A Kazakh official involved in brokering a controversial mining deal for a major Clinton Foundation donor is behind bars for his role in the transaction, undercutting a Clinton campaign “fact-check” that attempted to dismiss ethical questions about the former president’s ties to the lucrative contract.
Hillary for America and the Clinton-aligned group Media Matters pushed back on allegations that the Clintons had used their political clout to drum up millions in foundation donations and speaking fees by furthering the financial interests of friends in the wake of Tuesday’s publication of Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash.
Schweizer dedicated an entire chapter to a 2005 deal in which Bill Clinton allegedly helped his friend Frank Giustra break into a fiercely competitive uranium market, setting the stage for the high-profile takeover of mining conglomerate Uranium One by Russia.
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In response to a spate of stories questioning whether Giustra’s hefty donations to the Clinton Foundation influenced Hillary Clinton’s position on the Uranium One deal, Giustra released a statement denying his involvement with the company.
He also claimed Bill Clinton “had nothing to do with the purchase of private mining stakes by a Canadian company,” as Schweizer and others have suggested.
“That’s just dead wrong,” said Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, in a video released Wednesday. “The main donor he’s talking about sold his stake in the company two years before Hillary Clinton even became secretary of state.”
Giustra had to step down from UrAsia’s board when Uranium One acquired it in 2007 so his company could “pursue this transaction without any perception of conflict” because he was serving simultaneously as its financial advisor thanks to his position as chairman of Endeavour Financial.
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Giustra noted in his statement that he sold his shares “at least 18 months before Hillary Clinton became the secretary of state. No one was speculating at that time that she would become the secretary of state.”
“Schweizer spins a tale that in 2010, then-Secretary Clinton pushed the State Department to approve the sale of Uranium One to the Russian government in order to benefit a stakeholder who had donated to the Clinton Foundation,” Hillary for America said in its pushback.
The campaign “fact-check” highlighted the fact that Giustra sold his stake “three years prior to the sale” of Uranium One to Russia.
But Giustra’s firm, Endeavour Financial, remained Uranium One’s financial advisor well after its acquisition of UrAsia, casting doubt on assertions that he severed his ties to the company before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state.
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Giustra’s claim that Bill Clinton played no role in helping UrAsia win mining rights in Kazakhstan in 2005 contradicts what at least one Kazakh official has said about the nature of both Clintons’ involvement.
Mukhtar Dzhakishev, the Kazakh official in charge of the country’s uranium and nuclear industry, claimed then-Sen. Hillary Clinton had “pressured Kazakh officials to secure a deal for the Canadians” by refusing to meet with the prime minister when he was in the U.S., according to Schweizer.
In 2008, Dzhakishev also said Bill Clinton, Frank Giustra and Kazakh President Nazarbayev discussed the mining deal at a banquet just days before UrAsia acquired significant stakes in three mines, although both Giustra and Bill Clinton deny those conversations.
Dzhakishev was among the key officials whose approval UrAsia would have needed to complete the transaction.
Giustra’s company managed to secure a deal that industry insiders deemed a “mystery” less than 48 hours after he and Bill Clinton wrapped up their trip to Kazakhstan.
Mining analysts questioned the arrangement that allowed UrAsia to become “a major uranium producer when it didn’t even exist before.”
Giustra later gave $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation.
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The deal faced renewed scrutiny in May 2009 when Dzhakishev was arrested for arranging corrupt uranium transactions with foreign companies.
“Authorities singled out the sale of a 30-per-cent stake in Kyzylkum that was allegedly sold for little more than $100,000 in 2005,” the Globe and Mail reported the week after Dzhakishev was arrested.
That 30 percent stake was among the assets UrAsia acquired with Bill Clinton’s alleged assistance, and belonged to Uranium One at the time Hillary Clinton’s State Department allowed it to be bought by the Russian government.
Representatives of Uranium One assured media outlets in 2009 that UrAsia had paid $75 million for the mining stake in question.
“This is just a big misunderstanding, that’s all it is,” Jean Nortier, Uranium One’s CEO, told the Toronto Star.
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However, Giustra was unable to identify who had sold him the mining stakes after Dzhakishev came under fire.
Canadian securities documents showed a company called the Jeffcott Group, registered in the British Virgin Islands, had owned the disputed stake before UrAsia bought it in 2005.
Giustra told the Globe and Mail he had only been in contact with a representative from Jeffcott during the transaction and said he was “never privy to the Jeffcott purchase price.”
According to the World Bank’s Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative, Dzhakishev and a friend, Mukhtar Ablyazov, teamed up to form Jeffcott in a scheme to profit off mining deals like the one with UrAsia.
Ablyazov, who was then head of a state-controlled bank and was reportedly Dzhakishev’s college roommate, allegedly created Jeffcott and other offshore companies in order to put together joint ventures into which Dzhakishev shifted government-owned mining stakes.
Giustra later purchased the mining stakes in those joint ventures.
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By March of last year, the scandal surrounding Dzhakishev threatened Uranium One’s rights to the mines Giustra had purchased.
Two of the three mining properties involved in the 2005 UrAsia deal came from Ablyazov, the former Kazakh energy minister who spent about a year behind bars for corruption before Nazarbayev pardoned him in 2003, according to Bloomberg.
In 2010, Dzhakishev was sentenced to 14 years in prison for the scandal.
Just three years before he ended up behind bars, however, Dzhakishev was sitting down with Bill Clinton and Giustra at the former president’s Chappaqua, New York home.
Dzhakishev traveled for the meeting to discuss Kazakhstan’s interest in a U.S. company the same month Uranium One took over UrAsia, the New York Times reported in 2008.
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“Both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Giustra at first denied that any such meeting occurred. Mr. Giustra also denied ever arranging for Kazakh officials to meet with Mr. Clinton. Wednesday, after The Times told them that others said a meeting, in Mr. Clinton’s home, had in fact taken place, both men acknowledged it,” the Times wrote in January of that year.
The report also notes Giustra’s company sent an engineering consultant to Kazakhstan to scope out the mines in 2005, just four weeks before he and Bill Clinton headed to the country for the former president’s first trip there since leaving the White House.
That Kazakhstan trip was arranged “hastily” on “last-minute notice,” the Times reported.
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