Clinton Library Got Funds From Abroad
Saudis Said to Have Given $10 Million
By John Solomon and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 15, 2007; A03
Bill Clinton's presidential library raised more than 10 percent of the cost of its $165 million facility from foreign sources, with the most generous overseas donation coming from Saudi Arabia, according to interviews yesterday.
The royal family of Saudi Arabia gave the Clinton facility in Little Rock about $10 million, roughly the same amount it gave toward the presidential library of George H.W. Bush, according to people directly familiar with the contributions.
The presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has for months faced questions about the source of the money for her husband's presidential library. During a September debate, moderator Tim Russert asked the senator whether her husband would release a donor list. Clinton said she was sure her husband would "be happy to consider that," though the former president later declined to provide a list of donors.
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Bill Clinton has solicited donations for the library personally, aides said, but he also delegated much of the fundraising to others, especially Terence R. McAuliffe, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. The foundation statement stressed that he has turned over the facility to taxpayers, as other former presidents have.
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A handful of major donors' names to the Clinton library were disclosed in 2004 when a New York Sun reporter accessed a public computer terminal at the library that provided a list of donors. Soon after the article appeared, the list of donors was removed.
The amount of the contribution from Saudi Arabia and several other countries, as well as the percentage of the total given by foreigners, had not been revealed.
The Post confirmed numerous seven-figure donors to the library through interviews and tax records of foundations. Several foreign governments gave at least $1 million, including the Middle Eastern nations of Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the governments of Taiwan and Brunei.
In addition, a handful of Middle Eastern business executives and officials also gave at least $1 million each, according to the interviews. They include Saudi businessmen Abdullah al-Dabbagh, Nasser al-Rashid and Walid Juffali, as well as Issam Fares, a U.S. citizen who previously served as deputy prime minister of Lebanon.
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Clinton has been criticized for asking for donations, including from Saudi Arabia, at questionable moments. In an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal last year, former FBI director Louis J. Freeh said Clinton "hit up
Prince Abdullah for a contribution to his library" during a meeting in which Freeh wanted Clinton to ask about the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. Clinton has publicly disputed Freeh's account.
Clinton has also been challenged by members of Congress for accepting a reported $450,000 donation to his library from the former wife of fugitive financier Marc Rich before he granted Rich a pardon for tax evasion in 2001. Neither Clinton nor the Rich family confirmed the donation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/14/AR2007121402124_pf.html
Clinton Library Sells Secret Donor List
November 19, 2007 1:47 PM
Avni Patel and Marcus Baram Report:
Three years after the William J. Clinton Presidential Library opened its doors, the list of donors who helped the former president build his $165 million complex remains a secret from the public.
Yet the Blotter on ABCNews.com has learned that the Clinton Foundation sold portions of the list through a data company headed by a longtime friend and donor.
"The fact that they've sold the list and then turned around and said that these names must be kept anonymous completely undercuts their argument," said Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog group that tracks the influence of money in politics.
An employee of Walter Karl, a subsidiary of the data company InfoUSA, told ABCNews.com that the company made a list of more than 38,000 donors to the Clinton presidential library available for sale to foundations and other nonprofit groups from June 2006 to May 2007. A spokesman for the company would not say how the profits from the sale of the partial list were distributed.
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The little that is known about the identities of the donors to the Clinton library was reported by the New York Sun in 2004, after a reporter discovered the names on a touch-screen computer on the third floor of the library after its opening.
Members of the Saudi royal family, Arab businessmen, the governments of Dubai, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei and Taiwan, and Hollywood celebrities, were among the 57 individuals or foundations who gave $1 million or more to the library, according to the Sun.
The computer with the list of donors was disconnected after the Sun article ran. At the time, Clinton officials said that a permanent list of donors contributing $100,000 or more would eventually be installed on a wall at the library.
----------------------------------
Vin Gupta, CEO of InfoUSA, was also on the list of donors giving $1 million or more.
His ties to the Clintons came under scrutiny earlier in the year when a lawsuit filed by InfoUSA shareholders accused Gupta of wasting millions of dollars of the company's money to "ingratiate himself" with the Clintons and other personal friends.
Separately, a New York Times article in May revealed that InfoUSA was involved in an investigation in Iowa for selling mailing lists of elderly Americans to criminals. In response to the investigation, the company released a statement saying, "While InfoUSA can not manage what a client does with the publicly available information InfoUSA provides, the company has a strict policy about not selling data to companies who act illegally."
Gupta has donated and raised millions of dollars for the Clintons' political campaigns and charities over the last decade. InfoUSA spent millions more paying the former president as a consultant and flying him and his wife to events around the country and family vacations in Hawaii and Acapulco, Mexico on the company's private jet, according to the court documents.
Clintons' InfoUSA Ties Scrutinized
by Peter Overby
Last year, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton took the unusual step of renting out some of her lists. The transaction once again highlights the Clintons' connections to a businessman who now faces questions from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Reports from Clinton's campaign show that on Dec. 3, it collected payment for renting out three mailing lists, the sale of which netted them $8,225.
It was an unusual transaction, according to Roger Craver, a liberal guru of the political direct-mail industry.
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According to one direct-mail professional, $800,000 would have seemed like a more plausible price for a quality list...
Vin Gupta has a long history of giving and raising campaign money for the Clintons, and gave $1 million for the 2000 Millennium Celebration, a New Year's Party thrown by the Clintons.
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After the Clintons left the White House, Gupta hired Bill Clinton as a consultant. It's one of two continuing business relationships he has had since leaving office, and it has been worth $3.3 million, in addition to the options on 100,000 shares of stock.
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The corporate spending on behalf of the Clintons helped fuel a shareholder lawsuit against Gupta and 10 corporate directors.
There are plenty of other allegations in the suit about homes, cars, and a yacht for Gupta. A Delaware chancery court judge dismissed some of the allegations involving the Clintons. But the case is still proceeding. It has led to an informal inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is also asking if Gupta misspent corporate funds.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18Clinton Global Initiative
ORGANIZATION
Founded 2005, "a non-partisan catalyst for action, bringing together a community of global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges."
Official Website:
http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org /
Susan E. Arnold Global Business President, Proctor & Gamble
Richard Branson Founder of Virgin chain
Laura Bush First Lady under George W. Bush
Bill Clinton 42nd US President, 1993-2001
Edward Djerejian US Ambassador to Israel, 1994
Vin Gupta CEO, InfoUSA
Norman Hsu Notorious Democratic donor
Julian H. Robertson, Jr. Tiger Management
Hector Ruiz Chairman and CEO, AMD
http://www.nndb.com/org/780/000119423 /
After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton
By JO BECKER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
Published: January 31, 2008
Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.
Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton.
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"Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent."
"Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy."
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Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html?_r=1&oref=sloginhttp://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=076fd56f-4aca-4683-a9d1-3c55d748946eWith Friends Like These ...
Norman Hsu
Hsu parlayed his charming, obsequious personality into a spot as one of the top twenty Democratic fund-raisers nationwide. Problem is, he turned out to be a convicted felon, on the lam since 1992 due to a grand theft conviction. Then, this December, Hsu was indicted for running a pyramid scheme that defrauded investors out of at least $20 million and that made $25,000 a year in fraudulent political donations.
THE SLEAZE FACTOR (on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 somewhat sleazy and 10 stupendously so)
8. Hsu missed his initial (September 5) court date for the 1992 grand theft charge, only to be apprehended a day later on a train in Colorado; he was "freaked out," shirtless, shoeless, and holding a suitcase packed with Tiffany jewelry and $7,000 in cash. Now in federal custody, he confessed to running "phony" companies and leaning on investors to make political donations.
THE DAMAGE TO THE CLINTONS (on a scale of 1 to 10)
7. Extensive Hsu coverage stretched out over several news cycles during Hillary's presidential campaign, and the sordid details of the affair--the pyramid schemes, the links to Asian gangs, the eccentric professional con artist himself--stirred up memories of Clinton fund-raising scandals past. Hillary blamed the fiasco on errors in the donor-screening process.
**THE DONORS
Marc Rich, fugitive American businessman; Denise Rich, songwriter and socialite.
THE GREEN
Denise Rich contributed $70,000 to Hillary's Senate campaign and $450,000 to the Clinton presidential library fund.
THE SCANDAL
Over seventeen years after Marc Rich fled to Switzerland to avoid charges of racketeering, illegal trading, and tax evasion (he owed $48 million), Bill Clinton pardoned Rich during his last moments in the White House. His ex-wife Denise's generous donations and Friend of Bill status gave the pardon a particularly rotten stench.
THE SLEAZE FACTOR
7.5. Rich has been accused of a long list of white-collar crimes. The classiest: trading with Iran while the country was still holding U.S. hostages.
THE DAMAGE TO THE CLINTONS
9.5. As Hillary began her career in the Senate, a media frenzy and investigations in both houses of Congress and the Justice Department were launched to see if Denise's contributions bought her ex-husband's pardon. Though the president was never indicted for wrongdoing, the Rich affair is often mentioned as Exhibit A of Clintonian sliminess.
THE DONOR
Sant S. Chatwal, founder of Bombay Palace restaurants.
THE GREEN
In 2000, Chatwal hosted a half-million dollar fund-raiser for Clinton in New York. In 2007, he declared his intentions to raise $5 million for Hillary's presidential campaign.
THE SCANDAL
According to The Washington Post, as of September 2007, The IRS was pursuing him for $4 million in back taxes, the State of New York for another $5 million, and the FDIC is suing himin connection with a failed bank venture. The Post wrote, "Yet none of the legal and financial woes--occasionally touched on in American or Indian newspapers or highlighted by political opponents--raised red flags inside Hillary Clinton's fund-raising operation."
THE SLEAZE FACTOR
4. Though Chatwal's legal troubles span several suits and two continents (he's also been charged with bank fraud in India), his alleged crimes lack the color and imagination of, say, a Peter F. Paul.
THE DAMAGE TO THE CLINTONS
1. So far, none. But if any of the lawsuits against him come to a head during election season, the timing would be awful for Clinton.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-loeb/hillary-clintons-sleaze-_b_82183.htmlhttp://www.alamo-girl.com/0432.htmhttp://prorev.com/hillary3.htm
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