Clinton
Foundation Received Up To $81m From Clients
of Controversial HSBC Bank
Leaked files reveal identities of wealthy
donors with accounts in Geneva
Donors gave as much as $81m to Bill, Hillary
and Chelsea Clinton Foundation
Hillary Clinton expected to make inequality
a key issue of any 2016 campaign
By Paul Lewis in New York and James Ball
in London
February 10, 2015 "ICH"
- "The
Guardian"- The
charitable foundation run by
Hillary Clinton and her family has
received as much as $81m from wealthy
international donors who were clients of
HSBC’s controversial Swiss bank.
Leaked files from HSBC’s
Swiss banking division reveal the identities
of seven donors to the Bill, Hillary and
Chelsea Clinton Foundation with accounts in
Geneva.
They include Frank Giustra,
a Canadian mining magnate and one of the
foundation’s biggest financial backers, and
Richard Caring, the British retail magnate
who, the bank’s internal records show, used
his tax-free Geneva account to transfer $1m
into the New York-based foundation.
Hillary Clinton has
expressed concern over growing economic
inequality in the US and is expected to make
the issue a cornerstone of her widely
anticipated presidential campaign in 2016.
However, political observers are
increasingly asking whether the former
secretary of state’s focus on wealth
inequality sits uncomfortably with the close
relationships she and her husband have
nurtured with some of the world’s richest
individuals.
Giustra’s Swiss
HSBC account, created in 2002, contained
up to $10m in the 2006-2007 period. Lawyers
for the mining magnate said that he held the
account for investment purposes, and that it
was in compliance with Canadian laws that
required disclosure of foreign assets.
Caring was legitimately
permitted to keep his assets offshore by a
hereditary quirk of UK tax law, under which
he is registered as “non-domiciled”,
courtesy of his Italian-American father. The
HSBC records suggest Caring’s $1m donation
was paid in return for former president Bill
Clinton’s attendance at a lavish costume
charity ball organised by Caring in St
Petersburg, Russia.
Another Clinton foundation
donor who had a HSBC account in the tax
haven is Jeffrey Epstein, the hedge fund
manager and convicted sex offender who once
flew the former president on his private jet
for charity events in Africa.
The identities of Clinton
supporters who banked with HSBC in Geneva
are contained in internal bank data leaked
by a HSBC computer expert turned
whistleblower, Hervé Falciani.
The leaked files have now
been
obtained through an international
collaboration of news outlets, including
the Guardian, the French daily Le Monde,
CBS’s 60 Minutes and the Washington-based
International Consortium of Investigative
Journalists.
It is not unlawful for US
or other non-Swiss citizens to hold accounts
in Geneva and there is no evidence any of
the Clinton donors with Geneva accounts
evaded tax. However, Switzerland’s secretive
banking laws have for years made it a
destination for the super-rich.
$1m transfer
Under US charity law, the
non-profit, which was founded by the former
president in 2001 as the the William J
Clinton Foundation, is not required to
disclose the identity of its donors.
However, in late 2008,
amid concern over potential conflicts of
interest for Hillary Clinton, who was on
course to become President Barack Obama’s
secretary of state, the foundation
launched a public database of its donors
along with a rough estimate of the sums they
have given.
It reveals seven
foundation benefactors linked to HSBC bank
accounts in Geneva, who have donated, in
total, as much as $81m.
In a statement, the
nonprofit, which was renamed the Bill,
Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation in
2013, said its commitment to donor
transparency goes significantly beyond what
is required by US law.
“We are a philanthropy
through and through, and we take pride in
our programs, our efficiency, and our
transparency, and we rely on donors to help
fund our work, including support of
enterprise partnerships in South America
that are creating jobs; efforts to improve
access to early childhood education in the
US; and development programs for
small-holder farmers in Africa,” said Craig
Minassian, chief communications officer for
the Clinton Foundation.
“The Clinton Foundation
has strong donor integrity and transparency
practices that go well beyond what is
required of US charities, including the full
disclosure of all of our donors. The
contributions of these donors are helping
improve the lives of millions of people
across the world.”
Minassian did not comment
specifically on the foundation’s receipt of
$1m from Caring in in December 2005, a
donation made in return for Bill Clinton’s
attendance, the previous month, at the
lavish charity ball in Russia.
Caring arranged for 18th
century Russian costumes, borrowed from the
Hermitage Museum, to be tailor-fitted for
each guest at the event at Catherine the
Great’s Winter Palace. Photographs from the
event in November 2005 show
Bill Clinton, dressed as a Russian
general, partying with other VIP guests such
as Elizabeth Hurley. Entertainment was
provided by Tina Turner and Elton John.
Caring guaranteed funds
were raised for the British children’s
charity NSPCC and also, courtesy of his
personal transfer from the HSBC account in
Geneva, the Clinton foundation.
HSBC notes on Caring’s
accounts contain
an instruction to “transfer [$1m] to Bill
Clinton’s Foundation as a contribution
following his involvement in the Charity
Function [Caring] organised at the end of
November”.
Global elites
It is not against US law
or charity regulation to accept donations
from non-US citizens, or from overseas
accounts, but the Swiss ties of some
high-profile donors arguably contradict
stances taken by the Clintons and others on
the broad issue of taxation of the rich.
“One of the issues that I
have been preaching about around the world
is collecting taxes in an equitable manner,
especially from the elites in every
country,” Hillary Clinton told audience of
the Clinton Global Initiative in 2012, when
she was still secretary of state. “It is a
fact that around the world, the elites of
every country are making money. There are
rich people everywhere. And yet they do not
contribute to the growth of their own
countries. They don’t invest in public
schools, in public hospitals, in other kinds
of development internally.”
She added: “And so it
means – for leaders – telling powerful
people things they don’t want to hear.”
A spokesperson for Hillary
Clinton declined to comment about her family
foundation’s receipt of money from donors
with accounts in Geneva.
It is unclear whether the
foundation has ever questioned the offshore
status of supporters, although foundation
officials stress they thoroughly vet
contributors regardless of where the
donation originated from.
Giustra, the Canadian
billionaire who made his fortune funding
mining operations, is one of the
foundation’s most generous supporters.
The total sum donated by
Giustra is unknown but could be
significantly more than the minimum $50m the
foundation indicates comes from his
foundations, including the Vancouver-based
Radcliffe Foundation.
He is on the record as
having donated $31.1m to the foundation in
2007 and, later that year, pledged a $100m
commitment to tackling poverty in
conjunction with the Clinton foundation.
Giustra’s generosity has earned him unique
access to Bill Clinton, making him one of an
elite handful of philanthropists who have
accompanied the former president for
overseas charity events.
Another is Epstein, the
wealthy financier who was jailed for 13
months in 2008 for soliciting sex with
underage girls. The HSBC files show Epstein
connected to several Geneva accounts, one of
which was in his own name and contained
$3.5m.
He gave $25,000 to the
Clinton charity in July 2006, the year after
he was arrested following a complaint he
sexually abused a 14-year-old teenager in
Florida, according to tax disclosures from
Epstein’s New York-based nonprofit, the COUQ
Foundation.
Epstein, who reportedly
keeps much of his wealth in the US Virgin
Islands, where he owns a private island, did
not respond to multiple requests for comment
about his HSBC Geneva accounts.
Other HSBC Geneva clients
who donated $1m or more to the Clinton
foundation include ex-Formula One racing
driver Michael Schumacher, billionaire
businessman Eli Broad, and the French
hedge-fund manager Arpad Busson.
Schumacher has been a
resident in Switzerland for around 20 years.
A year before his recent ski accident, which
left him with serious head injuries,
Schumacher told a reporter that he and
other rich foreigners would leave
Switzerland if the country halted its tax
privileges.
Broad did not respond to
multiple requests for comment. Lawyers for
Busson said he had been a Swiss resident for
most of his life until 1996, and retains
business interest in the country.
Another client of HSBC
Geneva to donate to the Clinton foundation
is Denise Rich, the ex-wife of the late
billionaire and commodities trader Marc
Rich, who fled to
Switzerland in 1983 after being indicted
by US authorities for tax evasion, fraud and
racketeering. Mark Rich was was
controversially granted a presidential
pardon by Bill Clinton just hours before the
former president left office in 2001.
Denise Rich contributed as
much as $500,000 to the Clinton foundation.
Now 70, she is reported to have recently
renounced her US citizenship, becoming
tax-resident in Austria. She did not respond
to multiple requests for comment.
© 2015 Guardian News and
Media Limited