A Clinton initiative founded in 2002 to save lives infected with HIV/AIDS spent only $23 million of its $140 million of expenditures in 2016 directly on programs, according to financial records on the initiative’s website.
According to its website, the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) was set up in 2002 to help save lives by providing treatment to those living with HIV/AIDS. The Clinton Foundation describes CHAI as a “separate, affiliated entity” from the controversial foundation. CHAI summarizes its approach as a “solution-oriented approach”:
CHAI’s solution-oriented approach focuses on both global and national level work by rapidly improving market dynamics for medicines and diagnostics; lowering prices for treatment; accelerating access to lifesaving technologies; and helping governments build the capacity required for high-quality care and treatment programs.
However, of that $140 million, according to its financial report, it initially breaks down its expenditures as having spent $129,662,636 on “program services,” with $10,117,754 on management and $1,035,062 on fundraising.
However, the report later reveals that only $23 million was actually spent on “direct program expenditures.” The rest was spent on a whole host of other non-service related items, including $72,957,333 on salaries and benefits; $16,438,199 on meetings and training; $7,983,180 on “professional and consultation fees”; and $7,611,344 on travel.
CHAI did not respond to multiple requests for comment and clarification from Breitbart News.
The accounting taps into broader concerns about the Clintons’ philanthropic ventures — namely that for all its claims to do good in the world, very little of its money is spent on philanthropy.
Peter Schweizer, who exposed a great deal of the Clinton Foundation’s working in his 2015 book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, told Breitbart News last year that it is possible that as little as six percent of the Clinton Foundation’s money went to charitable causes.
In particular, he pointed to the claims made by Clinton groups such as the Clinton Foundation about their work and noted that even some of those direct services can be “fuzzy and hazy.” He suggested that it can be very hard to figure out exactly what is spent on actually helping people:
The problem is, when you start drilling down on what, precisely, those charitable activities are, and what they have to show for it, it gets really, really fuzzy and hazy. So you’ll have some charities like Doctors Without Borders will say, “We immunized 100,000 kids last year.” And you can look at that. That’s a very clear metric. Okay, here’s where they did it. They were in sub-Saharan Africa. They had all these doctors.
The Clinton Foundation will say, “We assisted or facilitated in 100,000 kids getting immunizations.” Well, okay, what does that mean? And they don’t really tell you. They don’t really explain to you how it works.
So the number is absolutely correct, that six percent goes to other charities. The other 94 percent is in this stew of marketing, and management, and travel expenses, and sort of all these obscure things, that it’s really hard to dissect what is the end result of that 94 percent being spent.
In September, CHAI announced that if Hillary Clinton was elected president in November, then Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea Clinton would step down from CHAI’s board. However, possibly because Clinton did not win, Bill and Chelsea are still listed as among CHAI’s board members.
Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY.
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