Epstein, Clintons & Cash: Why Zelenska Foundation is Vehicle to Divert Aid to Corrupt Ends
17:33 GMT 06.01.2024 (Updated: 19:18 GMT 06.01.2024)
© AP Photo / Julia Nikhinson
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The release of the Epstein documents has once again cast shadow over the Clintons and their philanthropic activities — and raised questions about their joint project with Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenskaya in September 2023.
Unsealed court filings over accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein named over a hundred of rich and powerful people connected to the billionaire pedophile — including former US President Bill Clinton and his aide Doug Band.
Ironically, back in 2003, Doug Band helped kick off now-famous Clinton Foundation international initiatives with the aim of rehabilitating Bill's post-presidential image, marred by sex scandals, and turning the ex-president into "the world’s philanthropist in chief," writes Vanity Fair.
The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), one of the foundation's international projects, was supposedly started in league with Jeffrey Epstein — who died in Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial — late in 2004-early in 2005, according to Charles Ortel, a Wall Street analyst who has been investigating the Clinton Foundation's alleged fraud for several years.
Ortel said the Clinton Foundation and its numerous offshoots were nothing but a vehicle to transform the once-broke presidential family into mega-multi-millionaires and help their associates to get rich too. The Wall Street analyst is highly skeptical about the Clintons' new joint endeavor with the Zelenskys, who have also been mired in corruption allegations.
"By the time Hillary Clinton commenced work with Ukraine's First Lady, the Clinton family had more than twenty years of experience breaking key charity laws, especially in New York City and State which, to date, have targeted Donald Trump and his family for charity frauds, but allowed Clinton charity frauds to expand in scope, scale, and international breadth," Ortel told Sputnik.
"In fact, 'Clinton Global Initiative' and 'The Clinton Foundation' have not complied with laws concerning 'public charities'," the Wall Street analyst continued. "These laws require that such entities be controlled by truly independent boards of directors, bar creation of 'private gain' through their operation, and forbid partisan political activities."
Ukraine's first lady Olena Zelenska hugs Hillary Clinton during the Clinton Global Initiative
© AP Photo / Julia Nikhinson
The Olena Zelenska Foundation
The Zelenska Foundation was founded in 2022 with the declared aim of attracting foreign businesses, funds and donors to "restore Ukraine's human capital". The Foundation's public launch took place on September 22, 2022 at a charity event in New York during the opening of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly.
The event was attended by former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, then-British foreign secretary James Cleverly, actor Matt Damon and "a wide circle of diplomats and businessmen", according to the Ukrainian president's official website.
Around that time Hillary Clinton started wooing the Ukrainian first lady, who received the Hillary Rodham Clinton Award for exceptional leadership in December 2022 and the 2023 Clinton Global Citizen Award in September 2023. Hillary and Olena's partnership, which started in 2022, resulted in the CGI Ukraine Action Network announced by the Clintons in September 2023, according to The Independent.
Ortel noted that the Clintons have a long record of collaborating with the Ukrainian elites, including oligarch Viktor Pinchuk and his wife Olena — daughter of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. Like Zelenskaya, Olena launched a foundation, this one to raise funds to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Ukraine, and cooperated closely with the Clintons. Her husband is well known as one of the most generous donors to Clinton charities.
"The Clinton family began operating in association with various persons in Ukraine by 2003 even though the original purported Clinton charity – The William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation never legitimately obtained approvals to operate outside Little Rock, Arkansas for any charitable purposes other than housing Presidential Records for Bill Clinton's period as President (20 January 1993 through 20 January 2001) and allowing interested parties to perform research on these records at the Presidential Center," explained Ortel.
"Without complying with applicable state, federal and foreign laws, Bill Clinton and his cohort of co-conspirators then ostensibly raised money for a raft of 'charitable' projects, including in Ukraine, for which there has never been proper accounting. If Ukraine maintains legal records on charities (an open question), there should be filings available to investigators that might allow authorities to compare claims made by Bill Clinton concerning his work there with apparent legal reality," he continued.
According to Ortel, "as during the Clinton years as Secretary of State, there is no oversight of monies flowing towards Ukraine from donors who believe they might be helping Ukraine repel Russia's special military operation."
Given the lack of oversight and the sordid public record of the Clinton family charities, Ortel suspects the joint effort by the Clinton and the Zelenskys "is likely nothing more than a vehicle to divert aid to corrupt ends."
26 November 2019, 17:02 GMT
Corrupt Elites and Minor Trafficking in Ukraine
In December, 38-year old Alex Soros, son of billionaire George Soros, met with the Zelenskys in Kiev. Alex, an heir to his father's financial and NGO empire, struck a partnership deal between his Open Society Foundations (OSF) and Olena Zelenska Foundation and gave $1 million to expand projects ostensibly to support Ukrainian children.
Child welfare has become a political football in Ukraine after the Kiev regime and Alex Soros promoted the unfounded narrative of Russia "stealing" 700,000 children from Ukraine — which some observers believe is just "projection."
During an informal meeting of the UN Security Council in November, Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia clarified that since the beginning of the special military operation, Russia had welcomed over 730,000 child refugees from Ukraine — most of them with their parents and just 2,000 from orphanages of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. A total of around five million Ukrainians and Donbass residents have sought refuge in Russia over the past 21 months.
By contrast, the Kiev regime lacks transparency about the fate Ukrainian children sent to Western countries by the nation's authorities. In May an evacuee from Artemovsk (also known as Bakhmut) told Sputnik that the Ukrainian authorities used to "abduct" children from residents and, under threats of being stripped of their parental rights, parents were forced to leave for areas under Kiev's control.
Likewise, on July 19, Donetsk People's Republic Senator Natalia Nikonorova, who is also a member of the parliamentary commission investigating Kiev's crimes against children, told the Russian media about multiple instances of unlawful "evacuation" of minors from the territory of the Donbass republics by the Kiev regime. Over 400 children from orphanages in Mariupol and Volnovakha vanished without trace after the Kiev regime's illegal "evacuation," the senator said.
Nikonorova also raised concerns about reports in the Ukrainian and Western press about "the possible work of so-called 'black transplantologists' in Ukraine." According to her, there is evidence that children were subjected to medical examinations regarding "the health of their organs" prior to the "evacuation" by the Ukrainian authorities.
The Western press has also raised the alarm about the fate of Ukrainian minors, most notably unaccompanied ones. In July 2022, The Independent published an article entitled "British paedophiles travelling to Poland ‘to target Ukrainian child refugees’". The newspaper, quoting the National Crime Agency (NCA), reported that at least ten known sex offenders traveled to refugee camps in Poland claiming they were providing "humanitarian assistance" to Ukrainian refugees. The NCA said there were 5,000 unaccompanied Ukrainian minors at the time.
It remains unclear whether the Olena Zelenska Foundation, whose declared aim is restoring Ukraine's human capital, is doing anything to remedy that situation.
Meanwhile, the recently-unsealed Epstein files show that ethics and morals of the rich and powerful are questionable, with Bill Clinton exposed as "liking his girls young" and even threatening the US media to protect himself and convicted sex offender Epstein.
"Human trafficking and slavery flourish in war and following national disasters," Ortel said. "If the fake elites truly cared about protecting vulnerable children and women (as well as men), they would make examples of the traffickers and slave-traders. Instead, watching the curious case of Jeffrey Epstein and his allies/enablers, too many powerful people may have gotten too close to the flames of vile temptation. Charities need to open their financial books and records and accept a new, tighter era where odious villains will be punished harshly. It will take public outrage and determination to bring charity gangsters and goons to justice."
2 January 2022, 12:36 GMT
