On March 25, 2011, former President Bill Clinton was in Lagos, Nigeria for the ThisDay annual awards for excellence and good governance at the posh Eko Hotel.
Clinton was in Nigeria in his capacity as the head of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). Informed sources have told WMR that Clinton’s CGI fund has been raking in millions of dollars from dubious and suspect businessmen and government leaders around the world. The former president’s money raising activities are being conducted with the full knowledge of the U.S. State Department and his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Clinton, according to the official record, departed Lagos to speak to the 2nd Global Sustainability Symposium in Manaus, Brazil on March 27. However, WMR has been informed that Clinton made a stop after visiting Nigeria and Brazil in the Cayman Islands. The purpose, we are told, was to make a sizable deposit in a Grand Cayman bank account.
In the wee hours of March 28, Clinton’s private jet arrived at Owen Roberts International Airport on Grand Cayman. The official reason for Clinton’s Cayman stopover was to speak at the “Embracing our Common Humanity fundraiser at the Ritz-Carlton on March 28. US Secret Service and Royal Cayman Islands Police Service personnel accompanied Clinton’s motorcade to a residence on Grand Cayman.
With reports that Clinton has benefited from the financial largess of unscrupulous mining tycoons from Canada to Kazakhstan, suspicions have been raised that the purpose of Clinton’s stopover in the Caymans was to deposit some ill-gotten loot from Nigeria, which has become a virtual kleptocracy as a result of the siphoning off of billions in revenues generated by the Nigerian oil industry, and from international businessmen cronies whom Clinton met in Brazil.
The Clinton Foundation has been cited by a number of critics for its lack of transparency. The foundation’s main benefactors are Canadian mining magnate and Clinton friend Frank Giustra and Mexican telecommunications multi-billionaire and the world’s richest man Carlos Slim Helu. Giustra’s business links to the Kazakhstan dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev and the Kazakh state uranium agency Kazatomprom have served as a basis to criticize Clinton’s own business links, using the veneer of the Clinton Foundation, to collect money from some of the world’s most unsavory leaders and business interests.
The Clinton Foundation has also received millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia, Jamaica, Italy, Qatar, Brunei, Norway, Dubai, Kuwait, and the Dutch National Lottery. The foundation’s corporate dionors have included the former Blackwater security company and Colombia’s Gold Service International, a firm with close ties to the former Colombian president and human rights criminal, Alvaro Uribe. The Clinton Foundation has also attracted sizable contributions from Canadian zinc and copper mining companies, as well as from Israeli-American Zionist businessman Haim Saban, Canadian billionaire Edgar Bronfman, Jr., the American Jewish Committee, and disaster capitalist George Soros.
In Manaus, Clinton called for the United States and Brazil to cut greenhouse gas emissions. However, in Nigeria and Brazil, Clinton apparently benefited personally from green cash emissions.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2011 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
