Recognizing that it helped to have highly placed friends in Washington, Chagoury started funneling money to the 1996 Clinton reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
He contributed $460,000 to a Miami-based voter registration group tied to the DNC. (Because Chagoury is not an American citizen, he is unable to legally contribute directly to a campaign.) As the Washington Post put it, the nearly half-million-dollar contribution was given to “curry favor with Clinton's administration on Abacha's behalf."
Abacha
Apparently it worked: in 1996, Chagoury and his wife attended the White House Christmas party. More significantly, Bill effectively changed US policy toward Nigeria with a single sentence.
The United States government had been pressuring Abacha to step down and hold elections. Abacha was expected to go. But President Clinton said in 1998, "If [Abacha] stands for election, we hope he will stand as a civilian."
In short, Clinton signaled that Abacha could stay; he simply needed to run as a civilian. The New York Times called it a "shift" in US policy. When Abacha died in 1998 (allegedly in the company of two prostitutes), the Nigerian government and European authorities began investigating the missing money.
Chagoury and Clinton
They quickly fingered Chagoury. In 2000 he was convicted in Geneva, Switzerland, of money laundering and “aiding a criminal organization in connection with the billions of dollars stolen from Nigeria during the Abacha years," as PBS's Frontline put it. (As part of a plea deal the conviction was later expunged.)
Chagoury cut a deal with the Nigerians and Swiss, returning $300 million of his own profits in exchange for legal immunity. Subsequently, the tiny island state of St. Lucia appointed him as its envoy to the United Nations Education, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), bringing him diplomatic immunity and preventing prosecution in other European countries.
Why St. Lucia bestowed this honor on him is unclear. Chagoury's apparent complicity in the looting of Nigeria by a brutal dictator might be enough to deter most people from doing business with him. But not the Clintons.
If anything, their relationship has blossomed. Clinton has recently been described as Chagoury's "close friend." Since his conviction in Europe, Chagoury has donated millions to the Clinton Foundation.
In 2009, shortly after Hillary became secretary of state, he pledged a whopping $1 billion to the Clinton's legacy project. During a speech Bill delivered in St. Lucia, the island's prime minister extended thanks to Chagoury for arranging the visit.
He was also an invited guest to Bill's sixtieth birthday party and attended the wedding of Bill's longtime aide Doug Band. The Chagourys were also active in Hillary's 2008 presidential bid. Michel Chaghouri, a nephew in Los Angeles, was a bundler for the campaign and served on the campaign staff.
Numerous other relatives gave the maximum $4,600 each to her campaign. Chagoury's legal troubles continued. In April 2010 Gilbert Chagoury and his brother Jack were indicted by the US Justice Department in a massive bribery scandal involving $6 billion and Halliburton.
Bribes had allegedly been paid to secure contracts in Nigeria. Eventually Chagoury and his brother were dropped from the case, and Halliburton settled with the federal government for $35 million.
Bill has lavished praise on Chagoury over the years. In 2005 Chagoury was presented with the Pride of Heritage award from the Lebanese community by Bill. And in 2009 the Clinton Global Initiative gave Chagoury's company an award for sustainable development.
In 2013 Bill showed up in Nigeria for a public ceremony involving one of Chagoury's construction projects. Why the Clintons continue to associate with, take money from, and have transactions with Gilbert Chagoury remains a mystery.
No less an expert than Marc Rich, who had years of experience working with Chagoury and Nigeria, once described the country as “the global capital of corruption."
The Clinton Foundation has made its work in Africa a centerpiece of its global work on HIV/AIDS and development. Unfortunately, many of those who are paying it and providing it with funds have profited off the worst excesses on the continent. One has to wonder why the Clintons would permit themselves to be so closely tied to such a corrupt group of individuals.