The corruption of the Clintons

Hillary’s Latest Headache: Skolkovo

Zero Hedge,

1 August,2016

The subject of Russia’s influence in American politics has been a hot topic of late, particularly as the MSM continues to link Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin and the DNC hack. However, a report published by the Government Accountability Institute presents a new twist in the Kremlin-US political ties. It all started with the 2009 “Russian reset” touted by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

As detailed in a WSJ op-ed by Peter Schweizer (author of the GAI report), after President Obama visited Russia in 2009, both nations agreed to “identifying areas of cooperation and pursuing joint projects and actions that strengthen strategic stability, international security, economic well-being, and the development of ties between the Russian and American people.”

One such project was Skolkovo, an “innovation city” of 30,000 people on the outskirts of Moscow, billed as Russia’s version of Silicon Valley. As chief diplomat, Hillary was in charge of courting US companies to invest in this new Russian city. Russia, on the other hand, had committed to spend $5 billion over the next three years (2009-12).


Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

As Schweizer continues, “soon, dozens of U.S. tech firms, including top Clinton Foundation donors like Google, Intel and Cisco, made major financial contributions to Skolkovo, with Cisco committing a cool $1 billion. In May 2010, the State Department facilitated a Moscow visit by 22 of the biggest names in U.S. venture capital—and weeks later the first memorandums of understanding were signed by Skolkovo and American companies.

By 2012 the vice president of the Skolkovo Foundation, Conor Lenihan—who had previously partnered with the Clinton Foundation—recorded that Skolkovo had assembled 28 Russian, American and European “Key Partners.”

Of the 28 “partners,” 17, or 60%, have made financial commitments to the Clinton Foundation, totaling tens of millions of dollars, or sponsored speeches by Bill Clinton…

Russians tied to Skolkovo also flowed funds to the Clinton Foundation. Andrey Vavilov, the chairman of SuperOx, which is part of Skolkovo’s nuclear-research cluster, donated between $10,000 and $25,000 (donations are reported in ranges, not exact amounts) to the Clinton’s family charity”

Thus far, this should not be surprising. It is yet another instance of crony capitalism that has so well characterized the Clintons over the years. However, as US intelligence agencies including the FBI were soon to find out, the Russian Silicon Valley served other purposes as well.

More from the WSJ op-ed: “The state-of-the-art technological research coming out of Skolkovo raised alarms among U.S. military experts and federal law-enforcement officials. Research conducted in 2012 on Skolkovo by the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Program at Fort Leavenworth declared that the purpose of Skolkovo was to serve as a “vehicle for world-wide technology transfer to Russia in the areas of information technology, biomedicine, energy, satellite and space technology, and nuclear technology.”Moreover, the report said: “the Skolkovo Foundation has, in fact, been involved in defense-related activities since December 2011, when it approved the first weapons-related project—the development of a hypersonic cruise missile engine. . . . Not all of the center’s efforts are civilian in nature…”

“The FBI believes the true motives of the Russian partners, who are often funded by their government, is to gain access to classified, sensitive, and emerging technology from the companies. The [Skolkovo] foundation may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial application.”


As Schweizer concludes:

Even if it could be proven that these tens of millions of dollars in Clinton Foundation donations by Skolkovo’s key partners played no role in the Clinton State Department’s missing or ignoring obvious red flags about the Russian enterprise, the perception would still be problematic. (Neither the Clinton campaign nor the Clinton Foundation responded to requests for comment.) What is known is that the State Department recruited and facilitated the commitment of billions of American dollars in the creation of a Russian “Silicon Valley” whose technological innovations include Russian hypersonic cruise-missile engines, radar surveillance equipment, and vehicles capable of delivering airborne Russian troops.

A Russian reset, indeed.

Naturally, the Hillary campaign did not reply to any requests from Schweizer on the report. But we are comfortable that HRC’s response would likely be along the lines “what difference at this point does it make?”

Hillary hypocrisy: her campaign chairman John Podesta received $35 million from Russian government

Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta sat on the executive board of a Russian energy company called Joule Unlimited.

the Duran,

1 August,2016

Karma hits fast. Just one day after Hilary Clinton upped the ante by officially blaming Russia for the DNC hack, and publicly saying that Donald Trump is in Putin’s pocket, news breaks today that Hillary’s campaign chairman John Podesta sat on the board of a Russian energy company that received $35 million in venture funding from a “Putin-connected” fund.

Best part of it all… John Podesta somehow failed to fully disclose his participation and compensation on his federal financial disclosures, as is required by US law.
Hillary’s latest hypocrisy is one of the many revelations from a 56-page report released late Sunday titled “From Russia with Money: Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset, and Cronyism” by the non-partisan government watchdog group, the Government Accountability Institute (GAI).

The New York Post and the Wall Street Journal ran stories on the released report late Sunday evening.

Under normal circumstances one would not care if Hillary’s campaign chairman did business in Russia, he is free to do so.

Why this matters is because for Hillary progressive liberals, when Trump even mentions the word “Russia”, he is a Putin patsy. When Hillary, and high ranking members of her team, are doing business in Russia, sitting on the board of Russian companies, which are tied to government investments…well that’s perfectly acceptable.
Breitbart reports…

As part of her duties during the so-called Russian reset, then-Sec. of State Hillary Clinton led the way on U.S. involvement in a Russian government technology initiative that was intended to be the Russian equivalent of America’s Silicon Valley known as Skolkovo. The “innovation city,” located outside Moscow, has some 30,000 workers in state-of-the-art facilities under strict government control. As Slate described it in 2013, “In some ways, Skolkovo is eerily reminiscent of Soviet utopian city-building projects.”

According to the GAI report, Clinton’s State Dept. recruited U.S. tech giants like Google, Cisco, Intel. Indeed, out of 28 U.S., European, and Russian companies that participated in Skolkovo, 17 of them were Clinton Foundation donors or paid for speeches by Bill Clinton.

However, as involvement in Skolkovo by Clinton cronies increased, so, too, did the danger for the technology coming out of the Russian tech mecca to be used for Russian military purposes.

In 2014, the FBI issued what it called “an extraordinary warning” to several technology companies involved with Skolkovo. “The [Skolkovo] foundation may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial application,” warned Lucia Ziobro, the assistant special agent at the FBI’s Boston office. She added: “The FBI believes the true motives of the Russian partners, who are often funded by the government, is to gain access to classified, sensitive, and emerging technology from the companies.”

Still, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta sat on the executive board of a small energy company called Joule Unlimited. Joule, too, received the FBI letter warning about Skolkovo. Other Joule board members included senior Russian officials. According to the GAI report: “Two months after Podesta joined the board, Vladimir Putin’s Rusnano announced that it would invest up to one billion rubles into Joule Unlimited, which amounts to $35 million. That represents one-fifth of the entire amount of investment dollars Joule collected from 2007 to 2013.”

Rusnano, which former Russian education and science minister and current science advisor to Vladmir Putin Andrei Fursenko describes as “Putin’s child,” was founded by Putin in 2007.

The GAI investigative report says it’s unclear how much, if any, money Podesta made. The reason: Podesta was on the board of three Joule entities, but only listed two on his disclosure; the most important entity, Joule Stichting, he did not list. “Podesta’s compensation by Joule cannot be fully determined,” reads the report. “In his 2014 federal government disclosure filing, Podesta lists that he divested stock options from Joule. However, the disclosure does not cover the years 2011-2012.”

Why Podesta failed to reveal, as required by law on his federal financial disclosures, his membership on the board of this offshore company is presently unknown.

“But the flows of funds from Russia during the ‘reset’ to Podesta-connected entities apparently didn’t end with Joule Energy,” the report states. According to the GAI report, Podesta’s far-left think tank, Center for American Progress (CAP), took in $5.25 million from the Sea Change Foundation between 2010-2013.

Who was funding Sea Change Foundation? According to tax records, Sea Change Foundation at the time was receiving a large infusion of funds from a mysterious Bermuda-based entity called ‘Klein, Ltd.’…Who owns Klein? It is impossible to say exactly, given corporate secrecy laws in Bermuda. But the registered agent and lawyers who set up the offshore entity are tied to a handful of Russian business entities including Troika Dialog, Ltd. Leadership includes Ruben Vardanyan, an ethnic Armenian who is a mega oligarch in Putin’s Russia. Vardanyan also served on the board of Joule Energy with John Podesta.

The FBI and U.S. Army sounded the alarm bells about Skolkovo being a threatening pathway for Russia to accelerate its military technological capabilities.

Via: http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/08/01/report-hillary-clintons-campaign-mgr-john-podesta-sat-board-company-bagged-35-million-putin-connected-russian-govt-fund-2/