Clinton Cash (18 page)

When Hillary Clinton became secretary of state in January 2009, Ethiopian officials interacted confidently with US diplomats. Despite public statements coming from Washington about promoting human rights in Ethiopia and Africa, Ethiopian officials remained unfazed. In February 2010 Hillary’s undersecretary of state, Maria Otero, met with the dictator and raised questions about the plight and arrest of an opposition figure named Birtukan Midekssa. Zenawi told her that Midekssa will
“vegetate in jail, forever,” according to leaked State Department cables obtained through WikiLeaks. As far as opposition groups were concerned, he said, “we will crush them with our full force.”
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It was a shocking display of disrespect, given that the United States was sending his government half a billion dollars a year. As
Foreign Affairs
put it, “Washington has expressed its concern about these issues to the Ethiopian government, and the Ethiopian government has reacted not only negatively but also insultingly—despite receiving $533 million in U.S. assistance in fiscal year 2010.”
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Zenawi aggressively went after not only domestic political opponents but also American organizations, like the US Chamber of Commerce and Jimmy Carter’s Carter Center, that were working in the country. According to another WikiLeaks State Department cable, diplomats raised concerns with Zenawi about his new policy requiring organizations like the US Chamber of Commerce and the Carter Center to seek government approval to use US money sent from the United States in Ethiopia. Zenawi said as far as the Carter Center was concerned, “Maybe we are better off if they do not come.” He was equally dismissive when diplomats raised questions about how the government restricted access to Western food aid in certain regions for political reasons.
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In 2012 Ethiopia was among the top sub-Saharan African recipients of US aid, with $707 million in planned aid. As secretary of state, Hillary was required to evaluate whether countries receiving American aid were transparent in how the money was spent. “The Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriation Act prohibits U.S. assistance to the central government of any country that does not meet minimum standards of fiscal transparency.” Unless, that is, Hillary decided to grant the country a waiver.
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State Department officials determined that Ethiopia failed to meet the transparency requirement. According to leaked cables from the embassy,

Ethiopia does not, however, have specific laws or regulations governing the public disclosure of revenues and expenditures in national budgets. There are no independent auditors of government budget data, so information is taken at face value. International economists generally focus their criticism on the number of extra-budgetary items that are omitted from the national budget. Notably, the national budget does not include over 100 state-owned enterprises or the over 70 “endowment” companies owned by the ruling political party.

The list of offenses continued and concluded by noting, “In the past year, there have not been any events that affected Ethiopia’s budget transparency and the Government of Ethiopia has not made any steps towards improving its fiscal transparency.” When US diplomats asked the Ethiopian minister of finance about the national budget, he “maintained that he does not have access” to complete books either. Diplomats raised the “message to GOE [Government of Ethiopia] officials regarding Ethiopia’s need to comply with USG [US government] fiscal transparency guidelines; however, this message has fallen on deaf ears and only seems to aggravate relations.”
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Despite the lack of compliance and the apparent lack of interest in moving toward transparency, Hillary granted the government of Ethiopia a waiver, which allowed it to avoid transparency requirements.
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Someone who has directly benefited from US assistance to Ethiopia is Sheikh Amoudi. Amoudi owned Ethiopia’s Dashen Bank, which he used to finance his other companies and projects.
According to Dashen’s annual reports, the bank reaps financial reward through the USAID’s Development Credit Authority, which is funded by US taxpayers and provides Ethiopian loan guarantees.
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The USAID also brokered a long-term contract in November 2009 specifically for Almeda Textiles (which is owned by Amoudi) to import textiles into the United States.
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W
hen Hillary was appointed secretary of state, she brought in a group of advisers to shape American policy toward Africa. But two individuals largely responsible for forming it didn’t have a direct portfolio at State. Husband Bill was considered to be Hillary’s closest Africa adviser. He had good contacts with several African presidents and traveled there regularly.
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The other key unofficial adviser was former ambassador Joe Wilson, regarded as Hillary’s “grey eminence for Africa.”
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Wilson had served as ambassador to several countries in Africa. In 1997 he was appointed special assistant to President Clinton and senior director for African affairs in the White House. Wilson had the responsibility to “plan and execute” then president Bill Clinton’s first trip to Africa, which supposedly raised his consciousness concerning the continent.
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Wilson is perhaps most famous for the role he played in a controversy involving his wife, Valerie Plame, a former CIA agent who had been outed by officials in the Bush administration. Wilson charged that this was an intentional act of retaliation against him for debunking the administration’s claims about Saddam Hussein’s seeking yellowcake uranium in Africa. It later turned out that the leak of Plame’s identity came from the State Department, not the White House. Nevertheless, husband and wife made something of a career out of the episode: Plame published a book about her experience, which in turn
became a movie starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. Wilson’s claims about the yellowcake uranium were later debunked by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
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Wilson was close to the Clintons. “He was very active with the Hillary Clinton [presidential] campaign,” his wife noted. Wilson penned articles declaring that in contrast with then senator Obama, Hillary had real-world diplomatic experience. On the campaign trail in Portland, Oregon, in April 2008, he said that Hillary was “easily the better candidate.” Joe Wilson also traveled with Bill Clinton to Africa as part of a Clinton Foundation delegation.
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Once Hillary was nominated for secretary of state, many believed she wanted to appoint Wilson to a senior State Department post for African affairs. But the reality of facing a difficult Senate confirmation deterred her. Many Republicans strongly disliked him. Still, Wilson was a strong presence at the State Department despite his lack of an official post. “Wilson’s presence in the wings is still strongly felt and the future incumbent in this post will constantly have him under their feet,” noted one African business publication.
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In January 2007 Wilson became vice chairman of a New York–based investment firm called Jarch Capital.
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A holding company focused on natural resources like oil, uranium, and gold, it specialized in cutting deals in countries where it expected “sovereignty changes.” That’s a nice way of saying countries that are at war.
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“Ambassador Wilson will be instrumental in the growth of Jarch as it expands in Africa, sometimes in politically sensitive areas,” noted the company in a press release. In other words, like Adolph Lundin did in Congo, Jarch would be striking deals with warlords fighting local governments, hoping to cash in when power changed hands. (As Jarch founder Philippe Heilberg, a
former Wall Street banker, explained his strategy of cutting deals with warlords, “You have to go to the guns, this is Africa.”)
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The venture was clearly off the grid as far as the Bush State Department was concerned. As
Harper’s
quoted a knowledgeable observer in 2007, “The State Department isn’t supportive of Jarch’s involvement because it knows that once Americans go after oil in the south any hope of a national unity government collapses.”
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But Jarch Capital pressed on anyway. Wilson was of particular help because he had dealt with Sudanese warlords while he had served in the Clinton administration. He knew the region, and was a master negotiator. These skills proved extremely valuable to Jarch.

Jarch was close to several warlords operating in the Sudan. In 2009, shortly after Hillary was appointed secretary of state, Jarch took out a fifty-year lease on 400,000 hectares (or one million acres—about the size of Vermont) in Unity State, South Sudan.
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In addition to the rights to farm the land, it procured oil and uranium rights as well. As the
Financial Times
put it, the deal had “a decidedly 19th century flavor to it.”
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Sudan was in the middle of a civil war and the United States had placed restrictions on US companies wanting to do business in the country. So Jarch set up a subsidiary, Jarch Management, which was registered outside of the United States, “making it easier to circumvent such restrictions.”
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Jarch acquired the land by striking a bargain with Gabriel Matip, the eldest son of General Paulino Matip Nhial, who was deputy commander in chief of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and former head of the South Sudan Defense Force (SSDF). The general was also put on the Jarch advisory board. SSDF bragged, “This company is set to become the largest producer of oil and gas in South Sudan.”
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Wilson’s firm continued signing up warlords and enriching their family members in exchange for lucrative leases on rebel-held territory. In 2010 it signed up Sudanese General Gabriel Tanginya as an “adviser” and leased a huge area of his native Jonglei state in what was called “Africa’s largest land deal.”
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Tanginya, who has been accused of instigating violence against civilians in southern Sudan, was apparently a very welcome addition to the firm. Jarch declared that General Tanginya “will give the Company much needed expertise in Jonglei and expand its expertise in Greater Upper Nile.”
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By the time there were national elections in 2011, the newly minted vice president of South Sudan was Riek Machar, who was also an adviser to Jarch. Machar had been a rebel leader and later apologized for his role in the Bor Massacre, in which thousands of people had been killed.
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As South Sudan struggles with factional fighting following its independence in 2011, Jarch Capital–linked warlords are in the thick of the fight. General Peter Gadet, a former member of the Jarch Capital advisory board, is the target of international sanctions. According to the BBC, the international sanctions are in response to “reports of atrocities committed in the first half of 2014.”
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T
he cluster of donors and advisers to the Clintons who rely on warlords and corrupt dictators is not confined to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, or Sudan. It extends further south on the continent and includes a longtime Clinton benefactor with close ties to the corrupt regime in Nigeria.

Nigeria is widely recognized as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. It has also been one of the most lucrative countries for the Clintons. Over the course of more than fifteen years, they have collected large speaking fees, campaign-related
funds, and large contributions for the Clinton Foundation from those who have made fortunes by working in the corrupt world of Nigerian politics.

In his first eight years on the global lecture circuit, Bill had never been paid to speak in Nigeria. But once Hillary was appointed secretary of state, he booked two of his top three highest-paid speeches ever by traveling to Nigeria, pulling in a whopping $700,000 each.
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The two speeches were allegedly underwritten by Nigerian media mogul Nduka Obaigbena, who owns Nigeria’s
ThisDay
newspaper. Obaigbena, a solidly built man “with a taste for bespoke Lanvin suits,” professes “to live modestly and discreetly,” all the while maintaining a home in Lagos, a large estate in Nigeria’s Delta State, and a sleek penthouse at the Ritz Carlton in Washington, DC.
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Obaigbena casts himself as a rebel fighting Nigeria’s corrupt political establishment. But he’s known more for his lavish parties and concerts, which have brought Beyoncé and Jay-Z, as well as Bill Clinton, to Nigeria at enormous expense. Often these lavish events come at a price for ordinary Nigerians. When Clinton appeared at a
ThisDay
award event in 2013, he handed out checks to schoolteachers as a reward for their work. But while Clinton collected his fee, the teachers saw their checks from
ThisDay
bounce.
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Obaigbena is close to the Nigerian government of President Goodluck Jonathan, to whom he serves as an unofficial adviser. Jonathan has been accused of corruption by numerous international organizations. (As the Associated Press puts it, Obaigbena has “close ties to major business leaders and those in the ruling People’s Democratic Party.”) Hillary’s State Department said that Jonathan’s tenure is marked by “massive, widespread, and pervasive corruption” at all levels of the Nigerian
government.
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And yet, as with Ethiopia, Hillary granted the country a waiver for corruption so it could continue to receive US assistance. Back in 2006, when Jonathan was the governor of Bayelsa State, he authorized the transfer of $1 million from the government’s poverty alleviation fund to Obaigbena’s organization so he could bring Beyoncé to Nigeria.
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