Clinton.Com

Oh, Denny Boy: How The Clintons Helped an Irish Telecom Tycoon Makes Millions in Earthquake Ravaged Haiti

On February 24, former President Bill Clinton was in Haiti to celebrate the opening of a luxury Marriott Hotel in Port-au-Prince. Like most foreign-backed projects in Haiti, the Clinton Foundation was a key player in its development. And like most projects involving the Clinton Foundation, a shady Clinton crony is running the show.

The 175-room hotel is owned by Digicel Group, the Caribbean and Central American telecom empire run by Denis O’Brien, an Irish billionaire who officially resides in Malta to avoid taxes and serves chairman of the Clinton Global Initiative’s Haiti Action Network. Digicel, the largest mobile provider in Haiti, invested $45 million in the project, which also benefited from $26.5 million in financing from the World Bank-affiliated International Finance Corporation. But it was Bill Clinton who made it all happen.

An Irish billionaire residing in Malta to avoid taxes? Say, isn't Ireland one of the PIIGS, the European countries slowly going bust for lack of industry and tax money? I thought democrats all wanted billionaires to stay where they belong and pay their taxes.

As Peter Schweizer documents in his latest book, Clinton Cash, Digicel received millions in U.S. tax dollars from USAID, an agency overseen by the State Department, as part of the Haiti Mobile Money Initiative. The program was designed to establish a mobile money-transfer system that would allow individuals to send donations directly to friends and relatives in Haiti.

Digicel was also tapped by the USAID Food for Peace program, which was under the direct control of Hillary Clinton’s top aide Cheryl Mills, to administer money transfers over its mobile network. Haitians received cell phones and a free Digicel account; Digicel received grants courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, collected millions in fees from Haitians every time they used the system, and significantly expanded its user base.

By 2012, Digicel had captured nearly 80 percent of the Haitian mobile phone market, and Haiti had surpassed Jamaica as the company’s most profitable market. Revenues were up 14 percent compared to 2011, and Digicel’s subscriber base increased by almost 30 percent during that period. O’Brien, who holds a 94 percent stake in the privately owned firm, continued to rake in cash. In 2014 alone, O’Brien awarded himself $650 million worth of dividends.

That's a fair amount of bread, even from a billionaire. So there is the pro quo. Where's the quid?

O’Brien helped arranged a number of speaking gigs for Bill Clinton—three in Ireland and one in Jamaica—between 2010 and 2013. On at least one occasion, Clinton flew to Ireland on O’Brien’s private jet. It’s not known how much the former president was paid for the speeches, but a Clinton spokesman told BuzzFeed that Clinton was not personally compensated for two out of the three speeches in Ireland.

So he was only personally paid once, for a half a million or more. A mere pittance compared to the  650 million that O'Brien made, but like the song says "you've got to prime the pump, you must have faith and believe, you've got to give of yourself 'fore you're worthy to receive."

Schweizer points out in Clinton Cash that the timing of the speeches raises questions about a possible quid pro quo. On September 29, 2010—just weeks after Digicel applied to receive millions of dollars worth of grants from a State Department-controlled agency to provide mobile payment services in Haiti—Clinton gave a speech in Dublin sponsored by O’Brien. Clinton was not paid, a Clinton spokesman told BuzzFeed, but acknowledged that the Clinton Foundation did received a donation after the speech. Clinton Foundation records show that O’Brien personally donated between $5 million and $10 million sometime between 2010 and 2011.

A few weeks after the September 2010 speech in Ireland, Clinton was paid $225,000 for a Digicel-sponsored speech in Kingston, Jamaica. Two months later, Digicel received its first installment of USAID grant money.

Even if it's only "donations" to the Clinton Foundation instead of money directly into Bill and Hillary's pockets, it's still corrupt. The Clinton Foundation exists primarily to support the Clinton's political agenda It only uses about 10% of the funds it receives on external programs; the rest gets spent on air travel, salaries for Clinton hit men (watch them start to come out of their coffins as the election heats up).

And the Obama/Kerry State Department officially announced that they didn't care:

State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke told reporters during Thursday’s briefing that the more than 1,100 undisclosed donors will not be reviewed as the department moves on.

“The State Department has not, and does not intend to initiate a formal review or to make a retroactive judgment about items that were not submitted during Secretary Clinton’s tenure,” spokesman Jeff Rathke told reporters during Thursday’s State Department briefing.