Clinton shakes hands with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at a press conference in Bogota, Colombia, on June 9, 2010. (Credit: Eitan Abramovich / Agence France Presse)
“While running for president in 2008, both Clinton and Senator Barack Obama (D) publicly opposed a US trade deal with Colombia, the United States–U., due to human rights violations there.
In June 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her husband former President Bill Clinton, and Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra meet with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in Colombia. Giustra has developed business ties worth hundreds of millions of dollars in Colombia after repeated meetings with Uribe and Bill Clinton. Giustra also has donated tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. Uribe has been widely criticized for human rights abuses.
Representative Jim McGovern (D) warns Hillary in a private email that “while in Colombia, the most important thing the Secretary can do is to avoid effusive praise for President Alvaro Uribe.” But Hillary ignores this warning. After the dinner, she gives a public speech in which she praises Uribe as an “essential partner to the United States” whose “commitment to building strong democratic institutions here in Colombia” would “leave a legacy of great progress that will be viewed in historic terms.”
She also publicly supports the US trade deal, a deal which would greatly benefit Giustra and other US investors in Colombia. In 2011, workers for the Giustra-owned Pacific Rubiales company in Colombia go on strike. There are allegations they are forced to live and work in “concentration camp-like” conditions. However, the Colombian military uses force and breaks the strike. By this time, Giustra has donated $130 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Clinton’s State Department certifies that Colombia is “meeting statutory criteria related to human rights,” despite widespread evidence to the contrary, and Clinton and now President Obama decide to support the trade deal they had opposed. Later in 2011, the trade deal passes Congress and becomes law. This is followed by more donations from both Giustra and Pacific Rubiales to the Clinton Foundation.” The Hill, 4/9/2015) (The New York Review of Books,1/30/2016)