Striking Revelation: How Germany Financed Clinton Foundation

According to Sputnik Germany, the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) appeared on the list of sponsors of the Clinton Foundation on the official website of the latter and is assumed to have donated from one to five million US dollars to the American institution.

As the screenshot shows, there is a **symbol after the name of the organization which, as explained below, means that the donated amount also includes subsidies from the state.

Some Internet users from Germany have already expressed their criticism in this context.

"Oh no, does it belong to the federation?! Our government has just donated a million or two to the Clinton Foundation?!" a comment said.

The GIZ confirmed on its website that it has donated a total of 2.4 million euro to the Clinton Foundation from 2013 to 2016. The money was supposed to finance a project that was commissioned to the Foundation by Germany's Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In the framework of the project, the Clinton Foundation has been responsible for the implementation of a development initiative in Africa and was supposed to use the donations "to equip health centers (f.e. in Malawi) as well as educate health care workers," an official GIZ statement said. Around 500,000 people in Malawi were supposed to receive access to essential health, HIV / AIDS and nutrition services thanks to the program.

Although the initiative sounds quite well-intended, questions have arisen of whether the funds have really been used in an appropriate way. The Clinton Foundation has repeatedly come under sharp criticism due to its remarkable sponsors and enormous expenditures.

The Clinton Foundation is a charitable foundation established by former US President Bill Clinton after he left the White House in 2001. Among others things, it includes the Clinton Global Initiative, which devoted itself to the fight against AIDS, and the Clinton Public School, which is supposed to motivate more young people to work in public services.

According to various sources, only six percent of the Clinton Foundation's revenues have been spent on these goals. At the same time, it was reported that it had paid out enormous salaries and claimed dubious business travels. As reported by the website FactCheck.org in June 2015, the organization spent 30 million dollars (20 percent of the total revenues) on salaries alone.

On November 13, the foundation once again came into the media spotlight, when it became known that in the 2011-2013 Switzerland had donated to the institution over half a million US dollars. It is noteworthy that at that time the US exercised pressure on Swiss banks in the context of their efforts to combat tax evasion.

Other donations came from Ukraine that had been one of the main physical sponsors of the Foundation in 1999-2014 with overall donations amounting to 10 million dollar. In early November 2016, the foundation also confirmed reception of one million dollar from the Qatari government. At that time Hillary Clinton was US Secretary of State and should have informed the State Department about the donation, which she, however, didn't.