SOURCE:
NATIONAL LEGAL AND POLICY CENTERURL:
http://nlpc.org/2016/11/05/happened-20-million-clinton-haiti-fund/by Peter Flaherty
BILL CLINTON AND MEXICAN BILLIONAIRE CARLOS SLIMIsabel Vincent reports today in the
New York Post that the Clinton Foundation set up a for-profit entity called the Haiti Development Fund that took in $20 million from “investors” Carlos Slim and Frank Giustra but that it is a mystery what happened to most of the money.
The Fund was supposed to provide capital to Haitian entrepreneurs in the wake of the 2010 earthquake, but the Post could only find evidence of one project that received funding.
The Fund was run by a Jean Marc Villain, who appears to be an American citizen or green card holder of Haitian descent. At the time he supposedly managed the Fund, he was in bankruptcy. He conveniently failed to report his $100,000 salary to the bankruptcy court. From the story:
“This cries out for an audit or an investigation,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center a Virginia-based watchdog group. “Its director was in bankruptcy and there’s almost nothing in the public record showing what happened to the millions of dollars it supposedly was going to use to help poor Haitians.”
Also from the story:
And the Clinton Foundation never disclosed the Fund as a “related entity” on its tax filings as required by IRS rules. It was only after the Clinton Foundation, under mounting scrutiny and media pressure, “voluntarily” decided to refile five years’ worth of tax returns in 2015 that the Fund appears on the forms.
The Post story is sure to reinforce widespread sentiment in Haiti that the Clintons raised a lot of money off Haiti’s misery but that very little help reached ordinary people. Hillary Clinton was in south Florida today campaigning in the Haitian community. From the Miami Herald:
“Haiti has been close to my heart for a very long time,” Clinton said. “And we really feel a sense of connection to Haiti and all of the challenges that Haiti has faced — the continuing terrible consequences of weather, the earthquake in 2010 — so I want to be a good partner with the people of Haiti.”
Carlos Slim is a Mexican oligarch who at one point was the richest man in the world. Frank Giustra, a five-foot Canadian billionaire nicknamed the “Poison Dwarf, ” is a major donor to the Clinton Foundation. He received approval for the sale of a uranium company to a Russian firm from the State Department while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.
The Haitian fund has similarities to another murky entity in Columbia established by the Clinton Foundation purportedly to assist entrepreneurs. Slim and Giustra were investors and questions have been raised about what actually happened to the money. In both cases, the Clinton Foundation failed to file the required disclosures.
