News Release

Clinton Foundation’s Cynical Move

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ClintonNPR reports: “Bill Clinton, Big Money To Leave Foundation If Hillary Clinton Is Elected.”

KEN SILVERSTEIN, [greater availability Saturday, Monday, and thereafter] 
ken.silverstein[at]gmail.com,
@kensilverstein1
Available for a very limited number of interviews Friday, Silverstein is a Washington, D.C. based investigative reporter. He wrote the piece “Shaky Foundations: The Clintons’ so-called charitable enterprise has served as a vehicle to launder money and to enrich family friends” for Harper’s Magazine. He just launched Washington Babylon, which features “shockingly true stories and political sleaze.” He is also a columnist for the New York Observer and a contributing editor to VICE.

Silverstein said today: “This move by the Clinton Foundation is an acknowledgement that they shouldn’t have done it in the first place. Further, it’s outrageous that they are saying they won’t take foreign money — if Hillary Clinton wins. So, they will keep taking it if she loses — perhaps to facilitate Chelsea Clinton’s political career?

“This is clearly a totally cynical political move. If Hillary Clinton wins, which seems incredibly likely now, the Clinton Foundation would have served its purpose. It helped portray them as do-gooders while they used it to solidify their corrupt brand of politics on the country and enriched their cronies.”

Silverstein has reported: “It is beyond dispute that former President Clinton has been directly involved in helping foundation donors and his personal cronies get rich. Even worse, it is beyond dispute that these very same donors and the Clintons’ political allies have won the focused attention of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton when she served as Secretary of State. Democrats and Clinton apologists will write these accusations off as conspiracy mongering and right-wing propaganda, but it’s an open secret to anyone remotely familiar with accounting and regulatory requirements for charities that the financial records are deliberately misleading. …

“[A] Canadian charity called the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership — which is run by one of Bill Clinton’s close friends, Frank Giustra — has been moving significant sums of money into the Clinton Foundation’s flagship in New York. There’s no way for the public to know precisely how much total money the CGEP has taken in over the years — or how much it has forwarded on to the Clinton Foundation — because, unlike in the United States, under Canadian non-profit law charities don’t need to report donors to tax authorities. Earlier this year, after being severely criticized by the Canadian press, the CGEP released the names of 24 of its donors, but more than 1,000 are still unknown. (CGEP wrote in an email that “going forward [it] will publicly disclose all future donors.”) …

“One money-laundering expert and former intelligence officer based in the Middle East — who had access to the foundation’s confidential banking information — told me that members of the royal family in Middle Eastern countries, including Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, have donated money to the CGEP that has then been sluiced through to the Clinton Foundation. He told me that the CGEP has received money from corrupt officials in South Africa during the former regime of Jacob Zuma and from senior officials in Equatorial Guinea, one of the most brutal and crooked dictatorships in the world. ‘Equatorial Guinea doesn’t give to the Clinton Foundation in New York because it’s too embarrassing,’ he said. ‘They give the money anonymously in Canada and that buys them political protection in the United States. The Clinton Foundation is a professionally structured money-laundering operation.'”