Clinton Foundation’s Ukraine Project Latest Public Fleecing Effort by ‘Crooked Charity World’
© AP Photo / Nick Wass
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A former charity fraud investigator told Sputnik that the Clinton Foundation’s latest project to solicit donations that are ostensibly for rebuilding Ukraine was just the latest part of a massive effort to fleece well-meaning members of the public.
Last week, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), a project of the Clinton Foundation, launched a new Ukraine Action Network (UAN) it says will “provide continued humanitarian aid to Ukrainians.” The network is reportedly an extension of a effort that began last year by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenskaya to bring together other nonprofits funneling money into the Eastern European country.
The CGI was revived last year after a five-year hiatus brought about by dire financial straits following Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential election loss to Donald Trump, when donations dried up. Dozens of new projects were unveiled last year, including a $1 billion effort by water.org, a charity co-founded by actor Matt Damon, with the stated goal of helping 100 million people in Africa, Asia and Latin America get water and sanitation access.
The Clinton Foundation was formed as a nonprofit 501(c)3 in 2001 after former US President Bill Clinton left office, and has faced numerous allegations over the years of corruption, bribery, and other schemes, although no charges have ever been brought against them by federal legal probes.
Former investor and charity fraud expert Charles Ortel told Radio Sputnik’s The Backstory that the basis of the Clinton Foundation was itself fraudulent, although it is just one of many such “fake” do-good schemes in the “crooked charity world.”
“We need to understand that the Clinton Foundation itself, in my own view and the lawyers I talked to, doesn't technically exist as a truly tax-exempt public charity, which needs to be organized with articles of incorporation and bylaws, and it needs to be registered in every jurisdiction in which it solicits donations and or conducts business,” Ortel told Sputnik.
“It didn't bother to register in New York, for example, until 2009 - that is to say, the Clinton Global Initiative didn't until 2009. Yet they held meetings starting in 2005 and issued many press releases where Bill and others bragged about how much money was, in theory, raised. But there's been no formal accounting of that. The required audits, which are really on the books - there are strict requirements, particularly if you operate in New York, to produce a real audit, the kind that I'm accustomed to seeing. And I can tell you the audits that are out on the Clinton Foundation and its many satellites are fake audits. They're fake. They just do not qualify,” he explained.
18 September 2023, 15:24 GMT
“So no, I think the Clintons - they're inside New York City and New York State, and with the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] and the Biden Justice Department protecting them - that nobody's ever going to go, they think, down a serious track of holding the Clintons, the trustees of the Clinton Foundation, to the strict requirements that others have been held for.”
Ortel explained that the level of destruction in Ukraine caused by the 18-month-long conflict with Russia meant that any kind of effort to solicit private investment in the country would encounter serious problems.
“When it comes to trying to rebuild Ukraine, we may want to wait and see what's left of Ukraine,” he said. “I mean, this has been a disaster for the people of Ukraine, and I sincerely doubt that any sane investor looking to make a return on his or her money will put private capital into the country.”
He said that the CGI has gotten away with so much of this because celebrities, journalists, and politicians alike had suffered from a “mass delusion” in endorsing the Initiative, including everyone from former Democratic US President Barack Obama to former Republican US First Lady Laura Bush to Australian conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
“Heads of state, former heads of state, multinational CEOs - have all either attended the meeting, even given money to support the meeting, and nobody seems to have done the essential diligence to say, ‘now, wait a minute, this charity, the Clinton Global Initiative, was not organized properly. Its control was, in theory, controlled by a parent company that's not organized properly, and there's no actual statement of the true revenues, the true expenses, the balance sheets, the cash flow of this Clinton Global Initiative, let alone there's you know, there's press releases that have come out of there,’” Ortel noted.
“In 2006, Bill Clinton recognized an Italian kid named Rafael Follieri, and said ‘this is an example of why I'm hopeful about the future.’ Here's a guy who is barely 30 years old, he set up his own foundation, they honored him for his philanthropic good works - and at the end of the meeting, he was arrested. He was running a Ponzi scheme. And there are many other examples like that,” Ortel explained.
Turning to the CGI’s new project in Ukraine, the Ukraine Action Network, the former fraud investigator said that it should land the Clintons in jail for breaking numerous laws.
“If you were to do something like this in the private sector - which is what I was trained in - if you were to make an offering where you failed to explain that the Clinton family illegally is in control of a public charity. There's a difference between a private foundation and a public charity. Private foundations like the Gates Foundation can be controlled by a family, but a public charity stands in the shoes of the government and must be controlled by a representative body, whether it's board of directors or board of trustees. The Clintons, sneakily, beginning in 2013, tried to amend the bylaws to vest control in this operation into Bill, Hillary and Chelsea, personally, for their lives. It's strictly forbidden. And they then tried to hide that by not reporting the paperwork properly in New York and other places. I found it.,” he said.
“This is a fake charity, faker than this story that Hillary is still selling that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin is going to - again, she claims - interfere in the 2024 election. Every aspect of this woman is a fake. And people who have this kind of a track record should not and are not allowed to solicit funds over state lines using the Internet the way these people are doing this. This is strictly forbidden. She should be in jail,” he said.
26 September 2023, 06:29 GMT
When asked what he thought the CGI would actually do with the money donated to them for rebuilding Ukraine, Ortel replied: “stealing it.”
“I think the way it's likely going to work is they will say, ‘all right, we will let you virtue signal, Mr. Controversial figure, we will let you say you gave us $10 million. All you have to do is give us $1,000,000. You can then deduct the $10 million and get money back on your tax returns, even though all you parted with was a million. We'll give you a slip of paper that says you gave us $10 million and you won't ask too much about what happened to your million.’ That's the kind of deal I think - you know, I don't know for a fact that that would happen, but that's the kind of deal that I believe does go on in the crooked charity world,” Ortel explained.
“There are so many vulnerable people around the world and there are so many good people in many countries who see tragedy and reach into their pockets and send the money to operations they think are legitimate. Typically, these involve celebrities and politicians. The correct thing to do when you see a charity with celebrities and politicians is to run away from it, because these people are not of a mind to check things carefully. There's a lot of damage - and it's not just with politicians, the Red Cross has had problems, the American Cancer Society, all these sweet sounding great ideas are havens for people who will go in - because they know the donors aren't doing their due diligence and they know the politicians, the celebrities, won't check things the way they should, and know the accounting firm firms are likely not going to travel to Ukraine and make sure that money that they say went to Ukraine ended up in some rural backwater on the border with Russia somewhere. I mean, nobody's going to check that, and the fraudsters understand that.”
