Clinton Cash (22 page)

Sadly, the houses were never built. In 2012 Osorio was indicted and convicted of financial fraud. Prosecutors would later accuse Osorio, who drove a Maserati and lived in a Miami Beach mansion, of using the money intended for relief victims to “repay investors and for his and his co-conspirators personal benefit and to further the fraud scheme.”
²¹
He was ultimately sentenced to twelve years in jail. Innovida collapsed.

I
t is hard to overstate the power the Clintons wielded in the disbursement of US taxpayer money for Haitian relief.
Esquire
magazine called Bill the “CEO of a leaderless nation,” because of his role as the cochair of IHRC.
²²
The
Miami Herald
repeatedly referred to Bill as the “co-czar of the recovery effort.”
²³
Others called him “president of Haiti” or “viceroy” because of his powers. Hillary, as secretary of state, had ultimate control over the dispersement of US taxpayer aid dollars.
²⁴

Many Haitians believed the Clintons further demonstrated their power in Haiti when Garry Conille became prime minister in October 2011. Conille had worked for Bill as a speechwriter and as his UN special envoy chief of staff.
²⁵
Conille’s appointment was seen as a compromise, and the fact that he was backed by Bill Clinton was touted by some Haitians as one of the reasons for his selection.
²⁶

What happened in Haiti was the classic Clinton Blur, mixing philanthropy, politics, and business.

Bill arrived in Port-au-Prince wearing several hats and pursuing myriad agendas, both public and private. As the
Economist
succinctly noted,

The strange multi-dimensional role that Mr. Clinton plays as co-chair of the IHRC, special UN envoy, former US president, spouse of the US secretary of state, and head of his own foundation which supports projects in the country, will continue to lead to confusion about who he advocates for and to whom he ultimately answers.
²⁷

Pushback from within IHRC came almost immediately. In October 2010 Jean-Marie Bourjolly, a member of IHRC, wrote a memorandum to the cochairs and the other commission members cautioning that by “vesting all powers and authority of the
Board in the Executive Committee [Clinton and Bellerive], it is clear that what is expected of us [the rest of IHRC] is to act as a rubber-stamping body.”
²⁸
Bourjolly’s concerns were not appreciated. Indeed, his memorandum was not included in the official minutes of the October IHRC meeting.

Other commission members and employees confirmed that Bill and Hillary got what they wanted when it came to Haiti projects and contracts. As one employee noted, projects were approved because “they were submitted by USAID and State.” Moreover, “as long as USAID is submitting it and USAID is paying for it, they would be approved.”
²⁹

In December 2010 nine of the fourteen Haitian IHRC members wrote an official complaint to Clinton and Bellerive; they felt “completely disconnected from the activities of the IHRC.” IHRC was moving forward on projects that didn’t seem to conform to the action plan that the Haitian government and donor nations had agreed to in the months following the tragedy. The members warned that “we risk ending up with a variety of ill-assorted projects, some of which are certainly interesting and useful taken individually, but which collectively can neither meet the urgency nor lay the foundation for the rehabilitation of Haiti, and even less its development.”
³⁰

The GAO echoed those concerns, noting in May 2011, “funding for approved projects is uneven across sectors and is not necessarily aligned with Haitian priorities.”

Bill’s role as unofficial “viceroy” raised questions in the Haitian community because of the Clintons’ penchant for mixing politics with crony business arrangements in Haiti. Back when Bill had been appointed special envoy for the United Nations in 2009, the
Haiti Observateur
challenged both Clintons to “come clean about [Bill’s] relationship to the former Haitian president and he and his wife’s business dealings in Haiti.”
³¹

“There have been whispers and rumors for quite a while about the Clintons’ choice connections to the former president and particularly the telephone business in Haiti,” the paper said.

As president in 1994, Bill Clinton had sent troops to Haiti to return to power Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the duly elected president who had been forced out in a 1991 coup. While president, after he was restored to power, a special deal was granted to a small US-based company called Fusion Communications. (The prime minister of Haiti at the time was Aristide friend and ally René Préval, who was president at the time of the earthquake.) The Haitian government–owned telecom company, Teleco, granted Fusion long-distance minutes from the United States to Haiti at a deeply discounted price. With a large number of Haitians living in the United States and calling home, this was a big market.

Fusion was a relatively small player in the long-distance telephone market. But it was top-heavy with operatives and politicians closely aligned with Bill and Hillary. The board of directors included Tom “Mack” McLarty, Bill’s former chief of staff, and was headed by Marvin Rosen, who had been chairman of the Democratic National Committee’s finance committee during Bill’s 1996 reelection campaign. It was under Rosen’s tenure that the notorious White House fundraising coffees, rental of the Lincoln Bedroom to large contributors, and foreign donations from China and Asia had occurred.
³²
Also on the board was Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor whom Bill had appointed ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
³³

Teleco’s special arrangement with Fusion was supposed to be public, in keeping with the regulations and laws of the FCC. But the company worked hard to keep it secret. As
Wall Street Journal
columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady, who broke the story, wrote, “By law the agreement is a public document but Fusion
wouldn’t give it to me until the FCC required them to do so.” It took her eight years to get a copy of the contract.
³⁴

It’s easy to see why. The contract gave Fusion access to the Haitian telephone network at a rate of twelve cents a minute, even though the official FCC rate was fifty cents a minute. In short, it was a sweetheart deal. Fusion says it “never made any improper payments or engaged in any improper activity with regard to its relationship with Teleco.” But of course, it didn’t have to.
³⁵

After the 2010 earthquake, more than a decade later, there were new telecom prizes available in Haiti. The system was set up so that decisions on doling out contracts and projects went through the Clintons.

In the months following the earthquake, the Clintons began pushing the idea of a wireless mobile phone money-transfer system for Haiti. The idea was to enable friends and relatives to send money directly to people in the quake-ravaged country. Hillary’s USAID was quick to send taxpayer money via a grant; it also organized the effort. The Bill Gates Foundation also came on board. The Haiti Mobile Money Initiative also offered incentive funds to companies who would establish mobile money services in the country.

The initiative’s big winner was Digicel, a mobile phone company owned by Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien. Digicel received millions in US taxpayer money for its TchoTcho Mobile system. (
TchoTcho
means “pocket money” in Creole.) The USAID Food for Peace program, under direct control of the State Department through Cheryl Mills, chose the TchoTcho system for its money transfers. Haitians were given cell phones and a free TchoTcho account. When Haitians used the system, they paid O’Brien’s company millions in fees. They also became users of O’Brien’s TchoTcho program.
³⁶

O’Brien had bought the company in 2008. After the project’s launch, Digicel’s mobile phone subscriptions soared and its profit margins rose, winning praise from investors.
³⁷
By 2012 Digicel had 77 percent of the Haitian mobile phone market, a rise fueled in part by the fact that it was a digital bank supplier.

Was the mobile money system a good idea? Very possibly it was. But the trouble was not in the idea itself; rather, it was the fact that it was helping make O’Brien lots of money. From April 2011 to March 2012 Digicel’s revenues increased 14 percent and its subscriber base jumped 27 percent. By September 2012 Haiti had overtaken Jamaica as Digicel’s most profitable market. The Haitian market became key to the success of Digicel. O’Brien granted himself $300 million in dividends from Digicel in 2012.
³⁸

O’Brien was in turn making money for the Clintons.

O’Brien arranged at least three speeches in Ireland, well as a speech in Jamaica. Bill’s October 9, 2013, speech at the Conrad Hotel in Dublin was his third in three years, “and was mostly facilitated by billionaire Irish tycoon Denis O’Brien,” noted
Irish Central
. “Last year Clinton delivered the keynote address at the Worldwide Ireland Funds annual conference in Cork. . . . The year before he was flown over to Ireland on O’Brien’s private jet to deliver a speech at the Global Irish Economic Forum in Dublin Castle.”
³⁹
In October 2010 Clinton gave a speech in Jamaica for $225,000 on “Our Common Humanity.” The speech was sponsored by Whisky Productions, in partnership with O’Brien’s Digicel.
⁴⁰

The timing of these paid speeches is also notable. The Haitian Mobile Money Initiative (HMMI) was announced in June 2010. Three months later, on September 29, Bill gave a speech at Dublin castle sponsored by O’Brien. The next day, Digicel filed notice of its intent to compete for HMMI contracts. In January of the following year, Digicel became the first company to be awarded funds for participation in HMMI.

On October 8, 2011, Bill gave a speech for the Global Irish Economic Forum, again facilitated by O’Brien. The following day, Digicel was awarded $100,000 through HMMI, which it was to split with fellow cell provider Voila.

On December 2 of the same year, USAID paid the first installment of what would eventually be more than $2 million of taxpayer money into O’Brien’s Digicel Foundation, based in Jamaica. According to government databases, Digicel had never received taxpayer money before.

The interlay of money and favors also included the use of O’Brien’s jet. When Frank Giustra’s jetliner was not available, Clinton used O’Brien’s, a modest Gulfstream 550 that seats twenty.
⁴¹

In addition to forking over these immense speaking fees, O’Brien was also a major contributor to the Clinton Foundation, pouring between $1 million and $5 million into the Clintons’ legacy project sometime in 2010 or 2011.

The Clintons lavished praise on O’Brien for his generosity and business acumen. In 2012 Bill named O’Brien a Clinton Global Citizen, an annual award offered by CGI. O’Brien received his award before a cheering crowd as Bill praised him for his visionary leadership ability. Bill also praised him in an article he penned for
Time
magazine titled “The Case for Optimism.”
⁴²

Ironically, Bill was conferring this award after an Irish government tribunal issued a scathing report concerning how O’Brien had made his fortune in the early days of the Irish wireless industry. The tribunal found that in the 1990s O’Brien had purchased properties for a government official named Michael Lowry, who was responsible for Irish telecom policy. The properties included land in Mansfield, England, and a home in Cheadle, England,
that were purchased with funds from O’Brien’s Credit Suisse account in London. In exchange, the tribunal found, “Lowry went to considerable effort to assist Denis O’Brien in securing the mobile phone license” that would end up making him a very rich man. For his part, O’Brien denies ever giving money to government officials and he was never formally charged by authorities.
⁴³

But it wasn’t just connected businessmen who were benefiting from the rebuilding of Haiti. Clinton family members did, too. Bill and Hillary had been looking for investors to come to Haiti. But it was a risky prospect, given the infrastructure problems, social and political instability, and endemic corruption. One possible bright spot was mining. Haiti is rich in natural resources—there is an estimated $20 billion in gold, silver, and other precious minerals under the rocky Haitian soil.

In 2012 the Haitian government decided to do something it had not done in more than half a century: grant permits for open-pit gold mining.

One of two recipients was a small North Carolina start-up called VCS Mining. The company had little track record of mining operations in Haiti, or anywhere else for that matter. But its leadership would later boast a board member with a familiar last name: Tony Rodham, Hillary’s youngest brother. Rodham would join the board of advisors less than a year after VCS was granted the mining permit. Another member of the board: former Haitian prime minister (and IHRC cochairman with Bill) Jean-Max Bellerive.

The Haitian government gave VCS a “gold mining exploitation permit” (in the company’s words) for a project in Morne Bossa, which could be generously renewed for up to twenty-five years. “This is one of two permits issued today, the first permit of their kind issued in over five decades,” the company proudly noted.

Rodham had no background in mining. More than half of his
bio on the VCS Mining website concerned his ties to his sister and her husband.
⁴⁴