Clinton Foundation Received Up To $81m From Clients Of Controversial HSBC Bank - Guardian [View all]

[WillyT]

Clinton foundation received up to $81m from clients of controversial HSBC bank
Paul Lewis in New York and James Ball in London - Guardian
Tuesday 10 February 2015 06.00 EST


Bill Clinton, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton speak during a student conference for the Clinton Global Initiative University in March 2014. Photograph: Matt York/AP

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The charitable foundation run by Hillary Clinton and her family has received as much as $81m from wealthy international donors who were clients of HSBC’s controversial Swiss bank. Leaked files from HSBC’s Swiss banking division reveal the identities of seven donors to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation with accounts in Geneva.

They include Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining magnate and one of the foundation’s biggest financial backers, and Richard Caring, the British retail magnate who, the bank’s internal records show, used his tax-free Geneva account to transfer $1m into the New York-based foundation.

Hillary Clinton has expressed concern over growing economic inequality in the US and is expected to make the issue a cornerstone of her widely anticipated presidential campaign in 2016. However, political observers are increasingly asking whether the former secretary of state’s focus on wealth inequality sits uncomfortably with the close relationships she and her husband have nurtured with some of the world’s richest individuals.

Giustra’s Swiss HSBC account, created in 2002, contained up to $10m in the 2006-2007 period. Lawyers for the mining magnate said that he held the account for investment purposes, and that it was in compliance with Canadian laws that required disclosure of foreign assets.

Caring was legitimately permitted to keep his assets offshore by a hereditary quirk of UK tax law, under which he is registered as “non-domiciled”, courtesy of his Italian-American father. The HSBC records suggest Caring’s $1m donation was paid in return for former president Bill Clinton’s attendance at a lavish costume charity ball organised by Caring in St Petersburg, Russia.

Another Clinton foundation donor who had a HSBC account in the tax haven is Jeffrey Epstein, the hedge fund manager and convicted sex offender who once flew the former president on his private jet for charity events in Africa. The identities of Clinton supporters who banked with HSBC in Geneva are contained in internal bank data leaked by a HSBC computer expert turned whistleblower, Hervé Falciani.

The leaked files have now been obtained through an international collaboration of news outlets, including the Guardian, the French daily Le Monde, CBS’s 60 Minutes and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

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More: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/10/hillary-clinton-foundation-donors-hsbc-swiss-bank