Ed Morrissey:
Is another shoe about to drop on the Clinton Foundation, and on Hillary Clinton’s problematic rollout? Newsweek’s Rory Ross reported this morning that the largest individual donor to the Clinton family business has conducted trade with Iran, perhaps in breach of US sanctions. Ukrainian energy mogul Victor Pinchuk has connections to the Clintons that go back almost a decade, and financial connections to the regime in Tehran that go much farther:
The fourth richest man in Ukraine, Pinchuk owns Interpipe Group, a Cyprus-incorporated manufacturer of seamless pipes used in oil and gas sectors.
Newsweek has seen declarations and documents from Ukraine that show a series of shipments from Interpipe to Iran in 2011 and 2012, including railway parts and products commonly used in the oil and gas sectors.
Among a number of high-value invoices for products related to rail or oil and gas, one shipment for $1.8m (1.7m) in May 2012 was for “seamless hot-worked steel pipes for pipelines” and destined for a city near the Caspian Sea.
Both the rail and oil and gas sectors are sanctioned by the US, which specifically prohibits any single invoice to the Iranian petrochemical industry worth more than $1m.
In other words, Interpipe should have been slapped with penalties and sanctions for its operations with Iran. Pinchuk’s company has a US subsidiary, which means that US sanctions apply across the entire organization. The agency for imposing penalties for sanctions violations in these cases, Ross notes, is the State Department. Who was in charge at the State Department during this period? None other than Hillary Clinton.
Pinchuk was among an elite few dumping tons of money into the Clinton Foundation, some of whom have interesting connections for a former Secretary of State:
Then there are checks worth millions of dollars from company executives, philanthropists, billionaires and foreign organizations, among them the Ukranian Victor Pinchuk, the Saudi Mohammed al-Amoudi and Rilin Enterprises, which is led by Chinese billionaire Wang Wenliang, a member of the Chinese parliament.
The contributions are legal, but funds from individuals or entities that have considerable diplomatic or economic clout to defend in Washington, expose Clinton to suspicions of conflict of interest since the Democrat gains directly from the success of the foundation which has carried her name since 2013.
Even as far back as 2008, prior to Hillary Clinton becoming SecState, Pinchuk was one of the larger donors to the foundation — between $1 million and $5 million, according to the disclosure. While serving in that role for four years, Pinchuk coughed up at least $8.6 million, but that was just a down payment for what was planned to be a much bigger donation for the Clinton Global Initiative, supposedly a separate operation during her tenure at State:
I wonder why Hillary won’t face non-vetted citizens with questions or the open media?
@Bill: I think the Hill cut her Iowa trip short because of disillusionment. She didn’t find the undying adulation she was looking for. She’s not physically able to handle these campaigning rigors.
two reasons, if she faces them, they will ask questions she can’t answer and won’t answer. She thinks she is above having to answer for her actions. She doesn’t feel like the ‘laws’ apply to her. Does this country need another president that will not follow laws? We have one now, we don’t need another.