Category Archives: Clinton Fraud

Pres. Study Directive Still Classified, Brotherhood

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By Bill Gertz – – Wednesday, June 3, 2015

President Obama and his administration continue to support the global Islamist militant group known the Muslim Brotherhood. A White House strategy document regards the group as a moderate alternative to more violent Islamist groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

The policy of backing the Muslim Brotherhood is outlined in a secret directive called Presidential Study Directive-11, or PSD-11. The directive was produced in 2011 and outlines administration support for political reform in the Middle East and North Africa, according to officials familiar with the classified study.

Efforts to force the administration to release the directive or portions of it under the Freedom of Information Act have been unsuccessful.

Gulf News in the Middle East reports the same in 2014.

US document reveals cooperation between Washington and Brotherhood Studies commissioned by the president concluded that the US should back ‘moderate Islamists’ in the region

Dubai: For the past decade, two successive US administrations have maintained close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Libya, to name just the most prominent cases. The Obama administration conducted an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2010 and 2011, beginning even before the events known as the “Arab Spring” erupted in Tunisia and in Egypt.

 

The President personally issued Presidential Study Directive 11 (PSD-11) in 2010, ordering an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood and other “political Islamist” movements, including the ruling AKP in Turkey, ultimately concluding that the United States should shift from its longstanding policy of supporting “stability” in the Middle East and North Africa (that is, support for “stable regimes” even if they were authoritarian), to a policy of backing “moderate” Islamic political movements. To this day, PSD-11 remains classified, in part because it reveals an embarrassingly naïve and uninformed view of trends in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region. The revelations were made by Al Hewar centre in Washington, DC, which obtained the documents in question. Through an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, thousands of pages of documentation of the US State Department’s dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood are in the process of being declassified and released to the public. US State Department documents obtained under the FOIA confirm that the Obama administration maintained frequent contact and ties with the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood.

 

At one point, in April 2012, US officials arranged for the public relations director of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammad Gaair, to come to Washington to speak at a conference on “Islamists in Power” hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. A State Department Cable classified “Confidential” report says the following: “Benghazi Meeting With Libyan Muslim Brotherhood: On April 2 [2012] Mission Benghazi met with a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood steering committee, who will speak at the April 5 Carnegie Endowment `Islamist in Power’ conference in Washington, D.C. He described the Muslim Brotherhood’s decision to form a political party as both an opportunity and an obligation in post-revolution Libya after years of operating underground.

The Brotherhood’s Justice and Construction Party would likely have a strong showing in the upcoming elections, he said, based on the strength of the Brotherhood’s network in Libya, its broad support, the fact that it is a truly national party, and that 25 per cent of its members were women. He described the current relationship between the Brotherhood and the TNC (Transitional National Council) as `lukewarm.’” Another State Department paper marked “Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU)” contained talking points for Deputy Secretary of State William Burns’ scheduled July 14, 2012 meeting with Mohammad Sawan, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who was also head of the Brotherhood’s Justice and Construction Party. The document is heavily redacted, but nevertheless provides clear indication of Washington’s sympathies for the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood as a major political force in the post-Gaddafi Libya. The talking points recommended that Secretary Burns tell Sawan that the US government entities “share your party’s concerns in ensuring that a comprehensive transitional justice process is undertaken to address past violations so that they do not spark new discontent.” The Burns paper described the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood: “Prior to last year’s revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood was banned for over three decades and its members were fiercely pursued by the Gaddafi regime.

 

The Libyan Muslim Brotherhood (LMB) returned to Libya last year after years in exile in Europe and the United States, selected new leadership and immediately began to plan for an active role in Libya’s political future.” After a redacted section, the document continued, “The LMB-affiliated Justice and Construction party, led by Misratan and former political prisoner under Gaddafi Mohammad Sawan, was created in March 2012. Sawan himself was not a candidate in the elections but wields significant influence as the head of the largest political party and most influential Islamist party in Libya.” The July 14 meeting was attended by both Secretary Burns and Ambassador Christopher Stevens. On September 11, 2012, Ambassador Stevens and three other American diplomats were killed in a premeditated terrorist attack on US mission and CIA facilities in Benghazi. An undated State Department cable revealed further courting of the LMB and its Justice and Construction Party. “Mohammad Sawan, Chairman of Justice and Construction Party, received yesterday at his office in Tripoli, Ambassadors of US, UK, FR and IT. The Ambassadors requested the meeting to get acquainted with the party’s position on the current events in Libya, the Government, the Party’s demand to sack the Prime Minister, the Constitution, GNC lifetime arguments, dialogue initiatives and Party’s assessment of political and security situation in Libya and the region. During the meeting, which took an hour and a half and attended by Mohammad Talb, party’s International Relations officer, and Hussam Naeli, acting liaison officer, Sawan explained that the Government has not been able to achieve any success in the core files such as security and local government, which both are under the direct supervision of the Prime Minister. Such a failure resulted in the lack of security, continuous assassinations, kidnappings, crimes, smuggling and attacks on public and private property, halt oil exports and disruption of water and electricity supply. Sawan stressed that a solution is possible and the party presented a clear solution, but the Government is not in harmony. He added we are responsible only for ministries that we take part in.”

 

The State Department cable noted that “On their part, the Ambassadors praised the active role of the Party in the political scene and confirmed their standing with the Libyan people and Government despite its weaknesses and they are keen to stabilize the region… At the end of the meeting, Sawan thanked his guests and all stressed the need to communicate. The guests affirmed that they will assist through Libyan legitimate entities as they did during the revolution.”

Could Sweden Force Hillary to Drop WH Race?

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The summary below is very long, but it explains in detail the machinery a the U.S. State Department, the backroom deals, the quid pro quo, the collusion and global relationships that circle around favors and money and power.

Bill Clinton’s foundation cashed in as Sweden lobbied Hillary on sanctions

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.

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign declined comment.

When Mrs. Clinton became President Obama’s secretary of state in 2009, she vowed to set up a transparent review system that would ensure any of her husband’s fundraising or lucrative speaking activities were reviewed for possible ties to foreign countries doing business with her agency, insisting she wanted to eliminate even the “appearance” of conflicts of interests.

But there is growing evidence that the Clintons did not run certain financial activities involving foreign entities by the State Department, such as the Swedish fundraising arm and the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative based in Canada, or disclose on her annual ethics form the existence of a limited liability corporation that Mr. Clinton set up for his personal consulting work.

The ethics agreement the Clintons signed in 2009 with the State Department stated that if a foreign government chose to “elect to increase materially its commitment, or should a new contributor country elect to support” Mr. Clinton’s charitable causes, “the Foundation will share such countries and the circumstances of the anticipated contribution with the State Department designated agency ethics official for review.”

The foundation spokesman said Mr. Clinton’s team had nothing to hide about the Swedish entity and set it up solely to take advantage of changes in Swedish law in 2011 that allowed some of the country’s lucrative lotteries to direct their charitable giving to the American-based Clinton Foundation.

The spokesman said Mr. Clinton’s team believed the Nationale Postcode Loterij and the Swedish Postcode Lottery, two of the biggest contributors to the Swedish fundraising arm, were privately owned and unrelated to the Swedish government.

Both lotteries are owned by the private firm Novamedia, but they are closely regulated by the Swedish government, and the Postcode Lottery’s top manager is approved and regulated by the Swedish government, according to interviews and documents.

According to Novamedia’s 2014 annual report, the Swedish Postcode Lottery’s managing director “is also the Lottery Manager appointed by the Swedish Gambling Authority. The Swedish Gambling Authority, which grants the lottery license, collaborates closely with the Lottery Manager and supervises the lottery.”

About half the funds collected by the foundation’s Swedish arm in 2011 and 2012 came from lottery enterprises tied to Novamedia.

“The Clinton Foundation is a philanthropy, period,” foundation spokesman Craig Minassian told the Times. “We’ve voluntarily disclosed our more than 300,000 donors on our website, including those from Sweden. In fact, support from the Swedish Postcode Lottery has helped give millions of people access to HIV/AIDS treatment, lifted tens of thousands of rural farmers out of poverty, helped rebuild Haiti after the devastating earthquake and made it possible for cities and countries to reduce their carbon output by millions of tons. The truth is, when organizations like this support the Clinton Foundation, they do want something in return: they want to see lives improved through our work.”

Familiar patterns and storylines?

Those who have followed or investigated the Clintons over their three decades of power in Washington say the Swedish episode uncovered by The Times fits a familiar pattern of ambiguous transparency promises and fundraising carried out through cutouts that targeted foreigners with business interests before the U.S. government.

“They were very effective in being able to obfuscate what they were doing through cutouts and how they were raising their money,” said retired Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican who chaired the main House investigative committee in the late 1990s that probed many of the Clintons’ activities ranging from travel office firings and Whitewater investments to Asian fundraising.

The latter investigation disclosed an extensive 1996 Clinton fundraising operation that rewarded donors with White House coffees, access to top officials and nights in the Lincoln Bedroom despite the Clintons’ promise to run the most ethical administration in history. It also proved that illegal foreign money went to the Democratic Party from the likes of Johnny Chung, a fundraiser who admitted taking $300,000 from a Chinese military officer and giving it to Democrats, and James Riady, who pleaded guilty to routing foreign funds through a network of “straw donors” who enriched the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party while collecting political favors for his companies.

“[The Clintons] understood it’s easy to raise money when you solicit people who had business pending before the government,” Mr. Burton said. “The information that established this pattern was substantial, coming from both friends and adversaries around the world who knew they could gain access to the president and his administration and they could get things done if they were willing to pony up the money.”

Fundraising in Sweden as sanctions debate raged in U.S.

At the time of Mr. Clinton’s foray into Swedish fundraising, the Swedish government was pressing Mrs. Clinton’s State Department not to impose new sanctions on firms doing business with Iran, including hometown companies Ericsson and Volvo.

Mrs. Clinton’s State Department issued two orders identifying lists of companies newly sanctioned in 2011 and 2012 for doing business with Iran, but neither listed any Swedish entities.

Behind the scenes, however, the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm was clearly warning the State Department in Washington that Sweden’s trade was growing with Iran — despite Swedish government claims to the contrary.

“Although our Swedish interlocutors continue to tell us that Europe’s overall trade with Iran is falling, the statements and information found on Swedish and English language websites shows that Sweden’s trade with Iran is growing,” the U.S. Embassy wrote in a Dec. 22, 2009, cable to the State Department that was released by WikiLeaks. The cable indicates it was sent to Mrs. Clinton’s office.

At the time of the warning, Mrs. Clinton was about a year into her tenure as Mr. Obama’s secretary of state and the two were leading efforts in Washington to tighten sanctions on Iran.

The Swedes were resistant to new sanctions, telling State Department officials repeatedly and unequivocally that they were worried new penalties would stifle the business between its country’s firms and Tehran. At the time, Iran was Sweden’s second-largest export market in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia.

“Behind the Swedish government’s reluctance to support further sanctions in Iran, especially unilateral European measures, is a dynamic (though still fairly small) trade involving some of Sweden’s largest and most politically well-connected companies: Volvo, Ericsson and ABB to name three,” the U.S. Embassy wrote in one cable to Washington.

Several top Swedish officials made the case against proposed U.S. sanctions in successive meetings in 2009 and 2010, according to classified cables released by WikiLeaks.

“[Swedish] Sanctions coordinator [Per] Saland told us that Sweden does not support implementing tighter financial sanctions on Iran and that more stringent financial standards could hurt Swedish exports,” one cable reported. Other cables quoted Swedish officials as saying they were powerless to order banks in their country to stop doing business with Tehran.

Sweden’s foreign trade minister, Ewa Bjroling, met with State officials and said even though her government was obeying all existing United Nations and European Union sanctions, “Iran is a major problem for the GOS (Government of Sweden) because Swedish businesses have a long-standing commercial relationship in the trucks and telecom industries.”

Eventually, Swedish Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Bildt — Mrs. Clinton’s equal on the diplomatic stage — delivered the message personally to top State Department officials, who described him as “skeptical” about expanded Iran sanctions.

“Overall, I’m not a fan of sanctions because they are more a demonstration of our inability than our ability,” Mr. Bildt was quoted as telling State officials in a cable marked “secret.”

When Mr. Obama planned to meet with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt in late 2009, the State Department described Sweden as having been a behind-the-scenes obstructionist to new Iran sanctions. “Sweden has hampered EU efforts to impose additional sanctions,” a State Department memo to the president warned.

Swedish government officials declined to address their back-channel overtures to Mrs. Clinton’s department. “Discussions leading to decisions on sanctions are internal and should remain so,” said Mats Samuelsson, a spokesman with the Swedish Embassy in Washington. “Sweden fully implements all U.N. and EU sanctions by which Sweden is bound.”

A pass to telecommunications companies?

The U.S. is allowed to penalize foreign firms — even if they are incorporated in countries that are U.S. allies  under the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA). Beginning in 2010, the Obama administration stepped up U.S. efforts to use ISA authorities to discourage investment in Iran and to impose sanctions on companies that insisted on continuing their business with Iran, according to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report.

The State Department is required to report to Congress on ISA matters, which should be done every six months. The State report typically covers U.S. diplomatic concerns over which companies and countries may be interfering with U.S. policy by continuing their investments in Iran — much like the concerns that were coming out of Stockholm.

However, the State Department was slow in delivering its reports to Congress and placing them in the Federal Register as required by Section 5e of the ISA, which drew the concern of lawmakers that State wasn’t moving fast enough on making its sanction recommendations prior to the 2011-2012 formal announcements.

In February 2010, Mrs. Clinton testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the State Department’s ISA preliminary review was completed in early February and that some of the cases reviewed “deserve more consideration” and were undergoing additional scrutiny. The preliminary review, according to the testimony, was conducted, in part, through State Department officials’ contacts with their counterpart officials abroad and corporation officials.

That preliminary review hasn’t been made public, and the first like-report was posted to the Federal Registrar in 2012 with no company names specifically mentioned.

Current State Department officials and outside experts who advised the department on Iran sanctions told The Times that Sweden, and more specifically Ericsson, was a matter of internal discussion from 2009 to 2011 before new sanctions were finally issued. “The Ericsson concerns were well-known, but in the end many of the sanction decisions were arbitrary and often involved issues beyond the actual business transactions,” one adviser directly involved in the talks told The Times, speaking only on the condition of anonymity because he was describing private deliberations.

U.S. intelligence officials told The Times that they kept the Obama administration apprised of Ericsson’s activities inside Iran, including the fact that the Swedish firm had provided Iran’s second-largest cellular provider with location-based technology to track customers for billing purposes. The technology transfer occurred in late 2009, shortly after Tehran brutally suppressed a pro-democracy movement in that country, the officials said.

U.S. intelligence further learned that Ericsson in 2010 discussed with Iran’s largest cellular firm providing tracking technology that could be used directly by Iranian security authorities but never formally pursued the contract, officials said.

State officials declined to say whether Ericsson ever appeared on any preliminary sanctions lists, but they described a process for each sanction decision that involved input from the Treasury Department, the CIA, the Commerce Department and State. During those deliberations, there was a propensity to give extra consideration to companies promoting telecommunications technology inside Iran, the officials explained.

The reason, one official said, was that these companies were seen to be providing something that might help average Iranians stay in contact with the rest of the world. More specifically, the official said, such technology might help them circumvent the draconian censorship measures being taken by Tehran’s government.

Swedish trade with Iran continued undeterred.

Swedish-based Ericsson and Volvo continued their business in Iran during this heightened period of scrutiny — even as other international companies started ending their relationships.

Ericsson has sold telecommunications infrastructure and related products to three Iranian firms: MCCI, MTN IranCell and Rightel. Volvo is the leading heavy truck company in Iran. U.S. senators have specifically raised concerns about the technology Ericsson was providing to Iran.

The company told The Times that it did, in fact, provide a location-based customer-tracking hub to MTN IranCell in 2009 but that it did not believe the system could be misused by Iranian security authorities to track dissidents because its location tracking wasn’t real-time and instead was aimed at facilitating billing.

“We have sold a location-based charging (LBC) to MTN IranCell,” Ericsson spokeswoman Karin Hallstan said. “LBC is used by operators all over the world as a market segmentation tool in order to charge customers differently depending on where they are located. Ericsson is unaware of authorities in any country using LBC as an active monitoring tool, not least as typically this is not open to real-time analysis.”

The company said it also pitched a tracking system specifically for Iran’s security agencies to mobile operator MCCI to determine the scope of their requirements. But it never bid or won such a deal, company officials said.

Ericsson, for its part, believes the sale of telecommunications equipment in Iran may foster a democratic state — and help human rights issues.

“Ericsson strongly believes telecommunication contributes to a more open and democratic society, and we believe that the people of Iran have gained from having access to this technology,” Ms. Hallstan said.

The telecommunications giant didn’t make any contributions to the Swedish fundraising entity set up by Mr. Clinton, but it did pay the former president a record $750,000 for a speech in Hong Kong in November 2011, just weeks after Mrs. Clinton released the first sanctions list that excluded Ericsson and other Swedish firms.

“The investment was significant but should be seen in light of [Mr. Clinton‘s] perceived crowd pull, the location (far to travel to Hong Kong) and an engagement that spanned two days,” Ms. Hallstan said. “The conversation regarding Iran that you refer to had no impact on this decision and was not considered by the event team.”

Ms. Hallstan said Ericsson started paying an annual membership fee to the Clinton Global Initiative in 2010 and is supporting a joint effort with Refugees United to help missing families reconnect with loved ones.
The company says it intends to continue pursuing opportunities with Tehran.
“Ericsson intends to continue to engage with existing customers and explore opportunities with new customers in Iran while continuously monitoring international developments as they relate to Iran and its government,” Ms. Hallstan said. “As a company present in 180 countries, we are sometimes asked to provide factual input regarding countries we operate in.”
After the U.S. announced its sanctions list in 2011 and 2012 — which included no Swedish companies — the Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse saw an uptick in its fundraising, from about $3 million in 2011 to $9 million in 2012 to $14 million in 2013, according to data released by the Swedish Svensk Insamlings Kontroll.
Two months after the second sanctions list was released, Mrs. Clinton made her first trip to Sweden as secretary of state to attend a Climate & Clean Air Coalition forum.
Setting up the Insamlingsstiftelse
When Mr. Clinton set up his Swedish fundraising arm in 2011, he turned to one of the former first family’s longtime confidants: Mrs. Clinton’s former Arkansas law partner Bruce Lindsey.
The entity was essentially a fundraising shell, having no employees or contractors in Sweden, and it was governed by a board with six directors: Mr. Clinton’s two close aides in retirement, Doug Band and Mr. Lindsey; the foundation’s chief financial officer, Andrew Kessell; Swedish lawyer Jan Lombach; German media mogul Karl-Heinz Kogel; and British financier Barry Townsley.
Mr. Townsley was a public figure in the 2006-2007 “pay for peerage” scandal that rocked the British government and tarnished the reputation of Tony Blair months before he left office as prime minister.
A House of Commons report concluded that Mr. Townsley, a successful stockbroker and generous philanthropist, provided a 1 million pound loan in 2005 to the ruling Labor Party and received a peerage nomination from Mr. Blair’s government. Mr. Townsley eventually declined the peerage appointment, saying the publicity had intruded on his privacy. He and other businessmen who made similar loans and were nominated for peerages were never charged with any wrongdoing, but the controversy tarnished Mr. Blair’s tenure.
Mr. Townsley told The Times that Mr. Clinton called him personally to ask him to serve on the Swedish entity’s board, and there were never any issues raised with him about the British patronage scandal.
He described himself as “a non-exec director,” saying he never got paid, never raised any money, never attended any functions for the Swedish entity and didn’t even get financial reports about the group’s activities.
He said he did not believe the past controversy in Britain should have any bearing on his relationship with the Clintons, which began in 1999. “There was nothing to it, and the investigation went away. Nothing to be investigated,” Mr. Townsley said.
The incorporation documents for Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse say “fundraising is the Swedish foundation’s only purpose,” and its annual reports show a total of $26 million raised since 2011. The Swedish documents disclose only a few sources of incoming donations, with the largest being the Nationale Postcode Loterij with about $5 million donated in 2012 and 2013 and the Swedish Postcode Lottery with about $4 million donated in that same time frame.
Mr. Clinton set up the Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse to become a direct recipient of the funds from the Swedish Postcode Lottery, rather than having to go through an intermediary organization to get the contributions, according to a Clinton Foundation official.

“Under Swedish lottery legislation, an organization must be registered in Sweden to receive funds directly from the Swedish Postcode Lottery,” said Roger Magergard, a spokesman for the lottery.
He added: “The partnership with Clinton Foundation Sweden is ongoing. The Swedish Postcode Lottery has 53 beneficiaries, and the cooperation with all organizations continues until either the beneficiary or the lottery decides to end the cooperation.”
In 2011, Sweden changed its giving laws to allow “little-brother” foundations, such as the Clinton Foundation Sweden, to operate in the country and broadened the issues those foundations could collect money for, explained Filip Wijkstrom, a director at the Stockholm School of Economics, who has studied Swedish foundations and nonprofits.
That same year, Sweden changed its tax laws so that individuals could get small tax breaks on their charitable contributions and companies could deduct some donations as business expenditures.

 

 

 

A Federalized/Globalized Red Cross Fails

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NYT: Greater Port-au-Prince is pocked with buildings that are half-standing, half-collapsed, including the National Palace, which one cynical aid worker described as “the beggar’s stump,” an enduring symbol of Haiti’s need for help.

Nobody knows exactly how many are living inside such wreckage. A study for the United States Agency for International Development estimated that 65 percent of condemned properties had been reinhabited as of last year. And a yearlong building inspection tagged about 80,000 houses red: beyond repair.

The Red Cross has a long stellar reputation in countless missions and locations but when governments have a hand in operations, failure is common.

There are fundamental national and global services provided by the Red Cross and those operations are well oiled machines where great work is delivered, yet when the Red Cross is tasked to go outside their lane for services such as building houses, the machine breaks down.

Several years ago, there was a devastating earthquake in Haiti. Charity organizations worldwide stepped up in humanitarian aid to the small country yet today, conditions are essentially no better.

How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti ­and Built Six Homes

Even as the group has publicly celebrated its work, insider accounts detail a string of failures

The neighborhood of Campeche sprawls up a steep hillside in Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince. Goats rustle in trash that goes forever uncollected. Children kick a deflated volleyball in a dusty lot below a wall with a hand-painted logo of the American Red Cross.

In late 2011, the Red Cross launched a multimillion-dollar project to transform the desperately poor area, which was hit hard by the earthquake that struck Haiti the year before. The main focus of the project — called LAMIKA, an acronym in Creole for “A Better Life in My Neighborhood” — was building hundreds of permanent homes.

Today, not one home has been built in Campeche. Many residents live in shacks made of rusty sheet metal, without access to drinkable water, electricity or basic sanitation. When it rains, their homes flood and residents bail out mud and water.

The Red Cross received an outpouring of donations after the quake, nearly half a billion dollars.

The group has publicly celebrated its work. But in fact, the Red Cross has repeatedly failed on the ground in Haiti. Confidential memos, emails from worried top officers, and accounts of a dozen frustrated and disappointed insiders show the charity has broken promises, squandered donations, and made dubious claims of success.

The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: six.

After the earthquake, Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern unveiled ambitious plans to “develop brand-new communities.” None has ever been built.

Aid organizations from around the world have struggled after the earthquake in Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. But ProPublica and NPR’s investigation shows that many of the Red Cross’s failings in Haiti are of its own making. They are also part of a larger pattern in which the organization has botched delivery of aid after disasters such as Superstorm Sandy. Despite its difficulties, the Red Cross remains the charity of choice for ordinary Americans and corporations alike after natural disasters.

One issue that has hindered the Red Cross’ work in Haiti is an overreliance on foreigners who could not speak French or Creole, current and former employees say.

In a blistering 2011 memo, the then-director of the Haiti program, Judith St. Fort, wrote that the group was failing in Haiti and that senior managers had made “very disturbing” remarks disparaging Haitian employees. St. Fort, who is Haitian American, wrote that the comments included, “he is the only hard working one among them” and “the ones that we have hired are not strong so we probably should not pay close attention to Haitian CVs.”

The Red Cross won’t disclose details of how it has spent the hundreds of millions of dollars donated for Haiti. But our reporting shows that less money reached those in need than the Red Cross has said.

Lacking the expertise to mount its own projects, the Red Cross ended up giving much of the money to other groups to do the work. Those groups took out a piece of every dollar to cover overhead and management. Even on the projects done by others, the Red Cross had its own significant expenses – in one case, adding up to a third of the project’s budget.

In statements, the Red Cross cited the challenges all groups have faced in post-quake Haiti, including the country’s dysfunctional land title system.

“Like many humanitarian organizations responding in Haiti, the American Red Cross met complications in relation to government coordination delays, disputes over land ownership, delays at Haitian customs, challenges finding qualified staff who were in short supply and high demand, and the cholera outbreak, among other challenges,” the charity said.

When the earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, the Red Cross was facing a crisis of its own. McGovern had become chief executive just 18 months earlier, inheriting a deficit and an organization that had faced scandals after 9/11 and Katrina.

The group said it responded quickly to internal concerns, including hiring an expert to train staff on cultural competency after St. Fort’s memo. While the group won’t provide a breakdown of its projects, the Red Cross said it has done more than 100. The projects include repairing 4,000 homes, giving several thousand families temporary shelters, donating $44 million for food after the earthquake, and helping fund the construction of a hospital.

“Millions of Haitians are safer, healthier, more resilient, and better prepared for future disasters thanks to generous donations to the American Red Cross,” McGovern wrote in a recent report marking the fifth anniversary of the earthquake.

In other promotional materials, the Red Cross said it has helped “more than 4.5 million” individual Haitians “get back on their feet.”

It has not provided details to back up the claim. And Jean-Max Bellerive, Haiti’s prime minister at the time of the earthquake, doubts the figure, pointing out the country’s entire population is only about 10 million.

“No, no,” Bellerive said of the Red Cross’ claim, “it’s not possible.” When the earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, the Red Cross was facing a crisis of its own. McGovern had become chief executive just 18 months earlier, inheriting a deficit and an organization that had faced scandals after 9/11 and Katrina.

Inside the Red Cross, the Haiti disaster was seen as “a spectacular fundraising opportunity,” recalled one former official who helped organize the effort. Michelle Obama, the NFL and a long list of celebrities appealed for donations to the group.

The Red Cross kept soliciting money well after it had enough for the emergency relief that is the group’s stock in trade. Doctors Without Borders, in contrast, stopped fundraising off the earthquake after it decided it had enough money. The donations to the Red Cross helped the group erase its more-than $100 million deficit.

The Red Cross ultimately raised far more than any other charity.

A year after the quake, McGovern announced that the Red Cross would use the donations to make a lasting impact in Haiti.

We asked the Red Cross to show us around its projects in Haiti so we could see the results of its work. It declined. So earlier this year we went to Campeche to see one of the group’s signature projects for ourselves.

Street vendors in the dusty neighborhood immediately pointed us to Jean Jean Flaubert, the head of a community group that the Red Cross set up as a local sounding board.

Sitting with us in their sparse one-room office, Flaubert and his colleagues grew angry talking about the Red Cross. They pointed to the lack of progress in the neighborhood and the healthy salaries paid to expatriate aid workers.

“What the Red Cross told us is that they are coming here to change Campeche. Totally change it,” said Flaubert. “Now I do not understand the change that they are talking about. I think the Red Cross is working for themselves.”

The Red Cross’ initial plan said the focus would be building homes — an internal proposal put the number at 700. Each would have finished floors, toilets, showers, even rainwater collection systems. The houses were supposed to be finished in January 2013.

None of that ever happened. Carline Noailles, who was the project’s manager in Washington, said it was endlessly delayed because the Red Cross “didn’t have the know-how.”

Another former official who worked on the Campeche project said, “Everything takes four times as long because it would be micromanaged from DC, and they had no development experience.”

Shown an English-language press release from the Red Cross website, Flaubert was stunned to learn of the project’s $24 million budget — and that it is due to end next year.

“Not only is [the Red Cross] not doing it,” Flaubert said, “now I’m learning that the Red Cross is leaving next year. I don’t understand that.” (The Red Cross says it did tell community leaders about the end date. It also accused us of “creating ill will in the community which may give rise to a security incident.”)

The project has since been reshaped and downscaled. A road is being built. Some existing homes have received earthquake reinforcement and a few schools are being repaired. Some solar street lights have been installed, though many broke and residents say others are unreliable.

The group’s most recent press release on the project cites achievements such as training school children in disaster response.

The Red Cross said it has to scale back its housing plans because it couldn’t acquire the rights to land. No homes will be built.

Other Red Cross infrastructure projects also fizzled.

In January 2011, McGovern announced a $30 million partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. The agency would build roads and other infrastructure in at least two locations where the Red Cross would build new homes.

But it took more than two and a half years, until August 2013, for the Red Cross just to sign an agreement with USAID on the program, and even that was for only one site. The program was ultimately canceled because of a land dispute.

A Government Accountability Office report attributed the severe delays to problems “in securing land title and because of turnover in Red Cross leadership” in its Haiti program.

Other groups also ran into trouble with land titles and other issues. But they also ultimately built 9,000 homes compared to the Red Cross’ six.

Asked about the Red Cross’ housing projects in Haiti, David Meltzer, the group’s general counsel and chief international officer, said changing conditions forced changes in plans. “If we had said, ‘All we’re going to do is build new homes,’ we’d still be looking for land,” he said.

The USAID project’s collapse left the Red Cross grasping for ways to spend money earmarked for it.

“Any ideas on how to spend the rest of this?? (Besides the wonderful helicopter idea?),” McGovern wrote to Meltzer in a November 2013 email obtained by ProPublica and NPR. “Can we fund Conrad’s hospital? Or more to PiH[Partners in Health]? Any more shelter projects?” Read much more here.

 

Another Secret Clinton Corporation?

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Notice the ‘To’ and ‘From’ in this document and the subject line.

 

Bill Clinton company shows complexity of family finances

WASHINGTON (AP) — The newly released financial files on Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s growing fortune omit a company with no apparent employees or assets that the former president has legally used to provide consulting and other services, but which demonstrates the complexity of the family’s finances.

Because the company, WJC, LLC, has no financial assets, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was not obligated to report its existence in her recent financial disclosure report, officials with Bill Clinton’s private office and the Clinton campaign said. They were responding to questions by The Associated Press, which reviewed corporate documents.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to provide private details of the former president’s finances on the record, said the entity was a “pass-through” company designed to channel payments to the former president.

Under federal ethics disclosure rules, declared candidates do not have to report assets worth less than $1,000. But the company’s existence demonstrates the complexity of tracking the Clintons’ finances as Hillary Clinton ramps up her presidential bid.

While Bill Clinton’s lucrative speeches have provided the bulk of the couple’s income, earning as much as $50 million during his wife’s four-year term as secretary of state in the Obama administration, the former president has also sought to branch out into other business activities in recent years. Little is known about the exact nature and financial worth of Bill Clinton’s non-speech business interests.

The identities of several U.S and foreign-based companies and foundations that Bill Clinton worked for have been disclosed in Hillary Clinton’s recent financial report as well as in earlier reports during her stint as secretary of state.

Under federal disclosure rules for spouses’ earned income, Hillary Clinton was only obligated to identify the source of her spouse’s income and confirm that he received more than $1,000. As a result, the precise amounts of Bill Clinton’s earned income from consulting have not been disclosed, and it’s not known how much was routed through WJC, LLC.

WJC, LLC was set up in Delaware in 2008 and again in 2013 and in New York in 2009, according to documents obtained by The AP. The company did not appear among holdings in the Clintons’ financial disclosure released last week or in previous Hillary Clinton disclosure reports between 2008 and 2013, when she resigned as secretary of state. Bill Clinton signed a document as its “authorizing person” in a corporate filing in Delaware in 2013.

A limited liability company is a commonly used business structure that provides tax advantages and limited legal protection for the assets of company owners and partners.

The purpose of Bill Clinton’s U.S.-based company was not disclosed in any of the corporate filings in Delaware and New York, but State Department files recently reviewed by the AP show that WJC, LLC surfaced in emails from Bill Clinton’s aides to the department’s ethics officials.

In February 2009, Clinton’s counselor, Douglas Band, asked State Department ethics officials to clear Bill Clinton’s consulting work for three companies owned by influential Democratic party donors. Memos sent by Band proposed that Bill Clinton would provide “consulting services regarding geopolitical, economic and social trends affecting the entity and philanthropic opportunities” through the WJC, LLC entity.

State Department officials approved Bill Clinton’s consulting work for longtime friend Steve Bing’s Shangri-La Industries and another with Wasserman Investments, GP, a firm run by entertainment executive and Democratic party donor Casey Wasserman. The ethics officials turned down Bill Clinton’s proposed work with a firm run by entertainment magnate and Democratic donor Haim Saban because of Saban’s active role in Mideast political affairs.

WJC, LLC was also cited by Band in a June 2011 memo sent to State Department ethics officials asking for clearance to allow Bill Clinton to advise Band’s international consulting company, Teneo Strategy LLC. Band’s request said Teneo would use “consulting services provided by President Clinton through WJC, LLC.” State Department officials approved the three-year contract between the two companies.

None of the proposals detailed how much Bill Clinton would be paid.

While Hillary Clinton’s 2011 federal disclosure report did not mention WJC, LLC, it reported that Bill Clinton received “non-employee compensation over $1,000 from Teneo,” but did not disclose a more precise amount. Federal disclosure rules require the spouses of filers to disclose the identity of any income sources over $1,000, but they do not have to provide exact figures.

Pass-through, or shell, companies became an issue in the 2012 presidential campaign when Republican candidate Mitt Romney disclosed a private equity entity worth $1.9 million despite failing to report the company on his previous federal disclosure. Romney aides said the company previously held no assets but then received the $1.9 million “true up” payment — a catch-up payment to make up for private equity fees from defunct investment advisory businesses that had not been previously paid.

Hillary, Libya, Goldman Sachs and Rebels

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Okay, call holding for Trey Gowdy…perhaps he should know about lifted sanctions where surely a certain server has some emails. Seems there are billions at stake even today and Hillary knew it and frankly still does know it. So many more moving parts. Going back to 2011….

Libyan Power Struggle Threatens Fund’s Goldman, SocGen Suits

A fight for control of Libya’s $60 billion sovereign wealth fund threatens to derail its multibillion dollar lawsuits against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA.

Since the Libyan Investment Authority’s London law firm quit in April, two competing factions have claimed control, hiring separate lawyers and public relations firms.

There is a “state of chaos” in the litigation, lawyer Andrew Hunter told a London judge Friday. He represents a potential witness in the Societe Generale case who says confidential files have been mishandled.

 

“It hasn’t been possible to get consent from the LIA” over the documents, Hunter said, “because there is no one at the LIA to get consent from.”

Libya’s sovereign wealth fund sued Goldman Sachs and Societe Generale, each for more than $1 billion, over investment deals that turned sour. Since the cases were filed last year, armed conflict between rival administrations in Tripoli and Tobruk has led to escalating violence and turmoil in the North African nation, ruled for 42 years by dictator Muammar Qaddafi before his death in 2011.

The Libyan Investment Authority has been shrouded in secrecy.

In one of Africa’s largest and most secretive foreign agricultural investment deals, oil-rich Libya, under the leadership of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, signed a 50-year, renewable lease for the land with Mali’s government in 2008.

20150525malibyaThe land in the Office of Niger, the agricultural heart of the West African country, was provided rent free, with water rights included, on the condition that Libya build canals and roads to cultivate rice and cattle there. Read more here.

Hillary had sanctions lifted.

U.S. Seeks to Use Frozen Gadhafi Assets to Aid Rebels

The U.S. is moving to free up more than $30 billion in frozen Libyan assets, a small part of which would go to fund opposition forces, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, in a move that could bolster a world-wide effort to finance Libya’s struggling rebel movement.

Speaking ahead of a meeting with other top diplomats in Rome, Mrs. Clinton said the Obama administration was working with Congress to pass legislation allowing the Treasury Department to release Gadhafi-regime assets that it had frozen earlier this year in the wake of the Libyan dictator’s violent crackdown on protesters.

Libya’s deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kaim, told reporters in Tripoli that giving the frozen assets to the rebels would be illegal, “like piracy on the high seas.”

In a first step, once the funds are unfrozen, the U.S. is considering sending more than $150 million to humanitarian agencies for use in rebel territory, a State Department official said.

The U.S. efforts come as 22 nations agreed at a meeting in Rome Thursday to set up an internationally monitored multibillion-dollar fund aimed at helping Libya’s rebel government, the Transitional National Council, fund basic provisions such as food and medicine, pay military salaries and rebuild hospitals and schools, according to several officials at the meeting.

The allied countries have already pledged $250 million in humanitarian aid, said Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.

Money from the fund won’t be used to pay for arms, said Mahmoud Jibril, the Libyan rebel group’s de-facto foreign minister, who also attended the meeting.

“Two weeks ago nobody was talking about… giving the [rebels] the means to defend themselves, but now I think it’s more accepted,” Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr al-Thani said after the meeting.

Sheikh Hamad added that the fund would be overseen by a five-member board, including three people appointed by the rebel council, one named by Qatar and another representing France and Italy on a six-month rotating basis.

Officials envisioned that the fund could in part be filled by assets of the Gadhafi government that have over the past few months been frozen by the United Nations and the European Union.

In March, the E.U. froze foreign assets owned by the Gadhafi family and the dictator’s close lieutenants. The E.U. also froze stakes that Libya’s central bank and its sovereign-wealth fund, the Libyan Investment Authority, hold in large European companies, ranging from banks to defense contractors.

On Thursday, the U.S. Treasury department announced that it planned to freeze assets under U.S. jurisdiction that are linked to Libya’s state broadcaster and two Libyan investment funds.

For the U.S., however, unlocking and using the frozen Gadhafi-government funds is difficult for legal reasons. Though the U.S. has allocated $25 million to help the rebels procure supplies, Washington hasn’t recognized the rebel leadership council as Libya’s rightful government—as some European countries have done—complicating the U.S.’s ability to provide funding.

If Congress passes legislation allowing those frozen assets to be tapped “we can make those funds available to help the Libyan people,” Mrs. Clinton said at the meeting.

Mrs. Clinton also called on her counterparts to turn up diplomatic pressure on Col. Gadhafi by sending envoys to Benghazi. Isolating his regime, she said, “includes suspending the operations of Gadhafi’s embassies and expelling pro-Gadhafi diplomats, as the U.S. and other countries have done, and sending envoys to Benghazi and facilitating the creation of [Transitional National Council] representative offices in capitals world-wide.”

The U.S. has sent an envoy to Benghazi. Mahmoud Jibril, the rebels’ de facto foreign minister, is expected visit Washington next week and meet with Treasury officials.

During the meeting, the group of allies also discussed conditions for security a cease-fire in Libya that would include easing the departure of the Gadhafi family from Libya and urging the country’s national assembly to write a new constitution, Mr. Frattini, the Italian foreign minister, said. He said “a few weeks is a realistic period” to secure a truce.