This latest Hillary Clinton/ Clinton Family Foundation scandal comes from the liberal
NY Times. It involves
a deal which enabled Russia to purchase
about 20% of the U.S. uranium supply
for the possible quid pro quo of
donations.
A Canadian based company called Uranium One, which owned the uranium assets, was being purchased by Russian state atomic energy agency Rosatom. The deal had to be approved by the State Department and other agencies that made up a cabinet level committee. As the State Department was mulling of the deal,
the Chairman of Uranium One donated $2.35 million from his family foundation to the Clintons',
others in the company followed suit, and Bill Clinton was invited to speak at the investor's meeting at a related company for $500,000.
The financial disclosures provided by Ms. Clinton prior to her becoming Secretary of State revealed, "the only Uranium One official to give to the Clinton Foundation was Mr. Telfer, the chairman, and the amount was
relatively small: no more than $250,000, and that was in 2007, before talk of a Rosatom deal."
But a review of tax records in Canada, where Mr. Telfer has a family charity called the Fernwood Foundation, shows that he donated millions of dollars more, during and after the critical time when the foreign investment committee was reviewing his deal with the Russians. With the Russians offering a special dividend, shareholders like Mr. Telfer stood to profit.
His donations through the Fernwood Foundation included $1 million reported in 2009, the year his company appealed to the American Embassy to help it keep its mines in Kazakhstan; $250,000 in 2010, the year the Russians sought majority control; as well as $600,000 in 2011; and $500,000 in 2012. Mr. Telfer said that his donations had nothing to do with his business dealings, and that he had never discussed Uranium One with Mr. or Mrs. Clinton. He said he had given the money because he wanted to support Mr. Giustra’s charitable endeavors with Mr. Clinton. “Frank and I have been friends and business partners for almost 20 years,” he said.
Mr. Telfer’s undisclosed donations came in addition to between $1.3 million and $5.6 million in contributions, which were reported, from a constellation of people with ties to Uranium One or UrAsia, the company that originally acquired Uranium One’s most valuable asset: the Kazakhstan mines. Without those assets, the Russians would have had no interest in the deal: “It wasn’t the goal to buy the Wyoming mines. The goal was to acquire the Kazakh assets, which are very good,” Mr. Novikov, the Rosatom spokesman, said in an interview.
In 2010 an ally of Uranium One, a Russian investment bank called Renaissance Capital invited Bill Clinton to speak to its investor's conference for $500,000.
It's important to note that the
NY Times report does not have a smoking gun beyond the coincidental timing of the major donations and the uranium deal. There is no evidence presented of a direct connection between Clinton Foundation donations, Bubba's half a million dollar speaking payday and the State Department approval of the deal. On the other hand the NY Times as well as the Washington Post and Fox News continue to do their own investigations based on Peter Schweizer's still unreleased book "Clinton Cash," as these revelations aggregate whether there is a smoking gun or not the build up of circumstantial evidence may doom Ms. Clinton's attempt to take the White House.
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