The Clinton Foundation board of directors (or board of trustees as it has sometimes been called) is largely made up of the Clintons and their closest political aides and advisers. The tightness of the board has raised alarm bells at places like the Better Business Bureau (BBB). In 2013 the BBB conducted a charity review of the Clinton Foundation and found that it failed to meet minimum standards of accountability and transparency.
It dinged the organization on its management and financial controls and pointed out that, despite having a staff of 319, the board of directors at the time had only three board members, who did not actually review the performance of the CEO.
The BBB also said that board members did not receive information about financial arrangements with outside fundraising firms and consultants. Similarly, Charity Navigator, which evaluates and ranks philanthropic groups, will not rank or grade the Clinton Foundation.
The explanation? The foundation's “atypical business model" makes it difficult, if not impossible, to evaluate. The Clinton Foundation has added corporate executives or business investors to its board of trustees from time to time, especially if they are major contributors.
One can only wonder how tight the screening process is, given that at least four Clinton Foundation trustees have either been charged or convicted of financial crimes including bribery and fraud.
Vinod Gupta, the founder and chairman of the database firm InfoUSA, was a major Clinton financial supporter who served as a foundation trustee. In 2008 he was charged with fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for using company funds to support his luxurious lifestyle. He was alleged to have used more than $9.5 million in corporate funds to pay for personal jet travel, millions for his yacht, personal credit card expenses, and the cost of twenty cars.
He settled with the SEC for $4 million. Company shareholders also filed suit against him for misuse of corporate funds, including paying Bill a $3 million consulting fee, and using corporate assets to fly the Clintons around.
Gupta defended his relationship with the Clintons, saying that those payments and his relationship with the Clintons earned huge dividends for Infogroup. The company settled with shareholders to the tune of $13 million.
Sant Chatwal, whom we met in the previous chapter, was another foundation trustee who has been in legal trouble over the years, including his conviction for illegal campaign financing, obstruction of justice, and other charges.
The New York politicians lured Yale girls into NXIVM with the promise of “women’s empowerment”, it was said.
Victor Dahdaleh
Victor Dahdaleh, another trustee, was charged by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in Great Britain with paying more than 35 million pounds in bribes to executives in Bahrain to win contracts of more than 2 billion pounds. He has worked for the American aluminum company Alcoa as a “super-agent." (The billionaire had his bail revoked in the case because he contacted prosecution witnesses.)
Dahdaleh was found not guilty after the SFO offered no evidence against him. A key witness, Bruce Hall, who had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to corrupt, would later change his testimony and two other key witnesses from the US refused to appear at trial.
A link is here.
Alcoa ended up pleading guilty in the US case arising out of the transaction and settled with the US Justice Department for $384 million. Dahdaleh was not charged in the United States individually.
Current Clinton Foundation board member and trustee Rolando Gonzalez Bunster has been named in a fraud case in the Dominican Republic involving his company InterEnergy. The charges were filed by the Dominican government's Anti-Corruption Alliance (ADOCCO).
In 2013 Bunster was charged along with officials of a government agency concerning alleged “ballooned" fees charged to the government. The company dismisses the charges as "“baseless allegations." The flow of funds into the Clinton Foundation comes from a variety of sources. While the foundation boasts that it has hundreds of thousands of contributors, it relies heavily on a group of high-dollar donors to fund its operations.
Since it reports contributions in ranges, not exact amounts, it is difficult to know precisely how dependent it is on those donors. But approximately 75 percent of its money has come from contributions of $1 million or more. And as we will see, many of these contributions came from foreign nationals who decided to give large gifts or make large pledges at times when they had business before the US government.
As we have seen, the Clinton Foundation failed to report multimillion-dollar contributions from foreign entities like Ian Telfer's Fernwood Foundation. Another Canadian mining investor whose contributions were never disclosed by the Clinton Foundation is Stephen Dattels.
This mines-to-metals tycoon has donated millions of shares of stock to the foundation. On June 8, 2009, Dattels donated two million shares of stock in his company Polo Resources-worth about $40,000 at the time. Eight weeks later, on July 29, according to WikiLeaks, the US ambassador in Bangladesh urged the prime minister and energy minister to reauthorize the Phulbari Mines for the use of “open pit" coal mining. Dattels's Polo Resources is an investor in the mine.
You’re seeing a lot more of this spell than most think. I don’t intend to promote this but I want people to be aware of tricks being played.
Just a regular American girl from New Jersey.
