January 1, 2014 – Bill Clinton’s $300 Million Birthday Gift!

“There are now dozens of articles, several films and numerous news reports about the money that the Clinton Foundation accepts — i.e. revenue.

But there are few, and few reliable, reports about how this organization spends its money and the programs it states it conducts. Taking $millions from unsavory international billionaires like Lebanese-Nigerian Gilbert Chagoury or countries like Saudi Arabia which also received arms deals through the U.S. government is one thing.

If the money comes from bad people and organizations, what if it’s turned to a good purpose? One hears frequently that “the Clinton Foundation does so many good works around the world!” Some charity experts purport to analyze the Foundation’s work; they’ve simply retyped statements from the various pages on the organization and its associates’ websites.

Supporters also tout the organization’s “A” rating from Chicago-based Charity Watchdog, aka “The American Institute for Philanthropy.” This organization has a budget of under $600,000 a year, and its five board members have not changed in at least a decade. Its founder Daniel Borochoff’s salary comprises about 30% of its current revenue. The methodology used by Charity Watchdog is extraordinarily simple and involves no analysis of program conduct, nature and impact, just adding up and dividing numbers from official tax returns. It is effective in detecting unsophisticated charity scammers who phone elderly people for donations, and then spend the money on themselves. Charity Watchdog itself is an organization worthy of some scrutiny as to its effectiveness and impact.

You can read my four-part series here on Medium (start here) if you want to read more in-depth about the Clinton Foundation’s programs.

The Clinton Foundation reported it received $337,985,726 in revenue in 2014 (the most recent year for which it has reported income and expense or filed taxes). Below are an additional three primary programs and achievements advertised on the Clinton Foundation website and their reported outcomes and stated cost.”

(…) Clinton Global Initiative ……………………..$23,544,381

The Clinton Global Initiative hosts huge Gala meetings that serve as PR vehicles for well-known attendees. CGI America was held in June in Atlanta. Most attendees pay $20,000 and up. At the Galas, attendees sit and hear panel speeches, watch videos, get reports on various issues (like “climate change”) and sign up for a “Commitment to Action” if they desire. The “Commitment to Action” is a non-binding agreement of “improvement” in whatever area the individual or organization thinks they ought to be working in. Since the majority of the attendees represent corporations or international finance, they “agree” to make various improvements in business they conduct.

Attendees and speakers at this year’s Gala include Sir Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Ursula Burns (Xerox CEO), Jim Yong Kim (President of the World Bank Group), Hemant Kanoria (Chairman and Managing Director of Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd.) and many other global corporate luminaries.

Membership is by invitation only.
Those who attend the meetings also receive the benefits illustrated below:

According to the Clinton Foundation, “more than 3,400 ‘Commitments to Action’” have been made “to date” — and a blog post records that “123 new Commitments to Action were signed in 2015.”

Let’s divide 123 into $23,544,381 and see what we get:

$191,417.73

Reasonable!

Let’s see if we can find a typical “Commitment to Action.”

No funds of the Clinton Foundation are expended to do any of the work or “action” in the Commitment to Action. The organization/corporation that makes the Commitment is agreeing to undertake the stated Action and obtain the identified outcomes or results on their own. The “Commitment” is supposed to be reported back to the Clinton Foundation each year.

(Read more: Amy Sterling Casil, 8/12/2016)

January 2014 – Clintons take $13 million, Pinchuk admits to giving millions less, as Russia opens a fraud investigation into $186 million missing from Pinchuk’s auto insurance company

Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, the former and wannabe presidents of the US, say they have accepted more than $13 million from Ukrainian pipemaker Victor Pinchuk since 2006. But Pinchuk says he’s given the Clinton Foundation only $7.6 million.

It won’t help to employ accountants to ask where the missing $5.4 million was originally trousered, if not the Pinchuk Foundation, then which branch of Pinchuk’s business. That’s because the Clinton Foundation’s auditors – an Arkansas firm called BKD – have turned up this much money in revenues, and also in expenditures, which the Foundation’s annual report inexplicably fails to report and regularly understates. The Pinchuk Foundation also refuses to answer questions about discrepancies in its annual accounts, whose auditors are reported by Pinchuk’s organization to be Ernst & Young. Their signature is reproduced in the Pinchuk Foundation annual reports, although no copy of their financial reports and notes has been published.

The question of the missing money is a criminal case in Moscow for Russian prosecutors. This is because they are investigating how and where Pinchuk trousered the sum of Rb6.5 billion ($186 million) from his Russian auto insurance company, Rossiya Insurance Open Shareholding Company. The insurer’s licence was canceled last October 23 by the Russian Central Bank’s insurance inspectorate. At the time, the liabilities of Rossiya were reported to be Rb2.3 billion ($72 million). Over the previous twelve months, Rossiya had defaulted on Rb4.5 billion ($141 million) in claims.

In the Moscow Arbitrazh Court hearing on Rossiya last month, the bankruptcy trustee Yevgeny Zhelnin charged that Pinchuk (left) had been using fraudulent reinsurance and other schemes to empty Rossiya’s treasury of its income from premiums, along with its reserves for payment of claims. The allegation against Rossiya and its proprietor is fraud on a grand scale. And that’s where the problem starts for Hillary Clinton (right), her husband, and daughter: have they been on the receiving end of a money-laundering operation in which the proceeds from Rossiya became the income of Pinchuk’s foundation, and were then spent on the Clinton Foundation?

Pinchuk first acquired a 25% blocking stake in Rossiya through his EastOne holding company in 2007. In 2009 he bought another 25% plus one share to become the controlling shareholder, and by the end of that year, he had taken 100% of Rossiya.

In a single-page summary of its annual balance sheets, purportedly endorsed by Ernst & Young, the Pinchuk Foundation reveals that 2007 was a bonanza year. The money box started with a cash balance of just $63,947. It then filled up with what Ernst & Young calls “contributions and charitable donations” totaling $15.7 million. The Foundation refuses to clarify the source of its donations.

The balance-sheet claims the foundation spent $1.1 million on Pinchuk’s lobbying group for Ukrainian membership of the European Union, called Yalta European Strategy. Another half a million dollars went to a Washington, DC, lobbyist called Anders Aslund at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and another $250,000 to the Brookings Institution, also a Washington think-tank lobbying for Pinchuk’s causes in the Ukraine.

The Clintons claim to have collected $132.5 million in 2007, but they won’t say how much was from Pinchuk. Pinchuk won’t say if he gave them a penny that year. Pinchuk’s accountants don’t start revealing their spending on the Clintons until 2009 when the Pinchuk organization reports that $4 million was despatched and received. In the meantime, the motor and third-party liability insurance premiums rolled into Rossiya in Moscow – and the philanthropy was booming at the Pinchuk Foundation in Kiev. According to Ernst & Young, Pinchuk’s donations in 2008 jumped 68% to $26.3 million.

In 2009, as EastOne took over Rossiya entirely, the Russian economy was in trade-induced recession, car sales dropped, along with premium revenues at Rossiya. Pinchuk’s generosity dropped to $13.8 million, according to the foundation balance-sheet. Aslund’s stipend was cut by half to $100,000 for the year.

Annus horribilis it might have been for philanthropy, but Pinchuk’s foundation paid itself $1.5 million in “administrative expenses” in 2009 – up from $1.4 million in 2008, and four times the $307,265 which running the show cost in 2007. Bill Clinton was paid to speak in January 2009 at what Pinchuk called his Davos Philanthropic Roundtable.

In 2010, Pinchuk said he gave $1.1 million to the Clinton Foundation; Clinton claims the amount was between $5 million and $10 million. In 2012, the Pinchuk Foundation says it gave $1 million; according to the Clinton Foundation that year the amount donated was between $5 and $10 million.

The Clinton Foundation’s problems of accounting for its money are legion. Although it has been taking in about a quarter of a billion dollars per annum, it overspent its income in 2007 by $11.1 million; in 2008 the overspend was $13.8 million. In 2013 BBB, the American philanthropy watchdog, warned public donors that the Clinton operation failed to meet the required standard for public accountability and independent supervision; make that avoidance of conflict of interest, since most of the foundation’s staff have also been involved in the presidential campaigning of Mrs. Clinton.

The foundation claims to operate a New York City headquarters at 1271 Avenue of the Americas, according to the website; 55 West 125th Street, according to the telephone answering machine. Its press department is headed by Valerie Alexander, who ran the press operation for Mrs Clinton’s abortive presidential campaign in 2007; the organization identifies her deputy as Betsy Feuerstein. Neither answers the telephone; both refuse to answer email requests for clarification of the $13 million in receipts from Pinchuk. On February 12, a New York newspaper claimed the total was “roughly $13.1 million”, but failed to cite a source. The reporter, who did not check Pinchuk’s financial reports and court claim records, refused to answer questions. The newspaper reported a statement in support of Pinchuk by Aslund and the Peterson Institute without identification of more than a million dollars Pinchuk has paid the two of them.

A cryptic note in the Pinchuk Foundation report for 2010 concedes that from “2009; all funding [for Clinton] was transferred through the accounts of the Foundation.” Open this link and go to page 61. That implies there was an agreement between Pinchuk and the Clintons, their foundations, and their lawyers that whatever conduit he had been using to pay them should appear from then on to be a channel between the two charities.” (Read more: John Helmer, 2/17/2014)

(Republished in part, with permission)