Clinton donors include foreign gov’ts

WASHINGTON (AP) — Foreign countries including Norway and Oman contributed to former President Bill Clinton’s charity, and donors ranging from the PGA Tour to multinational soft drink company Coca-Cola to singer Elton John’s foundation also pitched in as Hillary Rodham Clinton served her first year as secretary of state.

A donor list released on New Year’s Day by the William J. Clinton Foundation shows that in all, Norway has given $10 million to $25 million to the charity since its founding roughly a decade ago. Oman gave $1 million to $5 million over the years. The list gave cumulative donation totals and didn’t say how much each contributor gave last year.

The foundation provided The Associated Press with a donor list Friday morning under the heading “William J. Clinton Foundation Publishes Names of 2009 Contributors on Foundation Website” but later said the disclosure, which included many more foreign governments, covered donors dating back to the charity’s inception, and that it wouldn’t identify who gave in 2009. The foundation changed course Friday afternoon and updated the list to specify 2009 donors.

The Clintons agreed to annually disclose the names of donors to the foundation to address concerns about potential conflicts of interest between the former president’s fundraising abroad and his wife’s role in helping direct Obama administration foreign policy.

Then-President-elect Barack Obama made the disclosure a condition of his selection of Hillary Rodham Clinton for the post, and the two senior lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry, D-Mass., and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said when the first list was released in December 2008 that the disclosure “is designed to establish greater transparency and predictability with regard to the activities of the Clinton Foundation in the context of Sen. Clinton’s service as secretary of state.”

The William J. Clinton Foundation works in the United States and around the world on such issues as health care, particularly HIV/AIDS; climate change, and economic development. It also runs the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Ark., which includes Clinton’s presidential library.

“I am deeply grateful to the many generous contributors who made it possible for my foundation to accomplish so much in 2009, including increasing the number of people on lifesaving HIV/AIDS treatment, helping cities reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and inspiring millions of children to lead healthier lives,” Bill Clinton said in a written statement.

Several foreign governments that appeared in the foundation’s first disclosure in December 2008 didn’t give last year, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Brunei.

In releasing the list Friday, the foundation didn’t identify individual contributors’ employers, nationalities or any other details. It gave only cumulative ranges rather than precise donations, and didn’t provide a fundraising total. But it did say that more than 90 percent of the gifts it received last year were in donations of $250 or less.

The 2009 donors included three who ranked as the foundation’s all-time biggest givers, topping $25 million each since Bill Clinton founded the charity: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Canadian mining tycoon and Radcliffe Foundation chief executive Frank Giustra, and UNITAID.

Bill Clinton joined Giustra on a 2005 trip to Kazakhstan; within days after the pair met with Kazakhstan’s president, Giustra’s business lined up preliminary deals giving it rights to buy into uranium projects controlled by a Kazakhstan state-owned enterprise. Bill Clinton has said he had nothing to do with that.

In UNITAID’s case, almost all of the money simply passed through the foundation to buy commodities, the foundation said.

AUSAID, the Australian government’s overseas aid program, was also a 2009 giver. It donated $10 million to $25 million to the foundation over the years.

Those donating last year whose cumulative contributions total $5 million to $10 million include COPRESIDA, a Dominican Republic government agency formed to fight AIDS, whose donation of $5 million to $10 million passed through the foundation for commodity procurement; the Elton John AIDS Foundation; the Netherlands’ Nationale Postcode Loterij, and the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative - Canada.

Among other 2009 donors:

Story Continues →