The Clinton Foundation allegedly required Petra Nemcova’s charity to pony up a $500,000 donation as a condition for Bill Clinton to appear at her celebrity fundraiser last summer in New York City.
A former Dancing With the Stars contestant, supermodel Nemcova , 35, formed the Happy Hearts Fund, which builds schools in areas hit by natural disasters, after surviving the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami while she was in Thailand.
The charity has since built or rebuilt 114 schools in nine countries, primarily in Indonesia.
The Clinton Foundation has come under scrutiny primarily for the huge donations that poured into the non-profit from multinational corporations and foreign countries which were lobbying the U.S. government while 2016 Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State in the Obama administration. Lavish speaking fees paid to the ex-president and his wife have also similarly raised eyebrows in terms of potential favor buying.
According to the New York Times , Bill Clinton was willing to show up at the Petra Nemcova gala commemorating the 10th anniversary of the tsunami to accept an award only after the skids were greased with an invoiced $500,000 donation .
“The former president of the United States agreed to accept a lifetime achievement award at the June 2014 event after Ms. Nemcova offered a $500,000 contribution to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation… Happy Hearts’ former executive director believes the transaction was a quid pro quo, which rerouted donations intended for a small charity with the concrete mission of rebuilding schools after natural disasters to a large foundation with a broader agenda and a budget 100 times bigger. ‘The Clinton Foundation had rejected the Happy Hearts Fund invitation more than once, until there was a thinly veiled solicitation and then the offer of an honorarium,’ said the former executive director, Sue Veres Royal…”
The Clinton Foundation donation apparently represented about 25 percent of the take of the entire Happy Hearts Fund’s glitzy fundraiser, which was “enough to build 10 preschools in Indonesia,” the Times calculated.
“Petra called me and said we have to include an honorarium for him — that they don’t look at these things unless money is offered, and it has to be $500,000,” Royal added.
Both organizations have denied the allegation and claimed that they are partnering on unspecified projects in Haiti, which is still rebuilding after the 2010 earthquake. Parenthetically, the effectiveness of the Clinton Foundation’s role in the recovery has also come under criticism .
The Clinton Foundation is also apparently involved to some degree in the international soccer corruption investigation underway by the U.S. Justice Department. “The fast-moving FIFA bribery scandal now has a Clinton connection, after news that the nation of Qatar and its 2022 World Cup organizing committee — and even FIFA itself — donated between $1.3 million and $5.55 million to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation,” the Daily Mail claimed .
Following the latest Clinton Foundation revelation, Petra Nemcova’s organization subsequently threatened legal action against Sue Veres Royal, the former executive director, Fox News reported . “Royal received a cease-and-desist order Friday from legal representatives of the Happy Hearts Fund, saying that her contributions to the Times article amounted to a violation of a confidentiality agreement she had entered into.”
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