New York Post – by Isabel Vincent
The Clinton Foundation failed to properly file non-profit paperwork required by New York state for years and did not disclose government grants on its filings as required by law, yet Attorney General Eric Schneiderman gave it a pass.
A search of the New York charities database by The Post found that for the years 2010 through 2014, the Clinton Foundation was years late in submitting the required paperwork to raise money in New York — waiting until 2016.
Yet this is the same state questionnaire that recently landed the Trump Foundation in hot water.
Last week, the office of Democrat Schneiderman issued a cease and desist letter to the Trump Foundation ordering it to stop fundraising in the state for failing to complete the government form for every year that the group raises money in the state.
But the Clinton Foundation, which has had offices in New York since 2001, only completed much of its paperwork retroactively. The 2010-2014 forms were all signed on a single day — Jan. 12, 2016 — by Clinton Foundation executives Andrew Kessel and Kevin Thurm.
And in 2005, 2006 and 2007, the Clinton Foundation answered “no” to the question, “Did the organization receive government grants?” — even though foreign governments donated tens of millions of dollars to the non-profit during those years.
Last week, a day after the Trump Foundation was ordered to stop raising money in the state, the Clinton Foundation voluntarily and urgently submitted documents to Schneiderman’s office that the group’s executives said were missing from its previous filings.
“While we are not yet certain if this information is required to be filed, we would like to provide it out of an abundance of caution,” wrote Ricardo Castro, general counsel to the Clinton Foundation in a hand-delivered letter to the New York AG’s office that oversees charities. The letter, provided to The Post by Schneiderman’s office, is accompanied by six pages of audited financial statements for the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation from 2012 to the end of 2014.
“The Clinton Foundation is properly registered to solicit funds under Article 7A, which requires organizations to register before they solicit funds in New York,” Castro said in a statement.
But critics say that the Clinton Foundation has been sloppy with its paperwork in New York while a partisan AG has looked the other way.
“The Clinton Foundation recently refiled, yet again, forms pertaining to only some of the years that it has incorrectly reported since it began soliciting donors inside New York in 1998,” said Charles Ortel, a Wall Streeter who runs a blog analyzing the Clinton Foundation. “Like the IRS, the New York AG ignores massive red flags.”
In addition to registering every year, the state requires charities to disclose and itemize their contributions from government entities. In the past, the form did not distinguish between domestic or foreign governments on the form.
The Clinton Foundation’s reporting on foreign government grants has been inconsistent. In three years, between 2005 and 2007, it said that it had not received donations from a government agency on its New York state filings.
But in 2006, the Irish government committed nearly $89 million to the Clinton Foundation’s fight against AIDS in Africa.
“Nothing that I or my foundation have been able to do would have been possible without the involvement of the Irish government,” said former president Bill Clinton in October 2006 when the Irish donation was announced.
A year later, Norway began contributing to the Clinton Foundation. Between 2007 and 2015, the Norwegian government has donated $89.6 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to press reports.
Yet Schneiderman’s office has ruled the “No” answers to the government-grant question on state forms are somehow “in compliance” — effectively creating a loophole for the Clinton Foundation.
“Our office will issue additional guidance for all non-profits regarding disclosures of domestic and foreign government funding in the future,” said AG spokesman Eric Soufer.
http://nypost.com/2016/10/09/clinton-foundation-was-late-to-file-paperwork-but-got-pass-from-ag/