That’s the running theory. The latest angry outburst from former U.S. President Bill Clinton was in response to an article in Vanity Fair magazine, detailing the Clinton’s many shady connections to backroom deals and his “intemperate manner of speaking.”
The Kazakhstan connection here is that infamous handshake Clinton arranged for Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra with Nusultan Nazarbayev in exchange for a large donation to his NGO. The meeting between Giustra and Nazarbayev resulted in Giustra’s company getting a major stake in Uranium mining rights. Uranium appears to be at the center of Kazakhstan’s rush onto the world stage as a legitimate economic and resource player, making Clinton a lynchpin figure for the country’s further development prospects.
Granted, it is a stretch to say BoratGate (I am so so so sorry, but I couldn’t help myself) actually sank Hillary’s campaign all by itself. But it was another cog on the wheel of their Schroeder-like dealings. And shame on Bill Clinton for not having the dignity to pander to legitimate patrons, like the Saudi Royal family, or Japan.
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I think you are right–Clinton’s Kazakh scandal may well have played a role in persuading Democratic superdelegates to choose Obama…It was reported in the NY Times and repeaded by Purdum in Vanity Fair, hardly right-wing rags.
I think you are right–Clinton’s Kazakh scandal may well have played a role in persuading Democratic superdelegates to choose Obama…It was reported in the NY Times and repeated by Purdum in Vanity Fair, hardly right-wing rags.
Our firm in Vancouver works for Mr Frank Giustra on communications issues.
Your rehashing of Vanity Fair’s recent coverage of Bill Clinton with respect to former President Clinton’s relationship with Frank Giustra and the latter’s business transactions in Kazakhstan merely perpetuates misinformation and factual errors about Frank Giustra.
Nowhere in your blog posting do you mention that Vanity Fair’s description of Frank Giustra relies exclusively on an extremely erroneous and innuendo-filled description of Mr. Giustra and his relationship with Former President Bill Clinton that comes from a many months old and inaccurate New York Times article.
In fact, Vanity Fair never bothered to perform basic journalistic responsibilities and directly contact Frank Giustra, or make any effort to check the ample corrective public information available about Frank Giustra that has appeared subsequent to the New York Times article for accuracy.
Contrary to the errors and innuendo which you have rehashed, here are the key facts:
- The mining agreements Frank Giustra’s company reached in Kazakhstan had nothing to do with Mr. Giustra’s relationship with Former President Clinton. As Mr. Giustra has publicly stated multiple times, these mining agreements were concluded after many months of negotiations that were ongoing well before Bill Clinton’s visit to the country. These negotiations were conducted with private companies — not the Kazakhstan government – and the agreements that were reached involved market value payment for the assets involved.
- Frank Giustra has never needed or used Bill Clinton to assist him with his business transactions. There is more than ample information in the public domain which demonstrates that Mr. Giustra had a 25-year track record of conducting highly successful international business transactions long before he ever even met Former President Clinton. To suggest that Frank Giustra somehow needed Bill Clinton’s help in his business transactions is completely off-base.
- Where Bill Clinton has been enormously helpful to Frank Giustra has been in helping Mr. Giustra globalize his longstanding philanthropic interests. The relationship between Frank Giustra and Former President Clinton is based solely on their shared global philanthropic interests, nothing more and nothing less. Importantly, Frank Giustra and Former President Clinton have communicated, with detailed specificity to the public, their shared charitable causes, the amounts contributed by Mr. Giustra and how they will be deployed in support of global AIDS work as well as poverty alleviation and economic sustainability in developing world countries. To suggest, as you do, that there was some sort of connection between Frank Giustra’s business activities and his philanthropic work is baseless and totally untrue.
Norm Stowe
Managing Partner, Pace Group
Our firm in Vancouver works for Mr Frank Giustra on communications issues.
Your rehashing of Vanity Fair’s recent coverage of Bill Clinton with respect to former President Clinton’s relationship with Frank Giustra and the latter’s business transactions in Kazakhstan merely perpetuates misinformation and factual errors about Frank Giustra.
Nowhere in your blog posting do you mention that Vanity Fair’s description of Frank Giustra relies exclusively on an extremely erroneous and innuendo-filled description of Mr. Giustra and his relationship with Former President Bill Clinton that comes from a many months old and inaccurate New York Times article.
In fact, Vanity Fair never bothered to perform basic journalistic responsibilities and directly contact Frank Giustra, or make any effort to check the ample corrective public information available about Frank Giustra that has appeared subsequent to the New York Times article for accuracy.
Contrary to the errors and innuendo which you have rehashed, here are the key facts:
- The mining agreements Frank Giustra’s company reached in Kazakhstan had nothing to do with Mr. Giustra’s relationship with Former President Clinton. As Mr. Giustra has publicly stated multiple times, these mining agreements were concluded after many months of negotiations that were ongoing well before Bill Clinton’s visit to the country. These negotiations were conducted with private companies — not the Kazakhstan government – and the agreements that were reached involved market value payment for the assets involved.
- Frank Giustra has never needed or used Bill Clinton to assist him with his business transactions. There is more than ample information in the public domain which demonstrates that Mr. Giustra had a 25-year track record of conducting highly successful international business transactions long before he ever even met Former President Clinton. To suggest that Frank Giustra somehow needed Bill Clinton’s help in his business transactions is completely off-base.
- Where Bill Clinton has been enormously helpful to Frank Giustra has been in helping Mr. Giustra globalize his longstanding philanthropic interests. The relationship between Frank Giustra and Former President Clinton is based solely on their shared global philanthropic interests, nothing more and nothing less. Importantly, Frank Giustra and Former President Clinton have communicated, with detailed specificity to the public, their shared charitable causes, the amounts contributed by Mr. Giustra and how they will be deployed in support of global AIDS work as well as poverty alleviation and economic sustainability in developing world countries. To suggest, as you do, that there was some sort of connection between Frank Giustra’s business activities and his philanthropic work is baseless and totally untrue.
Norm Stowe
Managing Partner, Pace Group
We should all thank Mr Stowe for a bit of light entertainment!
No one would doubt that the agreements were negotiated well in advance of Bill Clinton’s visit. But in Kazakhstan, at this level, nothing means anything until it has Daddy’s approval . . which was given after and only after Giustra had demonstrated that he was not a two-bit deal-chaser (like so many in the mining business) but in fact a weighty global power-broker, so powerful that he could bring Bill Clinton all the way to Almaty! The fact that the deal was not discussed at the meeting with Nazza (as I am sure it was not) is completely irrelevant. Jakishev’s presence at the meeting was enough to show what the not-so-subtext was.
It is interesting that a firm being paid by Frank Guistra is bothering with this — it is quite obvious Mr Stowe is trying to defend here not Clinton but Guistra. Guistra comes out of all of this looking terrific, as far as I am concerned. He got himself in position to get a valuable uranium concession — no easy feat — and then he got Bill Clinton there to help seal the deal. And to do it, he did nothing remotely sleazy — he gave huge amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation which I am sure will be used, more or less, for good causes. And for all of this he has earned himself a vastly larger sum of money.
So hats off to Guistra for his business acumen and massive success, gained while staying well within the boundaries of acceptable business ethics.
But to get back to the point of the original post — a Bronx cheer for Bill Clinton, whose behaviour stinks to high heaven and completely destroyed on of Hillary’s main talking points — the (ridiculous) idea that she was a safe choice because she had already been “vetted.”
-Bakinets
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