Posted on 01/30/2008 8:19:48 PM PST by bd476
Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton.
Upon landing on the first stop of a three-country philanthropic tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous midnight banquet with Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent.
Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy. Mr. Clinton’s public declaration undercut both American foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among others, Mr. Clinton’s wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
Within two days, corporate records show that Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.
The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest uranium producers in a transaction...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yellow cake broker between Niger and Iraq, perhaps? Ah, the smell of sweet mint tea...
I almost bought into the argument that we’re better off staying home and letting the Democrats win the White House in 2008 so that the Republicans can put a true conservative in the White House in 2012.
But I’ve come to the conclusion that the Clinton corruption machine must be stopped at all costs.
Can you imagine how vindictive a President Obama could be towards the Clintons and their dealings? Why just defeat your opposition when you can destroy them?
Nothing like a good dose of Clinton to bring us back to reality.
Agree, but it's still a dilemma. It feels like our choice has been removed.
I'm not sure where the tea comes in but this is yet another ugly and typical mess brought home by the Clintons.
Bingo. Yet the idea of Obama or any other liberal benefiting from this is also bad.
Best to keep an eye on Oprah Winfrey and Harpo Managment's Obama, too. This could sail him right into the Presidency.
WHOO BOY!
Your words are coming true, ad guy ... tick, tick, tick
They went from dirt poor (beggar's) to filthy rich overnight.
Mandatory book club membership. That’s what we’ll get with an Obama presidency.
Holy MoLY!!
~~~~
“Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month.
The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public
***pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million,***
secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges.”
From the NY Times, no less - the libs have turned on the Clintons.......
The money is one thing, but the unabashed power grab by both Mr. and Mrs. Clinton is beneath contempt.
From the article:
"...Mr. Clinton’s public declaration undercut both American foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among others, Mr. Clinton’s wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York."
Archived Profile: Frank Giustra
Picture: http://drudgereport.com/cfg.jpg
Frank Giustra, a super-rich Vancouver mining and movie mogul with a midas touch, has used his wealth to become a friend of Bill — Bill being former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
As such, Giustra has placed his private jet at Clinton’s disposal, flying with the former president on trips to Asia and Africa during the past two years.
The former Howe Street wunderkind is a member of the board of trustees of the Clinton Foundation, the charitable and activist vehicle established by Clinton during his post-presidency.
Giustra organized a recent 60th birthday bash for Clinton at Toronto’s Fairmont Royal York, which raised $21 million for the Clinton Foundation.
Clinton spoke in Victoria and Kelowna Friday. Whether Giustra had any role in Clinton’s visit here is unknown. Giustra has preferred to fly under the media’s radar and declined an interview request for this story.
Giustra, the son of a Sudbury nickel miner, was CEO of Yorkton Securities in the ‘90s, founder of Lions Gate Entertainment and now chair of Endeavour Financial, a merchant banking firm which finances mining companies.
Giustra is also a director of the International Crisis Group (Crisis Group), an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization, established to prevent and resolve conflicts.
Last month Giustra was one of four chairs of the 2006 Global Leadership Awards dinner in New York where Clinton was honoured along with out-going UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Giustra’s special relationship with Clinton and his philanthropic efforts was noted by journalists who accompanied Clinton this summer on a tour of Africa.
David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, wrote a lengthy profile of Clinton in the magazine’s Sept. 18 issue.
Remnick described a government leaders forum sponsored by Microsoft that was held in a hotel ballroom in Capetown, South Africa. Clinton sat with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and a variety of sub-Saharan heads of state.
“Several tables away, I was talking to Frank Giustra, a mining financier based in Vancouver, who started, ran, and sold Lionsgate Films. Giustra is in his late 40s. He is short and trim and has close-cut white hair.
“The plane in which Clinton was touring Africa was Giustra’s, a MD-87 jet, complete with leather furniture and a stateroom. Giustra told me that he was still heavily involved in business — he travels frequently to Kazakhstan, to check on mining interests he has there — but that his wife had been pushing him to give away more of his money.
“’All of my chips, almost, are on Bill Clinton,” he said. “He’s a brand, worldwide brand, and he can do things and ask for things that no one else can.’”
Giustra’s wife is Alison Lawton, 36, a human rights activist and producer of documentary films on humanitarian crises. She also knows Clinton and has worked with him on humanitarian efforts related to the civil war in Uganda — a war which was the subject of her recent documentary Uganda Rising.
Remnick went on to say that Clinton is the first post-president to “tap into the newer generation of wealth” represented by people like Giustra.
The New Yorker editor added: “Clinton’s appeal for these tycoons is obvious: In exchange for giving money to a good cause — the Clinton Foundation’s budget last year was $30 million dollars — you not only have the usual tax break and the knowledge that you are doing good but also get to play Oh Hell [a card game] until five in the morning with a two-term ex-President who knows how to have a good time.”
The Clinton-Giustra connection was also noted in a Financial Times article in August. Writer Andrew Jack described a meeting between Clinton and Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg.
“On the plane the following day, Frank Giustra effuses about Mandela: ‘For me, he’s up there with Mahatma Gandhi.’ An Italian-Canadian with close-cropped white hair, Giustra is part of the most exclusive group in the Clinton entourage: the corporate sponsors.
“In fact, he is not travelling with us. We are travelling with him. Clinton is flying on Giustra’s luxurious personal MD-87 jet, and his donations are substantially underwriting the foundation’s pediatric HIV medicines programs.
“That gives him a regular place at the president’s side, including the card table, where the two men and others gather on the flights and late at night in palatial hotel suites across Africa.
They play Oh Hell, a card game the film director Steven Spielberg taught Clinton when he was president.
“Giustra is coy about his fortune, much made through investments in mining. He describes his donations as ‘significant,’ saying he became close to Clinton after inviting him to get involved in a post-tsunami fundraiser 18 months ago.”
Giustra and his wife Lawton staged a $10,000-a-couple fundraiser for tsunami-related relief at their waterfront home in West Vancouver last year, raising $1.7 million. They later held another fund-raising dinner with Clinton as guest of honour.
Giustra was born in Sudbury, Ont., and lived in Italy and Argentina as a child.
He graduated in 1979 from Douglas College where he spent his first year playing trumpet in the school’s music program before switching over to business and finance.
Giustra’s father was a stock market addict and introduced his son to his broker.
Giustra took a securities course and began his career in the investment industry in 1978 with Merrill Lynch as an assistant trader and then a stockbroker.
Ralph Nader has a good take on this:
I'm sure this has been known by the media all along - but they're just now starting to turn on the worm(s) -
Just think of the things that might come out if the media has really decided to go for the jugular -
This may be quite a ride - s'cuse me, I'm gonna stock up on popcorn
bump for later...
This from the same NYT’s that coverd Clinton’s ass for ten+ years (character doesn’t matter, etc.)?
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