Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

U.S. Schools Courtesy of Gulen

Posted on by

Anyone remember the Barack Obama famous Cairo speech? In April of 2009, Barack delivered a long message siding with Islam and opening the door for radicals to launch their agendas and local schools in America were included.

But setting the table for what is below is this: He is in the United States.

Turkey issues arrest warrant for cleric Gulen – state media

(Frank J.Gaffney Jr. The Wash.Times:11 Dec.2012)

It is a commonplace saying, but one that most of us ignore: If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. This applies in spades to a proposal under active consideration by the school board in Virginia’s Loudoun County. It would use taxpayer funds to create a charter school to equip the children of that Washington exurb with enhanced skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. Ostensibly, they will thus be equipped to compete successfully in the fields expected to be at the cutting edge of tomorrow’s workplace.

What makes this initiative, dubbed the Loudoun Math and IT Academy, too good to be true? Let’s start with what is acknowledged about the proposed school.

The academy’s board is made up of a group of male Turkish expatriates. One of them, Fatih Kandil, was formerly the principal of the Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School in Anne Arundel County, Md. Another is Ali Bicak, the board president of the Chesapeake Lighthouse Foundation, which owns Chesapeake Science Point and two other charter schools in Maryland. The Loudoun Math and IT Academy applicants expressly claim that Chesapeake Science Point will be the model for their school.

The taxpayers of Loudoun County and the school board elected to represent them should want no part of a school that seeks to emulate Chesapeake Science Point, let alone be run by the same people responsible for that publicly funded charter school. For one thing, Chesapeake Science Point has not proved to be the resounding academic success the applicants claim. It does not appear anywhere in the acclaimed U.S. News & World Report lists of high-performing schools in Maryland, let alone nationwide — even in the subsets of mathematics or charter schools.

What is more, according to public documents chronicling Anne Arundel County Public Schools’ dismal experience with Chesapeake Science Point, there is significant evidence of chronic violations of federal, state and local policies and regulations throughout its six years of operations, with little or inconsistent improvement, reflecting deficiencies in fiscal responsibility and organizational viability.

Why, one might ask, would applicants for a new charter school cite so deeply problematic an example as their proposed institution? This brings us to aspects of this proposal that are not acknowledged.

Chesapeake Science Point is just one of five controversial schools with which Mr. Kandil has been associated. He was previously the director at the Horizon Science Academy in Dayton, Ohio; the principal at the Wisconsin Career Academy in Milwaukee and at the Baltimore Information Technology Academy in Maryland; and one of the applicants in a failed bid to establish the First State Math and Science Academy in Delaware.

These schools have something in common besides their ties to the peripatetic Fatih Kandil. They have all been “inspired” by and in other ways are associated with Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish supremacist and imam with a cultlike following of up to 6 million Muslims in Turkey and elsewhere around the world. More to the point, Imam Gulen is the reclusive and highly autocratic leader of a global media, business, “interfaith dialogue” and education empire said to be worth many billions that is run from a compound in the Poconos.

This empire — including its roughly 135 charter schools in this country and another 1,000 abroad — and its adherents have come to be known as the Gulen Movement. Those associated with it, in this country at least, are assiduously secretive about their connections to Imam Gulen and his enterprise. For example, the Loudoun Math and IT Academy applicants, their spokeswoman and other apologists have repeatedly misled the Loudoun school board, claiming that these Turkish gentlemen and their proposed school have nothing to do with Imam Gulen.

There are several possible reasons for such professions. For one, the Gulen schools are reported to be under investigation by the FBI. A growing number of them — including Chesapeake Science Point — have also come under critical scrutiny from school boards and staff around the country. In some cases, they have actually lost their charters for, among other reasons, chronic financial and other mismanagement and outsourcing U.S. teachers’ jobs to Turks.

The decisive reason for the Gulenist lack of transparency, however, may be due to their movement’s goals and modus operandi. These appear aligned with those of another secretive international organization that also adheres to the Islamic doctrine known as Shariah and seeks to impose it worldwide — the Muslim Brotherhood. Both seek to accomplish this objective by stealth in what the Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad” and Imam Gulen’s movement describes as “jihad of the word.”

This practice enabled the Gulenists to help transform Turkey from a reliable, secular Muslim NATO ally to an Islamist state deeply hostile to the United States — one aligned with other Islamic supremacists, from Iran to the Muslim Brotherhood to Hamas to al Qaeda. Fethullah Gulen’s followers clearly don’t want us aware of the obvious dangers posed by their penetration of our educational system and influence over our kids.

The good news is that members of the Loudoun County school board have a code of conduct that reads in part: “I have a moral and civic obligation to the nation which can remain strong and free only so long as public schools in the United States of America are kept free and strong.” If the board members adhere to this duty, they will reject a seductive Loudoun Math and IT Academy proposal that is way too “good” to be true.

So what has happened since the launch of these schools around the country?

FBI raids Concept Schools in Illinois, 2 other states

The FBI and two other federal agencies conducted raids in Illinois and two other states at charter schools run by Des Plaines-based Concept Schools, FBI officials said Tuesday.

Search warrants were executed at 19 Concept schools in connection with an “ongoing white-collar crime matter,” said Vicki Anderson, a special agent in the Cleveland FBI office that’s leading the probe.

The U.S. Department of Education and the Federal Communications Commission also were involved in the June 4 raids, but officials said the warrants remain under seal, and they wouldn’t give any details about the investigation. 

The raids targeted Concept schools in Illinois — where Concept has three schools in Chicago and one in Peoria — as well as in Indiana and Ohio.

FBI RAIDS TURKISH GULEN CHARTER SCHOOL IN LA

Dec 14, 2013 by

fbi_raid“Finally FBI Raids Turkish Gulen Charter School in Louisiana”

by Donna Garner 12.13.13   

12.12.13 — To view the FBI raid of the Gulen charter school in East Baton Rouge, please go to the following link on WBRZ.com. The Gulen charter schools are tied to Fethullah Gulen who is an Islamist imam.  Kenilworth Science and Technology School is connected to the Pelican Foundation, Cosmos Foundation in Texas, Atlas Texas Construction and Trading (a Houston-based contractor), Harmony Charters in Texas, and to other Gulen/Turkish entities around the United States and Turkey:  http://www.wbrz.com/videos/fbi-raid-another-scandal-for-charter-school-company/   

===========  

12.11.13 — To read the full story about the FBI raid on the Gulen charter school, please read further: “FBI Raid Another Scandal for Gulen Charter School Company”

http://www.wbrz.com/news/fbi-raid-another-scandal-for-charter-school-company/   

EXCERPTS FROM THIS ARTICLE:

BATON ROUGE- Wednesday evening’s FBI raid on a charter school in East Baton Rouge is the latest item in a list of scandals involving the organization that holds the charter for the Kenilworth Science and Technology School.

Pelican Educational Foundation runs the school [and also Abramson] and has ties to a family from Turkey. The organization lost its school in New Orleans amid allegations of sexual misconduct among students that prompted a state investigation on campuses in the Crescent City and in Baton Rouge. It has also faced lawsuits and allegations from teachers about bad learning environments.

“It was an atmosphere where there was a double standard,” one former teacher told WBRZ News 2 in an investigation into the school in EBR. Former teachers were not happy with how things were handled when they spoke with a station reporter two years ago.

No one was ever charged in the sex allegations a school spokesperson pointed out Wednesday as federal investigators moved through the campus collecting items, putting them in boxes and then loading them into a van.

…The school receives about $5,000,000 in local, state, and federal tax money. In 2012, the Pelican group was accused of improperly handling money by the Legislative Auditor. A report found about $8600 was improperly used to buy gifts for students who scored high on LEAP tests.

…About the same time as allegations and lawsuits began dealing with Pelican charter schools, a BESE member took an improper trip on behalf of another Turkish organization. Linda Johnson, who is no longer on BESE, was fined for breaking the law by the ethics board. She got an all expenses paid trip to Turkey.

Kenilworth Science and Technology School will be open Thursday.

 

Failure: Secret Service from Treasury to DHS

Posted on by

Nothing says failure much like a club med attitude that is quite prevailing throughout government and when it comes to the Secret Service the symptoms are glaring.

There are lapses in security, in attendance, in pro-active measures, fraud and prostitutes. Fence jumpers are the most recent sign of lack of leadership and demands by those actually in the White House, when doors are unlocked, alarms are turned off and people and dogs are slow to respond, if at all.

After the Cartagena prostitute scandal, what took so long to find truth and begin to install real cures? Why did it take an outside investigation of the Secret Service to publish the problems?

‘USSS has two primary missions: (1) to safeguard the Nation’s financial infrastructure and payment systems and (2) to protect national leaders, visiting heads of state and government, designated sites, and high-profile events. USSS employs approximately 3,200 special agents, 1,300 uniformed officers, and more than 2,000 technical, professional, and administrative support personnel.’

The solutions? Ah yes, more dogs, more people, more training and a higher fence. No real mention of a culture problem and following existing policy and protocol. Now the question is how long will all these proposals take and at what cost to the taxpayer?

Panel Finds Deep Problems at Secret Service

Outside Experts Suggest Agency Seek Leader From Outside, Build Higher White House Fence

By Andrew Grossman, The Wall Street Journal

 WASHINGTON—The Secret Service needs more training, staff and a leader from outside its ranks to run an organization that has been stretched beyond its limits and become too insular, according to a panel of outside experts appointed to examine the agency.

Much of the report is classified and won’t be released publicly, but the executive summary suggests the panel found deep problems at the top of the Secret Service, which is tasked with protecting the president, his family and other dignitaries, as well as investigating financial crimes.

“The panel found an organization starved for leadership that rewards innovation and excellence and demands accountability,” the executive summary said.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson appointed the panel to review presidential security and the Secret Service after a man jumped the White House fence and ran into the mansion in September, leading to the resignation of then-director Julia Pierson.

The Wall Street Journal reviewed an executive summary of its report, which was delivered to Mr. Johnson this week.

 

The panel also recommended one simple step to make the White House more secure: Quickly raise the 7½-foot fence around the compound, which is far too easy to climb. An extra 4 or 5 feet, plus outward curves on top, would make a big difference, the panel wrote in an executive summary of its report.

Mr. Johnson called the recommendations “astute, thorough and fair” and said he’d make sure they’re implemented. Speaking on MSNBC earlier in the day, he said the president and his family are safe.

“Some of the panel’s recommendations are similar to others made in past agency reviews, many which were never implemented,” he said. “This time must be different.”

Among the changes it recommends is to break with a long tradition of having insiders run the Secret Service and appoint an outsider to lead the agency.

Sequestration of the IRS

Posted on by

Conservatives are angry that the more than $1 trillion CRomnibus legislation recently passed. There are many good reasons for that, however, there are some tactical methods underway as a result of the legislation most of all the Internal Revenue Service.

Since the IRS targeting program broke, certain measures have been taken most of which includes lawsuits to gain access to the no longer missing emails and communications of those colluding against conservative organizations.

Inside the CRomnibus was a deep cut to the IRS budget. Yippee, or not so fast. These conditions may delay income tax returns processing and the same applies to refunds.

The War On The IRS: Congress Cuts Its Funding To Lowest Level Since 1998

House GOP Appropriators bragged that this year’s IRS budget is the lowest since 2008. But it is actually worse than that. In inflation adjusted dollars, the agency’s funding is lower than it has been since 1998, when Buffy was still slaying vampires and people were listening to Aerosmith before it was nostalgic.

For context, in 1998, taxpayers filed about 125 million individual returns. Last year, the agency had to process 145 million.

Technology has made some of that work easier—more than 90 percent of individual returns are now filed electronically, vastly reducing the amount of work for IRS staffers. But technology has also forced the agency to respond to growing numbers of hackers and identity thieves.

And while processing returns may be easier, taxpayers must sort through increasingly complex rules—most as result of laws passed by the same Congress that cuts the IRS budget. The agency ought to be providing more assistance and education to help them but, thanks to those budget reductions, it is providing less.

According to the Government Accountability Office, IRS has cut staff by 9 percent since 2009. Examinations of business returns dropped from 50 percent to one-third. In 2014, callers waited twice as long for an IRS response than they did in 2009, and fewer said they received service. The IRS has cut training costs by more than 80 percent.  The agency estimates its audit rate for partnerships and other pass-through business–where fraud and error are rampant– was 0.5 percent in 2011.

Now the IRS faces the unenviable task of trying to track who has health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and calculate penalties for those who do not. Worse, it must sort out whether people received the right subsidies, and, if they did not, it must correct them.

Many tax administration experts have long feared the agency will be unable to get this right. And lower funding will make the task even more difficult. That, of course, is exactly what many anti-ACA lawmakers have in mind.

The IRS Commissioner is telegraphing a warning about the IRS. A possible shutdown is forecasted. Then a hiring freeze has been invoked.

“Our hiring — already limited at a ratio of one hire for every five people who leave — will be frozen with only a few mission-critical exceptions,” he wrote in an email to employees. “We will stop overtime except in critical situations.”

But there’s potentially more to come, as IRS leadership decides what else to cut over the next nine months of the fiscal 2015 budget, he warned. Koskinen also said IRS leadership is “consulting with the leadership of the NTEU” — referring to the National Treasury Employees Union, meaning the cuts in some way could affect employees.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/irs-budget-cuts-113651.html#ixzz3MHlLxtg0 

 

 

Congress Blind-Sided on Cuba Shift is False

Posted on by

First the White House said no to Cuba and the prisoner swap.  Alan Gross was a top asset sent to Cuba to investigate and impede the Cuba/Russian spy network designed to infiltrate United States Southern Command. There was some great success is the Cuban spies providing intelligence back to the island and then far beyond.

The White House going back to 2009 has announced a series of policy changes regarding Cuba. These objectives were in cadence with the State Department, the U.S. Treasury and the Commerce Secretary as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Several congressional committees were well aware of the epic shift of appeasement to the Communist country. Congress was hardly blind-sided including a prisoner swap as this has been a tactic of the White House.

It seems to grow the economy and to increase trade, the White House policy wonks think it is a prudent move to open diplomacy with a communist country after-all it works with China.

U.S. Policy
Congress has played an active role in shaping policy toward Cuba, including the enactment of legislation strengthening and at times easing various U.S. economic sanctions. While U.S. policy has consisted largely of isolating Cuba through economic sanctions, a second policy component has consisted of support measures for the Cuban people, including U.S. government-sponsored broadcasting (Radio and TV Martí) and support for human rights and democracy projects. The Obama Administration has continued this similar dual-track approach. While the Administration has lifted all restrictions on family travel and remittances, eased restrictions on other types of purposeful travel, and moved to reengage Cuba on several bilateral issues, it has also maintained most U.S. economic sanctions in place. On human rights, the Administration welcomed the release of many political prisoners in 2010 and 2011, but it has also criticized Cuba’s continued harsh repression of political dissidents through thousands of short-term detentions and targeted violence. The Administration has continued to call for the release of U.S. government subcontractor Alan Gross, detained in 2009 and sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2011, and maintains that Gross’s detention remains an impediment to more constructive relations.
Legislative Activity
Strong interest in Cuba is continuing in the 113th Congress with attention focused on economic and political developments, especially the human rights situation, and U.S. policy toward the island nation, including sanctions. The continued imprisonment of Alan Gross remains a key concern for many Members. In March 2013, Congress completed action on full-year FY2013 appropriations with the approval of H.R. 933 (P.L. 113-6), and in January 2014, it completed action on an FY2014 omnibus appropriations measure, H.R. 3547 (P.L. 113-76)—both of these measures continued funding for Cuba democracy and human rights projects and Cuba broadcasting (Radio and TV Martí). Both the House and Senate versions of the FY2014 Financial Services and General Government appropriations measure, H.R. 2786 and S. 1371, had provisions that would have tightened and eased travel restrictions respectively, but none of these provisions were included in the FY2014 omnibus appropriations measure (P.L. 113-76).
For FY2015, the Administration is requesting $20 million for Cuba democracy projects (the same being provided for FY2014) and $23.130 million for Cuba broadcasting.


Congressional Research Service
Cuba: U.S. Policy and Issues for the 113th Congress FY2014)

The House Appropriation Committee reported out H.R. 5013 (H.Rept. 113-499), the FY2015 State Department, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Act, on June 27, 2014, which would make available $20 million “to promote democracy and strengthen civil society in Cuba,” and provide not less than $28.266 million for Cuba broadcasting. The Senate Appropriations Committee reported out its version of the appropriations measure, S. 2499 (S.Rept. 113-195), on June 19, 2014, which would provide up to $10 million for Cuba democracy programs and an additional $5 million for programs to provide technical and other assistance to support the development of private businesses in Cuba; the Senate measure would also provide $23.130 million for Cuba broadcasting.
With regard to U.S. sanctions on Cuba, the House version of the FY2015 Financial Services and General Government Appropriation bill, H.R. 5016 (H.Rept. 113-508), approved July 16, 2014, has a provision that would prohibit the use of any funds in the Act “to approve, license, facilitate, authorize or otherwise allow” people-to-people travel.
Several other initiatives on Cuba have been introduced in the 113th Congress. Several would lift or ease U.S. economic sanctions on Cuba: H.R. 214 and H.R. 872 (overall embargo); H.R. 871 (travel); and H.R. 873 (travel and agricultural exports). H.R. 215 would allow Cubans to play organized professional baseball in the United States. H.R. 1917 would lift the embargo and extend nondiscriminatory trade treatment to the products of Cuba after Cuba releases Alan Gross from prison. Identical initiatives, H.R. 778/S. 647 would modify a 1998 trademark sanction; in contrast, H.R. 214, H.R. 872, H.R. 873, and H.R. 1917 each have a provision that would repeal the sanction. H.Res. 121 would honor the work of Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez. H.Res. 262 would call for the immediate extradition or rendering of all U.S. fugitives from justices in Cuba.

So this begs the question, who really benefits on the Cuban side, when the benefits to America are in the zero category?

From Fox Business: There is a price that the Cuban regime will exact from American companies to do business there if U.S.-Cuba relations are fully normalized, a price that likely won’t benefit the country’s lower classes, but will instead line the pockets of Castro & Co., experts on Cuba warn.

Because of its tight grip, the Castro regime has kept Cuba’s GDP hamstrung. It’s economy is now at a tiny $72.3 billion, less than half that of the state of Iowa, notes Richard J. Peterson, senior director at S&P Capital IQ. In fact, the average worker earns less than $25 a month.

Cuba is in crisis, it needs a bailout. Its crony communism has failed, it is steeped in debt, and its money is running low. Historically, Cuba has enjoyed lifelines in the form of money and oil from Venezuela, which had been generously supplying 100,000 free barrels of oil a day, estimates show, nearly two-thirds of Cuba’s consumption needs.

But Venezuela is on the brink of financial collapse as oil continues to plunge toward $60 a barrel, according to sources there, and it cannot supply Cuba the oil it needs. Plus Venezuela is now enduring three health epidemics: Malaria, dengue fever and chikungunya. Russia has also subsidized Cuba’s economy, but it, too, faces a severe economic contraction as oil nosedives.

Cuba needs tourism dollars, it needs trade and bank credits to save itself from bankruptcy. But it wants all that even while it keeps its failed government model in place. But it wants all that even while it keeps its failed government model in place. Cuba is run by a Soviet-style nomenklatura filled with party elites who call the shots behind the scenes, and who have gotten spectacularly wealthy in the process, all while abusing its people and business partners. Critics of the government, perceived enemies of the state, even those calling for basic human rights continue to be arbitrarily imprisoned without charge or due process, many beaten, even killed.

The Cuban power elite are the Castro brothers and their families, their party chieftains and army leaders. The Cuban economy has changed little since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Unchecked by a probing, independent media or Congress, the Cuban power elite enjoy rich salaries, vacations overseas, yachts, Internet access, beach compounds and satellite dishes to see U.S. movies, notes Cuban émigré and lawyer Nelson Carbonell, author of “And the Russians Stayed: The Sovietization of Cuba” (William Morrow & Co., 1989). The communists in Cuba routinely expropriate the assets of foreign investors, and have seized and control everything of value, including hotels, car distributors, banks, the sugar industry, resorts.

Just as Friedrich Engel, co-author of the Communist Manifesto, once said holds true of Cuba today, that “once in the saddle,” a new ruling class “has never failed to consolidate its rule at the expense of the working class and to transform social leadership into exploitation.”

If relations are fully normalized, American tourist dollars would pour into companies owned by the Castro regime, since tourism is controlled by both the military and General Raul Castro, warns the Cuba Transition Project (CTP).

That means rum, tobacco, hotels and resorts are all owned and operated by the regime and its security forces. Cuba’s dominant company is the Grupo Gaesa, founded by Raul Castro in the nineties and controlled and operated by the Cuban military, which oversees all investments. Cuba’s Gaviota, run by the Cuban military, operates Cuba’s tourism trade, its hotels, resorts, car rentals, nightclubs, retail stores and restaurants. Gaesa is run by Raul’s son-in-law, Colonel Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas.

The number of foreign companies doing business in Cuba have been cut by more than half since the 1990s, to 190 from some 400. Reasons include: Being forced to partner with army-controlled groups; hire workers through state agencies; and the freezing of bank deposits. Complaints have poured in from former senior executives at Dow Chemical, General Mills, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Colgate-Palmolive, Bacardi, American Express Bank, PepsiCo, Warner Communications, Martin Marietta Aluminum and Amex Nickel Corporation. Iberia, Spain’s national airline which at one time accounted for 10% of foreign commerce with Cuba, killed its Havana routes because they were unprofitable.

If U.S.-Cuba relations are normalized, fresh, new American dollars will only enrich the elite, “dollars will trickle down to the Cuban poor in only small quantities, while state and foreign enterprises will benefit most,” warns CTP, adding U.S. travelers to Cuba could still be “subject to harassment and imprisonment.” Over the decades, tourists visiting Cuba from Canada, Europe and Latin America and spending money there have only strengthened Cuba’s totalitarian state, it notes. There is a chance the free-flow of information from free trade could spark change long-term, but that could trigger an immediate, violent crackdown from the Cuban government, much like what occurred during the Arab spring.

Another significant factor: Corruption is rampant in Cuba, it has no independent, transparent, legal system, Cuba appoints its judges and licenses lawyers, and it repeatedly arrests peaceful pro-democracy activists.

Plus it is a debtor nation with a long history of defaulting on its loans. U.S. businesses risk having their operations confiscated by the government, and/or never seeing their loans repaid.

Cuba exports nickel, but that is largely controlled by Canadian interests, and its sugar industry is on the ropes. About 600 European suppliers have had over $1 billion arbitrarily frozen by the government since 2009, “and several investments have been confiscated,” CTP says.

In fact, Cuban law lets the government confiscate foreign assets for “public utility” or “social interest,” CTP says. Three CEOs of companies doing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of business in Cuba were arrested and stuck in jail without charges or due process: Cy Tokmakjian of the Tokmakjian Group, Sarkis Yacoubian of Tri-Star Caribbean, from Canada, and Amado Fakhre of Coral Capital of Great Britain.

All of this is why Cuba is ranked 176th out of 177 countries on the index of economic freedom put out by the Heritage Foundation, beating North Korea at dead last, but ranking worse than Iran and Zimbabwe.

Hillary’s Collusion and Favors via Ecuador

Posted on by

Paying to play goes from the Senate to the State Department. Video here.

MIAMI — The Obama administration overturned a ban preventing a wealthy, politically connected Ecuadorean woman from entering the United States after her family gave tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic campaigns, according to finance records and government officials.

The woman, Estefanía Isaías, had been barred from coming to the United States after being caught fraudulently obtaining visas for her maids. But the ban was lifted at the request of the State Department under former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton so that Ms. Isaías could work for an Obama fund-raiser with close ties to the administration.

It was one of several favorable decisions the Obama administration made in recent years involving the Isaías family, which the government of Ecuador accuses of buying protection from Washington and living comfortably in Miami off the profits of a looted bank in Ecuador.

The family, which has been investigated by federal law enforcement agencies on suspicion of money laundering and immigration fraud, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to American political campaigns in recent years. During that time, it has repeatedly received favorable treatment from the highest levels of the American government, including from New Jersey’s senior senator and the State Department.

The Obama administration has allowed the family’s patriarchs, Roberto and William Isaías, to remain in the United States, refusing to extradite them to Ecuador. The two brothers were sentenced in absentia in 2012 to eight years in prison, accused of running their bank into the ground and then presenting false balance sheets to profit from bailout funds. In a highly politicized case, Ecuador says the fraud cost the country $400 million.

The family’s affairs have rankled Ecuador and strained relations with the United States at a time when the two nations are also at odds over another international fugitive: Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, who has taken refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.

But while scrutiny has typically focused on whether the family’s generous campaign donations have helped its patriarchs avoid extradition, the unorthodox help given to Ms. Isaías, the daughter of Roberto, has received little attention.

In the spring of 2011, Ms. Isaías, a television executive, was in a difficult situation.

Her father and uncle were Ecuadorean fugitives living in Miami, but she was barred from entering the United States after she brought maids into the country under false visa pretenses and left them at her parents’ Miami home while she traveled.

“Alien smuggling” is what American consular officials in Ecuador called it.

American diplomats began enforcing the ban against Ms. Isaías, blocking her from coming to Miami for a job with a communications strategist who had raised up to $500,000 for President Obama.

What happened next illustrates the kind of access and influence available to people with vast amounts of money.

A Senator’s Assistance 

For more than a year, Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his staff engaged in a relentless effort to help Ms. Isaías, urging senior government officials, including Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, to waive the ban. The senator’s assistance came even though Ms. Isaías’s family, a major donor to him and other American politicians, does not live in his state.

The Obama administration then reversed its decision and gave Ms. Isaías the waiver she needed to come to the United States — just as tens of thousands of dollars in donations from the family poured into Mr. Obama’s campaign coffers.

An email from Mr. Menendez’s office sharing the good news was dated May 15, 2012, one day after, campaign finance records show, Ms. Isaías’s mother gave $40,000 to the Obama Victory Fund, which provided donations to the president and other Democrats.

“In my old profession as a prosecutor, timelines mean a lot,” said Ken Boehm, a former Pennsylvania prosecutor who is chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog. “When a donation happens and then something else happens, like the favor, as long as they are very, very close, that really paints a story.”

In 2012, the Isaías family donated about $100,000 to the Obama Victory Fund. Campaign finance records show that their most generous donations came just before a request to the administration.

Ms. Isaías’s mother, María Mercedes, had recently donated $30,000 to the Senate campaign committee that Mr. Menendez led when she turned to him for help in her daughter’s case. At least two members of Mr. Menendez’s staff worked with Ms. Isaías and her father, as well as lawyers and other congressional offices, to argue that she had been unfairly denied entry into the United States.

Over the course of the next year, as various members of the Isaías family donated to Mr. Menendez’s re-election campaign, the senator and his staff repeatedly made calls, sent emails and wrote letters about Ms. Isaías’s case to Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Mills, the consulate in Ecuador, and the departments of State and Homeland Security.

After months of resistance from State Department offices in Ecuador and Washington, the senator lobbied Ms. Mills himself, and the ban against Ms. Isaías was eventually overturned.

Mr. Menendez’s office acknowledged going to bat for Ms. Isaías, but insisted that the advocacy was not motivated by money.

“Our office handled this case no differently than we have thousands of other immigration-related requests over the years, and to suggest that somehow the senator’s longstanding and principled beliefs on immigration have been compromised is just plain absurd,” said Patricia Enright, the senator’s spokeswoman.

Ms. Enright said Mr. Menendez’s office worked on the case because Ms. Isaías had previously been allowed to travel to the United States six times despite the ban, and the decision to suddenly enforce it seemed arbitrary and wrong. She said the senator routinely acted on cases he got from across the nation.

In the Isaías case, the senator wrote seven letters for various members of the family, including four on April 2, 2012, alone.

Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, lobbied on behalf of Estefanía Isaías, though she is not a constituent. Mel Evans/Associated Press

A month after succeeding in Ms. Isaías’s case, Mr. Menendez sent another letter to the head of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to waive a ban on her sister, María — who had also been deemed an immigrant smuggler because she had brought maids into the United States and left them with her parents while she traveled abroad.

As that letter went out, their mother gave $20,000 more to the Obama Victory Fund.

Immigration officials forwarded the senator’s inquiries to Homeland Security Investigations, the immigration bureau’s investigative arm. Officials there noticed that the Isaías family had made several donations to the senator, and informed the F.B.I. in Miami.

Agents with Homeland Security Investigations are working to have the Isaías brothers deported. The Ecuadorean government has repeatedly requested that the men be extradited, but Washington has declined, saying that the extradition request was poorly prepared and did not meet legal standards. The criminal case in Ecuador was also marred by irregularities.

Support on Capitol Hill

The Isaías brothers consider themselves political exiles unfairly attacked by the Ecuadorean government and have garnered support on Capitol Hill, where sentiment against Ecuador’s leftist president runs strong.

But the case involving Estefanía could prove awkward for Mrs. Clinton, who was in charge of the State Department at the time high-ranking officials overruled the agency’s ban on Ms. Isaías for immigration fraud, and whose office made calls on the matter

Alfredo J. Balsera, the Obama fund-raiser whose firm, Balsera Communications, sponsored Ms. Isaías’s visa, was featured recently in USA Today as a prominent Latino fund-raiser backing Mrs. Clinton for president in 2016.

Mr. Balsera declined repeated requests to explain what work Ms. Isaías had done for his company, which has close ties to the Obama administration. To stay in the country under her three-year visa, Ms. Isaías would have to remain employed by Balsera Communications, request a change of immigration status or get another employer to sponsor her.

The company website does not list her as one of its 12 employees, though it has biographies and photos of even junior account executives, and news releases were issued when others were hired. Ms. Isaías’s name has not been mentioned on the company’s blog, Facebook page or Twitter timeline, and she is not present in any of the dozens of photographs posted on social media sites of company outings, parties, and professional and social events.

David A. Duckenfield, a partner at the company who is now on leave for a position as deputy assistant secretary of public affairs at the State Department, said Ms. Isaías worked for the firm but declined to comment further. Another senior executive at the firm said she must work outside the office because he had never heard of her.

Cheryl Mills, who was former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief of staff. Michael Buckner/Getty Images for J/P Haitian Relief Organization and Cinema for Peace

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton and her chief of staff, Ms. Mills, denied any special treatment for Ms. Isaías. Although Ms. Mills is unlikely to serve in any official capacity on a potential 2016 presidential campaign, she would undoubtedly be a strong behind-the-scenes presence and one of a small number of longtime advisers whom Mrs. Clinton would rely on for advice.

“There are rigorous processes in place for matters such as these, and they were followed,” said the spokesman, Nick Merrill. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, declined to comment, saying that visas are issued free from political interference by other federal agencies.

‘Not His Constituents’

Linda Jewell, the American ambassador in Quito, Ecuador, from 2005 to 2008, when Ms. Isaías’s immigration fraud was detected, said the intervention in Ms. Isaías’s case was far from routine.

“Such close and detailed involvement by a congressional office in an individual visa case would be quite unusual, especially for an applicant who is not a constituent of the member of Congress,” Ms. Jewell said after reviewing emails and documents related to the case. “This example of inquiry is substantially beyond the usual level of interest.”

Others have expressed concern. When Mr. Menendez’s office reached out to Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, to get him to write a letter on Ms. Isaías’s behalf, his office refused.

The office “discovered from the State Department that there were some red flags associated with the individual in question, and we took no further action,” said Mr. Nelson’s spokesman, Dan McLaughlin.

Mr. Boehm, the former Pennsylvania prosecutor, said Senate ethics rules allowed members of Congress to reach out to the administration on behalf of a constituent. “Members of Congress do a lot for their constituents,” Mr. Boehm said.

“These folks are not his constituents,” he added, referring to Mr. Menendez.

The Isaías family did not return several requests for comment. Ms. Isaías did not respond to emails and messages left at her home in Miami. Her lawyer, Roy J. Barquet, did not respond to phone and email messages.

In an interview this year, Roberto Isaías said the family’s donations were targeted to members of Congress who fight for human rights and freedom of speech in Latin America. He said he had met Mr. Menendez once or twice. “If you go to his website,” Mr. Isaías said, “it says, ‘If you have an immigration problem, call me.’ ”

The senator’s website does offer such casework assistance, under a category titled “Services for New Jerseyans.”