Tag: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Former President Bill Clinton has revealed tens of millions in donations to his foundation from foreign nations that Hillary Rodham Clinton may have to negotiate with as secretary of state.

Saudi Arabia was the most generous nation, giving between $10 million and $25 million, according to the list published today on the foundation’s Web site. (A warning: the site was crippled by high traffic throughout the day.)

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Only two donors to the William J. Clinton Foundation gave more than $25 million: the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, dedicated to relieving poverty for children in developing countries, and the disease relief group, UNITAID.

Norway donated $5 million to $10 million; Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Brunei all contributed between $1 million and $5 million, as did the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office. The Dutch national lottery gave between $5 million and $10 million. An Irish government aid program gave at least $500,000.

All told, the Foundation raised more than $500 million from more than 200,000 donors for humanitarian projects around the world and the construction of the presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas. Besides numerous foreign governments, the list includes companies and individuals who might have an interest in United States foreign policy.

One of the leading private donors is Amar Singh, an Indian politician. Singh met with Senator Clinton in September while on a trip to Washington to lobby for a controversial agreement for India to obtain civilian nuclear technology from the United States.

An Indian business association, the Confederation of Indian Industry, also donated between $500,000 and $1 million.

Among the biggest contributors overall are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, an overseas aid program by the Australian government and a Dominican Republic agency dedicated to combatting AIDS. All three gave between $10 million and $25 million.

Donors in the $10 to $25-million range include:

• Stephen L. Bing, a Los Angeles entertainment producer who was a Clinton fund-raiser during the presidential campaign and who also gave more than $4.8 million to liberal groups involved in the elections.
• Fred Eychaner, a Chicago media mogul.
• Theodore W. Waitt, co-founder of the Gateway computer company.
• Tom Golisano, founder of the Paychex payroll processing company in suburban Rochester, NY. Golisano also donated $1 million to the host committee for this year’s Democratic convention, and financed his own campaigns three times for New York governor.
• Frank Giustra, a Canadian merchant banker who finances mining ventures. Giustra flew Clinton to Kazakhstan in 2005 aboard his private jet as the former president was soliciting donations for his foundation. Clinton praised Kazakhstan’s authoritarian president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Giustra later entered agreements to invest in government-controlled uranium projects there.

The contributions also include $250,000 to $500,000 from Denise Rich, whose husband Marc Rich received a controversial pardon from Clinton in his final hours in the White House.

Former securities lawyer William Lerach, who is now serving two years in federal prison for his role in a kickback scheme, gave between $100,000 and $250,000.

Even Richard Mellon Scaife, a Pittsburgh media titan who helped finance efforts to discredit Clinton during his presidency, gave $100,000 to $250,000.

Federal law does not require a former president to reveal his foundation’s financial benefactors, and Clinton had declined to do so until now.

But when Obama asked Hillary Clinton to join his cabinet, the former president agreed to release his list as part of a nine-point agreement intended to keep his activities from compromising his wife’s work as the nation’s top diplomat.

The list released on Thursday does not detail the precise amounts of the donations, nor the dates they were given, instead breaking down contributors by general dollar ranges.

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