美国国家公共电台 NPR Clinton Foundation To Drastically Shrink If Hillary Clinton Is Elected

Clinton Foundation To Drastically Shrink If Hillary Clinton Is Elected

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In the Clinton Foundation is planning to spin off all its international programs if Hillary Clinton is elected president. The foundation has come under heavy criticism for taking large contributions from corporate and foreign donors and for helping donors seek favors in Washington. NPR's Peter Overby reports.

PETER OVERBY, BYLINE: The changes would disentangle Bill and Hillary Clinton from the fundraising and donor connections that currently ensnare the foundation. Foundation president Donna Shalala said plans are underway to move the foundations many international programs to other non-governmental organizations.

DONNA SHALALA: We're going to spin off or find partners for many of our programs.

OVERBY: The moves would break the ties between the programs which have sometimes proved controversial and Bill and Hillary Clinton.

SHALALA: We're not assuming that she's going to get elected, but we have to be prepared.

OVERBY: Shalala told NPR the planning began a year ago. One example - the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership. Since 2007, it's run anti-poverty programs in Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia. Frank Giustra is a Canadian entrepreneur and philanthropist. He and Clinton made a promo video for the partnership.

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BILL CLINTON: He doesn't want to waste his money, and he doesn't want to waste his time.

FRANK GIUSTRA: So a lot of the stuff that we don in the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership is about just creating the opportunity where it didn't exist and let them just do what they would normally do if they had the opportunity.

OVERBY: Now Shalala said the partnership will end.

SHALALA: That will spin off into a separate non-governmental organization on its own. The president's name will come off of that.

OVERBY: What will remain are the Clinton Presidential Library and Center in Little Rock, the Alliance for a Healthier Generation and some other domestic programs. The foundation has played a prominent role in the lives of the Clintons since 1997 when then President Bill Clinton founded it.

When Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, some of the biggest foundation donors, Middle Eastern governments and U.S. defense contractors, had business with the State Department. On a smaller scale, the Associated Press reported today that as secretary, Clinton met or had phone conversations with 154 private citizens. More than half of those people were donors or were connected to entities that gave money to the foundation or its projects. The foundation announced last week that Bill Clinton will stop raising money for it.

SHALALA: He's coming off the board of the foundation, but he's also coming off any relationship with any of the spinoffs or these new partner organizations.

OVERBY: Leslie Lenkowsky is with the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. He said the Clintons could have avoided conflicts by letting an independent board of directors oversee decisions.

LESLIE LENKOWSKY: Think of it a little bit as the kind of nonprofit equivalent of putting your assets in a blind trust. And they could have done that.

OVERBY: But Lenkowsky also said he's seen no clear evidence that foundation donors got more than small favors from Hillary Clinton's State Department.

LENKOWSKY: Unless it really gets to, you know, affecting public businesses, it's not nice to look at and probably shouldn't be done. A good donor shouldn't do it. But you know, it happens all the time.

OVERBY: Chelsea Clinton will remain onboard. The changes that Shalala laid out today were not forced by the criticism, she said.

SHALALA: We were already ahead of it. We knew that we had to think through what the role of the foundation was going to be months ago if she got elected.

OVERBY: But Republicans have begun calling for a special prosecutor to investigate what they say has already happened at the foundation. Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington