Hillary Clinton’s presidential run is prompting new scrutiny of the Clintons’ financial and charitable affairs—something that’s already proved problematic for the Democratic frontrunner, given how closely these two worlds overlap. Last week, the New York Times examined Bill Clinton’s relationship with a Canadian mining financier, Frank Giustra, who has donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation and sits on its board. Clinton, the story suggests, helped Giustra’s company secure a lucrative uranium-mining deal in Kazakhstan and in return received “a flow of cash” to the Clinton Foundation, including previously undisclosed donations from the company’s chairman totaling $2.35 million.
Giustra strenuously objects to how he was portrayed. “It’s frustrating,” he says. And because the donations came in through the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (CGEP)—a Canadian affiliate of the Clinton Foundation he established with the former president—he feels doubly implicated by the insinuation of a dark alliance.
“We’re not trying to hide anything,” he says. There are in fact 1,100 undisclosed donors to the Clinton Foundation, Giustra says, most of them non-U.S. residents who donated to CGEP. “All of the money that was raised by CGEP flowed through to the Clinton Foundation—every penny—and went to the [charitable] initiatives we identified,” he says.
The reason this is a politically explosive revelation is because the Clinton Foundation promised to disclose its donors as a condition of Hillary Clinton becoming secretary of state. Shortly after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, the Clinton Foundation signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the Obama White House agreeing to reveal its contributors every year. The agreement stipulates that the “Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative” (as the charity was then known) is part of the Clinton Foundation and must follow “the same protocols.”
It hasn’t.
Giustra says that’s because Canada’s federal privacy law forbids CGEP, a Canadian-registered charity, from revealing its donors. A memo he provided explaining the legal rationale cites CGEP’s “fiduciary obligations” to its contributors and Canada’s Personal Information Privacy and Electronic Disclosure Act. “We are not allowed to disclose even to the Clinton Foundation the names of our donors,” he says.
On Saturday, responding to the Times story, Maura Pally, the acting CEO of the Clinton Foundation, issued a statement echoing this assertion: “This is hardly an effort on our part to avoid transparency–unlike in the U.S., under Canadian law, all charities are prohibited from disclosing individual donors without prior permission from each donor.”
Canadian tax and privacy law experts were dubious of this claim. Len Farber, former director of tax policy at Canada’s Department of Finance, said he wasn’t aware of any tax laws that would prevent the charity from releasing its donors’ names. “There’s nothing that would preclude them from releasing the names of donors,” he said. “It’s entirely up to them.”
Mark Blumberg, a charity lawyer at Blumberg Segal in Toronto, added that the legislation “does not generally apply to a registered charity unless a charity is conducting commercial activities… such as selling the list to third parties.”
CGEP might have a stronger claim if it promised anonymity to donors, says David Fraser, a partner at McInnes Cooper in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who runs a blog on Canadian privacy law. He’s more skeptical of the argument that a charity has a fiduciary duty to donors. “They might have a fiduciary duty to the people they’re collecting money to help,” he said, “but for the donors that doesn’t seem to have the ring of truth.”
While Giustra says he can’t reveal any names, he is willing to disclose that CGEP money comes from “mostly Canadian donors.” The charity is registered in Canada, he says, not to hide the identity of its donors but to enable them to receive Canadian tax breaks that can reimburse them for nearly half of what they give.
However, not all CGEP’s big donors are Canadian. The Canada Revenue Agency—Canada’s IRS—requires charities to reveal whether they receive donations of more than $10,000 (Canadian) from people who are not Canadians, employed in the country, or carrying on business there. In both 2009 and 2010, CGEP filings show that it reported receiving such donations to Canadian authorities.
With millions of dollars and 1,100 donors shrouded in mystery, CGEP has caught the attention of journalist and authors, including Peter Schweizer, whose forthcoming book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, details Giustra’s financial relationship with Bill Clinton and posits nefarious intentions. The fact that the Clinton Foundation promised something that Giustra feels he can’t supply—the identity of his donors—has put him in an even worse spot.
Giustra is fed up, and he’s vowing to do something to ease his disclosure constraints and clear his name. “There is a way around it—but you need each individual donor’s written permission to allow us to disclose their names,” he says. “We’re going through a process now where we’re trying to get the permission.” He adds, “We’re not going to go to 1,100 people. But we’re certainly going to go to the big ones—a couple hundred grand and up—and just see what they say. Now, they can say no. But we’re going to try.”
Despite all the bad things about a Hillary presidency, imagine having to listen to that voice for 4 years! I’ll bet she & Slick Willy haven’t had sex in 30 years.
@Frederick
“I’ll bet she & Slick Willy haven’t had sex in 30 years.” that is the most ridiculous statement I have heard.
They have both had lots of sex, just not with each other.
Hmmm
I don’t particularly like Hillary, and I certainly would never vote for her. Unless of course the only alternative was Bernie Sanders……Hopefully by now America has woken up to the fact that the main stream “media” has been busy since day one attacking and attempting to destroy the campaigns of virtually every major Presidential candidate save one…….Bernie Sanders. Since day one, the main stream media, and in fact a huge majority of the entire online community as well, has treated Sanders with kid gloves. And all the while they have pig piled on Trump and Clinton. Even the traitors within the Republican party have now proven that they have no problem betraying the Party and the country in order to support either directly or indirectly Sanders.
Bernie Sanders is the choice of the lobby that has a stranglehold on the media, Congress, the FED, the 4 primary search engines controlling the web etc. And make no mistake, their man Sanders, does not owe his allegiance to America and Americans. He made that crystal clear decades ago when he attempted to dodge the draft by filing a phony conscientious objector request (flatly denied by the way) and instead of enlisting (which would have allowed him to sign up for a non combat MOS)As his record in Congress has demonstrated, he is a liar, as he is one of the leading chicken hawks in Washington today; Having voted to FUND pretty every conflict and war to come down the pike. Sanders chose instead to demonstrate his fealty to a foreign country by serving on a militarized Kibbutz in Israel. All kibbutz’s in Israel in the 60’s were under military control, as such it was considered by many as an alternative form of serve……….
America and the American people deserve and demand a President that will put them first, last and always. Only Donald Trump has come forward and stated he is, and rightfully so, neutral on Israel and will take an objective position in the Middle East where America and Americans come first. The real question the American people should be asking is why would they ever want a Candidate willing to do anything else. Every single other candidate has publicly stated their fealty to Israel………….