster capitalism need not be all bad. You do need qualified professionals to go into devastated
areas and begin the process of providing immediate relief and rebuilding infrastructure. An example
of where such efforts went well was in Indonesia, following the tsunami that devastated the region in
2004. Communities that were cut off from the rest of the country saw their services and infrastructure
restored, and crime and corruption were generally kept under control, according to the World Bank.
7
In the case of Haiti, the process was handled very differently. IHRC, for example, was supposed to
have a Performance and Anti-corruption Office (PAO) to monitor reconstruction efforts and
investigate allegations of corruption. But it was eleven months before a single employee was even
hired as part of PAO.
8 What’s more, IHRC was never fully staffed, and much of the decision making
was left in the hands of key employees of the Clinton Foundation.
9
Less than a month after the earthquake hit, US ambassador Kenneth Merten sent a cable from Port-au-Prince to State Department headquarters titled “THE GOLD RUSH IS ON.”
10 A flood of eager
businessmen were rushing to the capital looking to obtain government contracts. But securing
contracts and business apparently required knowing the right people. Put simply, it was widely
believed you needed access to the Clintons.
Florida-based contractor J. R. Bergeron was one of several business owners jockeying to land
lucrative contracts to help with disaster cleanup. To compete for cash in what Bergeron called “the
Super Bowl of disasters,” he understood the Clintons to be the referees.
11 His company, Bergeron
Emergency Services, invested more than a million dollars to move employees and equipment to Haiti
even before landing a contract. But Bergeron knew he would have to do more than just demonstrate
expertise and readiness. As he later observed, “posturing and aggressive self-promotion in Haiti was
an inevitable part of this high-stakes competition. . . . Politics plays a large role.”
12
Bergeron hired two lobbyists, giving them the job of “reaching out to officials of the Clinton
Foundation’s Haiti earthquake relief efforts and the U.S. Agency for International Development.”
13
They were Mitch Berger and Alex Heckler; Heckler had served on Hillary’s national campaign
finance committee. Bergeron also says he made a donation to the Clinton Foundation. (Records
indicate he gave less than $250.) He failed to obtain any contracts.
The realities seemed clear. As one individual told the Wall Street Journal , “if you don’t have
Clinton connections you won’t be in the game.”
14
But those with impeccable Clinton credentials apparently didn’t need to hire lobbyists.
Merten’s cable specifically mentioned the arrival of longtime Clinton friend and confidant General
Wesley Clark in the weeks after the earthquake.
15 Like Bill, Clark was from Arkansas and had been
NATO commander during Bill’s presidency. Indeed, Clark had been one of Clinton's favorite
generals and received several military promotions when Bill was in the White House. As the New
Yorker points out, Clark’s last three army jobs, including two at the highest rank, were awarded to
him without the army’s recommendation.
16
When Clark sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2004, Bill strongly backed his
candidacy. When Hillary ran for president in 2008, Clark raised money for her campaign. Clark also
serves on an advisory board of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). Much later, in 2013, he signed the
first fundraising letter for a super-pac backing a 2016 Hillary presidential bid.
17
According to Merten’s cable, Clark quickly scored a meeting with Haitian president René
Préval.
18
Clark had come to Port-au-Prince in search of a home-building contract for a south Florida
company called Innovida, a manufacturer of building materials. (Clark sat on the board of the
company along with former Florida governor Jeb Bush.) Clark was a big cheerleader for the
company. “It can do more for housing in Haiti, better and faster, than any other technology out there,”
he said. Innovida’s ties to the Clintons ran even deeper than Clark. According to the South Florida
Business Journal, Innovida’s CEO Claudio Osorio was a “big fundraiser” for the Hillary 2008
campaign and had contributed to CGI.
19
Innovida had little track record of actually building homes. Yet the company saw its project fast tracked by the Haitian government and the State Department.
20
Innovida received a $10 million loan
from the US government to build five hundred houses in Haiti.
Sadly, the houses were never built. In 2012 Osorio was indicted and convicted of financial fraud.
Prosecutors would later accuse Osorio, who drove a Maserati and lived in a Miami Beach mansion,
of using the money intended for relief victims to “repay investors and for his and his co-conspirators
personal benefit and to further the fraud scheme.”
21 He was ultimately sentenced to twelve years in
jail. Innovida collapsed.
It is hard to overstate the power the Clintons wielded in the disbursement of US taxpayer money for
Haitian relief. Esquire magazine called Bill the “CEO of a leaderless nation,” because of his role as
the co-chair of IHRC.
22 The Miami Herald repeatedly referred to Bill as the “co-czar of the recovery
effort.”
23 Others called him “president of Haiti” or “viceroy” because of his powers. Hillary, as
secretary of state, had ultimate control over the disbursement of US taxpayer aid dollars.
24
Many Haitians believed the Clinton's further demonstrated their power in Haiti when Garry Conille
became prime minister in October 2011. Conille had worked for Bill as a speechwriter and as his
UN special envoy chief of staff.
25 Conille’s appointment was seen as a compromise, and the fact that
he was backed by Bill Clinton was touted by some Haitians as one of the reasons for his selection.
26
What happened in Haiti was the classic Clinton Blur, mixing philanthropy, politics, and business.
Bill arrived in Port-au-Prince wearing several hats and pursuing myriad agendas, both public and
private. As the Economist succinctly noted,
The strange multi-dimensional role that Mr. Clinton plays as co-chair of the IHRC, special UN envoy, former US president,
spouse of the US secretary of state, and head of his own foundation which supports projects in the country, will continue to lead to
confusion about who he advocates for and to whom he ultimately answers.
27
Pushback from within IHRC came almost immediately. In October 2010 Jean-Marie Bourjolly, a
member of IHRC, wrote a memorandum to the co-chairs and the other commission members cautioning
that by “vesting all powers and authority of the Board in the Executive Committee [Clinton and
Bellerive], it is clear that what is expected of us [the rest of IHRC] is to act as a rubber-stamping
body.”
28 Bourjolly’s concerns were not appreciated. Indeed, his memorandum was not included in the
official minutes of the October IHRC meeting.
Other commission members and employees confirmed that Bill and Hillary got what they wanted
when it came to Haiti projects and contracts. As one employee noted, projects were approved
because “they were submitted by USAID and State.” Moreover, “as long as USAID is submitting it
and USAID is paying for it, they would be approved.”
29
In December 2010 nine of the fourteen Haitian IHRC members wrote an official complaint to
Clinton and Bellerive; they felt “completely disconnected from the activities of the IHRC.” IHRC was
moving forward on projects that didn’t seem to conform to the action plan that the Haitian government
and donor nations had agreed to in the months following the tragedy. The members warned that “we
risk ending up with a variety of ill-assorted projects, some of which are certainly interesting and
useful taken individually, but which collectively can neither meet the urgency nor lay the foundation
for the rehabilitation of Haiti, and even less its development.”
30
The GAO echoed those concerns, noting in May 2011, “funding for approved projects is uneven
across sectors and is not necessarily aligned with Haitian priorities.”
Bill’s role as unofficial “viceroy” raised questions in the Haitian community because of the
Clintons’ penchant for mixing politics with crony business arrangements in Haiti. Back when Bill had
been appointed special envoy for the United Nations in 2009, the Haiti Observateur challenged both
Clintons to “come clean about [Bill’s] relationship to the former Haitian president and he and his
wife’s business dealings in Haiti.”
31
“There have been whispers and rumors for quite a while about the Clintons’ choice connections to
the former president and particularly the telephone business in Haiti,” the paper said.
As president in 1994, Bill Clinton had sent troops to Haiti to return to power Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, the duly elected president who had been forced out in a 1991 coup. While president, after he
was restored to power, a special deal was granted to a small US-based company called Fusion
Communications. (The prime minister of Haiti at the time was Aristide friend and ally René Préval,
who was president at the time of the earthquake.) The Haitian government–owned telecom company,
Teleco, granted Fusion long-distance minutes from the United States to Haiti at a deeply discounted
price. With a large number of Haitians living in the United States and calling home, this was a big
market.
Fusion was a relatively small player in the long-distance telephone market. But it was top-heavy
with operatives and politicians closely aligned with Bill and Hillary. The board of directors included
Tom “Mack” McLarty, Bill’s former chief of staff, and was headed by Marvin Rosen, who had been
chairman of the Democratic National Committee’s finance committee during Bill’s 1996 reelection
campaign. It was under Rosen’s tenure that the notorious White House fundraising coffees, rental of
the Lincoln Bedroom to large contributors, and foreign donations from China and Asia had
occurred.
32 Also on the board was Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor whom Bill had
appointed ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
33
Teleco’s special arrangement with Fusion was supposed to be public, in keeping with the
regulations and laws of the FCC. But the company worked hard to keep it secret. As Wall Street
Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady, who broke the story, wrote, “By law the agreement is a
public document but Fusion wouldn’t give it to me until the FCC required them to do so.” It took her
eight years to get a copy of the contract.
34
It’s easy to see why. The contract gave Fusion access to the Haitian telephone network at a rate of
twelve cents a minute, even though the official FCC rate was fifty cents a minute. In short, it was a
sweetheart deal. Fusion says it “never made any improper payments or engaged in any improper
activity with regard to its relationship with Teleco.” But of course, it didn’t have to.
35
After the 2010 earthquake, more than a decade later, there were new telecom prizes available in
Haiti. The system was set up so that decisions on doling out contracts and projects went through the
Clintons.
In the months following the earthquake, the Clintons began pushing the idea of a wireless mobile
phone money-transfer system for Haiti. The idea was to enable friends and relatives to send money
directly to people in the quake-ravaged country. Hillary’s USAID was quick to send taxpayer money
via a grant; it also organized the effort. The Bill Gates Foundation also came on board. The Haiti
Mobile Money Initiative also offered incentive funds to companies who would establish mobile
money services in the country.
The initiative’s big winner was Digicel, a mobile phone company owned by Irish billionaire Denis
O’Brien. Digicel received millions in US taxpayer money for its TchoTcho Mobile system.
(TchoTcho means “pocket money” in Creole.) The USAID Food for Peace program, under direct
control of the State Department through Cheryl Mills, chose the TchoTcho system for its money
transfers. Haitians were given cell phones and a free TchoTcho account. When Haitians used the
system, they paid O’Brien’s company millions in fees. They also became users of O’Brien’s
TchoTcho program.
36
O’Brien had bought the company in 2008. After the project’s launch, Digicel’s mobile phone
subscriptions soared and its profit margins rose, winning praise from investors.
37 By 2012 Digicel
had 77 percent of the Haitian mobile phone market, a rise fueled in part by the fact that it was a
digital bank supplier.
Was the mobile money system a good idea? Very possibly it was. But the trouble was not in the
idea itself; rather, it was the fact that it was helping make O’Brien lots of money. From April 2011 to
March 2012 Digicel’s revenues increased 14 percent and its subscriber base jumped 27 percent. By
September 2012 Haiti had overtaken Jamaica as Digicel’s most profitable market. The Haitian market
became key to the success of Digicel. O’Brien granted himself $300 million in dividends from
Digicel in 2012.
38
O’Brien was in turn making money for the Clintons.
O’Brien arranged at least three speeches in Ireland, well as a speech in Jamaica. Bill’s October 9,
2013, speech at the Conrad Hotel in Dublin was his third in three years, “and was mostly facilitated
by billionaire Irish tycoon Denis O’Brien,” noted Irish Central. “Last year Clinton delivered the
keynote address at the Worldwide Ireland Funds annual conference in Cork. . . . The year before he
was flown over to Ireland on O’Brien’s private jet to deliver a speech at the Global Irish Economic
Forum in Dublin Castle.”
39
In October 2010 Clinton gave a speech in Jamaica for $225,000 on “Our
Common Humanity.” The speech was sponsored by Whisky Productions, in partnership with
O’Brien’s Digicel.
40
The timing of these paid speeches is also notable. The Haitian Mobile Money Initiative (HMMI)
was announced in June 2010. Three months later, on September 29, Bill gave a speech at Dublin
castle sponsored by O’Brien. The next day, Digicel filed notice of its intent to compete for HMMI
contracts. In January of the following year, Digicel became the first company to be awarded funds for
participation in HMMI.
On October 8, 2011, Bill gave a speech for the Global Irish Economic Forum, again facilitated by
O’Brien. The following day, Digicel was awarded $100,000 through HMMI, which it was to split
with fellow cell provider Voila.
On December 2 of the same year, USAID paid the first installment of what would eventually be
more than $2 million of taxpayer money into O’Brien’s Digicel Foundation, based in Jamaica.
According to government databases, Digicel had never received taxpayer money before.
The inter lay of money and favors also included the use of O’Brien’s jet. When Frank Giustra’s
jetliner was not available, Clinton used O’Brien’s, a modest Gulfstream 550 that seats twenty.
41
In addition to forking over these immense speaking fees, O’Brien was also a major contributor to
the Clinton Foundation, pouring between $1 million and $5 million into the Clintons’ legacy project
sometime in 2010 or 2011.
The Clintons lavished praise on O’Brien for his generosity and business acumen. In 2012 Bill
named O’Brien a Clinton Global Citizen, an annual award offered by CGI. O’Brien received his
award before a cheering crowd as Bill praised him for his visionary leadership ability. Bill also
praised him in an article he penned for Time magazine titled “The Case for Optimism.”
42
Ironically, Bill was conferring this award after an Irish government tribunal issued a scathing
report concerning how O’Brien had made his fortune in the early days of the Irish wireless industry.
The tribunal found that in the 1990s O’Brien had purchased properties for a government official
named Michael Lowry, who was responsible for Irish telecom policy. The properties included land
in Mansfield, England, and a home in Cheadle, England, that were purchased with funds from
O’Brien’s Credit Suisse account in London. In exchange, the tribunal found, “Lowry went to
considerable effort to assist Denis O’Brien in securing the mobile phone license” that would end up
making him a very rich man. For his part, O’Brien denies ever giving money to government officials
and he was never formally charged by authorities.
43
But it wasn’t just connected businessmen who were benefiting from the rebuilding of Haiti. Clinton
family members did, too. Bill and Hillary had been looking for investors to come to Haiti. But it was
a risky prospect, given the infrastructure problems, social and political instability, and endemic
corruption. One possible bright spot was mining. Haiti is rich in natural resources—there is an
estimated $20 billion in gold, silver, and other precious minerals under the rocky Haitian soil.
In 2012 the Haitian government decided to do something it had not done in more than half a
century: grant permits for open-pit gold mining.
One of two recipients was a small North Carolina start-up called VCS Mining. The company had
little track record of mining operations in Haiti, or anywhere else for that matter. But its leadership
would later boast a board member with a familiar last name: Tony Rodham, Hillary’s youngest
brother. Rodham would join the board of advisors less than a year after VCS was granted the mining
permit. Another member of the board: former Haitian prime minister (and IHRC co-chairman with
Bill) Jean-Max Bellerive.
The Haitian government gave VCS a “gold mining exploitation permit” (in the company’s words)
for a project in Morne Bossa, which could be generously renewed for up to twenty-five years. “This
is one of two permits issued today, the first permit of their kind issued in over five decades,” the
company proudly noted.
Rodham had no background in mining. More than half of his bio on the VCS Mining website
concerned his ties to his sister and her husband.
44
Not surprisingly, the deal provoked outrage in the Haitian senate. The mining concession was a
sweetheart deal. For one thing, the royalties to be paid to the Haitian government were only 2.5
percent, which mining experts noted at the time was “really low.” “Anything under five percent is just
really ludicrous for a country like Haiti,” said mining royalties expert Claire Kumar. “You shouldn’t
even consider it.”
45
The episode resulted in a resolution by the Haitian parliament challenging the secrecy of the
process and calling for a moratorium on new mining permits. The resolution passed the Haitian senate
unanimously.
46
VCS Mining is continuing to build on its mining concessions in Haiti.
Meanwhile, connected businessmen continued to reap benefits from the reconstruction efforts.
For contracts to remove debris in Port-au-Prince, USAID went with Washington-based CHF
International. As Rolling Stone put it, CHF became “one of the largest USAID contractors in Haiti
and enjoys a cozy relationship with Washington.”
47
It turns out that the company’s CEO, David Weiss, had been the deputy US trade representative for
North American affairs during the Clinton administration. (He was also a 2008 Hillary for President
campaign contributor.) In addition, the corporate secretary of the board of directors is Lauri FitzPegado, who was a protégé of Clinton commerce secretary Ron Brown. Fitz-Pegado had served in a
series of positions in the Clinton White House, including assistant secretary of commerce.
CHF received particular scorn from journalists on the ground in Haiti. According to Rolling Stone,
the firm operated out of “two spacious mansions in Port-au-Prince and maintains a fleet of brand-new
vehicles, [and] is generally considered one of the most ostentatious” groups working out of Haiti.
48
USAID contracts also went to consulting firms like New York–based Dalberg Global
Development Advisors, which was also an active participant in and financial supporter of CGI. In
spring 2010 Dalberg received a $1.5 million contract to identify relocation sites for Haitians
displaced by the quake from their homes and communities.
USAID’s inspector general reviewed the firm’s recommendations and found them generally sloppy
and unusable. As Rolling Stone reported, “One of the sites they said was habitable was actually a
small mountain. . . . It had an open-sided pit on one side of it, a severe 100 foot cliff, and ravines. . . .
It became clear that these people may not even have gotten out of their SUVs.”
49
One early initiative pushed by both Bill and Hillary was to provide transitional housing for those
left homeless by the earthquake. The plan was to give grants and funds to build approximately twenty
thousand temporary shelters for $138 million. But nearly a year later, an April 19, 2011, audit by the
USAID Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that only 22 percent of the shelters had been built
and that many of those were “substandard.”
50
The results were no better when it came to providing new permanent homes.
In December 2010 Bill and Hillary approved a “new settlements program” that called for fifteen
thousand homes to be built in and around Port-au-Prince. But by June 2013, more than two and a half
years later, the GAO audit revealed that only nine hundred houses had been built. The goal was
subsequently cut to twenty-six hundred. At the same time, the cost of the project almost doubled, from
$53 million to $90 million.
Even projects run through the Clinton Foundation and not the federal government achieved
disastrous results.
When Bill decided that the United States needed to secure temporary housing for Haitian
schoolchildren (a legitimate priority), Clayton Homes approached the Clinton Foundation and offered
to help. The company was still in trouble with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for
sending thousands of bad trailers to the US Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. A class action brought
against Clayton Homes and others was eventually settled.
51
In Haiti the Clinton Foundation paid $4 million of private money for what were called “hurricane
proof trailers” that were “structurally unsafe,” and in some instances were found to have high levels
of formaldehyde, with insulation coming out of the walls. The fumes, mold problems, and stifling heat
made students sick. Many trailers ended up abandoned because they were poorly designed and ill
suited to the Haitian climate.
52
From Chappaqua, New York, Bill dreamed up the idea of a housing expo in Haiti that would bring
architects and design firms from around the world to create sustainable homes using composite
materials.
53 The project was dubbed Building Back Better Communities (BBBC). Each builder
erected a sample home for Haitians to live in. These buildings and designs were expected to be
adopted for widespread use in the earthquake-ravaged country. But fourteen months later, “most of the
model homes sat empty,” providing shelter for squatters and the occasional goat.
54
“It was a waste of money with no respect for the builders,” Gabriel Rosenberg of GR Construction,
a Haitian firm, said in a telephone interview. “We invested about 25,000 dollars. We expected to sell
those houses.”
55
“It was the biggest joke I’ve ever seen,” complained John Sorge, with the firm Innovative
Composites International (ICI). “It was a hoodwink to promote the government . . . the whole Expo
was a farce.”
56
By far the largest and most ambitious project for Hillary and Bill was their plan to build a clothing
factory in northern Haiti. The area had been untouched by the earthquake, but they authorized the use
of US taxpayer funds for rebuilding to create what would be called the Caracol Industrial Park.
57
The Clintons had actually been pushing this project for some time. Cheryl Mills, Hillary’s right
hand at State, was “credited with leading the effort for more than a year,” wrote the Cleveland Plain
Dealer.
58 Originally a straightforward plan for economic development, the project gained new
momentum as a means to both uplift the Haitian economy and house homeless workers. In the end, the
complex project required hundreds of millions in US taxpayer money and special legislation passed
through Congress granting tariff-free access to US markets.
Ostensibly designed for the benefit of the Haitian people, Caracol has shown mixed results. As we
have already seen, the best intentions often go awry in a place like Haiti. One thing is clear, however:
the most obvious beneficiaries of the deal were three family-owned companies with a long history of
supporting the Clintons.
To start things off, a major clothing manufacturer had to be induced to build a factory. Sae-A, a
South Korean textile company, was lured to Haiti with a State Department commitment of $124
million for a power plant and basic infrastructure, as well as for employee housing. The InterAmerican Development Bank promised another $100 million. The Haitian government gave Sae-A a
fifteen-year break on taxes. Meanwhile, in the spring of 2010, Hillary, Bill, and Cheryl Mills pushed
for and secured the passage of the Haiti Economic Lift Program (HELP), a law that would allow
textiles to enter the United States from Haiti tariff-free.
Construction then began. However, before the omelet could be made, a few eggs had to be broken.
Three hundred sixty-six farmers, relatively prosperous by Haitian standards, were evicted from their
land to make way for the factory. The earthquake didn’t get them—but the factory did. “We watched,
voiceless,” Jean-Louis Saint Thomas, an elderly farmer, said. “The government paid us to shut us
up.”
59
The construction contract for employee housing went to a Minnesota-based firm called Thor
Construction. In addition to the contract rate, the firm received “danger pay” and “hardship pay,”
increasing its take by over 50 percent. Thor Construction executives, including the CEO, are heavy
contributors to Democrats.
The parameters of the job soon changed. The original estimate was that the worker houses would
cost $8,000. But due to cost overruns, the price tag quickly jumped to $23,409. The original plan was
to build twenty-five thousand homes. In the end, according to the GAO, little more than six thousand
were constructed.
60
In July 2012 Hillary and Bill showed up in Caracol for the factory’s grand opening, even as rubble
still clogged the streets in the capital city of Port-au-Prince.
61 The Clintons were joined by actors
Sean Penn and Ben Stiller, billionaire businessman Richard Branson, and fashion icon Donna Karan
to celebrate the factory’s opening. Hillary touted it as a great day for Haiti. Bill teared up.
For his part, Bill Vastine, a member of the USAID Shelter Team that established the project’s
original parameters, was aghast at the results. “If the American people saw the cost of this, they’d say
‘you’ve got to be out of your mind,’” he told a reporter in 2014.
62
Perhaps those happiest were the US retailers—all of whom enjoy long-standing connections with
the Clintons—who would benefit from selling the low-cost products coming out of Caracol.
These included GAP, whose chairman and CEO Robert Fischer sat on the Hillary for President
finance committee. The Fischer family had been longtime Clinton financial supporters.
Another big beneficiary: Target Stores, which was founded and is still controlled by the Dayton
family. The Daytons have also been longtime Clinton financial supporters.
Wal-Mart also received tariff-free clothing from the factory. Hillary had sat on the Wal-Mart board
back when Bill was governor of Arkansas. While some Walton family members do not share the
Clintons’ politics, several have written checks to a pro-Hillary super-pac since the factory opened.
Regrettably, Caracol has failed to live up to its hype. The project’s sponsors claimed that it would
create sixty thousand jobs. The actual number: about three thousand. The daily wage for workers is
two hundred gourdes, which is roughly five dollars. For workers at the factory this is obviously better
than nothing. But it is hard to believe such meager results were justified at such great expense.
63
In sum, little of the money that has poured into Haiti since the 2010 earthquake has ended up
helping Haitians. And how that money was spent was largely up to Hillary and Bill.
This fact has prompted two Haitian lawyers to petition Haiti’s Supreme Court of Auditors and
Administrative Disputes to demand an audit of Bill Clinton’s tenure on IHRC. The lawyers, Newton
Louis St-Juste and André Michel, have asked for information “to determine the relationship between
the former Head of State William Jefferson Bill Clinton and the firms that benefited from contracts
during and after his term as head of the IHRC.”
64
In the meantime, the rubble-strewn streets of Port-au-Prince are still populated by those who saw
their homes destroyed in 2010. These victims’ net worth hasn’t changed but that of the Clintons and
their associates surely has.
11
Quid pro Quo?
On December 9, 2009, the State Department beamed out a video message from Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton. The occasion was “International Anti-Corruption Day.” Seated in front of the
camera, she spoke about the important fight against political corruption around the world and praised
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) work combating bribery and
graft. The OECD is an international body of the world’s largest economies. Hillary herself chaired
the group in 2011, on its fiftieth anniversary. In the video, Hillary lauded OECD’s Anti-Bribery
Convention as “a milestone in global efforts to encourage responsible and accountable governance.”
She went on to declare that the United States “fully supports the OECD’s anti-corruption agenda.”
1
Fighting corruption and bribery in the developing world was an important focus during Hillary’s
tenure. As a State Department spokesman explained, she “elevated corruption as a major focus of
U.S. foreign policy. She also has promoted the importance of international anti-corruption
agreements, including the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention.”
2
The OECD Working Group on Bribery specifically explains that “individuals and companies can
also be prosecuted when third parties are involved in the bribe transaction, such as when someone
other than the official who was bribed receives the illegal benefit, including a family member,
business partner, or a favorite charity of the official.”
3
How does she reconcile her anti-corruption stance with the many transactions involving her and
her husband that arguably present serious conflicts of interest, even in the best possible light? How
can she maintain that her decisions were unaffected by the millions given to her husband and their
family foundation, even if there were no explicit agreements? How does she not see herself as part of
the problem?
Based on the OECD’s definition of bribery, there does not need to be an explicit quid pro quo. As
the US Sixth Circuit Court noted in a 2009 corruption case, a quid pro quo does not require “a
particular, identifiable act” when the funds were transferred. “Instead, it is sufficient if the public
official understood that he or she was expected to exercise some influence on the payor’s behalf as
opportunities arose.”
4 Friends, money, and politics are a dangerous cocktail. The Clintons should
know to avoid this kind of drinking while driving US policy.
Large commitments have been made by foreign businessmen with records of making payments to
government officials to gain influence. Gilbert Chagoury, for example, who has sponsored speeches
by Bill and committed $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative, has a long history of association
with corrupt transactions in Nigeria. Denis O’Brien, who has also arranged speeches and written
checks to the Clinton Foundation, was implicated in enriching government bureaucrats in Ireland to
help his cellular business.
5
The Clintons themselves have a history of questionable financial transactions. During their first
presidential campaign in 1992, concerns were raised about their position in a real estate development
in Arkansas known as Whitewater. There was also the matter of Hillary’s miraculous profit from
cattle futures, which turned a $1,000 investment into $100,000. No one ever proved that these
transactions were illegal. But a cloud hovered over their heads and, when Bill became president, he
and Hillary brought it with them to Washington.
In Bill’s first term as president, as both he and Hillary faced myriad allegations concerning
unethical conduct, his legal defense fund accepted an anonymous donation of $450,000 through a
Little Rock restaurateur named Charlie Trie. Clinton and Trie were close friends. Shortly after the
1992 election, Trie began channeling money to the legal defense fund and into the DNC’s so-called
soft-money accounts for the president’s reelection. The DNC became so concerned that the money
might be coming from China that it hired private investigator Terry Lenzner to investigate.
As Lenzner later wrote, “I could see why they were concerned; red flags were obvious. For
example, the money orders had different names on them, but the word ‘presidential’ was misspelled
on all of them—in the exact same way and in the same handwriting.”
6 Lenzner discovered that many
of these donations were from people who were making only $20,000 to $30,000 a year and could not
possibly be the source of these large contributions. Accordingly, Lenzner recommended the DNC
return the donations. The DNC agreed. But Bill initially refused. It was only after the co-chairs of his
legal defense fund (a former attorney general and a Catholic priest) both threatened to resign that the
donations were sent back.
Following the 1996 election, the DNC was forced to return some $2.8 million in illegal or
improper donations, most of it from foreign sources. Of that amount, almost 80 percent was raised or
contributed by Trie and another Clinton friend, John Huang. Like Trie, Huang had known Clinton for
years and worked for the Lippo Group, an Indonesian conglomerate. Huang took a post as a DNC
fundraiser and quickly set about soliciting large sums of money from foreign sources. Huang arranged
for South Korean businessman John H. K. Lee to have dinner with President Clinton—in return for a
$250,000 donation.
7 He also arranged for Yogesh K. Gandhi, who claimed to be related to Mahatma
Gandhi, to meet in the White House with the president and be photographed being presented with an
award—in exchange for $325,000. Both donations had to be returned after the stories became
public.
8
Meanwhile, more than one hundred “White House coffees” were held in 1995 and 1996 at which
large-dollar contributors paid for face time with the president. White House officials initially denied
that these were fundraisers, but schedules from Harold Ickes, the deputy chief of staff in the White
House, referred to them as “political/fundraising coffees.” White House officials even tracked the
“projected revenue” of these events, including who paid and how much.
9 Then there was the evidence
that, for the right contribution, you could spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom.
10
The Clinton's aren’t stupid people. They know the law and take pains to operate within it. Besides,
corruption of the kind I have described in this book is very difficult to prove. We cannot ultimately
know what goes on in their minds and ultimately prove the links between the money they took in and
the benefits that subsequently accrued to themselves, their friends, and their associates. That said, the
pattern of behavior I have established is too blatant to ignore, and deserves legal scrutiny by those
with investigative capabilities that go beyond journalism.
Over the last dozen years, the Clintons have been involved in hundreds of transactions (as private
citizens and public officials) with foreign governments, foreign investors, and foreign corporations
around the world. It appears from the Clinton Foundation donor list and the roster of those who have
sponsored speeches that there is barely an oligarch, royal family, or foreign investor in trouble with
the law that is not represented.
As we saw earlier, four of the Clinton Foundation trustees have been charged or convicted of
financial crimes. Is there another foundation anywhere in the world that has faced similar problems?
More to the point, why would a former American president choose to associate with such dubious
characters?
Hillary’s apparent involvement in these transactions is even more troubling. While Bill was a
private citizen, Hillary was still a government official. Her tenures as a senator and as secretary of
state are marked by an alarming pattern of large money flows: the sources of the funds, the amounts,
and the timing were frequently suspect. Many payments occurred as Hillary was grappling with vital
national security questions involving everything from uranium to the Keystone XL pipeline.
In fact, the money flow did not slow down when Hillary became America’s chief diplomat. On the
contrary, it accelerated, especially the funds from overseas. And the funds came from a collection of
troubling sources: foreign governments, third world oligarchs, and foreign corporations. The biggest
paydays came not from countries like Great Britain or Germany, but from countries and industries
with cultures where bribery and corruption are common and occur on a massive scale.
In March 2012 Hillary delivered remarks in the grand ballroom of the Mayflower Hotel in
downtown Washington, DC. The occasion was a dinner for Transparency International, an
international organization that fights corruption. Hillary spoke at length about how “sunlight [is] the
best disinfectant” and declared that fighting corruption is an “integral part of national security.”
Hillary said, “our credibility depends on practicing what we preach.”
11
But as we’ve seen, the Clintons have failed to live up to their commitments to President Obama, the
US Senate, and the American people to simply disclose the names of all Clinton Foundation major
contributors. Multimillion-dollar foreign contributions have not been reported. Contributions of
shares of stock in foreign companies that had business before the State Department were also not
disclosed. Foreign corporations that poured in millions have been hidden from view. Moreover, the
cases chronicled in this book are only the ones we know of.
And when it comes to Bill’s speeches, the Clintons have often failed to fully disclose who is
actually paying for the speeches. Why do the Clintons do this? Why do they put themselves again and
again in positions that raise serious questions about their ethical conduct?
Opinions run the gamut. Defenders claim that it is not about the money: Bill and Hillary don’t
really care that much about it. That’s an odd argument. If wealth is not the goal, why charge six-figure
speaking fees and pocket the money? Why not charge a minimal fee or donate the proceeds to charity?
Money definitely appears to be a factor. The Clintons are just like many in politics: money carries
serious weight. Gather enough weight and you can intimidate most people into not questioning how
you got it.
Indeed, as noted above, the Clintons have always been shamelessly transactional. During Bill’s
tenure as governor of Arkansas, for example, it was Hillary who benefited the family financially
through deals with those who wanted something from her husband. Her remarkable success in cattle
futures comes to mind. James Blair, who was an outside counsel to Tyson Foods, set up her accounts.
In the same period, Tyson was a beneficiary of several state actions.
12
Most recently, of course, the roles have been reversed. Those seeking help from Hillary became
the ones throwing money at Bill. Foreign money has flowed to the Clintons and their foundation from
people and entities with intense personal interests in the political choices of the secretary of state.
And in several instances that we have described, the evidence suggests that Hillary shifted course to
the benefit of those providing the funds.
Moreover, the latest game has been played not at the level of state or even national affairs, but on a
global scale. The era of globalization has opened up a bonanza of opportunities for businessmen
willing and able to cut resource extraction deals around the world. Many of these deals, as we have
seen, are made in developing countries where civilized rules do not always apply and where the
players involved are unsavory. The Clintons are perhaps the most politically sophisticated public figures of their generation. They
know how things work in the corridors of power and around the world; they know that foreign
governments are trying to influence American foreign policy; and they know that bribery is rampant
around the world. They have numerous avenues for making money. Some of those avenues might not
be as lucrative as giving a $700,000 speech in Nigeria, but they would be much cleaner.
Even if nothing illegal occurred, one has to wonder about the political judgment involved. Surely
the mere appearance of selling American power and influence to foreign interests should be enough to
cause a former US president—and a possible future one—to steer well clear of such potentially
embarrassing entanglements. “Bribery interferes with trade, investment, and development,” Hillary
Clinton said at the OECD’s fiftieth-anniversary forum in 2011. “It undermines good governance and
encourages greater corruption. And of course, it is morally wrong—and far too common.”
On that we can all agree.
notes and source
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