Former President Bill Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative Asia Meeting in Hong Kong on Dec. 2. (Kin Cheung/The Associated Press)

TRANSITION IN WASHINGTON

Bill Clinton lifts veil from foundation's donor list

WASHINGTON: The governments of Saudi Arabia and Norway, the Dubai Foundation and the businessmen Bill Gates, Stephen Bing, Haim Saban and Robert Johnson are among the biggest financial backers of former President Bill Clinton's foundation over the last decade, according to a complete donor list published Thursday for the first time.

Lifting a longstanding cloak of secrecy, Clinton disclosed the names of more than 200,000 donors to his foundation as part of an agreement negotiated with President-elect Barack Obama to douse concerns about potential conflicts of interest if Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is confirmed as secretary of state.

The donor list, posted on the Web site of the William J. Clinton Foundation, www.clintonfoundation.org, indicates that his organization accepted multimillion-dollar gifts from a variety of foreign governments, companies and individuals who might have an interest in U.S. foreign policy.

Many of these were known, and it was not immediately clear whether the disclosure of others might pose a diplomatic or political problem to any foreign donors.

The foundation raised $500 million over the last decade to pay for Clinton's presidential library and his philanthropic activities.

Federal law does not require a former president to reveal his foundation's financial benefactors and Clinton had previously declined to do so, arguing that many who gave expected confidentiality. But when Obama asked Hillary Clinton to join his cabinet, the former president agreed to release his list as part of an agreement intended to keep his multifaceted activities from compromising his wife's prospective work.

Bill Clinton's advocates said the publication of the list showed that he had nothing to hide. The foundation said that its median gift since its inception came to $45.

The list does not detail the precise amounts of the donations, nor the dates they were given, instead breaking down contributors by general dollar ranges. Clinton's aides said they have been laboring to track down and notify the 208,000 donors - people, companies and governments - that their identities would be made public.

The potential for foreign donors to create the appearance of conflicts of interest for Hillary Clinton as she handles foreign policy matters was illustrated by Amar Singh, listed as giving between $1 million and $5 million. The donor is apparently the prominent Indian politician of that name.

In September, Amar Singh visited Washington to lobby Congress to support a deal allowing India to obtain civilian nuclear fuel and technology from the United States. The deal was controversial because India has developed nuclear weapons but is not a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Singh met with Senator Clinton, afterward telling Indian reporters that she had assured him that Democrats would not block the deal. Congress approved the nuclear cooperation deal a few days later.

Several other donors have connections to India, a potential foreign policy flashpoint due to tensions with Pakistan.

One was Lakshmi Mittal, the businessman who made billions in the steel industry and is one of the richest men in the world. A London resident, Mittal, who donated between $1 million and $5 million, is a director of India's second largest bank. In 2002, Mittal was involved in a British scandal when, shortly after making a large donation to the Labour Party, he gained help from Tony Blair, who then was prime minister, in his attempt to convince Romania to sell him its state steel company.

The two largest contributors, listed as giving more than $25 million apiece, were the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, a grant-making charity that focuses on sub-Saharan Africa and India, and Unitaid, an international alliance formed two years ago to fight HIV/AIDS. An additional 11 donors gave from $10 million to $25 million, including Bing, Gates's foundation and the Saudi government.

Also in this category is Frank Giustra, the Canadian mining financier whose dealings with Clinton have drawn questions in the past. Clinton traveled with Giustra in 2005 to Kazakhstan, where Giustra was seeking uranium contracts. Clinton lavished praise on Kazakhstan's authoritarian leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Giustra's company soon afterward signed preliminary agreements to buy into state-controlled uranium projects.

Months later, The New York Times reported earlier this year, Giustra donated $31.3 million to the Clinton foundation. On the list posted Thursday, Giustra is reported as having given from $10 million to $25 million personally and the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative-Canada is reported as having given from $1 million to $5 million.

Another donor listed as giving between $1 million and $5 million is Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian businessman who is the son-in-law of that nation's former authoritarian president, Leonid Kuchma, whose handpicked successor was prevented from taking power during the so-called Orange Revolution of 2004.

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