Bill Clinton’s foundation cashed in as Sweden lobbied Hillary on sanctions
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/2/clinton-foundations-sweden-fundraising-arm-cashed-/?page=all
By John Solomon and Kelly Riddell - The Washington Times - Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Bill Clinton's foundation set up a fundraising arm in Sweden that collected $26 million in donations at the same time that country was lobbying Hillary Rodham Clinton's State Department to forgo sanctions that threatened its thriving business with Iran, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Times.
The Swedish entity, called the William J. Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse, was never disclosed to or cleared by State Department ethics officials, even though one of its largest sources of donations was a Swedish government-sanctioned lottery.
As the money flowed to the foundation from Sweden, Mrs. Clinton's team in Washington declined to blacklist any Swedish firms despite warnings from career officials at the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm that Sweden was growing its economic ties with Iran and potentially undercutting Western efforts to end Tehran's rogue nuclear program, diplomatic cables show.
"Sweden does not support implementing tighter financial sanctions on Iran" and believes "more stringent financial standards could hurt Swedish exports," one such cable from 2009 alerted Mrs. Clinton's office in Washington.
Separately, U.S. intelligence was reporting that Sweden's second-largest employer, telecommunications giant Ericsson AB, was pitching cellphone tracking technology to Iran that could be used by the country's security services, officials told The Times.
By the time Mrs. Clinton left office in 2013, the Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse had collected millions of dollars inside Sweden for his global charitable efforts and Mr. Clinton personally pocketed a record $750,000 speech fee from Ericsson, one of the firms at the center of the sanctions debate.
Mr. Clinton's Swedish fundraising shell escaped public notice, both because its incorporation papers were filed in Stockholm — some 4,200 miles from America's shores — and the identities of its donors were lumped by Mr. Clinton's team into the disclosure reports of his U.S.-based charity, blurring the lines between what were two separate organizations incorporated under two different countries' laws.
The foundation told The Times through a spokesman that the Swedish entity was set up primarily to collect donations from popular lotteries in that country, that the money went to charitable causes like fighting climate change, AIDS in Africa and cholera in Haiti, and that all of the Swedish donors were accounted for on the rolls publicly released by the U.S. charity.
The foundation, however, declined repeated requests to identify the names of the specific donors that passed through the Swedish arm.
A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign declined comment.
When Mrs. Clinton became President Obama's secretary of state in 2009, she vowed to set up a transparent review system that would ensure any of her husband's fundraising or lucrative speaking activities were reviewed for possible ties to foreign countries doing business with her agency, insisting she wanted to eliminate even the "appearance" of conflicts of interests.
But there is growing evidence that the Clintons did not run certain financial activities involving foreign entities by the State Department, such as the Swedish fundraising arm and the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative based in Canada, or disclose on her annual ethics form the existence of a limited liability corporation that Mr. Clinton set up for his personal consulting work.
The ethics agreement the Clintons signed in 2009 with the State Department stated that if a foreign government chose to "elect to increase materially its commitment, or should a new contributor country elect to support" Mr. Clinton's charitable causes, "the Foundation will share such countries and the circumstances of the anticipated contribution with the State Department designated agency ethics official for review."
The foundation spokesman said Mr. Clinton's team had nothing to hide about the Swedish entity and set it up solely to take advantage of changes in Swedish law in 2011 that allowed some of the country's lucrative lotteries to direct their charitable giving to the American-based Clinton Foundation.
The spokesman said Mr. Clinton's team believed the Nationale Postcode Loterij and the Swedish Postcode Lottery, two of the biggest contributors to the Swedish fundraising arm, were privately owned and unrelated to the Swedish government.
Both lotteries are owned by the private firm Novamedia, but they are closely regulated by the Swedish government, and the Postcode Lottery's top manager is approved and regulated by the Swedish government, according to interviews and documents.
According to Novamedia's 2014 annual report, the Swedish Postcode Lottery's managing director "is also the Lottery Manager appointed by the Swedish Gambling Authority. The Swedish Gambling Authority, which grants the lottery license, collaborates closely with the Lottery Manager and supervises the lottery."
About half the funds collected by the foundation's Swedish arm in 2011 and 2012 came from lottery enterprises tied to Novamedia.
"The Clinton Foundation is a philanthropy, period," foundation spokesman Craig Minassian told the Times. "We've voluntarily disclosed our more than 300,000 donors on our website, including those from Sweden. In fact, support from the Swedish Postcode Lottery has helped give millions of people access to HIV/AIDS treatment, lifted tens of thousands of rural farmers out of poverty, helped rebuild Haiti after the devastating earthquake and made it possible for cities and countries to reduce their carbon output by millions of tons. The truth is, when organizations like this support the Clinton Foundation, they do want something in return: they want to see lives improved through our work."
Familiar patterns and storylines?
Those who have followed or investigated the Clintons over their three decades of power in Washington say the Swedish episode uncovered by The Times fits a familiar pattern of ambiguous transparency promises and fundraising carried out through cutouts that targeted foreigners with business interests before the U.S. government.
"They were very effective in being able to obfuscate what they were doing through cutouts and how they were raising their money," said retired Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican who chaired the main House investigative committee in the late 1990s that probed many of the Clintons' activities ranging from travel office firings and Whitewater investments to Asian fundraising.
The latter investigation disclosed an extensive 1996 Clinton fundraising operation that rewarded donors with White House coffees, access to top officials and nights in the Lincoln Bedroom despite the Clintons' promise to run the most ethical administration in history. It also proved that illegal foreign money went to the Democratic Party from the likes of Johnny Chung, a fundraiser who admitted taking $300,000 from a Chinese military officer and giving it to Democrats, and James Riady, who pleaded guilty to routing foreign funds through a network of "straw donors" who enriched the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party while collecting political favors for his companies.
"[The Clintons] understood it's easy to raise money when you solicit people who had business pending before the government," Mr. Burton said. "The information that established this pattern was substantial, coming from both friends and adversaries around the world who knew they could gain access to the president and his administration and they could get things done if they were willing to pony up the money."
Fundraising in Sweden as sanctions debate raged in U.S.
At the time of Mr. Clinton's foray into Swedish fundraising, the Swedish government was pressing Mrs. Clinton's State Department not to impose new sanctions on firms doing business with Iran, including hometown companies Ericsson and Volvo.
Mrs. Clinton's State Department issued two orders identifying lists of companies newly sanctioned in 2011 and 2012 for doing business with Iran, but neither listed any Swedish entities.
Behind the scenes, however, the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm was clearly warning the State Department in Washington that Sweden's trade was growing with Iran — despite Swedish government claims to the contrary.
(The story continues but is too long to fit here. Click the link above if you want to read the rest of it.)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/2/clinton-foundations-sweden-fundraising-arm-cashed-/?page=all
By John Solomon and Kelly Riddell - The Washington Times - Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Bill Clinton's foundation set up a fundraising arm in Sweden that collected $26 million in donations at the same time that country was lobbying Hillary Rodham Clinton's State Department to forgo sanctions that threatened its thriving business with Iran, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Times.
The Swedish entity, called the William J. Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse, was never disclosed to or cleared by State Department ethics officials, even though one of its largest sources of donations was a Swedish government-sanctioned lottery.
As the money flowed to the foundation from Sweden, Mrs. Clinton's team in Washington declined to blacklist any Swedish firms despite warnings from career officials at the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm that Sweden was growing its economic ties with Iran and potentially undercutting Western efforts to end Tehran's rogue nuclear program, diplomatic cables show.
"Sweden does not support implementing tighter financial sanctions on Iran" and believes "more stringent financial standards could hurt Swedish exports," one such cable from 2009 alerted Mrs. Clinton's office in Washington.
Separately, U.S. intelligence was reporting that Sweden's second-largest employer, telecommunications giant Ericsson AB, was pitching cellphone tracking technology to Iran that could be used by the country's security services, officials told The Times.
By the time Mrs. Clinton left office in 2013, the Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse had collected millions of dollars inside Sweden for his global charitable efforts and Mr. Clinton personally pocketed a record $750,000 speech fee from Ericsson, one of the firms at the center of the sanctions debate.
Mr. Clinton's Swedish fundraising shell escaped public notice, both because its incorporation papers were filed in Stockholm — some 4,200 miles from America's shores — and the identities of its donors were lumped by Mr. Clinton's team into the disclosure reports of his U.S.-based charity, blurring the lines between what were two separate organizations incorporated under two different countries' laws.
The foundation told The Times through a spokesman that the Swedish entity was set up primarily to collect donations from popular lotteries in that country, that the money went to charitable causes like fighting climate change, AIDS in Africa and cholera in Haiti, and that all of the Swedish donors were accounted for on the rolls publicly released by the U.S. charity.
The foundation, however, declined repeated requests to identify the names of the specific donors that passed through the Swedish arm.
A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign declined comment.
When Mrs. Clinton became President Obama's secretary of state in 2009, she vowed to set up a transparent review system that would ensure any of her husband's fundraising or lucrative speaking activities were reviewed for possible ties to foreign countries doing business with her agency, insisting she wanted to eliminate even the "appearance" of conflicts of interests.
But there is growing evidence that the Clintons did not run certain financial activities involving foreign entities by the State Department, such as the Swedish fundraising arm and the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative based in Canada, or disclose on her annual ethics form the existence of a limited liability corporation that Mr. Clinton set up for his personal consulting work.
The ethics agreement the Clintons signed in 2009 with the State Department stated that if a foreign government chose to "elect to increase materially its commitment, or should a new contributor country elect to support" Mr. Clinton's charitable causes, "the Foundation will share such countries and the circumstances of the anticipated contribution with the State Department designated agency ethics official for review."
The foundation spokesman said Mr. Clinton's team had nothing to hide about the Swedish entity and set it up solely to take advantage of changes in Swedish law in 2011 that allowed some of the country's lucrative lotteries to direct their charitable giving to the American-based Clinton Foundation.
The spokesman said Mr. Clinton's team believed the Nationale Postcode Loterij and the Swedish Postcode Lottery, two of the biggest contributors to the Swedish fundraising arm, were privately owned and unrelated to the Swedish government.
Both lotteries are owned by the private firm Novamedia, but they are closely regulated by the Swedish government, and the Postcode Lottery's top manager is approved and regulated by the Swedish government, according to interviews and documents.
According to Novamedia's 2014 annual report, the Swedish Postcode Lottery's managing director "is also the Lottery Manager appointed by the Swedish Gambling Authority. The Swedish Gambling Authority, which grants the lottery license, collaborates closely with the Lottery Manager and supervises the lottery."
About half the funds collected by the foundation's Swedish arm in 2011 and 2012 came from lottery enterprises tied to Novamedia.
"The Clinton Foundation is a philanthropy, period," foundation spokesman Craig Minassian told the Times. "We've voluntarily disclosed our more than 300,000 donors on our website, including those from Sweden. In fact, support from the Swedish Postcode Lottery has helped give millions of people access to HIV/AIDS treatment, lifted tens of thousands of rural farmers out of poverty, helped rebuild Haiti after the devastating earthquake and made it possible for cities and countries to reduce their carbon output by millions of tons. The truth is, when organizations like this support the Clinton Foundation, they do want something in return: they want to see lives improved through our work."
Familiar patterns and storylines?
Those who have followed or investigated the Clintons over their three decades of power in Washington say the Swedish episode uncovered by The Times fits a familiar pattern of ambiguous transparency promises and fundraising carried out through cutouts that targeted foreigners with business interests before the U.S. government.
"They were very effective in being able to obfuscate what they were doing through cutouts and how they were raising their money," said retired Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican who chaired the main House investigative committee in the late 1990s that probed many of the Clintons' activities ranging from travel office firings and Whitewater investments to Asian fundraising.
The latter investigation disclosed an extensive 1996 Clinton fundraising operation that rewarded donors with White House coffees, access to top officials and nights in the Lincoln Bedroom despite the Clintons' promise to run the most ethical administration in history. It also proved that illegal foreign money went to the Democratic Party from the likes of Johnny Chung, a fundraiser who admitted taking $300,000 from a Chinese military officer and giving it to Democrats, and James Riady, who pleaded guilty to routing foreign funds through a network of "straw donors" who enriched the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party while collecting political favors for his companies.
"[The Clintons] understood it's easy to raise money when you solicit people who had business pending before the government," Mr. Burton said. "The information that established this pattern was substantial, coming from both friends and adversaries around the world who knew they could gain access to the president and his administration and they could get things done if they were willing to pony up the money."
Fundraising in Sweden as sanctions debate raged in U.S.
At the time of Mr. Clinton's foray into Swedish fundraising, the Swedish government was pressing Mrs. Clinton's State Department not to impose new sanctions on firms doing business with Iran, including hometown companies Ericsson and Volvo.
Mrs. Clinton's State Department issued two orders identifying lists of companies newly sanctioned in 2011 and 2012 for doing business with Iran, but neither listed any Swedish entities.
Behind the scenes, however, the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm was clearly warning the State Department in Washington that Sweden's trade was growing with Iran — despite Swedish government claims to the contrary.
(The story continues but is too long to fit here. Click the link above if you want to read the rest of it.)
