March 2010 – A federal agency (OPIC) rushes to approve funding for a Clinton donor’s sham Haiti recovery project that ends up defrauding the U.S. government out of millions

(…) “Miami businessman Claudio Osorio, who is currently serving 12 years in federal prison on fraud charges, leveraged his relationship with Bill and Hillary Clinton to help his company InnoVida obtain a $10 million loan from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) for a Haiti housing project in 2010.

OPIC is an independent government agency that submits its annual budget requests through the State Department and works closely with the agency.

Bill Clinton helped arrange for a high-powered Florida law firm to represent Osorio during loan negotiations with OPIC, according to court testimony. An internal OPIC memo said Hillary Clinton was prepared to marshal State Department resources to assist with the donor’s project.

InnoVida was supposed to use the funding to build houses in Haiti after the earthquake, but it defaulted on the loan and the homes were never built.

After InnoVida went bankrupt in 2011, a court-appointed investigator said it appeared that over $30 million of its funds had been diverted to foreign bank accounts and were not retrievable.

Osorio was later accused of using the company to run a Ponzi-like scheme, bilking government and private investors out of a collective $40 million and using their money to fund his lavish lifestyle—making payments on his Miami Beach mansion, buying a Maserati and maintaining his Colorado ski chalet.

He pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering in 2013.

Much of the media coverage of InnoVida has focused on Jeb Bush’s involvement as a consultant and board member. But previously unreported government documents and testimony from the 2013 fraud trial of InnoVida’s chief financial officer reveal that Osorio’s relationship with the Clintons played a central role in InnoVida’s efforts to obtain OPIC funding for the house-building scam.

The OPIC official who helped approve the InnoVida loan wrote in a 2010 internal memo that “secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has made available State Department resources to assist with logistical arrangements” for the project and “Former president Bill Clinton is personally in contact with the company [InnoVida] to organize its logistical and support needs.”

The memo added that the Clinton Global Initiative had agreed to purchase “6500 homes in Haiti from InnoVida within the next year.”

During the loan process, Osorio repeatedly emphasized his connections to the Clintons during conversations with OPIC officials, boasting about taking a trip to Haiti with the former president after the earthquake and telling an OPIC manager that he had a direct line to Hillary Clinton.” (Read more: Washington Free Beacon, 7/17/2015)

March 15, 2010 – Former Clinton Foundation trustee, Vinod Gupta, is charged with fraud

“The Securities and Exchange Commission charged former Clinton Foundation trustee Vinod Gupta with fraud on March 15, 2010.

“The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged three former senior executives and a former director of an Omaha-based database compilation company for their roles in a scheme in which the CEO funneled illegal compensation to himself in the form of perks worth millions of dollars.

The SEC alleges that Vinod Gupta, the former CEO and Chairman of infoUSA Inc. and infoGROUP Inc. (Info), fraudulently used corporate funds to pay almost $9.5 million in personal expenses to support his lavish lifestyle. He additionally caused the company to enter into $9.3 million of undisclosed business transactions between Info and other companies in which he had a personal stake.”

[…]”Gupta stole millions of dollars from Info shareholders by treating the company like it was his personal ATM,” said Robert Khuzami, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “Other corporate officers also abused their positions of trust by looking the other way instead of standing up for investors and bringing the scheme to a halt.”

Donald M. Hoerl, Director of the SEC’s Denver Regional Office, added, “Officers and directors must ensure that shareholders receive accurate and complete disclosure of all compensation paid to executives. Raval, as chairman of the audit committee, neglected these duties and allowed the money to flow to Gupta unbeknownst to investors.”

The SEC’s complaints, filed in federal district court in Nebraska, allege that from 2003 to 2007, Gupta improperly used corporate funds for more than $3 million worth of personal jet travel for himself, family, and friends to such destinations as South Africa, Italy, and Cancun. He also used investor money to pay $2.8 million in expenses related to his yacht; $1.3 million in personal credit card expenses; and other costs associated with 28 club memberships, 20 automobiles, homes around the country, and three personal life insurance policies. The SEC also alleges that Gupta failed to inform Info’s other board members of the material fact that he had purchased shares of an Info acquisition target for his own ill-gotten financial benefit.

The SEC alleges that Raval failed to respond appropriately to various red flags concerning Gupta’s expenses and Info’s related party transactions with Gupta’s other entities. Two Info internal auditors raised concerns to Raval that Gupta was submitting requests for reimbursement of personal expenses, yet Raval failed to take meaningful action to further investigate the matter and he omitted critical facts in a report to the board concerning Gupta’s expenses.” (Securities and Exchange Commission, 3/15/2010)