WIKI EXCERPT---The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation[2] (originally, the William J. Clinton Foundation) is a non-profit foundation established by former President of the United States Bill Clinton with the stated mission to "strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence."
The Foundation focuses on four critical areas: health security; economic empowerment; leadership development and citizen service; and racial, ethnic and religious reconciliation. The Foundation works principally through partnerships with like-minded individuals, organizations, corporations, and governments, often serving as an incubator for new policies and programs. They have offices located in New York City and Little Rock, Arkansas.
The William J. Clinton Foundation was founded in 2001 following the completion of the Presidency of Bill Clinton.[1] Longtime Clinton advisor Bruce Lindsey became the CEO in 2004.[3][4] Other Clinton hands who played an important early role included Doug Band[5] and Ira Magaziner.[3] Additional Clinton associates who have had senior positions at the foundation include John Podesta and Laura Graham.[1]
Most of the foundation's successes came from Bill Clinton's worldwide fame and his ability to forge together corporate executives, celebrities, and government officials.[1] Similarly, the foundation areas of involvement have often corresponded to whatever Bill Clinton suddenly felt an interest in.[1]
In September 2005, Frank Giustra flew Clinton to Kazakhstan as part of a three-country philanthropic tour. Clinton praised that nation's president Nursultan Nazarbayev for "this statement you have made about opening up the social and political life [of Kazakhstan]."
Within two days of the meeting, Giustra's fledgling uranium company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by the state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.
In 2006, in the months after Clinton's visit, Giustra donated $31 million to the Clinton Foundation.[6] However, Giustra had developed deep financial links with Khazakstan business uranium interests long before he and Clinton went to Khazakstan together.[7][8]
Around 2007, the Clinton Foundation was criticized for a lack of transparency. Although U.S. law did not require nonprofit charities — including presidential foundations — to disclose the identities of their contributors, critics said that the names of donors should be disclosed because Hillary Rodham Clinton was running to be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.
Commentator Matthew Yglesias wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that the Clintons should make public the names of foundation donors to avoid any appearance of impropriety.[9]
Following the failure of her bid, the election of Barack Obama, and his nomination of her to become U.S. Secretary of State, Bill Clinton agreed to accept a number of conditions and restrictions regarding his ongoing activities and fundraising efforts for the Clinton Presidential Center and the Clinton Global Initiative.[10]
Accordingly, a list of donors was released for the first time in December 2008.[11] The list was large and included politically sensitive donors from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to Blackwater Worldwide.[12] The foundation insisted that the disclosures would ensure that "not even the appearance of a conflict of interest" would exist once Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.[12]
The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) was spun off into a separate organization in 2010.[1]
In 2013, following the completion of Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, she joined the foundation, where she planned to work on issues regarding women and small children[13][14] as well as economic development.[3] Accordingly at that point, it was renamed the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.[1] Extra attention was paid to the foundation due to the possibility of her work for it becoming part of a visibility platform for a possible campaign in the United States presidential election, 2016.[1][3]
In July 2013, Eric Braverman was named CEO of the foundation.[4] He is a friend and former colleague of Chelsea Clinton from McKinsey & Company.[1][3] At the same time, Chelsea Clinton was named vice chair of the foundation's board.[1][4] The foundation was also in the midst of a move to two floors of the Time-Life Building in Midtown Manhattan.[1]
The outside review, conducted by the firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, came to conclusions that achieve public view in mid-2013.[3] A main aspect was to resolve how the foundation could achieve a firm financial footing that was not dependent upon the former president's fundraising abilities, how it could operate more like a permanent entity rather than a start-up organization, and thus how it could survive and prosper beyond Bill Clinton's lifetime.[1][3]
Dennis Cheng, a former Hillary Clinton campaign official and State Department deputy chief, was named to oversee a $250 million endowment drive.[1] The review also found the management and structure of the foundation needed to improve, including an increase in the size of its board of directors that would have a more direct involvement in planning and budget activities.[3] Additionally, the review said that all employees needed to understood the foundation's conflict of interest policies and that expense reports needed a more formal review process.[3]
In August 2013, The New York Times reported on the foundation's recent developments, including financial losses, staff conflicts and spending excesses.[1] In response, Bill Clinton published an open letter saying the deficits described by the paper were misleading and a consequence of the unique accounting and tax reporting requirements placed upon foundations.[15]
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Mmm the book coming out in early May touts it will expose a dozen or so problems within the fund
We currently know only the tip of iceberg?