Clinton Foundation admits mistakes in tax forms
Bill and Hillary Clinton embrace at the 2014 Clinton Global Initiative in New York. (Photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
The Clinton Foundation admitted Sunday it made some “mistakes” in its tax forms and is “acting quickly to remedy them.”
In a lengthy statement posted to the foundation’s website, Maura Pally, the foundation’s acting CEO, sought to address questions that arose late last week after the organization said it would refile its taxes.
“We have said that after a voluntary external review is completed, we will likely refile forms for some years,” Pally wrote. “While some have suggested that this indicates a failure to accurately report our total revenue, that is not the case. Our total revenue was accurately reported on each year’s form — our error was that government grants were mistakenly combined with other donations.”
Those grants, Pally wrote, “have always been properly listed and broken out and available for anyone to see on our audited financial statements, posted on our website.”
“So, yes, we made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do,” she continued. “But we are acting quickly to remedy them and have taken steps to ensure they don’t happen in the future. We are committed to operating the foundation responsibly and effectively to continue the life-changing work that this philanthropy is doing every day.”
The statement comes as the foundation’s finances are facing intense media scrutiny in the wake of the launch of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid and ahead of a much-anticipated book — Peter Schweizer’s “Clinton Cash,” due out May 5 — Republicans are hoping will derail it.
Parts of the book imply that the Clintons’ relationship with Canadian mogul Frank Giustra — a major donor to the Clinton Foundation — helped seal a Canadian mining company’s sale to a Russian energy company in a 2013 deal that required approval by the U.S. State Department when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and led to Hillary’s support of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement in 2011.
The Clintons attend the 37th Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa, last fall. (Photo: Getty Images)
The Hillary Clinton campaign vehemently denied the allegations raised by the book.
“The book relies on widely available data and twists it into absurd right-wing conspiracy theories,” Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told Yahoo News last week, accusing Schweizer of making “ridiculous, unproven claims” that former President Bill Clinton’s speaking fees swayed Hillary Clinton’s policy making.
The foundation did, too:
When Hillary Clinton was appointed secretary of state, we took unprecedented steps to avoid potential conflicts of interest by going above and beyond what is required of any philanthropy and instituted voluntarily annual disclosure of all of our donors on our website. We also established a policy around the foreign government contributions we accept, recognizing that in order to continue our life-improving work, we rely on the contributions of government, as is the case with most large-scale global charities.
Today, our donor disclosure and foreign government contributor policy is stronger than ever. Since Secretary Clinton decided to run for president, we have committed to disclosing all of our donors on a quarterly basis. In addition, we announced that we will only accept funding from a handful of governments, many of whom the foundation receives multiyear grants from, to continue the work they have long partnered on.
Pally also addressed the foundation’s relationship with Giustra specifically.
The Foundation has 11 different initiatives, some of which function in organizationally different ways. One of these 11 initiatives is the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (CGEP), which is focused on advancing innovative solutions to poverty alleviation on a global scale. CGEP has come under heightened scrutiny this past week, and I want to explain how it operates.
The Clinton Foundation executes all of the work that CGEP does. CGEP does receive financial backing for projects from an independent Canadian charity called the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (Canada), which Frank Giustra established so that Canadians could support the initiative’s valuable work and receive a charitable tax credit. CGEP (Canada) provides funding on a project-by-project basis, and this money goes exclusively to CGEP projects, not to the foundation’s general operating fund.
Like every contributor to the foundation, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (Canada) is publicly listed as a donor on our website. But as it is a distinct Canadian organization, separate from the Clinton Foundation, its individual donors are not listed on the site. This is hardly an effort on our part to avoid transparency — unlike in the U.S., under Canadian law all charities are prohibited from disclosing individual donors without prior permission from each donor.
