The Clinton Foundation is hiding the names of secret foreign donors who contributed $5.4 million in 2011 and 2012 to the William J. Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse (WJCFI), the Swedish shell company that is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Clinton Foundation.
While it is possible that the names of those donors are reported on the Clinton Foundation website, the website does not state that any donor listed on its website contributed first to the WJCFI, which in turn made a single “bundled” donation to the Clinton Foundation.
Breitbart News asked the Clinton Foundation to clarify if any of the publicly identified donors listed on its website made donations directly to the WJCFI rather than directly to the Clinton Foundation, but has received no response.
The WJCFI is at the center of a controversy surrounding allegations of the exercise of influence upon then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in failing to list Swedish companies, including telecommunications giant Ericsson Communications, for Iranian sanctions, first reported in the Washington Times.
Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State from January 2009 to January 31, 2013, and played a key role in recommending which companies should be listed for Iranian sanctions in 2011 and 2012.
In light of the significant role Hillary Clinton played in keeping Swedish companies off the Iranian sanctions list in 2011 and 2012, discovering the identity of unknown secret foreigners who donated that $5.4 million during those same years to the WJCFI that was passed through to the Clinton Foundation takes on greater importance.
Ericsson Communications, which paid Bill Clinton $750,000 personally for a speech delivered in November, 2011, is not listed as a donor to the Clinton Foundation, and its spokesperson tells Breitbart News the company has not donated to the foundation.
“Ericsson is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, and as such pays an annual membership fee. Ericsson is not a donor to the Clinton Foundation. Those are not contradicting statements. An annual membership fee is not a donation,” Ericsson spokeswoman Karin Hallstan told Breitbart News in an email on Thursday.
“Ericsson has not donated any money to the Clinton Foundation, so there is no amount I can give you. The annual membership fee of the Clinton Global Initiative is specified on their webpage and is 20,000 USD.” Hallstan added.
Earlier this week, the Washington Times reported “Hallston said Ericsson started paying an annual membership fee to the Clinton Global Initiative in 2010 and is supporting a joint effort with Refugees United to help missing families reconnect with loved ones.”
Breitbart News has asked Ericsson Communications whether the company or any of its executives as individuals donated to the WJCFI, but has not yet received a response.
Ericsson Communications was involved in telecom sales to Iran before Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State in 2009, and aggressively lobbied her during her tenure there not to include the company in the list of companies subject to Iranian sanctions.
As reported by Breitbart Editor at-large Peter Schweizer in his new book Clinton Cash:
Ericsson decided to sponsor a speech by Bill Clinton and paid him more than he had ever been paid for a single speech: $750,000. According to Clinton financial disclosures, in the previous ten years Ericsson had never sponsored a Clinton speech. But now it apparently thought it would be a good time to do so.
On November 12, 2011, Bill appeared at a telecom conference in Hong Kong and talked in general terms aobut the role that telecom plays in our lives. One week later, on November 19, the State Department unveiled its new sanctions list for Iran. Telecom was not on the list….
In April 2012, President Obama signed an executive order imposing sanctions on telecom sales to Iran and Syria. But those sanctions did not cover Ericsson’s work in Iran.
The manner in which the Clinton Foundation has obscured any ties between it and donors to the WJCFI makes it impossible to determine if any of the $5.4 million donated to the WJCFI from secret donors is transparent to the public
The Clinton Foundation makes its relationship with the WJCFI even more opaque because its website does not list a single donation coming directly from the WJCFI. However, in the 2012 annual report filed by the WJCFI with the Swedish government, the Clinton Foundation is identified as the only recipient of the funds it dispersed between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2012:
The Foundation has in 2012 issued and paid 68,095,449 [$9.5 million] (previous year 0) SEK to the William J. Clinton Foundation US for projects focused on climate change and childhood obesity
(Note: During 2011 and 2012, the exchange rate between the Swedish kroner (SEK) and the US dollar averaged about 0.14 US dollar for each SEK. In other words, it took 7.14 SEK to purchase 1 US dollar.)
As a result, the identities of the individuals or corporations who donated at $5.4 million of the $12.3 million received by the WJCFI in 2011 and 2012, all of which was presumably donated as a direct “pass through” to the Clinton Foundation, remain unknown.
Similarly, it is also unclear if the identities of individuals or corporations who donated $14 million to the WJCFI in 2013, and an as yet unreported amount in 2014, have been revealed on the Clinton Foundation website.
According to the Insmaling Kontrol website (the Swedish website that tracks receipts and expenditures of Swedish charities), the WJCFI raised a total of $26 million from its founding in 2011 to 2013. It raised $3 million but distributed no funds in 2011. It raised $9 million and distributed $9.5 million in 2012, leaving $2.5 million in its bank accounts. In 2013, it raised $14 million, distributed $16.2 million, and had $300,000 remaining at year end.
According to the Washington Times, “About half the funds collected by the foundation’s Swedish arm in 2011 and 2012 came from lottery enterprises tied to Novamedia.”
Breitbart News can confirm the reporting of the Washington Times. In the 2012 annual report the WJCFI submitted to the Swedish government in 2013, it identified three major 2011 and 2012 donors who contributed $6.9 million of its reported $12.3 million in receipts. That list included two Novamedia related entities, the Swedish Postcode Lottery and Nationale Postcode Loterij (the Dutch Postcode Lottery), as well as C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, Inc., the Michael Bloomberg financed “climate change” initiative.
As the annual report stated (translated from Swedish to English using Google translator):
The Foundation currently has a partnership with the Swedish Postcode Lottery and seems to be a regular recipients of grants. Grants received from the Swedish Postcode Lottery during the years to 2012 were 19.7 million [SEK = $2.8 million], which are both used in the project, the Clinton Climate Initiative Program (CCI) and used in Stifelsen general operations.
During the year, the contribution of 14.5 million [SEK =$2 million] obtained from the Nationale Postcode Loterij (Dutch Postcode Lottery) for global projects.
Another important partner is the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) with the Foundation conducts a joint project called CCI – C40. The project builds on that global cities will cooperate in climate. During the year, the Foundation received a grant of 15.1 million [SEK = $2.1 million] of C40 to this project.
During the year 2012 the Foundation has also initiated cooperation with the City of Stockholm on climate change issues and has contributed funds to deploy electric vehicles.
Between them, the National Postcode Loterij, the Swedish Postcode Lottery, and C40 contributed 49 million SEK ($6.9 million) of the 88 million SEK ($12.3 million) raised by the WJCFI in 2011 and 2012. The identity of the donors of the remaining 39 million SEK ($5.4 million) donated to WJCFI during that period remains unknown.
39 percent of the $12.3 million raised by the WJCFI in 2011 and 2012 came from the two national lotteries owned by Novamedia. 17 percent came from C40. Combined, these 3 entities accounted for 56 percent of the funds raised by WJCFI in 2011 and 2012.
(Note: the Washington Times may have estimated the two national lotteries owned by Novamedia accounted for “about half” [rather than 39 percent] of the donations made to the WJCFI in 2012 because it may have placed all of the Swedish Postcode Lottery’s donations into the single year 2012. The Google translation from Swedish to English used by Breitbart News indicated those donations came in the “years to 2012,” plural, which would include both 2011 and 2012.)
According to its website, Bloomberg serves as President of the Board of Directors of C40, while Clinton Foundation Chairman of the Board Bruce Lindsey and Danish bureaucrat and environmental activist Jesper Nygard, CEO of RealDania, serve on its board of directors.
The annual report did not, however, identify the names of the donors of the remaining $5.4 million, and the Clinton Foundation website does identify which of its donations have come as “pass throughs” from the WJCFI. It remains entirely possible, then that some or all of these donations are unreported at the Clinton Foundation website.
This leaves open the possibility that these unidentified donors may have been individuals or companies that benefited from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recommendation not to add Swedish companies to the list of Iran sanctioned companies.
According to the Clinton Foundation website, three European national lotteries owned by the privately held Novamedia and one Swedish charity funded by Novamedia have donated more than $31.5 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Nationale Postcode Loterij, the Dutch Postcode Lottery, has donated more than $25 million, including a donation made in 2014.
The Swedish Postcode Lottery, has donated between $5 million and $10 million, including a donation made in 2014.
The Swedish Postcode Foundation, a Swedish charity funded almost exclusively by the Swedish Postalcode Lottery, donated between $1 million and $5 million.
People’s Postcode Lottery, a British lottery, donated between $500,000 and $1 million.
In addition to the Novamedia related entities, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, Inc. has donated between $5 million and $10 million, including a donation made in 2014.
It is unclear, however, whether the entire amount of those donations were passed through the WJCFI or if some were made directly to the Clinton Foundation.
Novamedia, founded in 1989 by Boudewijn Poelmann, says its mission “is to set up and operate Charity Lotteries all over the world to raise funds for charities and increase awareness for their work.”
The private company, based in the Netherlands, owns and operates Nationale Postcard Loterij (the Dutch Postcode Lottery), the Swedish Postcode Lottery, and the People’s Postcard Lottery in Great Britain. It is also the primary donor to the Swedish Postcode Foundation.
It began its operations in Great Britain and Sweden in 2005.
The Clinton Foundation’s reporting policy with regards to listing donations from the WJCFI, its Swedish affiliate, is entirely inconsistent with its reporting policy with regards to listing donations from the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, its Canadian affiliate.
The Clinton Foundation website lists the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (CGEP) as having donated more than $25 million.
The Washington Post and Bloomberg News have reported that CGEP has received donations from 1,100 individuals or entities. None of these individuals or entities are reported as donors to the Clinton Foundation on its website.
In fact, the identities of 1,076 of these donors remain secret.
On its website, CGEP has identified 24 of these 1,100 individual donors. However, the identities of the remaining 1,076 donors remains unknown.
In contrast to CGEP, the WJCFI is not listed as a donor to the Clinton Foundation on the Clinton Foundation website.
Some, but apparently not all, of the donors to the WJCFI are listed individually as donors on the Clinton Foundation website.
The Clinton Foundation has claimed that the WJCFI was established in 2011 to take advantage of Swedish tax laws, making it easier for Swedish entities to donate to the foundation.
Novamedia’s close relationship with the Clinton Foundation continued after Hillary Clinton left the State Department.
According to a 2014 press release from Novamedia’s People’s Postcode Lottery, “On Wednesday 29th January, Chelsea Clinton joined 500 guests at People’s Postcode Lottery’s Charity Gala to celebrate the tremendous £10,200,000 players of the lottery have generated for good causes in 2013. The evening event was held at the historic National Museum of Scotland and also saw over £1,000,000 in new funding being awarded to a range of charities and good causes. These included the Clinton Foundation, Canal & River Trust, Missing People, Glasgow Bike Centre and The Mayhew Animal Home.”
As the press release stated:
In her keynote address to the Charity Gala, Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation, said:
“Thank you to the players of People’s Postcode Lottery for their support.” She went on to add that organisations like People’s Postcode Lottery represent just “how valuable collective action can be” and that “we couldn’t do what we do without you.”
Breitbart News asked the Clinton Foundation for comment on the facts reported in this story but has received no response.
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