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InquisitR: There are 22 “forever prisoners” who could possibly be imprisoned in the U.S. remaining at Guantanamo Bay. As reported by The Guardian,“they are joined by 32 men in some stage of the long-stalled military tribunals process, although 22 of those have been referred for prosecution and not yet charged.”
HouseCmteForeignAffairs: On Saturday afternoon, the administration released nine detainees from the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay to Saudi Arabia.
VOAreports the move “came just weeks after President Barack Obama announced an accelerated plan to try to shutter the prison before he leaves office in January 2017.” And it follows the April 4th release of two Al Qaeda bomb makers, one of which “fought coalition forces at Usama bin Laden’s Tora Bora complex in Afghanistan,” according to FOX News.
In all, the Obama administration is expected to push to release an additional 26 detainees before the end of summer. This mad rush comes despite the fact that:
Nearly 30 percent of former detainees return to the terrorist battlefield. According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s latest report, 30.2 percent of former detainees are either confirmed or suspected to have returned to terrorism. Notably, one detainee freed in 2012 has emerged publicly in a “key position” for Al-Qaeda in east Africa. Another former detainee, who was reportedly trained in explosives and working as part of an ISIS recruiting cell, was arrested by Spanish and Moroccan authorities in February.
Released detainees have killed Americans. In testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee last month, the Obama administration openly admitted terrorists released from the Guantanamo Bay prison have killed Americans. “What I can tell you is, unfortunately, there have been Americans that have died,” the Pentagon’s special envoy for Guantanamo detention closure said.
Currently, in an effort to limit public scrutiny, the administration only releases information about upcoming releases in classified documents. This needs to change.
That’s why Chairman Royce has introduced legislation, the Terrorist Release Transparency Act (H.R. 4850), to ensure the American people, and our foreign partners, have critical details about detainee transfers. Royce’s legislation would require the administration, in advance of each release, to publicly post details including:
The name, country of origin, and country of destination of the individual being transferred;
The number of individuals detained at Guantanamo previously transferred to that country, and;
The number of individuals who have reengaged in terrorist activity after being transferred to that country.
If the White House truly believed its race to empty out the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay was good for America’s national security, it could be taking these steps on its own – right now. Instead, it’s pushing an incomplete and illegal plan to bring some terrorists to U.S. soil while releasing others to foreign countries. Once again, Congress needs to step in.
USAToday: WASHINGTON — The Afghan Taliban announced Tuesday the start of a new fighting season against the U.S.-backed government as the White House weighs future troop levels for the war-torn country.
In an email to the media, the Taliban warned it would launch “large scale attacks” but would attempt to avoid civilian casualties, according to the Associated Press.
The United States has nearly 10,000 service members in Afghanistan. The White House is considering proposals to maintain a future military presence in the country after President Obama last year reversed a plan to remove all U.S. troops by 2016.
That reversal came as Afghan forces faced intense pressure from Taliban militants throughout the country. The Pentagon said no decisions have been made yet.
“Ultimately, Afghanistan has not achieved an enduring level of security and stability that justifies reduction in our support in 2016,” Gen. John Campbell, who recently stepped down as the top coalition commander in Afghanistan, testified to Congress recently.
This fighting season is likely to be another significant test for Afghan security forces, which number about 350,000, including police and soldiers.
The Taliban have emerged strong in parts of the country, including Helmand province, a significant opium growing region in the south, challenging local police and Afghan army forces.
The militants said in the email that the spring offensive began at 5 a.m. local time. They dubbed the campaign “Operation Omari” in honor of Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, who died three years ago, according to the AP.
The Taliban added that in areas under their control, “mechanisms for good governance will be established so that our people can live a life of security and normalcy.”
LWJ: The Taliban targeted a unit responsible for providing security for Afghan officials in a coordinated suicide assault in the Afghan capital today. The Taliban claimed credit for the deadly attack, in which at least 28 people were killed and more that 300 were wounded, according to reports on the ground.
The Taliban took responsibility for the attack on its official propaganda outlet, Voice of Jihad, and said it was part of Operation Omari, the 2016 spring offensive named after Mullah Omar, its founder and first emir. The Taliban reported a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle at the gate, which allowed armed fighters to breach the compound. This is a tactic that has been effectively employed by the Taliban and other jihadist groups throughout the world over the past decade.
“Amid the ongoing ‘Omari’ annual campaign at around 09:00 am local time this morning, a martyrdom seeking unit of Islamic Emirate launched a heavy attack on 10th directorate intelligence building located in PD1 of Kabul city,” the statement said. “The operation began when a martyrdom seeker detonated his explosives laden vehicle at the gate of the building, removing all barriers and killing the guards followed by a number of other martyrdom seekers rushing inside and engaging the remaining enemy targets.”
The Taliban’s account was substantiated by press reporting from Afghanistan. According to TOLONews, the compound that was attacked belonged to a “Secret Service Unit tasked with protecting VIPs.” Afghan officials said the attack began when a suicide bomber detonated at the gate, and one or more Taliban fighters then penetrated the perimeter and began firing on the survivors inside the compound. At least 28 people were killed and 327 more were wounded, according to the Afghan Ministry of Public Health.
The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan claimed that the attack was proof that the Taliban were unable to fight Afghan forces face to face “on the battlefield.”
“Today’s attack shows the insurgents are unable to meet Afghan forces on the battlefield and must resort to these terrorist attacks,” General John Nicholson, the commander of Resolute Support, NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, said in an email sent to The Long War Journal. “We strongly condemn the actions of Afghanistan’s enemies and remain firmly committed to supporting our Afghan partners and the National Unity Government.”
However, the Taliban are openly engaging Afghan forces on the battlefield on multiple fronts throughout Afghanistan. In the south, the Taliban controls nearly half of Helmand province and has pressured Afghan forces to retreat from key district there. The provincial capital of Lashkar Gah is under siege. In the north, the Taliban launched a coordinated offensive in all seven districts of Kunduz just after announcing the commencement of Operation Omar last week. The Taliban are also fighting in the open in multiple provinces in the east and west.
The Long War Journal estimates that the Taliban controls or hotly contests more than 80 of Afghanistan 400 plus districts.
Today’s attack in Kabul is the largest of its kind since Aug. 7-8, 2015, when the Taliban launched two suicide bombers and a suicide assault over the course of 24 hours. Forty-four people, including 20 Afghan police recruits, 15 Afghan civilians, eight US-contracted Afghan personnel, and a US Army Green Beret were killed when the Taliban targeted a police academy, a US Special Forces base, and a residential district. [See LWJ report, Taliban continues terror attacks in Afghan capital.]
Levitt/WSJ: The governor of Iran’s central bank warned last week that failure to do more to integrate Iranian banks into the global economy could jeopardize the international agreement over Tehran’s nuclear program. The onus is on Washington and its allies to reassure banks that doing business in Iran is fine, Valiollah Seif said in a speech Friday at the Council on Foreign Relations. He said tellingly little about Iran’s efforts to change an environment businesses are wary of investing in, underscoring the discrepancy between Iran’s view of the nuclear deal and other international perceptions.
Mr. Seif complained that “almost nothing” has been done to reintegrate Iran into the global economy since implementation of the deal was announced in January. “Unless serious efforts are made by our partners,” he said, “in my view, they have not honored their obligations.”
“Effective implementation of the agreement,” Mr. Seif said, must be done “in such a way that Iran’s economic and business activities will be facilitated.” Otherwise, the deal “breaks up on its own terms,” he said.
Iran seems to expect the Obama administration to provide benefits beyond those in the nuclear deal, including access to the U.S. financial system and the ability to change into dollars foreign currency transactions through U.S.-based banks. U.S. officials say that neither demand will be met.
Mr. Seif appeared to dismiss concerns about those activities as old hat. “If, according to our partners, it is our conduct which prevents international banks from engaging in business with us, they were fully aware of our conduct before signing. … We have not changed.”
That Iran has not changed is at the core of its problem, but that’s not how Mr. Seif seemed to see it. Asked about the risks of unwittingly doing business with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is still targeted by Treasury sanctions, Mr. Seif said potential investors could engage Iranian companies that run checks to determine who they would be doing business with. The use of Iranian companies to hide the IRGC’s involvement in business activities has been documented by the Treasury Department. And using in-country third parties to perform customer due diligence is seen as high-risk by international bodies that govern banking transactions.
The bottom line is that Iran has yet to curb or stop the illicit conduct that makes it a pariah state and a financial risk. It enacted a law against terrorist financing last July, but that’s done little to calm banks’ fears because its government continues to support terrorism. Until those behaviors change, banks are likely to continue to see prohibitive reputational, regulatory, and other risks to doing business there. And the only country that can do anything about that is Iran.
Bloomberg: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said international banks remain wary of U.S. regulations and need “reassurances” that they can resume business with his nation even after its nuclear deal with world powers.
Zarif, speaking in New York ahead of a Tuesday meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, said talks with his counterpart were necessary to follow up on the implementation of the agreement on the U.S. side.
The deal’s aim “was to not have the U.S. intervene in Iran’s relations with most other countries,” the Iranian Students’ News Agency cited Zarif as saying. “We should prevent past U.S. regulations from being obstacles to most financial institutions in Europe and Asia having banking relations with Iran.”
Iranian central bank Governor Valiollah Seif voiced similar sentiments last week, telling Bloomberg Television that the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control should issue guidelines encouraging European banks to be more receptive to Iran. Seif met Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Thursday during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington. More from Bloomberg.
For more than five years, Donald Trump’s new top campaign aide, Paul Manafort, lobbied for a Washington-based group that Justice Department prosecutors have charged operated as a front for Pakistan’s intelligence service, according to court and lobbying records reviewed by Yahoo News.
Manafort’s work in the 1990s as a registered lobbyist for the Kashmiri American Council was only one part of a wide-ranging portfolio that, over several decades, included a gallery of controversial foreign clients ranging from Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and Zaire’s brutal dictator Mobutu Sese Seko to an Angolan rebel leader accused by human rights groups of torture. His role as an adviser to Ukraine’s then prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, prompted concerns within the Bush White House that he was undermining U.S. foreign policy. It was considered so politically toxic in 2008 that presidential candidate John McCain nixed plans for Manafort to manage the Republican National Convention — a move that caused a rupture between Manafort and his then business partner, Rick Davis, who at the time was McCain’s campaign manager.
Manafort’s work for the Kashmiri group has so far not gotten any media attention.
But it could fuel more questions about his years of lobbying for questionable foreign interests before Manafort, 67, assumed his new position as chief delegate counter and strategist for a presidential candidate who repeatedly decries the influence of Washington lobbyists and denounces the manipulation of U.S. policy by foreign governments.
Court records show that Manafort’s Kashmiri lobbying contract came on the FBI’s radar screen during a lengthy counterterrorism investigation that culminated in 2011 with the arrest of the Kashmiri council’s director, Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, on charges that he ran the group on behalf of Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, as part of a scheme to secretly influence U.S. policy toward the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Paul Manafort, convention manager for the Trump campaign, on “Meet the Press,” April 10. (Photo: William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC NewsWire via Getty Images)
The Kashmiri American Council was a “scam” that amounted to a “false flag operation that Mr. Fai was operating on behalf of the ISI,” Gordon D. Kromberg, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, said in March 2012 at Fai’s sentencing hearing in federal court. While posing as a U.S.-based nonprofit funded by American donors sympathetic to the plight of Kashmiris, it was actually bankrolled by the ISI in order to deflect public attention “away from the involvement of Pakistan in sponsoring terrorism in Kashmir and elsewhere,” Kromberg said. Fai, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax fraud charges, was then sentenced to two years in federal prison.
Lobbying records filed with the secretary of the Senate show that Manafort’s lobbying firm, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, was paid $700,000 by the Kashmiri American Council between 1990 and 1995. This was among more than $4 million that federal prosecutors alleged came from the ISI; Fai collected the money over 20 years from “straw” American donors who were being reimbursed from secret accounts in Pakistan. (The funds were in some cases delivered to Fai in brown paper bags stuffed with cash — and then the donors reimbursed with wire transfers from ISI operatives, according to an FBI affidavit.)
Manafort, who handled the Kashmiri account for his firm, was never charged in the case, and Kromberg told Yahoo News that what knowledge, if any, he had of the secret source of money from his client was not part of the Justice Department’s investigation. (While registering with Congress as a domestic lobbyist for the Kashmiri American Council, Manafort never registered with the U.S. Justice Department as a foreign agent of Pakistan, as he would have been required to do if he was aware of the ISI funding of his client.)
But a former senior Pakistani official, who asked not to be identified, told Yahoo News that there was never any doubt on Pakistan’s part that Manafort knew of his government’s role in backing the Kashmiri council. The former official said that during a trip from Islamabad in 1994 he met with Manafort and Fai in Manafort’s office in Alexandria, Va., “to review strategy and plans” for the council. Manafort, at the meeting, presented plans to influence members of Congress to back Pakistan’s case for a plebiscite for Kashmir (the largest portion of which has been part of India since 1947), he said. (Internal budget documents later obtained by the FBI show plans by the council to spend $80,000 to $100,000 a year on campaign contributions to members of Congress.) “There is no way Manafort didn’t know that Pakistan was involved with” the council, the former official said, although he added: “Some things are not explicitly stated.”
Neither Manafort nor the Trump campaign responded to requests for comment for this story. (“I’m not working for any client right now other than working for Mr. Trump,” Manafort recently said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked by moderator Chuck Todd about his past “controversial” clients.)
Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, executive director of the Kashmiri American Council, in 2007. (Photo: Roshan Mughal/AP)
But Manafort’s former partner Charlie Black, now an adviser to rival Republican presidential candidate John Kasich, said that as far as the firm was concerned, the Kashmiri council was a domestic, not a foreign, client. “Nobody was more surprised than me that the guy was taking the money from Pakistan,” Black said in a telephone interview. “We didn’t know anything about it.”
But there was no doubt on the part of the Indian government about where the money was coming from. Its officials repeatedly alleged that the Kashmiri council was a front group for Pakistan during the period that Manafort’s firm was lobbying for it. The issue blew up in September 1993 after Manafort and one of his lobbying associates, Riva Levinson, traveled to Kashmir and, according to Indian officials, posed as CNN reporters in an effort to gather video footage of interviews with Kashmiri officials.
“The whole thing was obviously a blatant operation of producing television software with a deliberate and particularly anti-Indian slant by lobbyists hired by Pakistan for this very purpose,” Shiv Shankar, then the Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a letter to CNN in Atlanta at the time. (Levinson did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo News. At the time she denied the Indian allegations, telling a UPI reporter, “We never misrepresented ourselves as journalists.”)
Exactly what Manafort did for the Kashmiri council is unclear from the sketchy lobbying reports his firm filed with the secretary of the Senate. Those reports show his firm first registered as lobbyists for the group in October 1990, the same year the group was founded by Fai. The reports list little beyond the purpose of the lobbying: to seek support for a House resolution by then-Rep. Dan Burton to sponsor a “peaceful resolution” of the Kashmir dispute. They also show payments to the firm of $140,000 a year. (During this time, Black, Manafort had a long list of other domestic clients that included the NRA, the Tobacco Institute and the Trump Organization, which paid the firm $70,000 a year to lobby Congress on casino gambling, aviation and tax issues, according to the lobbying records.)
“We went to the Hill for them to raise the profile of the [Kashmiri] cause,” said Black about the firm’s work for Fai’s council. “But nobody in Bush 41 [the administration of George H.W. Bush] or the Clinton administration wanted to touch it. We never got any real attention for it.”
The FBI came across evidence that ISI was actually not pleased with Manafort’s work. The bureau’s investigation began in 2005 with a tip from a confidential informant (who was seeking a reduced prison term) that Fai and an associate in Pakistan, Zaheer Ahmad, were agents of the ISI. As part of the probe, agents obtained secret national security warrants to wiretap Fai’s communications; they also searched his home and offices. Among the evidence they seized: a December 1995 letter from Fai’s main ISI handler, identified as a Pakistani Army brigadier general named Javeed Aziz Khan, who went by the name of “Abdullah,” that criticized Fai for renewing a contract with a public relations firm, according to the FBI affidavit from a counterterrorism agent, Sarah Webb Linden, that was filed to support Fai’s detention in July 2011.
Lobbyist Charlie Black (Photo: Tom Williams/Roll Call/Getty Images)
Eight months later, at Fai’s sentencing hearing, prosecutor Kromberg for the first time identified the public relations firm as Black, Manafort, according to court records. He then detailed a dispute between Fai and his ISI handler over the Black, Manafort contract. Fai wrote back to Khan the next day insisting that the ISI official had in fact approved the renewal of the contract and noted that to “make it appear” that the council was a Kashmiri organization “financed by Americans,” there was a preexisting agreement that nobody from the Pakistani Embassy would ever contact Black, Manafort, said Kromberg. But Fai was overruled, according to Kromberg’s account. The ISI handler wrote back to Fai stating that that “‘we’ — a reference to the ISI — were unsatisfied with the performance of Black, Manafort & Stone, and advised Fai to terminate the contract immediately,” according to a transcript of Kromberg’s statement to the court.
Meanwhile, the FBI pursued even more alarming allegations relating to Ahmad, Fai’s Pakistan-based associate. According to a ProPublica account, the bureau questioned witnesses about a trip that Ahmad had allegedly made to Afghanistan with a Pakistani nuclear scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood; the scientist was suspecting of having met with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in August 2001 to discuss the terror leaders’ interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.
Manafort, for his part, appears to have expanded his business connections in Pakistan. In 2013 he acknowledged to French investigators that, in 1994, he had received $86,000 from two arms dealers involved in the sale of French attack submarines to Pakistan’s navy. The payments were part of an arrangement to compensate Manafort for political advice and polling he provided to French presidential candidate Édouard Balladur — one part of a wide-ranging French investigation into alleged kickbacks from arms sales dubbed by the French press “the Karachi affair.”
One puzzling question about the Kashmir case is why, six years after the investigation began, the FBI decided to arrest Fai in 2011. One explanation, a source familiar with the case said, is that it came during a period of mounting tensions between the United States and Pakistan, much of it due to concerns among U.S. national security officials about the “double game” being played by the ISI. In May of that year, President Obama ordered the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden without informing the Pakistani military, in part because of fears that elements of the ISI (an arm of the military) might have been protecting the al-Qaida leader. Just weeks later, federal prosecutors in Chicago presented damning testimony in federal court that an ISI handler had directed one of the confessed conspirators in the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai — which killed 164 people, including six Americans — that was perpetrated by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based group with links to al-Qaida committed to “liberating” Muslims from Indian rule in Kashmir.
Then, on July 18, after Fai returned from a trip to the United Kingdom, the FBI confronted him for the third time about whether he had any connections to the ISI — and he denied it. Fai was arrested, and he and Ahmad (who remained in Pakistan and died later that year) were charged in federal court with being unregistered foreign agents of Pakistan.
Thank you Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, for your wonderful speech last Friday, January 23rd.
We have, with President Obama, someone who believes in development and diplomacy. Coming to the State Department yesterday sent a very strong signal. A few of you may even know, as I mentioned in my testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee, that the President’s late mother was an expert in microfinance and worked in Indonesia. I have been involved in microfinance since 1983, when I first met Muhammad Yunus and had Muhammad come to see us in Arkansas so that we could use the lessons from the Grameen Bank in our own country. I was actually looking forward to being on a panel with the President’s mother in Beijing on microfinance.
You were very warmly welcomed by foreign service workers who have been struggling through eight years of the US losing its moral footing in the world. You brought up a favorite subject, microcredit, and two of my favorite people (along with yourself), President Obama’s late mother, Ann Dunham Soetero, and Muhammad Yunus, my “boss.”
One of those helping President Obama’s late mother organize that meeting was Lawrence Yanovitch now heading up Poverty issues at the Gates Foundation. He spoke to me about his work with Ann Dunham Soetero when in Paris last year. This Obama victory is also a victory for her and her work with microcredit.
Microcredit is not the only answer but it surely should be an important part of not only how we restructure our own American economy, but how we support others around the world.
Microcredit helps women. Microcredit helps fight against fundamentalism and violence against women, children, immigrant communities, and makes the business-model approach to ending poverty a human one.
Muhammad Yunus’ work with the Grameen Bank has now made it to the US with Grameen America. Organizations such as the Grameen Foundation have been replicating this model around the world.
President Obama’s late mother “got it,” Hillary Clinton “got it”…years before others. Now let’s grow it at home and around the world. It’s one banking system that is actually working. What other bank these days is made up mostly of women borrowers and can claim a 98-99% payback rate? Surely not Citibank!
Thank you to DailyCaller News Foundation: Hillary Clinton’s Department of State awarded at least $13 million in grants, contracts and loans to her longtime friend and Clinton Foundation donor Muhammad Yunus, despite his being ousted in 2011 as managing director of the Bangladesh-based Grameen Bank amid charges of corruption, according to an investigation by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The tax funds were given to Yunus through 18 separate U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) award transactions listed by the federal contracting site USAspending.gov.
They highlight how Clinton mixed official government business with Clinton Foundation donors. Yunus gave between $100,000 to $300,000 to the foundation, according to the Clinton Foundation website.
Groups allied to Yunus received an additional $11 million from USAID, according to the contracting website. Yunus had business relationships with all of them.
For more than 30 years, Yunus oversaw the distribution of Grameen Bank “micro-credit loans” to the poor to set up small businesses. He was eventually regarded as a saint among many anti-poverty activists.
But he also got a big helping hand over the three decades Bill and Hillary Clinton actively promoted him and repeatedly showcased him as a celebrity figure at major Clinton Foundation functions.
The former president is credited with launching a personal lobbying campaign to press the Nobel Committee to award its peace prize to the Yunus. It did so in 2006.
Secretary Clinton’s mixing of official work with foundation donors is reportedly the focus of a second, less publicized FBI public corruption investigation of the former secretary of state. The more widely known FBI probe focuses on her use of a private email server located in her New York residence to conduct official government business.
“Presumably if The Daily Caller News Foundation has this information, then the FBI has it,” said Robert T. Hosko, former assistant director of the Bureau’s criminal division. “Certainly, the FBI would want to know the nature of these relationships,” he told TheDCNF.
“That’s precisely the sort of thing that the FBI would be looking at and should be looking at to determine whether there’s an official act of corruption,” he said.
The FBI declined comment, saying, “we generally do not comment on whether or not we’re conducting a particular investigation.”
Clinton was not shy about using her post as America’s chief diplomat on behalf of Yunus and Grameen Bank when the Bangladesh government announced an investigation into multiple allegations of financial mismanagement by the political activist.
Clinton rocked the Bangladeshi political establishment when she publicly intervened on behalf of Yunus in 2011 as the South Asian government prepared to launch its probe.
With Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni — also a woman — at her side, Clinton said at a State Department news conference that “we have expressed directly to the government our concern and hope that the Grameen Bank … is able to continue to function productively on behalf of the people of Bangladesh.”
Emails from Clinton’s private server disclose that Bill and Hillary Clinton closely monitored the Bangladesh government’s investigation of Yunus, who is a high-profile fixture at most of the Clinton Foundation’s major gatherings. The foundation features him at 37 places on its website.
David Bossie, president of the conservative activist group Citizens United and a long-time Clinton critic, called for the FBI to look into possible conflicts of interest linked to the long association between Yunus and the Clintons.
“The mixing of State Department and U.S. government business with Clinton Foundation donors and interests is a prime example of what the FBI could be investigating in addition to the private email server setup.” Bossie told TheDCNF.
The Clinton-Yunus relationship dates from Bill Clinton’s tenure as Arkansas governor, when he and Hillary fell in love with the concept of micro-credit loans. Yunus, then a Bangladesh economist, has championed the micro-credit cause through Grameen Bank since 1978.
Things went terribly wrong for Yunus and Grameen Bank about five years ago when a number of independent authorities decided to take a closer look at the bank and the 50 inter-related enterprises Yunus created, most of which operate in Third World countries where there is little financial oversight.
Former Secretary Clinton and her husband closely followed Yunus’ mounting problems. A June 11, 2012 email from Amitabh Desai, the foundation’s foreign policy director, for example, alerted Hillary Clinton of a Yunus response to the Bangladesh investigation.
“In case you haven’t seen it already, WJC wanted HRC and you to see this,” Desai said in the email routed through Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, and Huma Abedin, her deputy chief of staff. “WJC” is Bill Clinton and “HRC” is Hillary Clinton.
Hosko said the email “is potentially an indicator of the co-mingling of state business with the Clinton Foundation. It is very concerning.”
Clinton’s aid to Yunus also included 18 grants, contracts and loans awarded to two of his America-based foundations, the Grameen Foundation USA and Grameen America, according to USASpending.gov.
The awards, totaling $13 million, were issued by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the development arm of the State Department, beginning when Clinton became secretary of state. Another $11 million in federal funds went to organizations allied with Yunus.
When asked to explain the Yunus grants and loans, USAID Spokesman Raphael Cook said the agency didn’t have the “manpower” to respond to questions about the transactions.
Other federal agencies also opened their coffers to Yunus after Clinton entered the administration. The Department of Treasury awarded a $600,000 grant directly to Grameen America under a fund designed to boost financial institutions in community development. A Treasury Department spokesman declined to provide any details beyond the fact the funds were for activities in New York.
A series of Small Business Administration grants to Grameen America also began in July 2011, totaling $934,000. Those grants were for “salaries and expenses” for the foundation to operate its New York offices where Clinton once a U.S. senator.
In addition to being revered among anti-poverty activists, Yunus was popular among elements of the Bangladesh military. When a group of generals overthrew the Bangladesh government in January 2007, Yunus considered establishing a new political party to lead the new military-led government, thereby legitimizing the coup.
The BBC reported April 7, 2007, that “the army would sponsor Nobel Peace prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus as a new leader.”
Sabir Mustafa, the BBC’s Bengali Service editor, added that “Dr. Yunus is still viewed as a credible candidate by elements in the army.” In the end, Yunus opted not to create the new party.
The Grameen Foundation, USA did not respond to a request for comment from TheDCNF. Neither did spokesmen for the Clinton presidential campaign or the Clinton Foundation.
