During the US election campaign in 2016, the Ukrainian authorities led by President Petro Poroshenko (r), openly and actively support Hillary Clinton. (Credit: public domain)

(Timeline editor’s note: This is an excerpt from an article written by Vasily Prozorov who is a former employee of the Ukrainian security service SBU. All of his work used to be found at ukr-leaks.org but now appears to have a new owner. You can still access this article via the archived link below. Mr. Prozorov appears to have an active Twitter account.)

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(…) “Manafort is only one of the participants in the drama, called “Ukraine Gate”. Another story is related to the financial support of Hillary Clinton from Ukraine. The intrigue is that during the presidential race in the United States, official Kiev helped the Democratic candidate not only politically and informationally, but also used the money stolen from the IMF tranches, to sponsor your favorite.

So, according to the information available to me, Ukraine is currently continuing investigation of criminal proceedings regarding the theft of IMF funds received by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU).

Vasily Prozorov (Credit: public domain)

It was assumed that foreign aid would be intended to support the financial sector of Ukraine. Under this program, the NBU allocated funds to various private credit organizations of the country. Their owners transferred the received amounts to offshore companies, transferring the agreed kickbacks to the head of the NBU Valeria Gontareva and her patron Petro Poroshenko, for whom she had previously worked in the ICU investment campaign.

Such banks of Ukraine as Tavrika, Pivdenkombank, Avtokrazbank, Moscow Commercial Bank (Converse Bank), Finrostbank, Terra Bank, Kiivska Rus, Vernum Bank participated in this scheme, “Credit Dnipro”, “Delta Bank” and others. Money was transferred from the country to offshore via Austrian bank MeinlBank AG.

The largest volumes of monetary assets were received by two credit organizations – Credit Dnipro and Delta Bank. These banks are closely associated with one of the richest Ukrainian oligarchs – Victor Pinchuk, son-in-law of former President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma. The Ukrainian billionaire maintained contacts with the former IMF representative in Ukraine, Jerome Wash, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF managing director, was a member of the Credit Dnipro Supervisory Board. It is hard to imagine that these distinguished gentlemen were not aware of the financial transactions of their Ukrainian friends. Therefore, it is possible that an international group was engaged in the theft of billions of foreign aid to Ukraine.

At the next stage, IMF loans went to the offshore companies MelfaGroup LTD (Belize), TandiceLimited (Cyprus), TosalanTradingLimited (Cyprus), AgaluskoInvestmentLimited (Cyprus), WintenTrading LTD (Cyprus), SilistenTradingLimited “NasternoCommercialLimited.” These offices, as it turned out, also associated with Victor Pinchuk.

But this was not the end of the financial chain. Most of the money from these foreign assets of Pinchuk went to the accounts of his main “washing machine” – The Victor Pinchuk Foundation. And already the “laundered money” was transferred to the Clinton Foundation. Since 2012, for almost five years, the family of the former US president has been listed more than 29 million dollars. Moreover, the largest tranches from the Pinchuk Foundation to the Clinton Foundation were held in 2015 and 2016. By a “coincidental” coincidence, it was at this time that Hillary fought for the post of US president.

Scheme of theft of IMF money tranches and their transfer to the Clinton fund.

Obviously, such a scheme was implemented with the direct participation of the head of the National Bank, Mrs. Gontareva, and the assistance of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko.” (Read more: Ukraine Leaks/Archived, 7/26/2019) (Direct link)

Translated:

(…) “In May 2016, according to the decision of the Kiev Pechersk Court, some Ukrainian credit organizations used shadow schemes for withdrawing funds through the correspondent accounts of the Austrian Meinl Bank AG, the damage from their actions amounted to more than $ 800 million.

(Credit: Kate Matberg/Mediapart)

Another “ingenious scheme” worked smoothly as follows. Ukrainian banks entered into custody and collateral agreements with a non-resident Austrian bank, in which all amounts of funds on correspondent accounts, accrued interest and any future receipts to these accounts were pledged to the foreign bank. The pledge was provided to ensure the fulfillment of obligations under the loan agreements that the non-resident bank, in turn, concluded with third parties – non-resident companies in Ukraine. The latter were associated with the owners of Ukrainian banking institutions. And the borrowers did not fulfill their loan obligations, for which Meinl Bank AG unilaterally extrajudicially charged (i.e., debited from the accounts of Ukrainian banks) all funds in its favor.

And now let’s take a closer look at the list of these Ukrainian banks and using their own reporting documents (by the way, already removed from the Internet, but still recorded by the author before this sad event), we will analyze some of their activities.

Former Ukraine Minister of Finance, Natalie Jaresko is named to manage Puerto Rico’s financial crisis on March 24, 2017. (Credit: public domain)

Of the 36 banks that were granted loans by the National Bank of Ukraine at the expense of IMF tranches, 11 were closed without returning borrowed funds (June 10, 2014 – March 15, 2018, Chairman of the Board Ms. Gontareva), 11 were closed without returning borrowed funds. It seems not so much in the framework of the “struggle for the purification and improvement of the financial and credit system of the state”.

However, the true scope, excuse my French, the scam becomes clear when it turns out that only eight credit institutions received up to 95% of this money. They strenuously pumped them through the already familiar Austrian Meinl Bank AG with a further withdrawal to private offshore companies in Cyprus and Belize. As a result, six of them have already left the orderly ranks of the banking system of Ukraine. And it happened somehow quietly, almost without ceremony, which suggests the national scale of such “Mummery”. Yes, and the ratio of the numbers 11 to 36, or 6 out of 11, not all the same – 6 out of 8 rather confirms our conjecture that Ms. N. Yaresko who held the post of Minister of Finance from February 12, 2014 to April 14, 2016 owned the situation.

It would not be superfluous to recall that Ms. N. Yaresko, a citizen of the United States treated by the highest presidential power, obtained the citizenship of Ukraine, so to speak, from the hands of Mr. Poroshenko for “special merit.” Was it only for merits to the state and what exactly were her merits?  Maybe in the ability to “correctly” distribute and divide financial flows, primarily taking care of the welfare of Mr. Poroshenko’s “team” and his inner circle?

Former IMF representative in Ukraine, Jerome Vacher (Credit: public domain)

Two more banks – participants of this scheme are PJSC “Credit Dnipro” and PJSC “Delta Bank” affiliated with it (declared insolvent in 2015, the bankruptcy procedure is not completed) continue to operate. Their owner is oligarch Pinchuk V.M. – son-in-law of the former President of Ukraine Kuchma L.D. Mr. Pinchuk maintained close ties with the former representative of the IMF in Ukraine, Mr. Jerome Vacher. In addition, the supervisory board of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on the supervisory board of PJSC “Credit Dnipro”. It should also be noted that Mr. Pinchuk is the founder of the “Victor Pinchuk Foundation”, which is funded, including through some private offshore companies.

Do you think this is another final link in the chain of funds adventure allocated by the IMF? Do not hurry! Since 2012, for almost five years, only through the Pinchuk’s fund, “Clinton Foundation” received more than $ 29 million. Yes, my dear Ukrainian reader, Mr. Pinchuk, in fact, became one of the largest financial donors to the former American presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Simultaneously, Mr. Pinchuk did not forget Mr. Poroshenko, paying for his election campaign in the media. Mr. Dudnik A.P. was responsible for this truly significant event for one of the leading Ukrainian oligarchs – yes, exactly the head of the supervisory board of the PJSC “Credit Dnipro” bank.

And this already really looks like a “state level” of the highest standard, especially considering the “State Dept” past of Ms. N. Yaresko. Isn’t it a perfect mediator and “watchwoman” for all interested parties?!

Clinton Foundation mega-donor Victor Pinchuk, (l), Toomas Hendrik (c), President of the Republic of Estonia and Petro Poroshenko (r), President of Ukraine. (Credit: Pinchuk Fund)

So instead of financing own economy, the current Ukrainian government headed by Mr. Poroshenko in effect, created a corrupt scheme of international scope, replenished its personal reserves “for a rainy day” and pleased the “democrats” ruling in the USA at that time. However, the Ukrainian president is not very successful with the current American “partners”. Violating the laws of at least two countries, as well as all conceivable principles of democracy and decency (yes, they also exist in politics, to put it mildly, are peculiar, but still) the US Democratic Party actually received uncontrollable income at the expense of the world financial organization allocated to support economy of another state – Ukraine. A crime? Yes! And it is very similar to the “payoff”! (Read more: Kate Matberg/Mediapart, 4/15/2019)

(Timeline editor’s note: We hope documents will be released to further verify this information.)

Terry McAuliffe (Credit: public domain)

“A useful timeline in the OIG report sketches the McCabe-McAuliffe saga—a swamp tale of a particular sort. In 2014, McCabe, a rising star at the FBI, is assistant director of the bureau’s Washington, DC, field office. His wife is a pediatrician in Virginia. Terry McAuliffe is governor.

In February 2015, Dr. McCabe receives a phone call from Virginia’s lieutenant governor. Would she consider running for a state senate seat?

Less than two weeks later, in March 2015, McCabe and his wife drive to Richmond for what they thought was a meeting with a Virginia state senator to discuss Dr. McCabe’s possible run for office.

In Richmond, according to the OIG report, they are told there had been “a change of plans” and that “Governor McAuliffe wanted to speak to Dr. McCabe at the Governor’s mansion.”

It’s around this time that a veteran FBI agent’s radar might start blinking.

McCabe and his wife meet with McAuliffe for 30 to 45 minutes, according to the OIG report. Fundraising was discussed. “Governor McAuliffe said that he and the Democratic Party would support Dr. McCabe’s candidacy.” McAuliffe asked McCabe about his occupation and “McCabe told him he worked for the FBI but they did not discuss McCabe’s work or any FBI business.” McCabe later described it to an FBI official as a “surreal meeting.”

After the meeting, the couple rode to a local event with the governor, then returned to the mansion with the governor to retrieve their car.

McCabe informed FBI ethics officials and lawyers about the meeting and consulted with them about his wife’s plans. No one raised strong objections. McCabe recused himself from all public corruption cases in Virginia and Dr. McCabe jumped into the race.

Jill and Andrew McCabe in their campaign attire on March 7, 2015. (Credit: Sharyl Attkisson)

In July 2015, the FBI opened an investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email practices.

Let’s pause to note here that while the official FBI investigation was opened in July 2015, Mrs. Clinton was known to be in hot water as far back as March 2015, when the State Department inspector general revealed her widespread use of a private, non-government email server.

Swamp cats will notice that March 2015 is also when Andrew and Jill McCabe got their surprise audience with McAuliffe, the longtime Clinton money man.

The McCabe fortunes rose in the autumn of 2015. Mr. McCabe was promoted to associate deputy director of the FBI. Dr. McCabe received $675,000 from two McAuliffe-connected entities for her state senate race. They were by far the biggest donations to her campaign.

In November 2015, Dr. McCabe lost her race.

In January 2016, the FBI opened an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

On February 1, Mr. McCabe was promoted again, to deputy director of the FBI.

Despite the McAuliffe connection, the OIG report notes, there was no FBI re-evaluation of McCabe’s recusals following his promotions. Although recused from Virginia public corruption investigations, he retained a senior role in Clinton-related matters.

In May 2016, news broke that McAuliffe was under FBI investigation for campaign finance violations. CNN reported that investigators were scrutinizing “McAuliffe’s time as a board member of the Clinton Global Initiative” and Chinese businessman Wang Wenliang, a U.S. permanent resident who made large donations to both the McAuliffe 2013 gubernatorial campaign and to the Clinton Foundation.

On October 23, the Wall Street Journal revealed the McAuliffe-linked donations to Dr. McCabe’s campaign. At FBI headquarters, McCabe resists pressure from senior executives to recuse himself from all Clinton-related matters.

Finally, on November 1—a week before the presidential election—McCabe recused from the Clinton email and Clinton Foundation investigations.” (Read more: Judicial Watch, 6/21/2018)

“Victor Pinchuk, the Ukrainian oligarch who took sides for the European Union (EU) against Russia, is running out of money, company officials admitted last week in a confidential briefing.

Pinchuk has been forced to provide his company with $20 million in emergency cash to stave off insolvency, but bondholders and banks owed more than $1 billion have not been paid. Although company officials admit that Interpipe, their pipemaking business in Dniepropetrovsk, has not been attacked directly by the fighting in Donbass, they say they are now cut off from supplies of scrap steel for smelters, electricity, and coal from Lugansk and Donetsk. As a result, Pinchuk is now planning to lay off at least 3,000 workers – one-fifth of his Dniepropetrovsk workforce. A brewing worker rebellion and bankruptcy action by unpaid bondholders are part of what one Interipe executive calls Pinchuk’s “fundamental risk”.

The timing of the disclosures could not be worse for Pinchuk, or for Dniepropetrovsk — until now the bastion of Igor Kolomoisky, Pinchuk’s commercial rival and governor of the region. Pinchuk was the target in the US last week as US newspapers opened investigations into the flow of money Pinchuk has directed to the Clinton Foundation, and to lobbying for commercial and political favours from Hillary Clinton and State Department officials directing the Kiev administration.

(…) In the US Pinchuk has employed a lobbyist named Douglas Schoen (below) since 2011 at $40,000 per month. The cash comes from both his Pinchuk Foundation, based in Kiev, and EastOne, his asset holding operating in London, Kiev, and Cyprus. Schoen, who is based in New York, is a pollster for the Democratic Party in the US and for US Government agencies abroad. He is also a booster for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign; that’s what the Rupert Murdoch media call a “political analyst”.

Schoen’s latest filing for Pinchuk with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) unit of the US Department of Justice reveals that during the last six months of 2014, Schoen’s monthly stipend remained undiminished at $40,000.

However, compared to the FARA filings in 2011 and 2012, Schoen now claims his efforts are “philanthropic work”, with “no payments attributable to lobbying work this period”. To the question: “During this 6 month reporting period, did you prepare, disseminate or cause to be disseminated any informational materials?” Schoen ticked the No box.

In fact, the promotional materials were written or delivered at lectures and in the press by Steven Pifer, a former US ambassador to Ukraine (below, left), and Anders Aslund (right), a propaganda specialist. Their stipends Pinchuk pays at the Washington think-tanks, Brookings Institution and the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). In acknowledgement, Pinchuk is listed as a member of the “international advisory council” at Brookings, and a board director at PIIE. For more details, read this.

When Schoen last admitted to the Justice Department that he was lobbying on Pinchuk’s tab, he revealed that he was focusing on Hillary Clinton and State Department officials, Melanne Verveer and Tom Melia. Schoen reported to the Justice Department that he had asked Clinton to meet and endorse Areny Yatseniuk, now the Ukrainian prime minister, and to back other schemes for “the democratization and free and fair elections in the Ukraine. “

Melia is deputy assistant secretary at the State Department, responsible for Ukraine at the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labour. Both Melia (left) and his superior, Victoria Nuland (right), were active in preparing Yatseniuk’s takeover of power in Kiev on February 22, 2014. Pinchuk hosted the last outing together of Aslund, Pifer, Melia and Schoen at the Kiev session of the Yalta European Strategy (YES), another Pinchuk philanthropy, in Kiev last September.

What the distinction between lobbying and philanthropy means is that Pifer and Aslund do the lobbying for Pinchuk, and he puts money in their pockets through the think-tanks. Then Schoen reports to the Justice Department that he is receiving $40,000 per month from Pinchuk for doing nothing reportable at all.

Thomas Weihe

Last week, when three Washington Post reporters were investigating money Pinchuk had given the Clinton Foundation, they missed the $6 million difference between what Pinchuk said he had given, and the smaller number the Clinton Foundation said it had received. The Post investigation also failed to detect that the origin of the Pinchuk funds may have been a Russian insurance company fraud. Read more.

The Post reporters, who didn’t open the FARA files of lobbyist and philanthropist Schoen, reported that Interpipe had “has faced formal complaints in the United States for unfair trade practices. Spokesmen for the Clintons and Pinchuk waved away any suggestion of a conflict between the donor’s regulatory concerns and the charitable contributions to the foundation. ‘No assistance with any business issues has now or ever been sought from the Clinton Foundation or its principals,’ said Thomas Weihe (right), a spokesman for the Kiev-based Pinchuk Foundation. He said Pinchuk supported the Clinton effort because of the foundation’s record and the ‘unique capacity of its principals to promote the modernization of Ukraine.’”

(Read more: John Helmer, 2/20/2015)   (Archive)

(Reposted in part, with permission)

Ken Berger (Credit: Nonprofit Chronicles)

“After being the subject of a spate of negative newspaper accounts about potential conflicts of interest and management dysfunction this winter — long before Clinton Cash — the Clinton Foundation wound up on a “watch list” maintained by the Charity Navigator, the New Jersey–based nonprofit watchdog. The Navigator, dubbed the “most prominent” nonprofit watchdog by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, is a powerful and feared player in the nonprofit world. Founded in 2002, it ranks more than 8,000 charities and is known for its independence. For a while, the Clinton Foundation was happy to promote Charity Navigator’s work (back when they were awarded its highest ranking). In September 2014, in fact, the Navigator’s then-CEO, Ken Berger, was invited to speak at the Clinton Global Initiative. Of course that was before the Foundation was placed on a list with scandal-plagued charities like Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and the Red Cross.

Since March, the Foundation has embarked on an aggressive behind-the-scenes campaign to get removed from the list. Clinton Foundation officials accuse the Navigator of unfairly targeting them, lacking credible evidence of wrongdoing, and blowing off numerous requests for a meeting to present their case. “They’re not only punishing us for being transparent but are not being transparent themselves,” Maura Pally, the Foundation’s acting CEO, told me by phone from Morocco last week. “Charity Navigator doesn’t disclose its donors, but we do and yet that means we’re suffering the consequences.”

Navigator executives counter that the Foundation has demanded they extend the Clintons special treatment. They also allege the Foundation attempted to strong-arm them by calling a Navigator board member. “They felt they were of such importance that we should deviate from our normal process. They were irritated by that,” says Berger.

The feud is a microcosm of all that is exhausting about the Clintons’ endless public battles. Generally, it goes like this: bad press about their lack of transparency sparks some real-world consequence or censure, the Clintons complain that they’re being held to an unfair standard while their critics contend that they expect to be able to write their own rules, and the resulting flare-up leads to more bad press.” (Read more: NYMag 5/10/2015)

The Clintons stand behind Terry McAuliffe during his inauguration as the Commonwealth of Virginia’s 72nd governor. (Credit: Patrick Semansky / The Associated Press)

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe is widely considered the best friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and was co-chair of one of Bill’s presidential campaigns and the chair of Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign. In March 2016, McAuliffe says, “We’re best friends, I’ve been family friends with the Clinton’s for thirty years. It’s a great relationship, we vacationed together for years, we’re just very personal friends…” (The Valley’s Music Place, 3/31/2016)

On March 7, 2015, McAuliffe and other state Democratic Party leaders meet with Dr. Jill McCabe and persuade her to run for a state senator seat in Virginia. Dr. McCabe is a hospital physician who has never run for political office before. This has potentially larger political implications, because her husband is Andrew McCabe, an FBI official who runs the FBI’s Washington, DC, field office at the time.

Dr. Jill McCabe (Credit: Twitter)

FBI officials will later claim that after the March 7, 2015 meeting, Andrew McCabe seeks ethics advice from the FBI and follows it, avoiding involvement with public corruption cases in Virginia, and also avoiding any of his wife’s campaign activities or events.

Five days before Jill McCabe is asked to run, on March 2, 2015, the New York Times publicly reveals Clinton’s use of a private email address, and her use of a private email server is revealed two days later, starting a major and prolonged political controversy. Jill McCabe announces her candidacy on March 12, 2015.

On July 10, 2015, the FBI’s Clinton email investigation formally begins, although it may have informally begun earlier.

Andrew McCabe and Jill McCabe pose at a campaign event in 2015. (Credit: Sharyl Attkisson)

Andrew McCabe’s Washington, DC, field office provides personnel and resources to the investigation. At the end of July 2015, he is promoted to assistant deputy FBI director, the number three position in the FBI.

During the 2015 election season, McAuliffe’s political action committee (PAC) donates $467,500 to Jill McCabe’s campaign. Furthermore, the Virginia Democratic Party, ”over which Mr. McAuliffe exerts considerable control,” according to the Wall Street Journal, donates an additional $207,788 to her campaign. “That adds up to slightly more than $675,000 to her candidacy from entities either directly under Mr. McAuliffe’s control or strongly influenced by him.”

This represents more than a third of all the campaign funds McCabe raises in the election. She is the third-largest recipient of funds from McAuliffe’s PAC that year.

Virginia State Senator Dick Black (Credit: Twitter)

On November 3, 2015, Jill McCabe loses the election to incumbent Republican Dick Black. Once the campaign is over, “[Andrew] McCabe and FBI officials felt the potential conflict-of-interest issues ended,” according to the Journal.

In February 2016, Andrew McCabe is promoted to deputy FBI director, the second highest position in the FBI. In this role, he is part of the executive leadership team overseeing the Clinton email investigation, though FBI officials say any final decisions are made by FBI Director James Comey.

However, that is not the only potential conflict of interest. By February 2016, four FBI field offices are conducting investigations of the Clinton Foundation. McAuliffe was a Clinton Foundation board member until he resigned when he became the governor of Virginia in 2013. (The Wall Street Journal, 10/24/2016)

Also, at some point in 2015, if not earlier, the FBI begins conducting an investigation of McAuliffe. When the existence of this investigation is publicly leaked in May 2016, media reports suggest it may involve McAuliffe’s financial relationship with a Chinese businessperson who has donated millions to the foundation. It is also reported that investigators have looked at McAuliffe’s time as a board member of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), a yearly conference run by the Clinton Foundation.  (CNN, 5/24/2016)

Andrew McCabe (Credit: Getty Images)

In the spring of 2016, Andrew McCabe agrees to recuse himself from the McAuliffe investigation, due to McAuliffe’s donations to Jill McCabe’s election campaign. However, he doesn’t recuse himself from the Clinton Foundation investigation or the Clinton email investigation, despite McAuliffe’s close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton. (The Wall Street Journal, 10/24/2016)

In mid-July 2016, the FBI seeks to reorganize the Clinton Foundation investigation. McCabe decides the FBI’s New York office should take the lead, while the Washington office that he formerly headed should take the lead with the McAuliffe investigation. The Journal will later report, “Within the FBI, the decision was viewed with skepticism by some, who felt the probe would be stronger if the foundation and McAuliffe matters were combined.” However, the decision is implemented.

McCabe also is involved in an effort to shut down the foundation investigation in August 2016, but his role is unclear.

In October 2016, McCabe’s potential conflicts of interest will be revealed by two Wall Street Journal articles. (The Wall Street Journal, 10/30/2016) In early November 2016, the Journal will report that “some [in the FBI] have blamed [McCabe], claiming he sought to stop agents from pursuing the [Clinton Foundation] case this summer. His defenders deny that, and say it was the Justice Department that kept pushing back on the investigation.” (The Wall Street Journal, 11/2/2016)

Around that time, James Kallstrom, the former head of the FBI’s New York office, will say of McCabe, “The guy has no common sense. He should be demoted and taken out of the chain of command.” (The American Spectator, 11/1/2016)

The Wyss Foundation, Washington D.C. (Credit: public domain)

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s family foundation received millions of dollars from a corporate magnate whose former company caused the death of three people by injecting a cement-like mix into their spines during illegal human drug trials.

The Wyss Foundation has given the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation between $1million to $5 million, including an unspecified amount in 2014. The donor was one of 168 that gave $1 million or more to the Clinton philanthropy, according to its website.

Hansjörg Wyss (Credit: public domain)

The Wyss Foundation is a charitable arm of Hansjorg Wyss, a reclusive Swiss billionaire and former chief executive officer of Synthes, Inc., which conducted the illegal clinical trials.

Justice Department attorneys negotiated a $24 million plea deal in 2011 with Synthes and Norian Corporation, its wholly owned subsidiary, that sent four of its U.S. executives to prison. Wyss, who was not jailed, sold the company in 2012 to Johnson & Johnson for a reported $21.3 billion. He was the major stockholder at the time of the sale.

U.S. District Judge Legrome D. Davis said Synthes conducted the illegal human drug trials without Food and Drug Administration approval for doing so, then “in search of profits, chose not to tell the FDA the truth” about what it was doing.

The company knew from its own research prior to the illegal trials in 2009 that the bone cement mixed with blood to cause blood clots, according to the federal indictment, and that in porcine tests the “blood clots became lodged in the lungs. Notwithstanding this knowledge, the company allegedly proceeded to market the product.”

The Justice Department further charged that the Wyss firm “did not stop marketing the product until after a third patient had died on the operating table.” Then, instead of recalling the product, they “compounded their crimes by carrying out a coverup in which they lied to the FDA.”

The judge wrote that the company had tried to evade detection and accountability, and that its “pattern of deception is unparalleled.”

The Clinton Foundation website merely gives the name of the organization. There is one other Wyss Foundation in the U.S., but it disburses less than a million dollars a year total, and its accountant said it had not donated to the Clinton philanthropy. The Swiss billionaire’s D.C.-based foundation staff would not discuss the donation. It has not filed Internal Revenue Service disclosures for 2014.

The Washington Examiner first reported on Wyss’ past, and his connection to liberal groups, in July 2014, finding that it had given millions to the Center for American Progress, a nonprofit run by John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff and more recently a senior adviser to President Obama.

In January, the center provided a list of its donors to the Washington Post in an attempt to demonstrate that it was “transparent” since Podesta is expected to manage Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Missing from the listing given to the Post was Wyss. (Read more: The Washington Examiner, 3/16/2015)  (Archive)

On April 11, 2019, Greg Craig, Obama’s former White House counsel and a partner at law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, was indicted for lying about and concealing his work in Ukraine. Craig, who reportedly worked closely with Manafort, was paid more than $4 million to produce an “independent” report justifying Ukraine’s trial and conviction of the former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko. Notably, Craig’s name was not included in the “Black Ledger” leak from Leshchenko and Sytnyk.

The indictment notes that “a wealthy private Ukrainian” was fully funding the report. In a recent YouTube video, Craig publicly stated that “it was Doug Schoen who brought this project to me, and he told me he was acting on behalf of Victor Pinchuk, who was a pro-western, Ukrainian businessman who helped to fund the project.”

“The Firm understood that its work was to be largely funded by Victor Pinchuk,” Skadden wrote in recent FARA filings.

Pinchuk put out a statement on Jan. 21, denying any financial involvement:

“Mr. Pinchuk was not the source of any funds used to pay fees of Skadden in producing their report into the trial and conviction of Yulia Tymoshenko. He was in no way responsible for those costs. Neither Mr. Pinchuk nor companies affiliated with him have ever been a client of Skadden. Mr. Pinchuk and his team had no role in the work done by Skadden, including in the preparation or dissemination of the Skadden report.”

Pinchuk is the founder of Interpipe, a steel pipe manufacturer. He owns Credit Dnipro Bank, several ferroalloy plants and a media empire. He is married to Elena Pinchuk, the daughter of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.

Pinchuk has been accused of profiting immensely from the purchase of state-owned assets at severely below-market prices through political favoritism.

Between April 4 and April 12, 2016, Ukrainian parliamentarian Olga Bielkova had four meetings, with Samuel Charap (International Institute for Strategic Studies), Liz Zentos (National Security Council), Michael Kimmage (State Department), and David Kramer (McCain Institute).

FARA documents filed by Schoen showed that he was paid $40,000 a month by Pinchuk (page 5)—in part to arrange these meetings.

Schoen attempted to arrange another 72 meetings with congressmen and media (page 10). It’s unknown how many of these meetings, if any, took place.

In September 2013, Pinchuk pays Clinton to appear at a YES event promoting Ukrainian membership of the European Union, break with Russia, and regime change in Kiev and Moscow. (Credit: Pinchuk Foundation)

Schoen also helped Pinchuk establish ties with the Clinton Foundation. The Wall Street Journal reported on March 19, 2015, how Schoen connected Pinchuk with senior Clinton State Department staffers in order to pressure former Ukrainian President Yanukovych to release Tymoshenko–a political rival of Yanukovych–from jail. And the relationship between Pinchuk and the Clintons continued. According to the Kyiv Post:

“Clinton and her husband Bill, the 42nd U.S. president, have been paid speakers at the annual YES and other Pinchuk events. They describe themselves as friends of Pinchuk, who is known internationally as a businessman and philanthropist.”

Although exact numbers aren’t clear, reports filed by the Clinton Foundation indicate that as much as $25 million of Pinchuk’s donations went to the Clinton organization.

Pinchuk also has ties to Leshchenko, the Ukrainian MP who leaked the information on Manafort. Leshchenko had been a frequent speaker at the Ukrainian Breakfast, a traditional private event held at Davos, Switzerland, and hosted by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and has also been pictured with Pinchuk at multiple other events.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 4/26/2019)

Andrej Babis (Credit: public domain)

“Andrej Babis is one of the wealthiest men in eastern Europe — if you bite bread, read a newspaper, fill your car with fuel, or put fertilizer on your window box in Prague, chances are you owe Babis money. He is also Deputy Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Finance Minister, and candidate to become the next Czech President.

When Babis announced on Friday in Washington that he is planning to sue the US foreign policy establishment for libel, he wasn’t bluffing. His aim is to stop the US State Department, American officers at NATO headquarters in Brussels, and the war party in Kiev from attacking him as a Kremlin stooge.

The rise of Babis is also the takeoff of another albatross which is about to hang itself around the neck of candidate to become President of the US, Hillary Clinton. For it’s her campaign booster and pollster, Douglas Schoen and his old firm Penn Schoen Berland (PSB), which claim credit for inventing Babis’s political party, Akce Nespokojených Občanů (Action of Dissatisfied Citizens) – the acronym ANO also means “yes” in Czech – and putting Babis in power. From non-existence in 2011, ANO took 19% of the votes in the Czech lower house election of 2013, a close second behind the ruling Social-Democratic Party; 17% in the Czech senate election of last October. According to the American pollster, PSB’s Czech-educated executive, Alexander Braun is the winner of several US awards for his Czech political campaigns. He also claims credit, along with Schoen, for advising “notable clients…includ[ing] Tony Blair and Hillary Clinton, as well as presidents in Mexico, Ukraine, and Philippines.”

With the ANO vote running at close to 20%, and Babis’s voter approval rating at better than 60%, he and his appointees in the Czech Government control the ministries of finance, defence, justice, transport, environment, and regional development. Try buying, lighting, and stubbing out a cigarette between Karlovy Vary in the west, on the German border, and Ostrava in the east, near Poland, and you need ANO’s permission.

Czech Republic

If it is American strategy to prevent Germany or Russia, or the two of them together, from ruling who can drop their butts in Eastern Europe, then the rise of the potentate of Prague is either a good thing, or a bad thing. For the time being, it’s an uncertain, so a dangerous thing.

When “Dragoon Ride”, a convoy of 120 armoured cars from the US Army and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), tried to rally Czech support for American rule of Ukraine and war against Russia last month, it was the ANO ministries which refused to allow them to drive through Prague, diverting them instead to a military base on the outskirts.

Caption: “US soldiers from the 3rd Squadron of 2nd Cavalry Regiment are preparing to leave the Vyskov Area near the Brno, Czech republic, 29 March 2015. The soldiers finished their 3-month-long training in Poland and now they spend three days in Czech republic.” (Source: http://www.demotix.com)

The US Army called “Dragoon Ride” a “highly visible demonstration of U.S, commitment to its NATO allies and demonstrating NATO’s ability to move military forces freely across allied borders in close cooperation.” On March 29 the Stars and Stripes reported that “the convoy unleashed fierce debate among the Czech people and politicians. On Saturday, thousands of people gathered in Prague, the capital, to demonstrate support for and opposition to the convoy and American foreign policy.” The Ukrainian regime media called that “the opening of another Russian front in the Czech Republic”, and the Czech Republic “Russia’s outpost in central Europe.” In Kiev Babis’s ANO was called the “Führerpartei”.

The Ukrainian allegations were published on March 29. On April 13 a US-supported think-tank in London calling itself the Henry Jackson Society published a report on Babis entitled “Now the Czechs have an oligarch problem, too”. The author was Andrew Foxall (right), who heads the Jackson group’s Russia Studies Centre. Foxall has been an academic in Belfast. For several days he has had a problem. When readers tried to open his report on Babis, the link was blocked by what was described as a “fatal error”. The think-tank now says “that was a technical problem with our website.” It can now be read here.

The Jackson think-tank reports patrons representing the US Council on Foreign Relations; the US National Endowment on Democracy; General Jack Sheehan (below left), a former US NATO commander and now lobbyist for the Bechtel construction company; former Pentagon official, Richard Perle (centre); and Robert Kagan (right) a foreign policy advisor to several secretaries of state. Kagan is the husband of Victoria Nuland, the State Department official currently in charge of eastern Europe and the Ukraine war.

On Friday (April 17) Babis was in Washington for the annual spring meeting of finance ministers at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), announcing there that the Jackson Society’s allegations are “a pack of lies and dirty tricks…What a coincidence that it was published [on April 10] two days before I arrived [in the United States].”

Babis directed his public attack against Foreign Policy, which published Foxall’s report in the US. The magazine was owned by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace until 2008, when it was bought by the Washington Post. When the Post was sold in 2013 to Jeffrey Bezos, the Amazon.com owner, Foreign Policy was one of the small properties in the deal. It calls itself “A Trusted Advisor for Global Leaders When the Stakes are Highest.”

David Rothkopf (right), the editor of Foreign Policy, is an apparatchik from Bill Clinton’s administration. He also owns a company called Garten Rothkopf, which he describes as “an international advisory company specializing in global political risk, energy, resource, technology and emerging markets issues based in Washington, D.C.” According to the company, it specializes in “focus on political realities that uncovers the likely – though often unintended – consequences of government action”.

Rothkopf is a booster of the Hillary Clinton campaign. Two years ago he claimed in print “there are few certainties in American politics. But you can write it down: If Hillary Clinton wants to be the next nominee of the Democratic Party to be president, the job is hers.” Rothkopf also claims Clinton “has been the most successful U.S. secretary of state in two decades.”

(…) In New York the Clinton Foundation identifies few donors from the Czech Republic. One is Ladislav Drab (below, right), the chief executive of American Power Supply and Czeska Energie (CE Group), traders in imported natural gas, LNG, and electricity for the Czech market. Drab’s donation to the Clintons is listed in the $100,000 to $250,000 range. Drab received this souvenir from Bill Clinton:

Drab and Clinton at an energy summit conference at the Prague Castle, May 2012 Source: http://www.gscep.cz/cs/aktuality

Another in the Clinton roster of donors is Braun’s firm Penn Schoen & Berland (PSB), which is recorded as making a donation of $50,000 to $100,000. If Braun was fronting for Babis or another of Braun’s clients, he isn’t saying. There is no record at the US Justice Department’s foreign agents’ registry that Braun or PSB represent either Babis or a Czech government entity or business. If Braun has been billing Babis for advice on which US Government officials to meet, he isn’t obliged to register as a foreign agent. If he picks up the telephone to arrange a meeting, the law requires him to register.

The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Newsweek have all been reporting in recent days on the foreign business and government lobbying of Hillary Clinton accompanied by large donations to the Clinton Foundation. For more on the $13 million in donations which Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk has made to the Clinton Foundation, on the advice of lobbyist Schoen from PSB, click. This week Newsweek is reporting that while Pinchuk was giving money to the Clintons, Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State overlooked his breaches of US and European Union sanctions against trading with Iran.

Schapiro and others from the Clinton entourage are now pressing Babis and the ANO to reverse Czech policy, and revive earlier US and NATO plans to establish missile batteries and other military deployments on Czech territory. An American source in Prague says: “Babis doesn’t work for the Americans, but he doesn’t like Zeman. Clearly he is out to become president himself. He is likely to succeed. ” (Read more: John Helmer, 4/20/2015)  (Archive)

(Republished in part with permission.)

“Wikileaks has just released another 1,135 John Podesta emails, bringing the total to 43,104 with seven days left until the November 8th US elections.

The latest release shows more Clinton Foundation pay-to-play arrangements, but not with Morocco kings or Saudi princes, but with a Ukraine oligarch.

Victor Pinchuk and his wife Elena Franchuk sign a $2.5 million cooperation agreement to fight AIDS in Ukraine with Bill Clinton. (Credit: public domain)

In an email from President Clinton’s Director of Foreign Policy, Amitabh Desai, to Hillary Clinton’s inner circle (including Huma Abedin and John Podesta), we see the Clinton Foundation’s biggest donor, billionaire Victor Pinchuk, push Hillary Clinton staff to either set up a “private” meeting with Bill Clinton (aka WJC), or “bring together a few western leaders to show support for Ukraine”…with WJC present at the event to show his commitment to “the county [sic] and for him [Victor Pinchuk].”

We are betting that Pinchuk was planning on leveraging Bill Clinton’s presence to display that the future President (via her husband) was fully behind the oligarch and his faltering plan to pivot west.

The email exchange paints a picture of a Ukraine oligarch “relentlessly following up” to expose his connection to the Clinton family, given that (as Desai wrote) Pinchuk “is under Putin’s heel right now, feeling a great degree of pressure and pain for his many years of nurturing stronger ties with the West.”

It’s important to note that Pinchuk was a big supporter of the Maidan coup…a foreign policy debacle that Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland (another Hillary Clinton state department protege) helped spearhead.

From 2009 up to 2013 (the year the Ukrainian coup erupted), the Clinton Foundation received at least $8.6 million from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, which is headquartered in Kiev.

Via Wikileaks…

(Read more: The Duran, November 2016)

Credit: Austin Hargrave/The Hollywood Reporter)

By: Charles Ortel

The Latest Available Clinton Foundation Filings Appear Deceptive

My interest in the Clinton Foundation financial disclosures was originally sparked by an article written in the New York Times entitled “Unease at Clinton Foundation over Finances and Ambitions.”

Considering this article with the benefit of hindsight after having poured through reams of public filings and comments made by the Clinton Foundation as well as related parties, one wonders how seriously management, directors, and other employees take their manifold legal duties, particularly when it comes to making truthful and complete disclosures.

Since August 2013, few investigative reporters have dug deeply enough below the surface of Clinton Foundation filings, seeking and finding answers to questions concerning the stated financial performance of significant constituent entities as well as the consolidated whole.

I have completed a summary review of these filings, and have attached a report which answers a few key questions. Specifically:

1. What do Clinton Foundation disclosures tell informed readers about the stewardship of billions of dollars in “charitable contributions” sent to Little Rock, to New York City, to Boston, to London, and to Stockholm from numerous donors with modest means, from wealthy and powerful donors, and from a host of governments and government-connected benefactors?
2. Did management exercise vigilance to ensure that the Clinton Foundation actually carried out its original and its amended tax-exempt purposes?
3. Did directors take reasonable care, as fiduciaries, under applicable state, federal, and foreign laws to operate this charity serving, at all times, a public interest?
4. Are all business arrangements with material “related” parties fully and adequately disclosed in annual, publicly available filings that comparable charities regularly complete on time?

Or, do the Clintons, and others who operate the Clinton Foundation, function as Robin Hood in reverse? Do they dupe small, modest income donors to enrich themselves and cronies?

Headline Conclusions of the First Foundation Report

The truth is that it is difficult to perform penetrating analysis of publicly available financial information pertaining to the Clinton Foundation because, so far, it is not technically complete in numerous material respects.

The numbers that the Clinton Foundation supplies to the public in its legally mandated filings do not add up, are frequently incorrect, and appear to be materially misleading. In numerous cases, the Clinton Foundation appears to have followed inconsistent policies adding in appropriate portions of the various activities it pursued around the world to create “consolidated” financial statements.

As the attached report notes, In several instances portions were added only for some of the years in which the entities remained in operation, artificially enhancing purported financial results. In other cases, important elements of activity were improperly characterized and combined.

Meanwhile the Foundation solicits donations even though its informational filings are not in compliance with applicable law. Regulators at Federal, State, Local, and international levels are not doing what they should do to protect the public.

Why?

And how long must we wait before regulators at home and abroad remedy rampant and persistent deficiencies in the Clinton Foundation’s operating and disclosure practices.

The attached print report details ten specific concerns about the most recent Clinton Foundation filings. I invite your considered reaction. (Charles Ortel, ‘False Philanthropy’ Report, 4/20/2015)

Clinton Foundation donor, George Stephanopoulos, interviews “Clinton Cash” author, Peter Schweitzer on April 26, 2015. (Credit: ABC News)

(…) Clinton’s team scrambled in the spring of 2015 to reaction to allegations made about the Clinton Foundation in “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.”

Emails show an elaborate response plan, even debuting a rapid-response website for grassroots supporters to get talking points.

“The biggest question for this group is if and how HRC engages on Clinton Cash this week and what are the ‘two lines’ she would deliver,” Jake Sullivan wrote on May 3 to 10 top aides, including Jennifer Palmieri, Robby Mook, Mandy Grunwald, Joel Benenson, and Jim Margolis. Benenson responded with a few lines for Clinton to say about the foundation’s “life-saving work around the world.”

“The notion that that anyone donating to the foundation was going to influence me in my job is absurd,” Benenson suggested Clinton say, to which Margolis suggested, adding “and never happened.”

Of the rapid-response website, Sullivan wrote, “John [Podesta] and I discussed yesterday and think it is important that supporters and press know that we will deal aggressively with unfair attacks, but our real focus and hers is her proactive vision. Important that we do not appear beleaguered.”

In April, the team looked for ways to have reporters thoroughly debunk “Clinton Cash” before its release. “Amy Chozick from the NYT called us to indicate she had obtained a copy of the book on her own and intends to file a separate story tomorrow. Her story will not unpack all of the book’s claims … she will do a more process-y story about the book’s existence, the fact that the publisher has approached multiple media outlets in advance of the book’s publication to spoon-feed them some of the book’s research,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon wrote to other Clinton advisers.

He added, “We think this story, though it was not originated by us, could end up being somewhat helpful in casting the book’s author as having a conservative agenda.”

When the author, Peter Schweitzer, stumbled through an awkward interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos — himself a Clinton Foundation donor — the comms team took a victory lap as they sent around the transcript.

“[G]reat work everyone. this interview is perfect. he lands nothing and everything is refuted (mostly based on our work),” wrote spokesman Jesse Ferguson.

“This is therapeutic to watch. George is cool as a cucumber, doesn’t rush into it, but just destroys him slowly but surely over the course of the interview,” chimes in Nick Merrill.” (Read more: Politico, 10/07/2016)  (Archive)

Hillary Clinton (Credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

“The co-founder of the Clinton Foundation’s Canadian affiliate is revealing new details about the charity’s donors in an effort to counter allegations in the New York Times and the new book “Clinton Cash.”

“Hillary Clinton’s presidential run is prompting new scrutiny of the Clintons’ financial and charitable affairs—something that’s already proved problematic for the Democratic frontrunner, given how closely these two worlds overlap. Last week, the New York Times examined Bill Clinton’s relationship with a Canadian mining financier, Frank Giustra, who has donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation and sits on its board. Clinton, the story suggests, helped Giustra’s company secure a lucrative uranium-mining deal in Kazakhstan and in return received “a flow of cash” to the Clinton Foundation, including previously undisclosed donations from the company’s chairman totaling $2.35 million.

Giustra strenuously objects to how he was portrayed. “It’s frustrating,” he says. And because the donations came in through the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (CGEP)—a Canadian affiliate of the Clinton Foundation he established with the former president—he feels doubly implicated by the insinuation of a dark alliance.

“We’re not trying to hide anything,” he says. There are in fact 1,100 undisclosed donors to the Clinton Foundation, Giustra says, most of them non-U.S. residents who donated to CGEP.  “All of the money that was raised by CGEP flowed through to the Clinton Foundation—every penny—and went to the [charitable] initiatives we identified,” he says.

The reason this is a politically explosive revelation is because the Clinton Foundation promised to disclose its donors as a condition of Hillary Clinton becoming secretary of state. Shortly after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, the Clinton Foundation signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the Obama White House agreeing to reveal its contributors every year. The agreement stipulates that the “Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative” (as the charity was then known) is part of the Clinton Foundation and must follow “the same protocols.”

It hasn’t.”

Former President Bill Clinton received more than $8 million from companies that had business with Hillary Clinton’s State Department between 2009 and 2013. (Credit: Associated Press)

“On May 12, 2015, the private equity firm Apollo Global Management announced it was unloading the remainder of its stake in Noranda Aluminum. Apollo had gained control of the Tennessee-based company in a 2007 leveraged buyout and had subsequently followed a familiar playbook in the cutthroat world of corporate takeovers: It saddled Noranda with the debt it had used to buy the company and then extracted large dividends. As Noranda struggled to stay solvent, Apollo eventually cashed out of the firm. In early 2016, the debt-riddled aluminum company declared bankruptcy, shut down its largest smelting plant in Missouri, and laid off hundreds of employees.

That same day in 2015 that Apollo disposed of its stake in Noranda, Bill Clinton pocketed $250,000 for a speech to one of its subsidiaries, Apollo Management Holdings”.

(…) “The Apollo speech came a month after Hillary Clinton—who recently said her husband would be “in charge of revitalizing the economy” in her administration—formally declared her candidacy. Prior to launching her White House bid, Clinton had ditched the profitable speaking circuit. (She earned almost $22 million between April 2013 and March 2015, according to an analysis by CNN.) But the former president continued to deliver lucrative paid speeches until late 2015, banking about $3 million in payments just in the months that his wife had been running for president.”

(…) “Apollo is known as a vulture fund, so named because these types of firms swoop in to buy up distressed companies, in some cases stripping them of their assets and leaving little more than a corporate carcass behind. Founded in 1990, Apollo rose from the ashes of Drexel Burnham Lambert, a major investment bank that collapsed in 1990 due to junk bond pioneer Michael Milken’s illegal trading (for which Milken would receive a 10-year prison sentence, of which he would serve 22 months, and a $600 million fine). When Drexel fell apart, Leon Black, a managing director at the firm, led a group of his co-workers in launching Apollo. Since then, the company’s growth has made Black and his co-founders immensely wealthy. Black is worth about $4.7 billion. Another Apollo co-founder, Joshua Harris, is worth more than $2 billion and in 2011 bought a controlling interest in the Philadelphia 76ers.” (Read more: Mother Jones, 6/01/2016)

Hillary Clinton doled out favors to Swedish Telecom giant Ericsson after it paid Bill Clinton $750,000 to give a speech in 2011. (Credit: Casper Hedberg, Bloomberg/Getty Images)

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. (Read more: The Washington Times, 4/05/2015)  (Archive)

“Officials of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are in flight from evidence of negligence, incompetence, and corruption in their management of billions of dollars in loans for Ukraine.

Nikolai Gueorguiev, head of the Ukraine team at IMF headquarters in Washington, DC, and Jerome Vacher, the IMF representative in Kiev, refuse to respond to questions on their role in the offshore diversion of IMF loan money through Privatbank and Credit Dnepr Bank, banks owned by Ukrainian oligarchs Igor Kolomoisky and Victor Pinchuk. The Fund’s Managing Director Christine Lagarde (lead image, front) and her spokesman, Gerry Rice (rear), are covering up evidence of conflicts of interest and multiple violations of the IMF Staff Code of Conduct which have been occurring in the Ukraine loan programme. Simonetta Nardin, head of the Fund’s media relations, refuses to explain her apparent violations of the Code, or respond to evidence that she fabricated elements of her career resume.

On Tuesday a spokesman at the US Department of Justice in Washington confirmed that an investigation is under way of the role played by US clearing banks in the movement of IMF funds through the Privatbank group and companies connected with Kolomoisky. Speaking for the Asset Forefeiture and Money Laundering Section, Peter Carr declined to give more details.

In recent indictments presented to US courts, Justice Department officials have defined the crime of money laundering as the transmission or transfer of money through “a place in the United States to or through a place outside the United States” with the “intent to promote the carrying on of specified unlawful activity”; with knowledge that the transfer of funds represents “the proceeds of some unlawful activity”; and with the intention to “conceal or disguise the nature, the location, the source, the ownership, or the control of the proceeds of unspecified unlawful activity”.

The role of US system banks, such as Citibank, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase, in clearing US dollar transactions has been the basis of selective Justice Department prosecutions of Russian and pro-Russian Ukrainian companies and individuals since the toppling of President Victor Yanukovich in Kiev in February 2014. In contrast, Ukrainian allies of the US in that operation, including Yulia Tymoshenko (below, left), Kolomoisky (centre), and Pinchuk (right), have not been pursued on court evidence of their involvement in corruption and money-laundering.

Washington’s selectivity and political favouritism was condemned by an Austrian court in May when a US extradition request for Dmitry Firtash on corruption charges was rejected. Justice Department lawyers are now attempting a retrial of their allegations in an appeals court in Vienna.

For the Justice Department to acknowledge this week that it is investigating Kolomoisky is unusual. Kolomoisky himself was last recorded as visiting the US in April; follow that story here. He is based in Geneva, where a Swiss Government investigation of his qualification for renewal of a residency permit continues without end.

For the US to acknowledge opening an investigation of IMF lending to Ukraine is unprecedented. The IMF resumed its loan disbursements to Ukraine in March. This was after a hiatus of six months from October of 2014 when the Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) agreed the previous April was suspended as Fund officials attempted to convince the board that the Kiev government was capable of repaying its debts and meeting its loan conditions. When the Fund launched the SBA on April 30, 2014, it had claimed: “A strong and comprehensive structural reform package is critical to reduce corruption…to build capacity to more effectively conduct enforcement of anti-money laundering and anti-corruption legislation.”

The IMF reports that in 2014 it gave $2.2 billion to the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) before the suspension. Another $5.4 billion in IMF cash was paid to Kiev for what is called “budget support”. That also included warfighting in eastern Ukraine.

When the IMF board agreed to restart lending with a new arrangement called the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), the American deputy managing director of the Fund, David Lipton, claimed: “Restoring a sound banking system is key for economic recovery. To this end, the strategy to strengthen banks through recapitalization, reduction of related-party lending, and resolution of impaired assets should be implemented decisively.” Using the future tense Lipton (below, left) was acknowledging that next to nothing had been done to reform the Ukrainian banks in fifteen months.

Gueorguiev (right), an ex-official of the Bulgarian government, has claimed he is in charge of the independent auditing and supervision of the Ukrainian banks; for the record of his admissions in June 2014, click. Since then Gueorguiev refuses to answer questions.

In the new staff report for which he and Jerome Vacher, the IMF resident representative in Kiev, are responsible, issued a month ago, they admitted the condition of the Ukrainian banks is parlous. “Outstanding NBU loans are still elevated for a number of domestic banks. At end-June, the aggregate liquidity ratio among the 35 largest banks was 15.2 percent, although seven of these domestic privately-owned banks had liquidity ratios below 5 percent.” Privat and Credit Dnepr, the Kolomoisky and Pinchuk pocket banks, aren’t identified.

(…) The new staff report claims it has been decided to continue making “provision related loans in full and transfer them into a specialized unit inside the bank in case it is needed to ensure medium-term financial viability of any resolved SIB. [And] inject public funds in the SIBs only after shareholders have been completely diluted and non-deposit unsecured creditors are bailed in.” This looks like the IMF has decided to oust Kolomoisky from control of Privatbank. It may be advance warning for him to empty the bank’s pockets into his own before the dilution and other conditions take effect. That would make Gueorguiev and his IMF colleagues complicit in the money laundering schemes the Justice Department is investigating – if evidence turns up that they knew, or ought to have known, of transfer schemes intended to defraud the bank, its collateral shareholder NBU and lender IMF, by hiding the cash offshore under Kolomoisky’s personal control.

Jerome Vacher

(…) Vacher (right), the Fund’s resident representative in Kiev, may be of greater interest to US investigators because he appears to have been exchanging valuable favours with Pinchuk. Questioned about his trip to Venice in May to attend a Pinchuk art show and political rally, Vacher is admitting through the Fund’s press office that he wasn’t on official duty at the time. But did he stay on board Pinchuk’s motor yacht Oneness, which port logs show to have been in Venice between May 4 and May 8? Vacher and his superiors in Washington are withholding their answer. For more details of Vacher’s relationship with Pinchuk, read this. For the impact of the IMF loan programme on Credit Dnepr Bank, click here.

Reporting to Managing Director Lagarde as chief spokesmen for the Fund’s Ukraine operations are Rice, a British national, and Simonetta Nardin, an Italian. She claims to have been a journalist in Italy before joining the IMF in 1997. In a forum sponsored by the US Government’s National Endowment for Democracy, the Czech Foreign Ministry, the European Commission, and a Taiwan government office in Prague, she also claimed her role is “to make the IMF responsible and accountable for what it does.” (Read more: John Helmer, 9/03/2015)    (Archive)

(Republished in part, with permission)

(Credit: public domain)

 “After endless delays and excuses, the Clinton Foundation released its 2014 tax return as well as amended returns for the previous four years and an audit of its finances. That fulfilled a pledge made last April by Clinton Foundation acting CEO, Maura Pally, who acknowledged that the foundation had previously made a few unfortunate accounting “mistakes.”

Journalists are going to be scouring through this new financial information and pumping out “balanced” stories that evade what is already evident, namely that the  Clintons have used their foundation for crass profiteering and influence peddling.

If the Justice Department and law enforcement agencies do their jobs, the foundation will be closed and its current and past trustees, who include Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton, will be indicted. That’s because their so-called charitable enterprise has served as a vehicle to launder money and to enrich Clinton family friends.

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. And not coincidentally, those records were long filed by a Little Rock–based accounting firm called BKD, a regional auditor with little international experience.”  (Read more: Harpers Magazine, 11/17/2015)

Ye Jianming, (l) a Chinese oil tycoon, with President Milos Zeman of the Czech Republic in Shanghai in 2015. (Credit: Lucie Mikolaskova/Czech News Agency/The Associated Press)

“The Clinton Foundation accepted a donation from CEFC China Energy Company, the firm [from] which Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter appears to have leveraged his father’s office to gain equity and kickbacks from.

(…) A New York Times article, “A Chinese Tycoon Sought Power and Influence. Washington Responded.”, outlined how Ye sought influence in D.C., attempting to connect with powerful individuals like those from the Biden family.

The Clintons, however, had no qualms about accepting money from Ye, a Chinese Communist Party member with ties to the People’s Liberation Army. The New York Times noted:

“Mr. Ye also further loosened CEFC’s purse strings, donating as much as $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation.”

Clinton Foundation records reveal that CEFC China Energy company donated a sum between $50,001 and $100,000 to the foundation, a sizable amount which came in the third quarter of 2015.

The Wall Street Journal described how, in response to Clinton’s 2016 bid for the presidency, donations to the foundation had skyrocketed:

“Some foreign companies were also among the new donors to the foundation. Attijariwafa Bank, a major bank in Morocco in which the holding company controlled by the Moroccan royal family has owned a stake, gave between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative. (The holding company earlier this year indicated it planned to sell its shares in the bank.) CEFC China Energy Company, an energy and financial services firm that is one of the largest private companies in China, gave between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative.”

(Read more: The National Pulse, 10/22/2020)  (Archive)