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While Hillary Clinton has criticized the sort of financial dealings that were revealed in the Panama Papers leak, it has come to light that the former secretary of state and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have extensive links to those named in the documents.
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Among those named were "Gabrielle Fialkoff, finance director for Hillary Clinton’s first campaign for the U.S. Senate; Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining magnate who has traveled the globe with Bill Clinton; the Chagoury family, which pledged $1 billion in projects to the Clinton Global Initiative; and Chinese billionaire Ng Lap Seng, who was at the center of a Democratic fund-raising scandal when Bill Clinton was president," the Washington Bureau of McClatchy Papers reports.
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Another company using the company founded by the late billionaire investor Marc Rich, an international fugitive who Bill Clinton pardoned him in the final hours of his presidency. In 1983, Rich was indicted on 65 criminal counts, including income tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering, and trading with Iran during the oil embargo, a time when U.S. citizens were being held hostage after the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Had Rich been convicted, he would have been sentenced to 300 years in prison.
Critics say that Rich's pardon had been bought, as his family had donated over US$1 million to the Democratic Party, including US$100,000 to Hillary Clinton's 2000 New York Senate campaign.
Clinton said that a major motivating factor behind his decision to pardon Rich were pleas from Israeli politicians, including former Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Olmert, who was recently convicted of fraud, and noted war criminal Shimon Peres.
Peres' administration oversaw the occupation of Palestine, parts of Syria and Lebanon. In April 1996, Peres initiated a military operation called "Grapes of Wrath," which caused over 400,000 Lebanese to flee their homes, 800 of them to a United Nations base in Qana, South Lebanon.
On April 19, 1996, Israeli forces shelled that UN base, killing 102 civilians — mostly women, children, and the elderly — while injuring many more civilians.
McClatchy approached the Clintons for comment on their connections to those named in the Panama Papers.
"Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon declined to answer specific questions about her connections but referred to Clinton’s earlier comments that criticized the behavior last week. Bill Clinton’s office and the Clinton Foundation declined to comment," McClatchy reports.
Bernie Sanders, Clinton's opponent for the Democratic nomination, has repeatedly condemned financial dealings like those exposed by the Panama Papers, and recently called for treating Palestinians with dignity and respect at a debate with Clinton in New York.
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