A Chinese firm with extremely close ties to China’s internal security department is among the largest donors to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, a revelation that recalls the former president’s multiple campaign finance scandals involving illegal Asian money.
“Rilin Enterprises pledged $2 million in 2013 to the Clinton Foundation’s endowment. The company is a privately-held Chinese construction and trade conglomerate and run by billionaire Wang Wenliang, who is also a delegate to the Chinese parliament,” CBS News reported Monday.
“Public records show the firm has spent $1.4 million since 2012, lobbying Congress and the State Department. The firm owns a strategic port along the border with North Korea and was also one of the contractors that built the Chinese embassy in Washington.”
Foreign nations typically rely only on firms with extremely close ties to government intelligence elements to build overseas embassies.
Security expert Jim Mann told CBS that with “embassy construction, one of the most important tasks is making sure that there are no bugs there. So you want to have the closest security and intelligence connections with and approval of the person or company that’s going to build your embassy.”
A company spokesman said Wenliang makes many charitable contributions every year and the $2 million to the Clinton Foundation was just one of multiple donations he made in 2013.
The Rilin revelation comes amid growing controversy about the Clinton Foundation receiving millions of dollars in contributions from foreign governments, corporations and individuals. A CBS News analysis estimated that the Clinton Foundation received more than $170 million from such foreign sources.
The Washington Examiner reported Monday that among the foundation’s foreign donors in 2014 was reclusive Swiss billionaire Hans Wyss, whose former company staged illegal drug trials that killed three people. The company reached a $24 billion settlement with the Justice Department and four of its top executives, though not Wyss, went to federal prison.
Allegations of questionable contributions from sources linked to the Chinese government during the 1996 campaign sparked a lengthy investigation by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, led by then-chairman Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn.
Thompson’s panel “uncovered strong circumstantial evidence that the Government of the People’s Republic of China was involved in funding, directing or encouraging” millions of dollars in contributions to Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign.
The Democratic National Committee was at the center of the Clinton campaign’s re-election funding and was overseen on a daily basis by Harold Ickes, then-deputy White House chief of staff.
“The Democratic National Committee was ultimately forced to return $2,825,600 in illegal or improper donations,” Thompson’s panel said in its final report. “Of this total amount, almost 80 percent was either raised or contributed by two men – John Huang and Charlie Trie. Strikingly, both men were longtime friends of President Clinton, and both were in positions to raise large campaign contributions because of their personal relationships with the president.”
Ickes remains a close Clinton confidant and is an adviser to the Ready for Hillary Super PAC. He is expected to play a key role in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign once she officially announces it and to be prominent in her administration if she is elected.
Huang pleaded the Fifth Amendment when questioned by the committee and refused to cooperate with congressional investigators in any way. Trie fled to China when his illegal fundraising activities became the subject of media interest.
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.
