Clinton Cash (7 page)

Russia wanted the deal for commercial and strategic reasons. The Canadian investors wanted the deal because it stood to make them richer. But politics in the United States would prove critical. Because uranium is a strategic industry, the Russian purchase of a Canadian company holding massive US assets required US government approval. Playing a central role in whether approval was granted was none other than Hillary Clinton.

When the Uranium One deal was announced in June 2010, news of the bid “panicked some shareholders and alarmed industry observers worried that the Vancouver-based company might end up serving the Kremlin’s strategic interests,” as one Canadian newspaper put it.
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The Kremlin went into full public relations mode. It dispatched Russian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak to meet with mining executives in Colorado to soothe concerns about the deal. “Do you mind some investment? It is a normal commercial operation—not something that is operating on any political guidance,” he said in an interview. “It doesn’t matter whether it is uranium or steel or oil or gas,” Kislyak said. “What is important is that the positive ties between our two countries seem to be getting more and more expanded. Politically, that is very important.”
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Kislyak’s distinction between business and politics is highly misleading: the funds for the Uranium One acquisition came from Putin directly and were approved by the Russian Presidium. And of course Russia has a history of using natural gas and energy exports to neighboring countries as a political tool.
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Four senior congressmen—Peter King of the Homeland Security Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Foreign Affairs, Spencer Bachus of Financial Services, and Howard McKeon of Armed Services—voiced grave concerns about the deal. They were troubled by Rosatom’s “activities—and the context within which it
operates in Russia—[which] should raise very serious concerns for United States national security interests.” The fact that Rosatom had helped Iran in building the Bushehr nuclear power plant “should raise red flags. . . . Although Uranium One USA officials are reportedly skeptical that the transaction would result in the transfer of any mined uranium to Iran, we remain concerned that Iran could receive uranium supplies through direct or secondary proliferation,” they wrote. “We believe the take-over of essential US nuclear resources by a government-owned Russian agency . . . would not advance the national security interests of the United States.”
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Wyoming senator John Barrasso also wrote a letter to the Obama administration raising concerns about Russian control of uranium assets in his state, citing Russia’s “disturbing record of supporting nuclear programs in countries that are openly hostile to the United States, specifically Iran and Venezuela.”
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In short, a bipartisan group of congressmen felt that Russia could not be trusted to allocate US uranium in keeping with US nuclear interests. Then congressman Ed Markey pushed a bill in the House with Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, “expressing disfavor of the Congress regarding the proposed agreement for cooperation between the United States and the Russian Federation.”
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Markey said, “Russia continues to train Iranian nuclear physicists, supply sensitive nuclear technology to Iran. . . . Does Russia want cooperation with the United States, or with Iran and Syria? Because it can’t have both.”
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In light of the obvious national security concerns, Uranium One and Rosatom officials offered concessions. Uranium One, for example, did not have an export license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) allowing it to ship uranium outside of the United States. Supporters of the deal argued, therefore, that no one should fear that American uranium might end
up in, say, Iranian reactors.
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But in correspondence with the NRC, Uranium One executives did not rule out trying to obtain an export license in the future. They could only say that “Uranium One does not intend today (and does not envision in the foreseeable future) any export of U3O8 from the United States derived from the Uranium One U.S. Facilities.”
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Despite the glaring concerns, the Russian majority control purchase of Uranium One was approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). CFIUS is a small and somewhat secretive executive branch task force created in 1975 to evaluate any investment transactions that might have a direct effect on American national security. Besides the secretary of state, CFIUS includes cabinet officials such as the secretary of defense, the secretary of homeland security, and the treasury secretary. CFIUS wields enormous power to stop or limit investment deals. Ironically, Uranium One officials, after CFIUS approved the deal, did mention global markets as an important reason why the deal made sense. “Donna Wichers, Uranium One Senior Vice President, said her company is pushing for uranium mines in Wyoming with an eye toward growing markets both in the United States and abroad as countries plan for new nuclear power reactors. ‘We’ve got China—they’re looking at opening 500 nuclear power plants in the next 40 years; India—several hundred. . . . So you can see worldwide there is a huge demand for nuclear power.’”
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T
here were all sorts of warning signs about Russia’s push into the uranium market. For example, the US International Trade Commission was in the midst of a large investigation into allegations dating as far back as 1991 that Russia was dumping uranium on US markets to damage the American uranium
industry.
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In early 2010 Admiral Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, appeared before a congressional committee and warned about the perils of doing business with state-owned entities in Russia, stating that “criminally linked oligarchs will enhance the ability of state or state-allied actors to undermine competition in gas, oil, aluminum and precious metal markets.” He didn’t name specific Russian entities involved, but referred to the problem as “a growing nexus in Russian and Eurasian states among governments, organized crime, intelligence services and big business figures.” He indicated that the United States needed to address the Russian instances of “bribery, fraud, violence and corrupt alliances with state actors to gain the upper hand against legitimate businesses.”
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In the midst of this complex and controversial transaction, which would require US cabinet–level approval, a small Canadian investment company named Salida Capital became intimately involved with the Clinton Foundation.

According to Canadian tax records, Salida Capital received in 2010 an anonymous donation of $3.3 million into their charitable foundation (Salida Capital Foundation), which allowed the tiny firm to make the dramatic announcement that it would contribute millions to the Clinton Foundation.
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In 2010 it donated $780,220 to the Clinton Foundation. This amounted to about 90 percent of all Salida’s charitable giving that year. It was part of a multimillion-dollar commitment that would send more than $2.6 million to the Clintons between 2010 and 2012.
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Salida Capital also cosponsored a speech by Bill Clinton on May 21, 2010, in Calgary, Canada. While the speech was publicly listed by the Clintons as an event for “The Power Within,” a Canadian motivational-speaking organization, according to State Department documents filed by Bill Clinton’s office, sponsors for the event included Salida Capital.

Salida Capital invests in natural resource companies, including several in the Russian-dominated portions of Ukraine. In 2010, when Salida moved aggressively into the Ukrainian market, their chief business partner in the country happened to be the personal adviser to Energy Minister Yuri Boyko, who helped create the trading company Vladimir Putin used to control the Ukrainian natural gas trade. Boyko was described in a confidential State Department cable as being “very close to Russia” and as the “point of contact for the Kremlin” on energy dealings in the country.
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In 2011 a company named Salida Capital would be identified in a Rosatom annual report as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Russian state nuclear agency.
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Is it the same firm? There is compelling evidence that it is, but we cannot say for sure.
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I contacted Salida Capital in Toronto on three occasions and provided it with the opportunity to deny that it is connected to the Salida Capital listed as a subsidiary of Rosatom. It has refused comment.

The timing of events raises questions. If it were the same firm, an entity owned and controlled by Rosatom funneled millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation at the very time Hillary would have been involved in deciding whether to approve Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One.
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But the Clintons’ fortune didn’t end there. In June, shortly after the Rosatom deal was announced, Bill was in Moscow for a particularly well-compensated speech. He was paid $500,000 to deliver remarks at an event organized by a firm called Renaissance Capital (RenCap).
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Bill had not given a speech in Russia in over five years and then it had been for a British firm, Adam Smith International. His pay for that speech was only $195,000.
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RenCap, which is registered in Cyprus, is populated by former Russian intelligence officers with close ties to Putin. In
correspondence with the State Department seeking approval for the speech, Clinton’s office simply describes the firm as “an investment bank focusing on emerging markets.” According to
Businessweek
, when Putin became president of Russia in 2000, RenCap “hired several executives with connections to the Kremlin and Russian intelligence service, now known as the FSB [Russian Domestic Intelligence Service].” Yuri Kobaladze, executive director at the firm, served for thirty-two years as a KGB and SVR (the foreign intelligence arm of the Russian government) officer, retiring with the rank of general.
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Yuri Sagaidak, the deputy general director at RenCap, was a colonel in the KGB.
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Vladimir Dzhabarov served
simultaneously
as an officer in the FSB and first vice president at RenCap from 2006 to 2009.
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RenCap was also watching the Uranium One deal. Only three weeks before Clinton’s speech, on May 27, RenCap had been pushing Uranium One stock. “We believe the company is well positioned to provide impressive volume growth in the global sector and play the uranium spot price recovery,” RenCap wrote in a twenty-eight-page report on the company. It actively encouraged investors to buy the stock.
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Clinton’s hour-long, half-million-dollar speech on the theme of Russia “going global” was followed by a plenary session that included Renaissance Capital executives and senior Russian government officials.

During his Moscow visit, Bill also met with Putin himself.

Just days earlier the FBI had made a series of arrests, breaking up a Russian spy ring. Ten sleeper agents, using encrypted data transferred through digital images, invisible ink, and a sophisticated system for transferring information by switching bags at a train station in Queens, had been broken up. Among the spy ring’s targets: a leading fundraiser for Hillary who also happened
to be a Clinton friend. A Russian sleeper agent named “Cynthia Murphy” was instructed “to single out tidbits unknown publicly but revealed in private by sources close to State Department.”
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According to the FBI, intercepted communications showed that the chief assignment of the ring would be “to search and develop ties in policy-making circles in U.S.”
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When Bill sat down with Putin, it didn’t take long for the subject of Russian espionage to come up. “You have come to Moscow at the exact right time,” Putin told the former president, according to the
New York Times
. Waving a finger at him, Putin continued, “Your police have gotten carried away, putting people in jail.”
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In response, “Clinton appeared to chuckle.”
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Clinton and Putin had a close relationship. President Boris Yeltsin first appointed Putin prime minister in 1999, while Bill was still president, and they had remained in contact ever since. In January 2009, while at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Bill had gone to Putin’s private party at the Sheraton, where he was greeted by the Russian leader as “our good friend” before cheering him with vodka shots. The pair then headed off to a private room where they “talked deep into the night.”
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In September 2013, as the Ukrainian crisis built, Clinton offered what the Russian news agency RIA Novosti called “Rare U.S. Praise for Putin” on CNN. Clinton described the Russian leader as “very smart” and “brutally blunt.” When he was asked by CNN’s Piers Morgan if Putin ever reneged on a deal, Clinton responded: “He did not. He kept his word on all the deals we made.”
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Remember, for the Russian purchase of Uranium One to go through, it required approval by CFIUS, of which Hillary was a member. “We have provided all relevant information requested in the U.S., and elsewhere and we expect approval in due time,” said spokesman Dmitry Shulga.
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H
illary Clinton
had long had a reputation as a CFIUS hawk, opposing the sale of US strategic assets to foreign governments. She had also been a consistent critic of lax reviews by that body in the past. After a Bush administration CFIUS review approved the 2005 purchase of several ports in the United States by the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates, then senator Clinton was quick to denounce it. When the Senate Armed Services Committee held hearings on the matter in early 2006, Hillary promptly assumed the role of chief prosecutor. She not only argued that the CFIUS decision was wrong, she condemned administration officials for failing to consider the national security implications of the ports deal. She was particularly concerned because the deal involved not just a foreign company, but a foreign government. “For many of us,” she said, “there is a significant difference between a private company and a foreign government entity.”
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