Analyst's probe implicates Hillary in foundation fraud

Hillary Clinton

NEW YORK – Although Hillary Clinton was appointed to the board of directors of the Clinton Foundation in 2013, after she had resigned as secretary of state, Wall Street analyst and investor Charles Ortel contends she is complicit in what he has described as systematic financial fraud warranting a criminal investigation.

After months of tedious investigation, Ortel has concluded the foundation has filed financial and tax forms that were materially misleading, incomplete and in error with the goal of enriching the Clintons and their close associates.

Ortel alleges Hillary Clinton advanced an "inurement" scheme – enriching oneself through a nonprofit organization – in complicity with her husband by positioning various key associates within the Clinton Foundation structure while she served as U.S. senator from New York and subsequently as secretary of state under President Obama.

“Ongoing analysis of legally required public disclosures reveals that while Mrs. Clinton served as director, the Clinton Foundation and its principal constituent elements, filed false and materially misleading tax returns with the IRS and with other governmental authorities, for multiple years,” Ortel charges in his second report on alleged Clinton Foundation mismanagement.

WND reported Wednesday that Ortel found the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation's explanation for why it was divided into three, legally separate tax-exempt organizations to be "misleading and false." As WND reported Tuesday, based on Ortel's findings, a prominent lawyer and a top government watchdog in the nation’s capital are calling for the Clinton Foundation to be shut down. In his first report, Ortel found what he characterizes as an elaborate system devised by the Clintons to enrich themselves through schemes such as skimming tens of millions of dollars from U.N. levies imposed on airline travelers.

Ortel writes in his second report that during Hillary Clinton's service as director, the Clinton Foundation "mischaracterized required independent vetting of key financial statement information in these returns as being ‘audits’ of constituent elements within the Clinton Foundation, when they were, in fact, not independent audits, performed by appropriately informed professionals, as is required by applicable federal, state, and foreign laws."

"These wanton transgressions by the Clinton Foundation, while Mrs. Clinton served as director, constitute material and uncured breaches of her duty of care, her duty of obedience, and of her duty of loyalty,” he alleges.

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“Moreover, these illegal acts occurred while the Clinton Foundation continued its regular practice of soliciting the general public to make donations to cover annual operating expenses and during a companion solicitation program to raise a capital endowment.”

The evidence, Ortel believes, should prompt immediate state and federal criminal investigations and the shutting down of the Clinton Foundation shut down from further fundraising while the investigations proceed.

The foundation should be put in receivership and the board of directors replaced to prevent further defrauding of the charitable-giving population, he contends.

“Considering evidence already in the public domain in light of New York and federal laws alone, acts by the Clinton Foundation while Mrs. Clinton served as director constitute multiple counts of financial reporting fraud and of fundraising fraud,” Ortel maintains.

Dennis Cheng

On Feb. 9, 2015, CNN reported Dennis Cheng, the Clinton Foundation’s chief development officer, resigned his position to serve as likely finance director of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

In announcing the move, CNN noted that since joining the Clinton Foundation in 2011, Cheng had raised $248 million for the Clinton Foundation endowment.

Prior to joining the Clinton Foundation, Cheng worked as Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of protocol in the State Department and in her 2008 presidential campaign as New York state finance director.

Ortel said investigators "considering historical and ongoing events concerning the Clinton Foundation and constituent elements will want to review all communications to and from Mr. Cheng that relate to any donations, contributions, or grants sought or obtained, as well as all public solicitation efforts under his direction."

An apparent conflict of interest arises in his duties as chief of protocol at the State Department, which are to schedule and accompany foreign dignitaries, assisting the secretary of state as a "gatekeeper to the president for foreign governments," as Washington Times reporter Jeffrey Scott Shapiro noted in a March 10 article.

Huma Abedin and Doug Band

Hillary Clinton's top assistant and confidant for more than 20 years, Huma Abedin, drew fire in 2013 when Fox News revealed she was working as a consultant at the private firm Teneo that paid her $355,000 while she was earning $135,000 as Clinton’s chief of staff.

Human Abedin and Hillary Clinton

Teneo is a New York-based investment-banking firm co-founded in 2011 by Doug Band, who began working in the Clinton White House in 1995 as an unpaid intern along with then-unpaid intern Cheryl Mills. Band then became President Clinton’s “body man,” from where he moved to the Oval Office to serve as a special assistant to the president.

Band’s biography on the Teneo website credits him as being “the key architect of Clinton’s post-presidency.” It notes Band “created and built the Clinton Global Initiative, which to date has raised 69 billion dollars for 2,100 philanthropic initiatives around the world and impacted over 400 million people in 180 countries.”

“Twelve years earlier, at the age of 27, Band had entered Clinton’s orbit as that lowliest of Washington archetypes: the body man,” wrote Alec MacGillis in a New Republic story Sept. 22, 2013, titled “Scandal at Clinton, Inc.”

“He was the all-purpose aide who carried the bags, provided the pen, watched the clock, kept the cigars close, and ensured the Diet Cokes were always chilled,” MacGillis wrote. “And after the inglorious end of Clinton’s presidency, Band had stayed on. It was he who had engineered Clinton’s transformation into a philanthropist-king, and over the years, the pair had formed a bond that was more like father and son than boss and factotum.”

In 2008, Mike Allen at Politico reported that Band, along with longtime Hillary Clinton associates Bruce Lindsey and Mills, had successfully concluded negotiations with President Obama, represented by John Podesta, for Hillary to be nominated secretary of state.

“Obama’s transition team gave the green light to Clinton’s nomination after lawyers worked out a remarkable agreement addressing potential conflicts of interest for former President Bill Clinton, who has extensive financial ties abroad,” Politico noted. “Most remarkably, the former president agreed to release the long-secret list of 208,000 donors to his presidential library and foundation. As one of nine concessions, he has promised to put out the list by the end of the year.”

In 2012, WND reported Huma Abedin’s Muslim Brotherhood roots, including her work on the editorial board a Saudi-financed Islamic think tank established by her father alongside Abdullah Omar Naseef, secretary-general of the Muslim World League, who has been accused of financing al-Qaida fronts.

Abedin is the wife of former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner of New York, who was forced to resign in disgrace due to a sexting scandal.

WND reported Huma’s father, professor Syed Abedin, was the founder of the Institute for Minority Affairs, a Saudi group that reportedly had the quiet, but active, support of Naseef. Huma’s mother, Saleha, served as the editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, the publication of Syed’s Institute. WND further reported a manifesto commissioned by the Saudi Arabian monarchy effectively places the work of the Abedins' institute at the forefront of a grand plan to mobilize U.S. Muslim minorities to transform America into a Saudi-style Islamic state.

In his second report, Ortel sums up Huma Abedin’s role in the Clinton Foundation scandals.

“A second trusted aide of Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, secured permission to work simultaneously as a Special Government Employee for the U.S. State Department, in an unexplained capacity for the Clinton Foundation, in an unexplained capacity for Teneo Holdings, and in a personal capacity for Mrs. Clinton.”

Ortel said the "unusual arrangements" spanned a period from approximately June 2012 through approximately February 2013.

"Particularly for the period before and after the Annual Meeting for CGI, held in New York City during September 2012, investigators will want to examine Mrs. Abedin’s role in all business attempted or concluded by Teneo Holdings, with any contributor to CGI, and more broadly, her role and that of her relations by blood and by marriage in any business transaction, at any time, with any contributor to any part of the Clinton Foundation, and its constituent elements.”

Ortel noted Band served as a director of the Clinton Global Initiative from 2010 to 2013 while building what became Teneo Holdings "in league with Declan Kelly, who served as U.S. Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland beginning in September 2009, under the direction of Mrs. Clinton when she was Secretary of State.”

He said investigators "will wish to examine closely all business transactions of any type involving Teneo Holding and any contributor or beneficiary of the Clinton Foundation and its constituent entities to determine whether more than insignificant private benefit was created.”