Clinton Cash (25 page)

12.  Berke, Richard L., “The Clinton Pardons: The Democrats; This Time, the Clintons Find Their Support Buckling from the Weight of New Woes,”
New York Times
, February 23, 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/23/us/clinton-pardons-democrats-this-time-clintons-find-their-support-buckling-weight.html.

13.  Reid, Tim, “Donors List Raises Fears over Hillary Clinton Role as Secretary of State,”
The Times
(London), December 19, 2008, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/americas/article1998893.ece.

14.  Mehta, Pratap Bhanu, “Charity at Home?”
Indian Express
, October 18, 2010, http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/charity-at-home-/699359/.

15.  Hitchens, Christopher, “Why Are So Many Oligarchs, Royal Families, and Special-interest Groups Giving Money to the Clinton Foundation?”
Slate
, January 12, 2009, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2009/01/more_than_a_good_feeling.html.

16.  Calabresi, Massimo, “A Blip in Hillary Clinton’s Senate Lovefest: Bill’s Donations,”
Time
, January 14, 2009, http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1871526,00.html.

17.  US Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations,
Nomination of Hillary R. Clinton to be Secretary of State
(2009), 8 (testimony of Richard Lugar).

18.  Ibid., 11.

19.  Ibid.

20.  Calabresi, “A Blip in Hillary Clinton’s Senate Lovefest.”

21.  US Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations,
Nomination of Hillary R. Clinton to be Secretary of State
(2009), 156 (testimony of Hillary Clinton).

22.  Ibid., 286.

23.  “Saudis, Indians among Clinton Foundation Donors,”
Economic Times,
India Times
, December 18, 2008, http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2008-12-18/news/27709369_1_annual-charitable-conference-income-and-speeches-william-j-clinton-foundation.

24.  Allen, Jonathan, and Amie Parnes,
HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton
(New York: Crown Publishing Group, Random House, 2014), 81.

25.  “The Clinton Foundation,”
Washington Post
, December 21, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/20/AR2008122001647.html.

26.  Ibid.

27.  Ghattas, Kim,
The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power
(New York: Picador, 2013), 40–41.

28.  Jack, Andrew, “Charm Offensive Five Years after Leaving Office, Bill Clinton Is Applying His Famous Drive and Charisma to Talk AIDS in Africa,”
Financial Times
, August 19, 2006.

29.  Wiener, Jon, “Hillary’s Big Ethics Problem: Bill,”
The Nation
, November 22, 2008, http://www.thenation.com/blog/hillarys-big-ethics-problem-bill.

30.  Leigh, David, “WikiLeaks Cables: US Keeps Uzbekistan President Onside to Protect Supply Line,”
The Guardian
, December 12, 2010, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/12/wikileaks-us-conflict-over-uzbekistan.

31.  US Department of State, Embassy in Tashkent, “Uzbekistan: Rumors of Succession Planning, Government Reshuffling,” WikiLeaks, July 31, 2009, http://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09TASHKENT1357_a.html.

32.  Stump, Scott, “Fashion Week Cancels Show from Dictator’s Daughter,” Today.com, September 9, 2011, http://www.today.com/id/44452554/ns/today-style/t/fashion-week-cancels-show-dictators-daughter/#.U_ZBSf3DdBM.

CHAPTER 2: THE TRANSFER

1.    Becker, Jo, and Don Van Natta Jr., “After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton,”
New York Times
, January 31, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

2.    “How to Make Money in Kazakhstan,” TheNewswire.ca, October 14, 2011, http://www.metalinvestmentnews.com/how-to-make-money-in-kazakhstan/.

3.    World Health Organization, “Summary Country Profile For HIV/AIDS Treatment Scale-Up,” December 2005, http://www.who.int/hiv/HIVCP_KAZ.pdf.
UNAIDS Sub-Saharan Africa Fact Sheet
, report, May 25, 2006, http://data.unaids.org/pub/GlobalReport/2006/200605-fs_subsaharanafrica_en.pdf.

4.    Nichol, Jim, “Kazakhstan: Recent Developments and U.S. Interests,” Congressional Research Service, June 20, 2008, http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/97-1058_20080620.pdf. Foust, Joshua, “The Gilded Age of Asia,”
Foreign Policy
, April 11, 2013, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/11/the_gilded_cage_of_asia. Watt, Nicholas, “Kazakhstan’s Autocratic President Tells David Cameron: I Would Vote for You,”
The Guardian
, July 1, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/01/kazakhstan-president-david-cameron-vote.

5.    Mayr, Walter, “Ex-Stepson Talks in Family Feud: Tapping Kazakstan’s Natural Resources,”
Spiegel
, May 19, 2009, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ex-stepson-talks-in-family-feud-the-long-arm-of-kazakhstan-s-president-a-625720-2.html.

6.    Love, James, “The Well-Connected Dictator,”
Huffington Post
, May 25, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/the-wellconnected-dictato_b_67423.html. Kilner, James, “Copper Tycoon Tops Kazakhstan’s Rich List,”
The Telegraph
, May 15, 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/kazakhstan/9268133/Copper-tycoon-tops-Kazakhstans-rich-list.html. Buckley, Neil, “ENRC Founders Made Good in Kazakhstan,”
Financial Times
, May 3, 2013, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/71a13774-b3e0-11e2-ace9-00144feabdc0.html#axzz351P7vNvu.

7.    Hoffman, Andy, “Renaissance Man,”
Globe and Mail
(Toronto), June 27, 2008, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/renaissance-man/article17988489/?page=all. Humphreys, Tommy, “Stop Taking Yourself so Seriously, Says Tycoon Frank Giustra,” Mining.com, June 28, 2013, http://www.mining.com/web/stop-taking-yourself-so-seriously-says-tycoon-frank-giustra/.

8.    Cernetig, Miro, “Frank Giustra: A Man of Many Hats,”
BC Business
, November 5, 2011, http://www.bcbusiness.ca/people/frank-giustra-a-man-of-many-hats. Smith, Elliot Blair, “Clinton Used Giustra’s Plane, Opened Doors for Deals (Correct),” Bloomberg.com, February 22, 2008, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aa2b8Mj3NEWQ.

9.    Canada’s
Globe and Mail
explained Giustra’s approach this way: “A mining promoter will buy a cheap ‘shell’ company already listed on the stock exchange, gather some friends to help fund the acquisition, and then, some time down the road, load it up with mining assets (remember the shuffle?) and do another share offering. These deals can be very lucrative, especially if you’re in the promoter’s ‘circle of trust.’” Hoffman, Andy, and Sinclair Stewart, “How to (Still) Get Rich in Mining,”
Globe and Mail
(Toronto), globeadvisor.com, May 19, 2007, https://secure.globeadvisor.com/newscentre/article.html?/servlet/GIS.Servlets.WireFeedRedirect?cf=sglobeadvisor/config_blank&vg=BigAdVariableGenerator&date=20070519&archive=gam&slug=RCOVER19.

10.  Hoffman, “Renaissance Man.”

11.  Remnick, David, “The Wanderer: Bill Clinton’s Quest to Save the World, Reclaim His Legacy—and Elect His Wife,”
The New Yorker
, September 18, 2006, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/09/18/the-wanderer-3.

12.  Becker and Van Natta, “After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton.”

13.  Jenkins, Iain, “Fun and Games with Penny Stocks,”
New York Times
, March 9, 1996, http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/09/your-money/09iht-penns.t.html. McNish, Jacquie,
The Big Score: Robert Friedland and the Voisey’s Bay Hustle
(Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1998), ix, 45.

14.  “Corporate Info,” Diamond Fields International Ltd., http://www.diamondfields.com/s/Management.asp (accessed 2014). Morais, Richard C., “Friends in High Places,”
Forbes
, August 10, 1998, http://www.forbes.com/global/1998/0810/0109038a.html.

15.  Morais, “Friends in High Places.”

16.  McNish,
The Big Score
, ix, 40.

17.  Morais, “Friends in High Places.”

18.  McNish,
The Big Score
, ix, 45.

19.  Becker and Van Natta, “After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton.”

20.  Hoffman, Andy, “Who Sold Key Asset to Uranium One?”
Globe and Mail
(Toronto), May 29, 2009, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/who-sold-key-asset-to-uranium-one/article4274871/.

21.  Becker and Van Natta, “After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton.”

22.  Clinton, William J., “President’s News Conference with President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan,” American Presidency Project, February 14, 1994, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=49652.

23.  Nichol, “Kazakhstan: Recent Developments and U.S. Interests.”

24.  US Department of State, “Visits to the U.S. by Foreign Heads of State and Government—1999,” http://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/15730.htm. “Kazakh President, Clinton to Meet,”
American Metal Market
, December 21, 1999. Kazakhstan Goldfields Corp., “Open Letter to President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan,” December 20, 1999, http://www.infomine.com/index/pr/Pa034388.PDF.

25.  Sidorov, Dmitry, “An Interview with Sergei Kurzin,”
Forbes
, April 20, 2009, http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/17/clinton-sergei-kurzin-opinions-contributors-sidorov.html.

26.  “A Russian’s Underground Route to the Stock Market,”
The Telegraph
(UK), February 15, 2004.

27.  Becker and Van Natta, “After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton.”

28.  Sidorov, “An Interview with Sergei Kurzin.”

29.  “Wall Street Journal Publishes Letter from Frank Giustra that Corrects Misinformation,”
Reuters
, May 01, 2008, http://webcache.googleusercontent.cohttp://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UsTisocqOKUJ:www.reuters.com/article/2008/05/01/idUS188740+01-May-2008+PRN20080501&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us.

30.  Clinton Foundation, “Statement on Frank Giustra from President Clinton,” January 15, 2009, http://www.clintonfoundation.org/main/news-and-media/statements/statement-on-frank-giustra-from-president-clinton.html.

31.  Clinton Foundation, “Statement on Frank Giustra from President Clinton.”

After “Borat-gate” broke, certain points of fact and interpretation were vigorously disputed by both Frank Giustra and the Clintons. Their objections can be summarized into two categories. First, the agreement struck by Giustra and his partners was with private parties in Kazakhstan and not with the government in general or Kazatomprom in particular. Second, as Giustra and his partners had been working on the transaction for over a year inside Kazakhstan, they did not need President Clinton to complete the deal.

The first objection is misleading in that it uses the answer to one question—did Giustra and his partners pay a private party for the right to mine uranium in Kazakhstan? While the answer is technically yes, this obscures two much more pertinent questions. First, did UrAsia enter into a commercial relationship with the Kazakh government through its state nuclear agency, Kazatomprom? And second, was the deal in its entirety contingent upon Kazakh government approval? The answer to those two questions is an unequivocal yes. What Giustra secured in 2005 were two joint ventures encompassing three uranium mining sites, each of which featured Kazatomprom as a commercial partner by UrAsia’s own corporate filings. For at least one of the sites, the Kazakh government transferred the rights a mere five days
after
Clinton’s trip. Giustra et al. paid $350 million for the rights to that site and one other (to the Betpak Dala LLP). Without that transfer of rights, Giustra would have had nothing to buy.

The objection is more straightforwardly wrong for three other reasons. First, accounts of the deal given either before or without reference to its controversy treat it as a deal with the Kazakh government—and Kazatomprom in particular—from start to finish. This is true not only of Giustra et al.’s early 2006 victory lap in Canada’s
Financial Post
, but also a mining trade publication’s interview with Sergey Kurzin, with whom Giustra had done business in Kazakhstan, off and on, since the mid-1990s. Kurzin recounts that the deal started with a meeting he arranged for himself, Giustra, and other figures crucial to the deal with Mukhtar Dzhakishev, head of Kazatomprom. Second, in late May 2009 Dzhakishev was arrested and brought up on criminal charges related to the UrAsia deal. By this time UrAsia’s successor company, Uranium One, had taken over the disputed holdings. Anxious to calm investors, Uranium One’s then president Jean Nortier stated in no uncertain terms that both UrAsia’s and Uranium One’s mining rights enjoyed explicit governmental approval: “UrAsia’s acquisition of these assets, as well as Uranium One’s subsequent acquisition of UrAsia, were completed in accordance with the requirements of Kazakh law, and both transactions were approved by the Kazakh authorities.” Third, UrAsia and Uranium One’s
own
corporate filings unequivocally demonstrate that any transfer of subsurface mineral rights in Kazakhstan
must
be approved by Kazkhstan’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Rights (MEMR). Incidentally, MEMR’s head in 2005, Vladimir Shkolnik, later became head of Kazatomprom after Dzhakishev was arrested. Not long after, his son-in-law, Vadim Jivov, ascended to the board of Uranium One (he eventually became its president) while Giustra’s good friend and Clinton Foundation donor Ian Telfer was chairman of the board. In any case, the key fact revealed by the evidence is not so much Kazatomprom’s commercial participation with UrAsia, but the Kazakhstan government’s complete authority over the company’s acquisition of mining rights and its subsequent operations within the country. There would have been no deal had Kazakh authorities failed to sign off on it.