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Biggest Donor to Clinton Foundation, Violated Iran Sanctions, Got State Dept Meetings Under Hillary
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On April 18, 2015 @ 11:01 pm In The Point | No Comments
With the Clintons, this sort of thing is [1] as predictable as the rain in Seattle.
Enemies of Hillary Clinton waiting to discredit her bid for the White House are likely to seize on news that one of the biggest benefactors to the Clinton Foundation has been trading with Iran and may be in breach of US sanctions imposed on the country.
Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, 54, has courted the Clintons for at least nine years – in the United States, the Alps and Ukraine.
Earlier this year, he was confirmed as the largest individual contributor to the Clinton Foundation, whose aims include the creation of “economic opportunity and growth”. He also has links to the Tony Blair Foundation and represented its biggest single donor in 2013.
Which tells you that he isn’t a philanthropist, he’s calculatedly building ties through non-profit foundations with former world leaders.
Pinchuk became particularly friendly with Bill Clinton. In 2010, he invited the former president to his 50th birthday party in the French ski resort of Courchevel. In return, Pinchuk attended Clinton’s 65th in 2011, and was a guest at the inauguration of Clinton’s Presidential Library. The Clintons spoke at Pinchuk’s Yalta European Strategy conference, which seeks integration between Ukraine and Europe.
Additionally Pinchuk is very much involved in politics. And his Clinton donations brought him into the house [2].
A steel magnate and major contributor to the former president’s foundation, Mr. Pinchuk was in frequent contact with Mrs. Clinton’s State Department, at meetings arranged by a Clinton political operative turned lobbyist, Douglas E. Schoen.
Does this impact Americans? Yes it does.
And now Mr. Pinchuk is at the center of a trade dispute that places him at odds with steelworkers in Pennsylvania and Ohio, precisely the kind of union workers Mrs. Clinton would need to appeal to in a presidential campaign.
Mr. Pinchuk’s relationship to the Clintons became the subject of scrutiny last summer when American steel makers filed a case alleging that Ukraine — and by extension Mr. Pinchuk’s company, Interpipe Ltd. — and eight other countries had illegally dumped a type of steel tube used in natural gas extraction, an industry whose growth has provided one of the few bright spots in the United States manufacturing sector.
Interpipe is the same company accused of violating Iran sanctions. Back to the Clinton factor…
Since 2006, Mr. Pinchuk has donated roughly $13.1 million to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. Mr. Clinton attends Mr. Pinchuk’s annual conferences in the resort city of Yalta, Ukraine, and Mr. Pinchuk attended the former president’s 65th birthday party in Los Angeles.
He was first introduced to Mr. Clinton in 2004 by Mr. Schoen, a New York-based pollster who has advised both Clintons. Mr. Pinchuk immediately began building a friendship with the former president and enthusiastically donating to Mr. Clinton’s causes, including an H.I.V. program that was later expanded into Ukraine.
Mr. Schoen had been on a $40,000-per-month retainer as an adviser to Mr. Pinchuk since 2000. In 2011, Mr. Schoen, who had never previously done any lobbying, registered as a lobbyist for him to set up meetings with Washington officials to discuss the political crisis in Ukraine.
The meetings Mr. Schoen scheduled were almost exclusively with senior officials at Mrs. Clinton’s State Department.
Mr. Schoen arranged roughly a dozen meetings with State Department officials from September 2011 to November 2012 on behalf of or with Mr. Pinchuk. At times those meetings overlapped with Mr. Pinchuk’s other involvements with the Clintons. For instance, in 2012, Mr. Pinchuk took a break from the Clinton Global Initiative to meet upstairs in a hotel suite with Melanne Verveer, a close aide to Mrs. Clinton and ambassador at large for global women’s issues at the State Department.
Pinchuk also, predictably, has links to George Soros.
Article printed from FrontPage Magazine:
http://www.frontpagemag.comURL to article:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/biggest-donor-to-clinton-foundation-violated-iran-sanctions-got-state-dept-meetings-under-hillary/URLs in this post:
[1] this sort of thing is:
http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-runs-white-house-and-row-over-ukrainian-benefactors-trade-322253.html[2] brought him into the house:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/us/politics/trade-dispute-centers-on-ukrainian-executive-with-ties-to-clintons.html
