“Despite the polls in the run up to November 8, 2016, and the post-election shenanigans that continue to this day, the United States has a new President, and it is not Hillary Clinton. There are many reasons for this, and Charles Ortel’s dogged, two-year investigation of the Clintons’ predatory humanitarianism is a major one. He is not yet done. It is almost universally unacceptable to prey on the weak of one’s own species. There are laws and religious precepts against this in every human culture. In fact, as humans, we find it so heinous to prey on the helpless that, contrary to all biological rules, we prey on the strong, and not the sick, young, and injured, even when we hunt other species. The Clintons and their associates are not above the law, and Ortel, with his credentials as a graduate of the Harvard Business School, decades of Wall Street experience, and accurate assessment in 2008 of General Electric stock as being overvalued, is taking his investigation to the next level. I caught up with him last week for the following interview.” – Dr. Dady Chery
(Credit: The United Nations)
DC: Charles, we now know that former President Barack Obama did not pardon former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
CO: The pardons would have been for the Clinton family and others for federal offenses arising from the illegal operation of, and solicitation for, numerous so-called charities. The apparent failure to pardon removes a major excuse that US state, federal, and foreign government authorities may have had for failing to investigate, expose, prosecute, and win criminal convictions in what I believe to be the largest charity fraud ever attempted.
It will take time to replace federal government employees inside the Department of Justice, Internal Revenue Service, and Federal Trade Commission, who likely were complicit in a scheme to impede and obstruct investigations into this ongoing charity-fraud conspiracy. Given time, I certainly hope the Trump administration will increase the resources for the rumored investigations by the FBI and the IRS, which should address widespread illegal solicitation and operations in virtually every US state and numerous foreign countries. I also hope that the Trump administration will work closely with foreign-government donors who either were complicit in these charity frauds, or who should now be working hard to recover funds advanced to Clinton charities under false pretenses.
(Credit: US Department of State)
DC: Now that the Clinton Global Initiative has shut down its operations, will there be access to its documents? Are the people who were involved with CGI still responsible to show to the IRS and other government agencies that its affairs are in order?
CO: Unlike investigations into Ponzi schemes and other frauds involving for-profit entities, investigators wield enormous leverage when they finally decide to look into frauds by not-for-profit entities. Review of New York and other state laws, IRS regulations and practices, and laws in relevant countries suggest that the executives, directors, and their professional advisors will bear the burden of proving that they organized and then operated the various Clinton charities lawfully at all times. Losing or obscuring records will hurt those who are potentially liable, and I would note that criminal penalties for organizing and operating charity frauds, particularly disaster-relief charity frauds, are onerous.
(Credit: US Department of State)
DC: Many people confuse the Clinton Global Initiative, which recently closed its doors, with the Clinton Foundation. Is the CGI a legal entity, and how does it relate to the Clinton Foundation?
CO: The CGI began to operate in New York by September 2005, illegally, as a concept. Under US law, a validly organized charity cannot be a formless association; instead it must be a lawfully constituted entity. In most cases, the trustees or directors of a lawfully organized charity choose to establish a nonprofit corporation under US state laws; after this, they get federal tax exemption on the basis of a detailed application that must be filled out truthfully and accurately, and that states their specific purposes, which are then authorized by the IRS. There’s no record anywhere that the Clinton Foundation validly changed its authorized purposes. Originally, in January 1998, these were to erect a presidential archive, establish a research facility in Little Rock, Arkansas, and raise a capital endowment. So, starting with the first CGI Annual Meeting in Manhattan, the Clinton Foundation became engaged in substantial activities that were not authorized, or even charitable. Disclosures in the IRS filings for the Clinton Foundation show that CGI activities were substantial in every year from 2005 through 2009.
(Credit: US Department of State)
New CGI
On September 4, 2009, several weeks before the 2009 CGI Annual Meeting in Manhattan, a new Arkansas nonprofit corporation called “Clinton Global Initiative, Inc.” was established. It’s not clear yet from the filings how sums were divided between January 1, 2009 through September 3, 2009; and September 4, 2009 through 31 December 31, 2009. Though a CGI meeting was held in 2009 while the old initiative and the new legal entity both, in theory, existed, an application for federal tax exemption for the new entity was not submitted until August 2010. This application falsely claims that the new entity wasn’t a legal successor to any previous activity, when abundant evidence in the public domain shows otherwise.
(Credit: US State Department)
The New CGI held meetings in 2010, 2011, and 2012. So far, the Shared Services Agreement under which the parent Clinton Foundation operated New CGI hasn’t been made public. So we don’t yet know the financial ramifications of these arrangements. According to documents in the public domain, the Clinton Foundation controlled New CGI. So, in these three years, New CGI provided Annual Reports to the IRS, but its financial results were also consolidated into the Clinton Foundation’s financial and operating reports.
The Clinton Foundation elected, in theory, to merge New CGI back into the Clinton Foundation in 2013. To do so validly under Arkansas and other laws, each charity must be validly organized and operated from inception through the merger date. I don’t believe close analysis supports such a conclusion. Until recently, the Clinton Foundation continued to solicit funds for CGI and to hold various meetings whose charitable purpose is far from clear.”
(Credit: The World Bank Archive)
(Read much more: Haiti Chery, 1/26/2017)
Dady Chery is the Editor of Haiti Chery and the author of We Have Dared to Be Free: Haiti’s Struggle Against Occupation. In addition to being an associate professor in the biological sciences, Chery is Haitian-born journalist, playwright, essayist, and poet who writes in English, French, and her native Kreyol. She writes extensively about Haiti and world issues such as climate change. Her many contributions to Haitian news include the first proposal that Haiti’s cholera had been imported into the country by the United Nations, and the first description of Haiti’s mineral wealth.