OCP is the mining company, and it’s been criticized for “serious human rights violations.” Politico’s Ken Vogel reported on the ties between the Moroccon government (including OCP) and the Clintons:
[T]he Clintons have had a long — and lucrative — relationship with Morocco. Moroccan King Mohammed VI, who was traveling abroad during last week’s CGI meeting in Marrakech, nonetheless loaned one of his palaces to Bill and Chelsea Clinton to stay in during the meeting, according to attendees. The king was listed on a donor roll as having pledged as much as $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation to help build Bill Clinton’s presidential library (though the foundation says the donation never came through), while the state firm OCP has donated as much as $6 million over the years to the Clinton Foundation’s efforts. Both Clintons have publicly embraced the king in recent years as an example of an Arab moderate ruler with whom the U.S. should partner, and leaked Moroccan diplomatic cables show that Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state was seen by Rabat as among its most ardent supporters in the Obama administration.
But here’s another interesting detail on OCP: U.S. taxpayers gave the state-owned company a $92 million loan guarantee last year through the Export-Import Bank, so that OCP would buy equipment from a politically connected U.S. firm called Holtec.
I wrote about this subsidy last year:
OCP is Morocco’s state-owned phosphate-mining company. Citibank is a major U.S. bank. Holtec and Westech are two major U.S. equipment makers. You might think that the Kingdom of Morocco, a megabank, and two big manufacturers could figure out the financing of mining equipment without the aid of Uncle Sam.
But no, the U.S. taxpayers are guaranteeing this $92 million loan from Citi to the Moroccan state-owned company.
Ex-Im Exposed first made the connection between OCP’s Clinton ties and its subsidy.
