As Oil Money Flowed, Clinton Turned Back on Rights Abuses in Colombia: Report [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

As Oil Money Flowed, Clinton Turned Back on Rights Abuses in Colombia: Report

Published on Thursday, April 09, 2015

by Common Dreams

'This much is clear: After millions of dollars were pledged by the oil company to the Clinton Foundation, Secretary Clinton abruptly changed her position on the controversial U.S.-Colombia trade pact.'

by Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

A new investigative look at the ties between big business interests in Colombia, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and her family's charitable foundation are raising troubling questions about the role that corporate trade deals and big oil may have played in softening the powerful Democrat's position on human rights in the South American country.

During her time heading the State Department, presumptive 2016 presidential nominee Clinton stayed silent on reports of violence and threats against labor activists in Colombia, even as her family's "global philanthropic empire" was developing—and benefiting from—private business ties with a major oil corporation accused of worker-intimidation in the country, according to new reporting published Thursday by International Business Times.

In addition, the IBT investigation shows that after millions of dollars were pledged by the oil company to the Clinton Foundation, Clinton reversed her position on a U.S.-Colombia trade pact she had previously opposed on the grounds that it was bad for labor rights.

As IBT journalists Matthew Cunningham-Cook, Andrew Perez, and David Sirota report:

At the same time that Clinton's State Department was lauding Colombia's human rights record, her family was forging a financial relationship with Pacific Rubiales, the sprawling Canadian petroleum company at the center of Colombia’s labor strife. The Clintons were also developing commercial ties with the oil giant's founder, Canadian financier Frank Giustra, who now occupies a seat on the board of the Clinton Foundation, the family’s global philanthropic empire.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/04/09/oil-money-flowed-clinton-turned-back-rights-abuses-colombia-report

Good reads:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016119784