Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich

by Peter Schweizer

  While much of the media attention to Clinton’s speaking has focused on his fees from Wall Street and pharmaceutical companies, it has been the outsized payments from overseas that have really brought in the money. In 2011 Bill Clinton made $13.3 million in speaking fees for giving fifty-four speeches.31 But of those speeches paying $250,000 or more, nearly 40 percent, or $5.1 million of those fees, came from just eleven speeches given outside the United States. Overall, these mega-paying speeches for over $250,000 generated nearly $40 million in income for the Clintons from 2001 to 2013.

  In short, Bill Clinton’s best years—with much higher than average fees being consistently paid by foreign entities—occurred while his wife was at the pinnacle of her power as secretary of state, a perch with enormous influence over issues that directly affected foreign governments.

  A few examples make the point.

  Beginning in 2009, the Swedish telecom giant Ericsson came under US pressure for selling telecom equipment to oppressive governments, some of which used those technologies to monitor and control their own people. In late 2010 the SEC sent a letter to Ericsson about sales to countries that were considered state sponsors of terrorism by Hillary’s State Department.32 The regimes included Sudan and Syria, where Ericsson sold and maintained telephone-switching equipment, and Iran, where it was selling “commercial grade systems to public network operators for mobile communications.”33

  Hillary was a well-known hawk on Iran and used economic tools against regimes that were considered sponsors of terrorism. According to US diplomatic cables, State Department officials were “regularly and increasingly” raising these transactions involving Ericsson with the Swedish foreign minister.34

  In April 2011 Ericsson was named in a State Department report for supplying telecom equipment for the oppressive regime in Belarus.35 Separately, on Capitol Hill pressure was mounting and a bill would later be introduced in December 2011 in the House of Representatives to “stop the sale of surveillance technologies to repressive regimes.”36 In June 2011 the State Department started drawing up a list of which goods and services might be covered under expanded sanctions on Iran and other state sponsors of terrorism.37

  Meanwhile, Ericsson decided to sponsor a speech by Bill Clinton and paid him more than he had ever been paid for a single speech: $750,000. According to Clinton financial disclosures, in the previous ten years Ericsson had never sponsored a Clinton speech. But now it apparently thought would be a good time to do so.

  On November 12, 2011, Bill appeared at a telecom conference in Hong Kong and talked in general terms about the role that telecom plays in our lives. One week later, on November 19, the State Department unveiled its new sanctions list for Iran. Telecom was not on the list.38

  On December 8, Hillary discussed the issue of telecom companies and their sales to repressive regimes for the first time since Bill’s speech. She argued that companies like Ericsson needed to make “good decisions” about whom they do business with but proposed no further action.39

  In April 2012, President Obama signed an executive order imposing sanctions on telecom sales to Iran and Syria. But those sanctions did not cover Ericsson’s work in Iran. The Swedish company said that it was planning to scale down its work in the country because of public pressure, but internal documents obtained by Reuters found that the company planned to honor existing contracts in Iran.40

  In 2011 much of the Arab world was in upheaval, dealing with the aftermath of the Arab Spring, which had sparked widespread protests across the region. In Egypt and Tunisia, large crowds took to the streets and demanded political change. Many of these protests turned violent.41 Even countries considered relatively stable, including Bahrain and Yemen, were dealing with violent upheavals.42

  The events left small but wealthy countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) feeling very vulnerable. The UAE was being pressured by the United States to tighten its grip on economic ties with Iran.43 In May two oil and shipping companies faced sanctions for their trade with Iran. On June 20, 2011, the Obama administration designated six UAE-based shipping firms for sanctions over their business dealings with Iran.44 Three days later, the United States charged several other parties in the UAE with trading parts for fighter jets and attack helicopters to Iran.45

  The UAE was in a precarious situation because it feared the Iranian regime. But it feared something perhaps even more: being abandoned by the United States. In a secret State Department cable, the crown prince said his country was “being left out of our [US] Iran sanctions consultations.” He explained to a visiting congressional delegation that the royal family was “left wondering what will happen to them in any deal the US and Iran reach through back-channel conversations.”46

  Amid this uncertainty, the royal family decided to pay Bill Clinton $500,000 to come and speak in Abu Dhabi.47 Bill arrived in Abu Dhabi and stayed at the Emirates Palace hotel.48

  His speech was on collecting environmental data. “The lack of environmental data hurts,” he said. “On top of all environmental issues, the financial crisis is making the world’s stability even worse. The only way out, though, is a green economy.” 49

  What is striking about the speech is not what Clinton said but the timing of the payment. Even as Bill was being introduced to the audience by the crown prince of the UAE, the prince’s brother (the foreign minister) was en route to Washington for meetings with none other than Hillary. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan arrived in Washington on December 12 and met Hillary the day after Bill collected his half million. Based on the Clintons’ financial disclosures, it does not appear that the UAE royal family had ever paid for a Clinton speech before.50

  This was not the first time Bill collected large checks for speeches paid by foreign governments, such as Thailand and Turkey.51 It certainly wouldn’t be the last.

  The year 2010 was a tense time for US-Chinese relations. The problems were piling up: the Chinese government reduced its military ties with the Pentagon following US arms sales to Taiwan; Google disclosed that it had been a victim of a Chinese cyber assault; Barack Obama hosted the Dalai Lama in Washington amidst public outcries in Beijing; relations grew stiff when officials disagreed on trade issues and China’s alleged manipulation of its currency. Meanwhile, China was flexing its military muscle, sending a submarine to the bottom of the South China Sea where it planted a Chinese flag on the ocean floor to signify China’s claim to the mineral-rich area.

  At the center of US policy toward China was Hillary Clinton, who was the architect of the Obama administration’s strategic “pivot” to Asia.

  At this critical time for US-Chinese relations, Bill Clinton gave a number of speeches that were underwritten by the Chinese government and its supporters. That might not be apparent if you look at the Clintons’ public financial disclosures. For example, on October 21, 2011, Bill gave a speech before something called the Silicon Valley Information Business Alliance in Santa Clara, California. But who underwrote the speech? According to correspondence between Bill’s office and the State Department, the cosponsors were a coalition of Chinese government entities and organizations. Bill received $200,000 for the speech (well above his average for speaking in the United States) and the sponsors were the China Electronic Commerce Association (an entity launched and chaired by an official from the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry);52 the Suzhou People’s government (a municipality around Shanghai); the China Association of Science and Technology Industry Parks (this third sponsor sounds pretty innocuous, but it is a government-run entity in China); and the California State Friendship Committee, a small California-based organization designed to foster US-Chinese relations.53

  There were no clear guidelines about what was and what wasn’t permissible. After the speech in California, Bill Clinton’s office contacted the State Department and sought approval for a speech sponsored by the Shanghai Airport Authority (SAA). Note the flexibility and lack of understanding that it had already approved the speech in California
when the State Department wrote back, “[Your correspondence] states that the Shanghai Airport Authority, a state-owned enterprise, would be a ‘title sponsor only.’ Does this mean that SAA is not contributing any funds to pay for President Clinton’s fees? I don’t believe we’ve previously cleared acceptance of fees from PRC-linked entities, but could consider this variation.”

  The State Department Ethics Office was willing to “consider” a “variation” on guidelines, they wrote to Clinton’s office. Ultimately Clinton declined the speech. His office said there was a scheduling problem.

  Bill also took a $550,000 payment for an appearance in Shanghai at something called the Huatuo CEO forum, underwritten by Chinese billionaire Yan Jiehe, a man described as “China’s baddest billionaire builder.” Yan has become wealthy in part through large government construction contracts. His company is perhaps most famous in China for lopping off and flattening seven hundred mountaintops for a construction project. (Yan says, in defense, the number wasn’t quite that high.)54 Yan, who calls Clinton a “close friend,” is an outspoken Chinese nationalist, explaining that foreign countries must “not look down on China. . . . I understand that my country, my nation, China is the greatest in history.”55

  Prior to Hillary’s appointment as secretary of state, Bill had given only two speeches on the Chinese mainland, for a total of $450,000.

  After Hillary’s appointment, the Clintons promised both the incoming Obama White House and the US Senate that his speeches and business ties would be vetted by the State Department Ethics Office, as described in chapter 1.

  This approach was doomed to fail, because the disclosures to be made were not required to indicate anything other than the name of the donor, certainly not investments or what business they might have with the State Department. An examination of the communication between Bill’s office and State Department ethics officers, which was obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), indicates that Bill Clinton’s office never provided anything but a cursory description of who was paying for each speech. TD Bank’s ties to the Keystone Pipeline, for example, were never disclosed. Ericsson, in the correspondence concerning that speech, is simply described as a “world-leading provider of telecommunications equipment.” No mention is made of its tangles with the State Department at the time. And the department green-lighted 215 speechmaking arrangements as not posing conflicts of interest.56

  For the ethics officers replying to the Clinton requests, the emphasis was on a speedy response. And then there was the intimidation factor: they were vetting speeches being done by the spouse of their ultimate boss. And the spouse happened to be a former president. For good measure, all correspondence pertaining to Bill’s speeches between his office and the ethics office was copied to Cheryl Mills, Hillary’s chief of staff and Bill’s longtime friend.57 And who ran the ethics office at the time? That would be the State Department legal adviser, Harold Koh, who had previously been appointed by President Clinton as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor.58

  Speaking of ethics problems, some of Bill’s largest paydays for speaking fees have come from scandal-plagued Nigeria. As we will learn in the next chapter, the Clinton financial ties to the continent of Africa run deep, and often include those with troubling reputations and rich histories of corruption.

  CHAPTER 8

  Warlord Economics

  THE CLINTONS DO AFRICA

  It was an unusually hot July in 2009 when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed in Kinshasa, the sprawling capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC (previously named Zaire) had for decades been a house of horrors. Ruled by corrupt dictators, populated by child soldiers, plagued by tribal fighting, and suffering from invasions by neighboring countries, few places on earth are more hellish than the DRC.

  As a senator, Hillary had taken the lead in rooting out DRC corruption and violence. In 2006 she was one of the first to sign on as a cosponsor of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006—one of only twelve cosponsors in the Senate. The legislation—which was authored by then senator Barack Obama—included provisions on human rights, corruption, and sexual violence. It also addressed the issue of conflict minerals, the illicit trade in valuable minerals that fuel much of the country’s violence. The bill had teeth, giving the US secretary of state real power and authority to combat the country’s problems. The bill was passed by the Senate and House, and President George W. Bush signed it into law.1

  Hillary was also a vocal supporter of the Enough Project, an initiative launched by the liberal Center for American Progress. The project called for an international certification system that would require DRC mining companies and end users to account for their minerals’ origins. A similar program had been established several years earlier for the diamond trade. Soon after Hillary arrived in Kinshasa, former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo, who was from Congo, took her on a tour of a hospital built in honor of his late mother. Mutombo worked with both the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) on projects in the region.2

  Hillary spoke with students about her commitment to helping Congo turn things around. “We know that the promise of the DRC is limitless,” she told them. “We will help you build a strong, civilian-led government that is accountable and transparent.” From Kinshasa she hopped aboard a UN plane (her US aircraft was too big) to visit President Joseph Kabila in the eastern city of Goma. There she talked about efforts to reduce the rapes and sexual violence that had terrorized the population. She talked about the lucrative mining trade in the country, too. “I am particularly concerned about the exploitation of natural resources, like the mining and the timber, where the resources do nothing to help the people of this country,” she said in front of the international media.3

  Her words were strong. But her actions during her tenure as secretary of state came nowhere near the positions she had taken while in the US Senate. As one scholar from Johns Hopkins University put it, the law she had cosponsored was “never implemented” by Secretary of State Clinton.4 Furthermore, in 2011 the DRC government held national elections that were widely condemned. But the State Department showed little interest in trying to remedy them. When the Congolese government changed its constitution midelection in favor of President Kabila, the State Department called it an “internal affair.” When the United Nations Group of Experts linked Congolese militia groups to the neighboring government in Rwanda, it was proof of Rwanda’s military intervention into Congo that had contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Some have asserted that Hillary’s State Department sought to block or delay the publication of the damning portion of the investigation and “quietly” asked Rwanda to stop its support for the rebellion.5

  What happened between 2006, when Hillary took those strong positions, and 2009, when she became secretary of state? Did she change her position? And if so, why? We can’t ultimately know why she carried out the policies that she did, but we can notice where changes in policies conformed with the interests of Clinton Foundation large donors.

  On January 20, 2007, Hillary Clinton sat on a gold-colored sofa in her Washington, DC, home and announced via the Internet that she was forming an exploratory committee and filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to seek the presidency. “I’m in,” Hillary declared. “And I’m in to win.”6

  Poll numbers gave her reason to be confident. With George W. Bush’s poll numbers in a free fall, there was a sinking feeling in Republican circles that the GOP would have a hard time keeping the White House. And among Democrats, Hillary was the early front-runner.

  Pundits, pollsters, and the American public were not the only ones paying attention. Hillary’s announcement, in the weeks and months to follow, sent a cascade of foreign dollars flowing into the Clinton Foundation and into the Clintons’ own pockets. Significant funds came from foreign investors with massive investments in troubled corners of the world.
Securing access to African business opportunities had often required paying bribes to government officials. Now these investors were looking for access and political cover at the highest levels of power in Washington.

  A few months after Hillary’s presidential announcement, on July 6, 2007, the Clinton Foundation announced that a reclusive Swedish mining investor named Lukas Lundin was committing $100 million through a charity called Lundin for Africa. According to the announcement, “the Lundin for Africa commitment will be aimed, in large part, at approved projects in Africa, where the Lundin Group has significant mining, oil, and gas interests.”7 Lundin lived in Vancouver, Canada, and used a series of offshore trusts to manage his business affairs. A friend of Frank Giustra, Lundin was the head of a sprawling enterprise that cut deals with African warlords and dictators to gain access to valuable minerals and oil. As one longtime observer put it, the company “pursued a strategy of operating in countries under sanctions” and “building assets in countries such as Libya, Iran, and Sudan, where many other competitors were unable to operate.”8

  This kind of business could be enormously profitable if you were willing to look the other way on corruption and human rights. But the strategy also posed enormous risks. By 2007, when he made his commitment to the Clinton Foundation, his company was under considerable political and legal heat in the United States and Europe for some of its business dealings. The Lundin Group was one of only two Western oil companies drilling in the Sudan, which was not only the focus of media attention for massive human rights violations but was also on the US State Department’s list of terrorism-sponsoring nations. Human rights activists were pushing for pension funds to divest stock in the company. Even more troubling, the Lundin Group was under investigation by the International Prosecution Chamber in Stockholm for complicity in “war crimes and crimes against humanity.” (In 2012, the chief prosecutor decided not to press charges.)9 In announcing the donation to the Clinton Foundation, the family’s spokesman explained, “This is not to soothe a bad conscience but we want a positive impact in countries in Africa where mining is conducted.”10