NEW YORK – As the U.S. presses for an agreement that could
allow Iran to become a nuclear-weapons power, Hillary Clinton’s receipt of
funds from the mullah-led Islamic regime and her hiring of a convicted
Iranian-American multimillionaire with ties to Tehran as her national campaign
finance director in 2008 could become an issue if she runs for president again.
The Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea
Clinton Foundation accepted $30,000
between April 2005 and March 2006
and another contribution of between
$25,000 and $50,000 in 2008 from the New
York-based Alavi Foundation.
U.S. government prosecutors have identified the foundation
as an arm of the Iranian government.
For her 2008 presidential campaign, Clinton
hired Hassan Nemazee as her national campaign finance director, who was known for his efforts to normalize relations with
the theocratic Iranian regime. In 2010, Nemazee pleaded guilty to running a
Ponzi scheme in which he obtained $292 million in fraudulent loans.
Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for
Democracy, spelled out the problem with the Clinton Foundation receiving funds
from the Alavi Foundation in a Jan. 5, 2009, article published by Forbes.
“Alavi’s contribution [in 2008] to Clinton came just two
days after the Treasury Department also designated Alavi’s partner, the New
York-based Assa Corp., as a terrorist entity, and the New York Southern
District’s attorney seized and forfeited its assets,” Ehrenfeld wrote.
Then, in September 2013, Preet
Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York announced
that U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest had issued a decision granting
summary judgment in favor of the United States’
claims for forfeiture of a 36-story Midtown Manhattan office building owned by
the Alavi Foundation and Assa Corp.
The feds charged the building’s owners were “a front for the
Iranian government” that had violated in conjunction with Bank Melli Iran the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act, IEEPA, and federal
money-laundering statutes.
In October 2007, Bank Melli was designated
a terrorist funding organization under Executive Order 13382. Iran’s largest bank was providing services to Iranian
entities involved in creating nuclear weapons and advancing Iran’s ballistic
missile programs in conjunction with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
On April 19, 2014, the U.S. Justice Department agreed to
distribute the proceeds of the Manhattan office building to victims of attacks
by Iran-backed militants.
Hillary’s Iranian fundraiser
Hillary Clinton inherited Nemazee, the multimillionaire
Iranian-American investment banker and top Democratic Party fundraiser, from
John Kerry. In 2004, Nemazee served as the New York finance chairman for
Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign after serving as finance chairman of the
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
During the 2004 presidential campaign, Nemazee’s history of
urging the United States to normalize diplomatic relationships with the
theocratic regime ruling Iran, despite Iran’s continued alleged pursuit of
nuclear weapons, caused anti-mullah Iranian activists in the U.S. to accuse
Nemazee of being an agent of the Iranian government.
On Oct. 18, 2004, WND attended a deposition in New York City
in which Nemazee was questioned under oath by legal counsel for Aryo Pirouznia,
the leader of the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in
Iran.
Nemazee had sued Pirouznia in a $10 million defamation suit
in which Nemazee charged that Pirouznia had defamed him by calling him an agent
of the religious clerics ruling Iran.
Pirouznia had charged that Nemazee was utilizing his
resources, including investment funds Nemazee managed in Nemazee Capital Corp.,
to further the interests of the religious rulers in Tehran in the formation of
U.S. foreign policy toward Iran.
The lawsuit was ultimately settled out of court.
On Sept. 30, 2004, in the first nationally televised
presidential debate with President George W. Bush, Kerry said the U.S. should
provide nuclear fuel to Iran to test them and “see whether or not they were
actually looking for it for peaceful purposes.”
It was basically the same strategy the Clinton
administration tried with North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung in 1994 under an
“Agreed Framework” in which the Clinton administration handed over to North
Korea enough nuclear fuel to run two nuclear power plants.
After the delivery of the nuclear fuel by the Clinton
administration, Kim withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and
proceeded to make nuclear warheads for North Korea’s Nodong missiles.
On Aug. 25, 2009, federal law enforcement authorities in New
York City arrested Nemazee as he was attempting to board a flight to Rome,
Italy, at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and charged him
with engaging in criminal fraud for his role in arranging a $74 million loan
from Citibank.
U.S. Attorney Bharara in New York
City and the FBI told Dow Jones
Newswires the then-59-year-old Nemazee
applied for the Citibank loans for Nemazee Capital Corp. by giving Citibank
“numerous documents that purported to establish the existence of accounts in
Nemazee’s name at various financial institutions containing many hundreds of
millions of dollars.”
According
to the criminal complaint released by Bharara,
the accounts Nemazee submitted in the loan documentation were “fraudulent and
forged” and “either never existed or had been closed years before Nemazee
submitted the documents referencing those accounts.”
The complaint alleged Nemazee’s fraudulent scheme began in
December 2006, when he first approached Citibank to borrow $25 million. He
subsequently raised the sum to $80 million.
On March 2010, Nemazee, then 60, plead
guilty in federal court to charges of fraudulently applying for and receiving
some $292 million in loans as chairman of
Nemazee Capital from Citicorp, Bank of America and HSBC. The proceeds were used
to buy property in Westchester County, make campaign contributions to
Democratic Party politicians, donate to charity and to support his lavish
society lifestyle.
On July 15, 2010, U.S. District
Judge Sidney H. Stein in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of
New York sentenced
Nemazee to serve 12 ½ years in federal prison on multiple federal criminal
counts of bank and wire fraud.
Nemazee’s history with Democratic Party politics stretches
back to the Clinton administration.
In 1998, President Clinton nominated
Nemazee to be ambassador to Argentina, a nomination Clinton withdrew after
Forbes magazine published
an extremely damaging review of Nemazee’s business career.
On May 3, 1999, Forbes wrote:“Over the past four years
Nemazee and his family have given more than $150,000 to Democratic politicians
and the DNC. Six of Nemazee’s friends and relatives have given $10,000 apiece –
the maximum allowable per year – to Bill Clinton’s legal defense
http://www.wnd.com/2015/03/hillary-has-history-of-iranian-fundraising-to-explain/
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