Bill and Hillary Clinton

The Clinton Foundation’s controversial involvement with Haiti, The Huffington Post reports, might have a “profound impact” on US Eelection Day.

The Post’s H. A Goodman interviewed “Harvard-trained investor and financial analyst” Charles Ortel, who has spent over a year investigating the Clinton Foundation.

Ireland is the largest country donor per capita to the Clinton Foundation.

Mr Goodman writes:

The Miami Herald has a video of Haitian activists protesting the Democratic National Convention, primarily because of the “Clinton Foundation’s spending in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.” According to The Nation in a piece titled The Shelters That Clinton Built, the Clinton Foundation provided Haiti with trailers “structurally unsafe and laced with formaldehyde” that “came from the same company being sued for sickening Hurricane Katrina victims.” Pertaining to the Clinton Foundation’s legacy in Haiti, The New York Times writes “the Clintons have become prime targets of blame for the country’s woes.”

From the interview:

Goodman: “How did the Clinton Foundation benefit from the disaster in Haiti?”

Charles Ortel: “In the beginning, the Foundation received lots of positive publicity. This disaster created an opportunity for the Clinton Foundation and its allies to raise substantial funds, especially over the internet. With lax to non-existent financial controls and no real audits, the possibility to divert funds from incoming streams of donations presented itself.”

Goodman: “How much money did the Clinton Foundation raise for Haiti and how much of that money went to the Haitian people?”

Ortel: “The books of the Clinton Foundation and of Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund suggest that around $100 million or so may have been raised―but the truth is that no one really knows. One major warning sign is that the Clinton Fondation 990 for 2010 (and the amended return for 2010 filed in November 2015) show the largest single expenditure as being a $37 million grant to the CBHF― the trouble is that both declarations list a PO Box address in Baltimore, MD as that of the CBHF, whereas other declarations made under penalties of perjury state that the CBHF had one office only and that was in Washington, DC.

Another problem is that the CBHF claims in its 990s to the IRS that it had no foreign bank accounts― How did they manage millions of dollars inside Haiti? All told, high end estimates of how much money may have been sent towards Haiti exceed $10 billion and this amount is about equal to the total incomes earned by all Haitians during 2010, so it is a mammoth sum, considered in the context of Haiti.

Most of these funds were raised, not through the Clinton Foundation and CBHF, which are estimated to have raised $0.130 billion altogether, but through Clinton’s Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), which, according to Dady Chery, ran Haiti during a declared state of emergency from April 2010 to October 2011. Very little, trifling amounts, seem to have actually helped. So where did all these missing billions go?”

Good times.

The Clinton Foundation’s Legacy in Haiti – “Haitians are more than upset…” (Charles Goodman, Huffington Post)

Meanwhile: Haiti Battered By Matthew (CNN)

Previously: Meanwhile, In The No Spin Zone

Meanwhile…

Via Pat the berner