The Clintons attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Foundation donor Sae-A Trading Company, a South Korean clothing manufacturer. (Credit: ABC News)
(…) “The Clintons got their cronies to build Caracol Industrial Park, a 600-acre garment factory that was supposed to make clothes for export to the United States and create — according to Bill Clinton — 100,000 new jobs in Haiti. The project was funded by the U.S. government and cost hundreds of millions in taxpayer money, the largest single allocation of U.S. relief aid.
Yet Caracol has proven a massive failure. First, the industrial park was built on farmland and the farmers had to be moved off their property. Many of them feel they were pushed out and inadequately compensated. Some of them lost their livelihoods. Second, Caracol was supposed to include 25,000 homes for Haitian employees; in the end, the Government Accountability Office reports that only around 6,000 homes were built. Third, Caracol has created 5,000 jobs, less than 10 percent of the jobs promised. Fourth, Caracol is exporting very few products and most of the facility is abandoned. People stand outside every day looking for work, but there is no work to be had, as Haiti’s unemployment rate hovers around 40 percent.
The Clintons say Caracol can still be salvaged. But former Haitian prime minister Jean Bellerive says, “I believe the momentum to attract people there in a massive way is past. Today, it has failed.” Still, Bellerive’s standard of success may not be the same one used by the Clintons. After all, the companies that built Caracol with U.S. taxpayer money have done fine — even if poor Haitians have seen few of the benefits.” (Read more: National Review, 7/18/2016)
(…) “An ABC News investigation shows that after opening its factory in Haiti, Sae-A donated between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
The chairman of Sae-A, Woong-Ki Kim, also invested in a startup company, BlackIvy Group, owned by Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills.
The revelations are among the latest examples of the sordid connections and transactions between the global nexus of Clinton Foundation donors and the favorable treatment they received and the shady deal-making during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.” (Read more: ABC News, 10/11/2016)