Hillary Clinton sat on the board of a Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) partner that is under investigation amid accusations that it supplied funds to the Islamic State during negotiations with the terrorist group.
A French company accused of sending payments to ISIS confirms to Breitbart News that Clinton served as a board member of the company, and that the company partnered with the Clinton Global Initiative as recently as 2014. Financial records show that the company donated between $50,001 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to the Donald Trump campaign.
The company LaFargeHolcim, known as LaFarge, is a cement company that is in hot water following reports that it did business with ISIS.
“The mentioned review is still ongoing,” LaFargeHolcim told Breitbart News, referring to an internal audit that the company launched to investigate its own conduct regarding ISIS.
An investigative report by the French daily Le Monde revealed in June that the corporation, the world’s leader in construction materials, had paid taxes to Isis middlemen, as well as other armed groups in Syria, to protect its cement business operations in the country.
But the Le Monde story only covered a fraction of the revelations. Previous investigations by Zaman al-Wasl, an independent news outlet run by elements of the Syrian opposition, revealed that Lafarge had even regularly bought oil from Isis.
Al-Wasl’s original investigation, which Le Monde appears to have borrowed from considerably, was published in February, and based on internal documents and emails from the company. Al-Wasl reported that the CEO of Lafarge Cement Syria, Frederic Jolibois, had personally instructed his firm to make payments to Isis.
“Lafarge participated in the 2014 conference of the Clinton Global Initiative as one of many other participants. The participation was in the context of an affordable housing commitment (10,000 microcredits). This commitment was achieved and the partnership was not renewed,” LaFargeHolcim told Breitbart News.
“Hillary Clinton was on the Board of Directors of Lafarge North America for a short time (1990 – 1992) and left it almost 25 years ago,” the company stated.
So what exactly was LaFargeHolcim doing with the Clinton Foundation? Let’s turn to a September 23, 2014 press release. The press release made it clear that LaFarge was very excited to be joining the Clinton group (emphasis their own):
On the 23rd of September Eric Olsen, Executive Vice-President Operations, represented our Group at the Annual Meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, which Lafarge recently joined. On this occasion, Eric Olsen announced a strong commitment: by the end of 2015, we aim to reach a run rate of 10,000 microfinance housing projects per year, positively affecting the lives of 80,000 people…
…Over the past two years, we have developed a unique portfolio of affordable housing solutions in different regions of the world, including microfinance for affordable housing, slum renovation, earth-cement solutions and social housing.
So did they build 10,000 houses? Not quite.
A “microfinance housing project,” or “microcredit,” is actually a loan of indeterminate value given out in poor areas. LaFarge, through the Clinton Global Initiative, was handing out these small loans in Third World countries, but the company’s press release doesn’t say where.
“Microcredit is used to describe small loans granted to low income individuals that are excluded from the traditional banking system. It is part of the larger microfinance industry, which provides not only credit, but also savings, insurance, and other basic financial services to the poor. The term ‘micro’ stems from the relatively small amounts of money that are being borrowed or saved.”
The company’s press release touted a Twitter hashtag campaign called #LaFarge10khomes to promote the initiative, but the campaign consisted of five tweets all on the same day: September 23, 2014.
The Canary quotes an American Spectator article from 1996 reporting that La Farge helped funnel weapons to Saddam Hussein during Clinton’s tenure:
“provided key services for the covert arms export network that supplied Saddam Hussein. To prevent exposure of that secret supply line, and collateral damage to Hillary Clinton – who joined Lafarge board in 1990, just as the arms pipeline was being shut down… the Justice Department was told to bury the investigation… But investigators from other US government agencies who worked on the case say they were ‘waved off’ whenever they got too close to exposing the direct involvement of the intelligence community in the arms export scheme.”
Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill did not provide comment on the candidate’s relationship with LaFarge for this report.
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