Where All Committie Members Who Reviewed the Uraniam One Deel Dems
Greenbacks Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal
The headline on the website Pravda trumpeted President Vladimir V. Putin'southward latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when its precursor served equally the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: "Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World."
The article, in Jan 2013, detailed how the Russian diminutive energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Primal Asia to the American Westward. The deal made Rosatom one of the world's largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.
Merely the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a old American president and a woman who would similar to be the side by side one.
At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who take been major donors to the charitable endeavors of erstwhile President Beak Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and somewhen sold off to the Russians a company that would become known every bit Uranium One.
Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are amidst the nigh lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production chapters in the United states. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the bargain had to be approved by a commission composed of representatives from a number of United states of america authorities agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the Country Department, then headed past Mr. Clinton's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
As the Russians gradually causeless control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a menstruation of cash made its manner to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium 1'south chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly place all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations too.
And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to larn a majority stake in Uranium I, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.
Image
At the fourth dimension, both Rosatom and the United States government fabricated promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control of the company's assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records prove.
The New York Times's examination of the Uranium Ane deal is based on dozens of interviews, as well equally a review of public records and securities filings in Canada, Russia and the The states. Some of the connections between Uranium One and the Clinton Foundation were unearthed by Peter Schweizer, a sometime fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institution and author of the forthcoming book "Clinton Cash." Mr. Schweizer provided a preview of material in the book to The Times, which scrutinized his information and congenital upon it with its ain reporting.
Whether the donations played any office in the blessing of the uranium deal is unknown. But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed past a old president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his married woman helped steer American foreign policy equally secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation'south donors.
In a argument, Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton's presidential entrada, said no one "has ever produced a shred of show supporting the theory that Hillary Clinton e'er took action as secretary of state to support the interests of donors to the Clinton Foundation." He emphasized that multiple United States agencies, as well as the Canadian government, had signed off on the deal and that, in general, such matters were handled at a level beneath the secretarial assistant. "To suggest the State Section, nether then-Secretary Clinton, exerted undue influence in the U.S. regime'due south review of the sale of Uranium One is utterly baseless," he added.
American political campaigns are barred from accepting foreign donations. Merely foreigners may requite to foundations in the U.s.. In the days since Mrs. Clinton announced her candidacy for president, the Clinton Foundation has announced changes meant to quell longstanding concerns well-nigh potential conflicts of interest in such donations; information technology has express donations from foreign governments, with many, like Russia's, barred from giving to all just its wellness care initiatives. That policy stops brusque of a more stringent agreement between Mrs. Clinton and the Obama assistants that was in outcome while she was secretarial assistant of state.
Either way, the Uranium One deal highlights the limits of such prohibitions. The foundation will continue to accept contributions from foreign sources whose interests, similar Uranium One'southward, may overlap with those of foreign governments, some of which may exist at odds with the U.s..
When the Uranium 1 deal was approved, the geopolitical properties was far dissimilar from today'due south. The Obama administration was seeking to "reset" strained relations with Russian federation. The deal was strategically important to Mr. Putin, who before long later on the Americans gave their blessing sat down for a staged interview with Rosatom'due south chief executive, Sergei Kiriyenko. "Few could have imagined in the past that we would own 20 per centum of U.S. reserves," Mr. Kiriyenko told Mr. Putin.
Now, afterward Russia's annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine, the Moscow-Washington relationship is devolving toward Cold War levels, a betoken several experts made in evaluating a deal so benign to Mr. Putin, a man known to use energy resources to project power around the world.
"Should we exist concerned? Absolutely," said Michael McFaul, who served under Mrs. Clinton as the American ambassador to Russia only said he had been unaware of the Uranium One deal until asked almost it. "Practice we want Putin to have a monopoly on this? Of course nosotros don't. We don't want to be dependent on Putin for anything in this climate."
A Seat at the Table
The path to a Russian conquering of American uranium deposits began in 2005 in Republic of kazakhstan, where the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra orchestrated his first big uranium deal, with Mr. Clinton at his side.
The 2 men had flown aboard Mr. Giustra's private jet to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where they dined with the authoritarian president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev. Mr. Clinton handed the Kazakh president a propaganda coup when he expressed support for Mr. Nazarbayev's bid to head an international elections monitoring group, undercutting American foreign policy and criticism of Kazakhstan's poor human rights tape past, among others, his wife, then a senator.
Inside days of the visit, Mr. Giustra's fledgling company, UrAsia Energy Ltd., signed a preliminary deal giving it stakes in 3 uranium mines controlled by the country-run uranium agency Kazatomprom.
If the Kazakh deal was a major victory, UrAsia did not look long before resuming the hunt. In 2007, it merged with Uranium Ane, a Southward African company with assets in Africa and Commonwealth of australia, in what was described as a $iii.5 billion transaction. The new company, which kept the Uranium One name, was controlled by UrAsia investors including Ian Telfer, a Canadian who became chairman. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Giustra, whose personal stake in the deal was estimated at nearly $45 million, said he sold his stake in 2007.
Shortly, Uranium One began to snap up companies with avails in the United States. In April 2007, information technology appear the purchase of a uranium factory in Utah and more than than 38,000 acres of uranium exploration properties in four Western states, followed chop-chop past the acquisition of the Energy Metals Corporation and its uranium holdings in Wyoming, Texas and Utah. That deal fabricated clear that Uranium Ane was intent on becoming "a powerhouse in the United States uranium sector with the potential to become the domestic supplier of choice for U.Due south. utilities," the company declared.
Image
Yet, the company'south story was hardly front-page news in the United States — until early 2008, in the midst of Mrs. Clinton's failed presidential campaign, when The Times published an article revealing the 2005 trip's link to Mr. Giustra'southward Republic of kazakhstan mining deal. It also reported that several months later, Mr. Giustra had donated $31.3 one thousand thousand to Mr. Clinton'due south foundation.
(In a statement issued after this article appeared online, Mr. Giustra said he was "extremely proud" of his charitable work with Mr. Clinton, and he urged the media to focus on poverty, health care and "the real challenges of the globe.")
Though the 2008 article quoted the former caput of Kazatomprom, Moukhtar Dzhakishev, as saying that the deal required government approval and was discussed at a dinner with the president, Mr. Giustra insisted that it was a private transaction, with no need for Mr. Clinton'southward influence with Kazakh officials. He described his human relationship with Mr. Clinton as motivated solely by a shared interest in philanthropy.
As if to underscore the point, five months later Mr. Giustra held a fund-raiser for the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative, a project aimed at fostering progressive ecology and labor practices in the natural resources industry, to which he had pledged $100 million. The star-studded gala, at a conference heart in Toronto, featured performances by Elton John and Shakira and celebrities like Tom Prowl, John Travolta and Robin Williams encouraging contributions from the many so-called F.O.F.due south — Friends of Frank — in attendance, among them Mr. Telfer. In all, the evening generated $sixteen million in pledges, according to an article in The Globe and Mail.
"None of this would have been possible if Frank Giustra didn't have a remarkable combination of caring and modesty, of vision and energy and iron determination," Mr. Clinton told those gathered, adding: "I beloved this guy, and you should, also."
Simply what had been a string of successes was about to hit a speed crash-land.
Arrest and Progress
By June 2009, a petty over a year afterwards the star-studded evening in Toronto, Uranium One's stock was in gratis-autumn, downward 40 pct. Mr. Dzhakishev, the head of Kazatomprom, had only been arrested on charges that he illegally sold uranium deposits to strange companies, including at least some of those won by Mr. Giustra's UrAsia and now owned past Uranium One.
Publicly, the visitor tried to reassure shareholders. Its chief executive, Jean Nortier, issued a confident statement calling the situation a "complete misunderstanding." He as well contradicted Mr. Giustra's contention that the uranium deal had non required government approving. "When you do a transaction in Kazakhstan, you demand the regime's approval," he said, calculation that UrAsia had indeed received that approval.
Image
Merely privately, Uranium I officials were worried they could lose their joint mining ventures. American diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks also reverberate concerns that Mr. Dzhakishev's arrest was function of a Russian power play for control of Kazakh uranium assets.
At the time, Russia was already eying a stake in Uranium I, Rosatom company documents show. Rosatom officials say they were seeking to larn mines around the world because Russia lacks sufficient domestic reserves to run across its own industry needs.
Information technology was confronting this properties that the Vancouver-based Uranium Ane pressed the American Embassy in Kazakhstan, likewise as Canadian diplomats, to take up its cause with Kazakh officials, according to the American cables.
"We want more than a statement to the printing," Paul Clarke, a Uranium One executive vice president, told the diplomatic mission'south energy officer on June 10, the officeholder reported in a cable. "That is simply chitchat." What the visitor needed, Mr. Clarke said, was official written confirmation that the licenses were valid.
The American Embassy ultimately reported to the secretary of land, Mrs. Clinton. Though the Clarke cable was copied to her, it was given wide apportionment, and it is unclear if she would have read it; the Clinton campaign did not address questions about the cable.
What is clear is that the embassy acted, with the cables showing that the energy officer met with Kazakh officials to discuss the outcome on June x and 11.
Iii days later, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rosatom completed a deal for 17 percent of Uranium One. And within a year, the Russian regime substantially upped the ante, with a generous offer to shareholders that would give information technology a 51 per centum controlling stake. But first, Uranium I had to go the American regime to sign off on the deal.
The Power to Say No
When a visitor controlled past the Chinese government sought a 51 per centum stake in a tiny Nevada gold mining functioning in 2009, it set off a secretive review procedure in Washington, where officials raised concerns primarily about the mine'south proximity to a military installation, but also nigh the potential for minerals at the site, including uranium, to come up under Chinese control. The officials killed the deal.
Such is the ability of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the Usa. The committee comprises some of the nigh powerful members of the cabinet, including the attorney general, the secretaries of the Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce and Energy, and the secretary of state. They are charged with reviewing any deal that could outcome in strange control of an American business or asset deemed important to national security.
The national security issue at stake in the Uranium One deal was not primarily well-nigh nuclear weapons proliferation; the United states of america and Russian federation had for years cooperated on that front, with Russia sending enriched fuel from decommissioned warheads to be used in American nuclear power plants in return for raw uranium.
Instead, information technology concerned American dependence on strange uranium sources. While the United states gets ane-fifth of its electrical power from nuclear plants, it produces merely around 20 percent of the uranium information technology needs, and most plants take just 18 to 36 months of reserves, co-ordinate to Marin Katusa, author of "The Colder War: How the Global Energy Merchandise Slipped From America'due south Grasp."
"The Russians are easily winning the uranium state of war, and nobody'due south talking about it," said Mr. Katusa, who explores the implications of the Uranium One deal in his book. "It's not merely a domestic upshot but a foreign policy outcome, too."
When ARMZ, an arm of Rosatom, took its beginning 17 percent stake in Uranium One in 2009, the two parties signed an agreement, found in securities filings, to seek the foreign investment committee's review. Simply information technology was the 2010 deal, giving the Russians a controlling 51 percent stake, that fix off alarm bells. Four members of the Business firm of Representatives signed a letter of the alphabet expressing business. Two more began pushing legislation to kill the deal.
Senator John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming, where Uranium One'southward largest American operation was, wrote to President Obama, saying the bargain "would give the Russian government control over a sizable portion of America's uranium production capacity."
Prototype
"Every bit alarming," Mr. Barrasso added, "this auction gives ARMZ a pregnant stake in uranium mines in Kazakhstan."
Uranium Ane's shareholders were also alarmed, and were "afraid of Rosatom as a Russian state giant," Sergei Novikov, a company spokesman, recalled in an interview. He said Rosatom'due south chief, Mr. Kiriyenko, sought to reassure Uranium One investors, promising that Rosatom would non break upward the company and would keep the same management, including Mr. Telfer, the chairman. Another Rosatom official said publicly that information technology did non intend to increment its investment beyond 51 percentage, and that information technology envisioned keeping Uranium One a public company
American nuclear officials, too, seemed eager to assuage fears. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission wrote to Mr. Barrasso assuring him that American uranium would be preserved for domestic use, regardless of who owned information technology.
"In order to export uranium from the Us, Uranium One Inc. or ARMZ would demand to employ for and obtain a specific NRC license authorizing the consign of uranium for use every bit reactor fuel," the letter said.
Yet, the ultimate authority to approve or reject the Russian acquisition rested with the cabinet officials on the foreign investment committee, including Mrs. Clinton — whose hubby was collecting millions in donations from people associated with Uranium One.
Undisclosed Donations
Before Mrs. Clinton could assume her post every bit secretary of state, the White Business firm demanded that she sign a memorandum of understanding placing limits on the activities of her husband'south foundation. To avoid the perception of conflicts of involvement, beyond the ban on strange authorities donations, the foundation was required to publicly disembalm all contributors.
To judge from those disclosures — which list the contributions in ranges rather than precise amounts — the but Uranium Ane official to give to the Clinton Foundation was Mr. Telfer, the chairman, and the corporeality was relatively small: no more than than $250,000, and that was in 2007, before talk of a Rosatom bargain began percolating.
Image
But a review of tax records in Canada, where Mr. Telfer has a family charity chosen the Fernwood Foundation, shows that he donated millions of dollars more, during and after the critical time when the foreign investment committee was reviewing his deal with the Russians. With the Russians offer a special dividend, shareholders like Mr. Telfer stood to profit.
His donations through the Fernwood Foundation included $one million reported in 2009, the year his company appealed to the American Embassy to assistance information technology keep its mines in Kazakhstan; $250,000 in 2010, the year the Russians sought majority control; also as $600,000 in 2011 and $500,000 in 2012. Mr. Telfer said that his donations had nothing to do with his business dealings, and that he had never discussed Uranium One with Mr. or Mrs. Clinton. He said he had given the money because he wanted to back up Mr. Giustra's charitable endeavors with Mr. Clinton. "Frank and I take been friends and concern partners for nearly 20 years," he said.
The Clinton campaign left it to the foundation to respond to questions about the Fernwood donations; the foundation did not provide a response.
Mr. Telfer's undisclosed donations came in add-on to betwixt $ane.3 one thousand thousand and $v.6 million in contributions, which were reported, from a constellation of people with ties to Uranium One or UrAsia, the visitor that originally acquired Uranium I'due south nigh valuable asset: the Kazakh mines. Without those assets, the Russians would have had no interest in the bargain: "It wasn't the goal to buy the Wyoming mines. The goal was to acquire the Kazakh assets, which are very good," Mr. Novikov, the Rosatom spokesman, said in an interview.
Amid this influx of Uranium Ane-continued money, Mr. Clinton was invited to speak in Moscow in June 2010, the same month Rosatom struck its bargain for a majority stake in Uranium Ane.
The $500,000 fee — among Mr. Clinton's highest — was paid by Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment depository financial institution with ties to the Kremlin that has invited world leaders, including Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, to speak at its investor conferences.
Renaissance Capital analysts talked up Uranium Ane's stock, assigning it a "buy" rating and maxim in a July 2010 inquiry report that it was "the best play" in the uranium markets. In improver, Renaissance Capital letter turned up that aforementioned year equally a major donor, along with Mr. Giustra and several companies linked to Uranium One or UrAsia, to a small medical charity in Colorado run past a friend of Mr. Giustra'due south. In a newsletter to supporters, the friend credited Mr. Giustra with helping get donations from "businesses around the world."
Image
Renaissance Capital would not comment on the genesis of Mr. Clinton's voice communication to an audience that included leading Russian officials, or on whether it was connected to the Rosatom deal. According to a Russian government news service, Mr. Putin personally thanked Mr. Clinton for speaking.
A person with knowledge of the Clinton Foundation'southward fund-raising functioning, who requested anonymity to speak candidly most it, said that for many people, the hope is that coin volition in fact purchase influence: "Why exercise y'all recollect they are doing it — because they beloved them?" But whether it actually does is another question. And in this case, there were broader geopolitical pressures that likely came into play equally the U.s.a. considered whether to approve the Rosatom-Uranium One bargain.
Diplomatic Considerations
If doing business with Rosatom was good for those in the Uranium One deal, engaging with Russian federation was also a priority of the incoming Obama assistants, which was hoping for a new era of cooperation as Mr. Putin relinquished the presidency — if only for a term — to Dmitri A. Medvedev.
"The assumption was we could engage Russia to further core U.Due south. national security interests," said Mr. McFaul, the one-time ambassador.
It started out well. The two countries made progress on nuclear proliferation issues, and expanded apply of Russian territory to resupply American forces in Afghanistan. Keeping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon was among the United States' tiptop priorities, and in June 2010 Russian federation signed off on a United Nations resolution imposing tough new sanctions on that country.
2 months afterward, the deal giving ARMZ a decision-making stake in Uranium One was submitted to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States for review. Because of the secrecy surrounding the procedure, it is hard to know whether the participants weighed the want to improve bilateral relations against the potential risks of allowing the Russian government control over the biggest uranium producer in the United States. The deal was ultimately approved in Oct, following what 2 people involved in securing the approving said had been a relatively polish process.
Non all of the committee'southward decisions are personally debated by the bureau heads themselves; in less controversial cases, deputy or banana secretaries may sign off. Merely experts and quondam committee members say Russia's interest in Uranium One and its American uranium reserves seemed to warrant attention at the highest levels.
Image
"This bargain had generated press, it had captured the attending of Congress and information technology was strategically important," said Richard Russell, who served on the committee during the George West. Bush-league administration. "When I was at that place invariably any one of those conditions would cause this to get pushed manner upwards the chain, and here y'all had all three."
And Mrs. Clinton brought a reputation for hawkishness to the process; as a senator, she was a vocal critic of the committee'south approval of a bargain that would have transferred the management of major American seaports to a company based in the United Arab Emirates, and as a presidential candidate she had advocated legislation to strengthen the process.
The Clinton campaign spokesman, Mr. Fallon, said that in general, these matters did non ascension to the secretary'south level. He would not comment on whether Mrs. Clinton had been briefed on the matter, but he gave The Times a statement from the former assistant secretary assigned to the foreign investment committee at the time, Jose Fernandez. While not addressing the specifics of the Uranium One deal, Mr. Fernandez said, "Mrs. Clinton never intervened with me on any C.F.I.U.S. matter."
Mr. Fallon also noted that if any agency had raised national security concerns about the Uranium One deal, it could accept taken them directly to the president.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, the Country Department'southward managing director of policy planning at the time, said she was unaware of the transaction — or the extent to which information technology made Russian federation a dominant uranium supplier. Only speaking generally, she urged circumspection in evaluating its wisdom in hindsight.
"Russian federation was not a country nosotros took lightly at the time or thought was cuddly," she said. "But it wasn't the antagonist it is today."
That renewed adversarial relationship has raised concerns about European dependency on Russian energy resource, including nuclear fuel. The unease reaches beyond diplomatic circles. In Wyoming, where Uranium Ane equipment is scattered across his 35,000-acre ranch, John Christensen is frustrated that repeated changes in corporate ownership over the years led to French, South African, Canadian and, finally, Russian control over mining rights on his property.
"I detest to encounter a strange government own mining rights here in the United states of america," he said. "I don't think that should happen."
Mr. Christensen, 65, noted that despite assurances by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that uranium could not get out the country without Uranium One or ARMZ obtaining an export license — which they do not have — yellowcake from his property was routinely packed into drums and trucked off to a processing plant in Canada.
Asked about that, the commission confirmed that Uranium One has, in fact, shipped yellowcake to Canada even though it does not have an export license. Instead, the transport company doing the aircraft, RSB Logistic Services, has the license. A commission spokesman said that "to the best of our knowledge" well-nigh of the uranium sent to Canada for processing was returned for utilize in the United States. A Uranium One spokeswoman, Donna Wichers, said 25 per centum had gone to Western Europe and Japan. At the moment, with the uranium market in a downturn, nothing is existence shipped from the Wyoming mines.
The "no export" assurance given at the time of the Rosatom deal is not the only one that turned out to be less than it seemed. Despite pledges to the opposite, Uranium Ane was delisted from the Toronto Stock Substitution and taken private. As of 2013, Rosatom's subsidiary, ARMZ, owned 100 percent of it.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html
0 Response to "Where All Committie Members Who Reviewed the Uraniam One Deel Dems"
Post a Comment