By Matthew Vadum ——Bio and Archives--May 12, 2015
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improperly used corporate funds for over $3 million of personal jet travel for Gupta and his family and friends to such destinations as South Africa, Italy, and Cancun; $2.8 million of costs associated with Gupta's yacht; $1.3 million of personal credit card expenses; and costs associated with 28 club memberships, 20 automobiles, his homes around the country, and premiums for three personal life insurance policies. The Commission also alleges that Gupta failed to inform Info's other board members of the material fact that he had purchased shares of an Info acquisition target for his own benefit from which he obtained realized and unrealized ill-gotten gains.The book reports that Gupta paid Bill Clinton a $3 million “consulting fee,” an abuse of corporate funds that led to a shareholder lawsuit against Gupta. Eventually the company settled, agreeing to fork over $13 million to shareholders. Gupta settled the civil charges without admitting or denying wrongdoing. According to an SEC press release Gupta agreed to disgorge $4,045,000 plus prejudgment interest of $1,145,400, along with a $2,240,700 civil money penalty. He was also barred “from serving as an officer or director of a public company,” and restrictions were placed “on Gupta's voting of his Info common stock.” It appears that two of Gupta's projects in India that were to be named after Mrs. Clinton failed to materialize. Gupta's charity, according to the Clinton Foundation's website, committed to underwrite something called the “Hillary Clinton School of Journalism.” Courses offered would presumably include Evading Questions, Treating Reporters As Stenographers, Lies Damn Lies and Statistics, Useful Subterfuge: The Art of Smearing, and so on. (Longtime Clinton lapdog and character assassin Sidney Blumenthal would have been an excellent choice to serve as dean of the j-school.) The Vinod Gupta Charitable Foundation pledged $6 million to the journalism project in 2007. The school was to be established in India but web searches conducted by this writer failed to locate the educational institution. It was unclear at time of writing if the school project ever went forward but another project bearing Mrs. Clinton's name is now referenced on the Gupta charity's website. The website refers to the “Hillary Rodham Clinton Nursing School,” which was proposed to be constructed in “Rampur Maniharan, Saharanpur (Uttar Pradesh).” However, the link the website provides to the “Hillary Rodham Clinton Nursing School,” http://www.womenspolytechnic.in, leads to a placeholder page of an Internet domain name broker that reads, “Click here to buy womenspolytechnic.in for your website name!” According to its website, the Vinod Gupta Charitable Foundation was incorporated in India. It was “established as a society under the Societies Registration Act XXI of 1860 in Delhi on 4th July, 1997.” Sant Singh Chatwal, a wealthy Democratic fundraiser and a longtime friend of the Clintons, was convicted last year of illegal campaign financing (including contributions to Hillary Clinton's campaign), obstruction of justice, and witness tampering. As part of his plea bargain, Chatwal agreed to pay the U.S. government $1 million. Jordanian-born billionaire Victor Dahdaleh, according to Clinton Cash, “was charged by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in Great Britain with paying more than 35 million pounds in bribes to executives in Bahrain to win contracts of more than 2 billion pounds.” The SFO's case against Dahdaleh, who worked for the U.S. company Alcoa as a “super-agent,” fell apart when “a key witness … pleaded guilty to conspiracy to corrupt but refused to testify.” Alcoa entered a guilty plea in a U.S. case related to the bribery saga and agreed to pay the U.S. Department of Justice $384 million. According to Clinton Cash, current Clinton Foundation trustee Rolando Gonzalez Bunster “has been named in a fraud case in the Dominican Republic involving his company InterEnergy.” An anti-corruption agency within the government of that Caribbean nation charged Bunster and others in 2013 “concerning alleged ‘ballooned’ fees charged to the government.” Bunster's company says the claims are “baseless allegations.'” Probably the most disturbing allegation to emerge from the book so far is that then-Secretary of State Clinton gave her blessing to a financial transaction that handed partial control of America’s strategically important uranium resources to Vladimir Putin’s Russia after investors paid off her husband and gave huge donations to the Clinton Foundation.
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Matthew Vadum, matthewvadum.blogspot.com, is an investigative reporter.
His new book Subversion Inc. can be bought at Amazon.com (US), Amazon.ca (Canada)
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