Clinton Foundation: 'Vehicle to Transform
Once Broke Family Into
Mega-Multi-Millionaires' – Analyst
By
Ekaterina Blinova
November 27, 2019 "Information
Clearing House"
- The Clinton Foundation has
been in the news again after the entity's
tax records showed a new multi-million fall
in donations. Wall Street analyst Charles
Ortel explained the entity's financial
losses and why further scrutiny of the
charity may expose new violations and
conflicts of interests.
The
Clinton Foundation’s 2018 tax return
documents indicated a $16.8 million loss on
revenue of $30.7 million in 2018. All in all
the Clinton Foundation's donations have
plummeted by $49.6 million since Hillary
Clinton lost the 2016 election prompting the
"pay to play" debate.
Neither a 'Public
Charity' Nor Just a 'Charity'
Wall Street analyst and investigative
journalist Charles Ortel, who has been
looking into the Clinton Foundation's
alleged fraud for more than four years, says
that the answer to the question why the
charity's donations dropped 90 percent since
2014 is the loss of political power by the
Clintons.
"To me, it seems clear that the steep
drop off in government support for the
Clinton Foundation is Hillary Clinton’s
stunning loss during 2016, and then her
petulant refusal to accept that she lost
because she campaigned poorly and
arrogantly, turning off voters in key
states who were captivated by Donald
Trump’s message and promises to change
the status quo for the better," Ortel
notes.
However, the problem is bigger than just an
alleged conflict of interests: the Clinton
Foundation cannot be called a "public
charity" or just a "charity" to begin with
due to numerous violations
of the IRS regulations concerning tax-exempt
entities.
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Ortel takes a walk down the memory lane
recalling that "The William J. Clinton
Presidential Foundation” (the entity's
original name) was "granted federal
tax-exemption status on 29 January 1998
retroactive to 23 October 1997 to store the
records and other materials created or
received during Bill Clinton’s two
presidential terms, and to allow visitors to
study these Presidential Records (a defined
term under US law) in Little Rock,
Arkansas."
Since that time the organisation has
considerably expanded the scope of its
actions, including educational and
healthcare initiatives while one cannot find
any evidence IRS has "ever validly
authorised" the entity "for any purpose
outside of Little Rock, Arkansas" which is
required under US laws. According to Ortel,
some of organisation's initiatives, such as
the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI),
went beyond the scope of charitable
activities.
On
the other hand, a genuine "public charity"
must be actually independent from its
creators and cannot be dominated, at any
time, by a particular family which,
according to the public record, is obviously
not the case with the Clinton Foundation, he
notes.
"Instead, many pronouncements of numerous
Clinton family members in press releases and
other published media show that the
organisation served as a vehicle to
transform a once financially ruined family
(while Bill was President) into the
mega-multi-millionaires they have since
become," he suggests.
Neither Validly Organised Nor
Properly Audited
Furthermore, the entity was neither validly
organised nor properly audited, according to the
analyst.
"It
was incorporated on 23 October 1997, but
only adopted Bylaws on 23 December 1997,"
Ortel explains. "This means, that for a
crucial period in 1997, when Bill Clinton
was president, and when Bill and Hillary
'selected' the Little Rock site of the
Presidential Library (in early November
1997), there was no organisation because
Trustees had not come together and adopted
Bylaws or even obtained the crucial 'Federal
Employer Identification Number' that is
absolutely required in the United States to
operate a lawfully constituted nonprofit
corporation."
In any
other case such flaws would have caused the IRS
to shut down the charity at inception, but not
the Clinton Foundation, apparently because Bill
Clinton was the US president through 20 January
2001, the analyst presumes.
In
addition, for many years, these defects appear
to be overlooked by those tasked with auditing
the organisation, Ortel continues, referring to
CohnReznick LLP, that has recently carried out
the entity's audit.
"The
'audit' issued by Cohn Reznick is supposed
to come, under applicable laws, from a truly
'independent' accounting firm. Because Cohn
Reznick was intimately involved during 2015
in, supposedly, examining the historical
records of the Clinton Foundation and
because Cohn Reznick either 'missed' or
overlooked major defects in Clinton
Foundation historical filings concerning the
period 23 October 1997 forward, inside and
outside the United States, I do not believe
that firm is actually 'independent' and
objective", he stresses.
This
would allow one to challenge whether the Clinton
Foundation met the legal requirements under many
laws of procuring an “audit” from accountants
that do not have disqualifying conflicts of
interest, Ortel underscores.
'FBI, the IRS, and the
Justice Department Missed Fatal Flaws'
"Curiously, from February 2001 through a
specific date unknown in 2005, the FBI, the IRS,
and the Department of Justice, in theory,
performed a wide-ranging investigation of Bill
and Hillary Clinton
and the Clinton Foundation", Ortel points out,
adding that
then US Attorney for the Southern District of NY
James Comey,
then FBI Director Robert Mueller
and Rod Rosenstein who at that time served in
main Justice overseeing prosecutions of tax
frauds were in power then those inquiries took
place.
"Why
did the FBI, the IRS, and the Justice
Department miss these fatal flaws during a
four-year investigation from 2001 through
2005?" the Wall Street analyst asks
rhetorically.
To
illustrate his point, Ortel notes that when one
checks the forms filed by the Clinton Foundation
for 1998 through 2007, one will find that "they
falsely declared they received no government
grants at all during this ten year period".
However, that was not true – one can see this
looking at the revenue breakdown section of each
form, the investigative journalist notes.
Being
subjected to scrutiny during the 2015/2016
presidential race the Clinton Foundation and its
associated CHAI initiative voluntarily refiled
tax returns for six years with the IRS, amending
their reporting of donations from foreign
governments among other issues.
While
the entity claimed that they were not legally
required to refile the 990 forms and that the
errors were unsubstantial, new reports indicated
that between 2010 and 2013, when Hillary Clinton
served as a secretary of state, the foundation
got $20 million in funds from mostly foreign
governments. The 2015 exposure is just the tip
of the iceberg, according to Ortel.
"Why
did governments, say Saudi Arabia as one
known example, fail to complain?" the
analyst asks. "Perhaps these governments saw
the modest contributions they made as a form
of 'insurance policy' that they might hold
extra sway over US policies once a Clinton
returned to the White House?"
Ortel
believes that "many governments and large donors
are aware of the pitfalls that loom",
once the IRS and Department of Justice
re-consider controversies related to the Clinton
Foundation and associated entities and
initiatives.
This article was originally published by "Al
Jazeera
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