A fresh scandal involving Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton surfaced on Monday following a disclosure that her State Department awarded at least US$13 million in grants and loans to Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.
The US based Daily Caller News Foundation made the disclosure after its investigation found that Yunus had benefitted from grants, contracts and loans by the
State Department while it was under the direction of Clinton.
Yunus, who was ousted as managing director of the Bangladesh-based Grameen Bank on grounds that he was past his age of retirement, has also been revealed to be a Clinton Foundation donor.
Spokeswoman Lamia Morshed of the Yunus Centre in Dhaka did not respond to New Age requests sent on her cell phone and e-mail to comment on the issue.
The FBI is apparently investigating Clinton for corruption linked to this case, reports Telesur.
According to the report by the Daily Caller News Foundation, the FBI declined to comment, saying, ‘we generally do not comment on whether or not we’re conducting a particular investigation.’
In its report the Daily Caller News Foundation said, ‘The tax funds were given to Yunus through 18 separate US Agency for International Development award transactions listed by the federal contracting site USAspending.gov,’ the news outlet said.
According to the outlet, Clinton mixed official government transactions with her donors to her family’s foundation. Yunus, for example, donated between US$100,000 and US$300,000 in apparent exchange for the grants and loans worth US$13 million.
Groups allied to Yunus also benefited from an additional US$11 million from USAID, according to the contracting website.
Yunus had business relationships with all of them, the Daily Caller report added.
Bill and Hillary Clinton have been actively helping Yunus over three
decades by promoting him as a celebrity personality at major Clinton Foundation events.
The Clintons also personally lobbied to press the Nobel Committee to award Yunus with the peace prize, which they did in 2006, based on credits he and his bank granted to poor people in order to help them build a business and improve their futures.
Emails from Clinton’s private server disclose that Bill and Hillary Clinton closely monitored the Bangladesh government’s investigation of Yunus, who is a high-profile fixture at most of the Clinton Foundation’s major gatherings. The foundation features him at 37 places on its website.
David Bossie, president of the conservative activist group Citizens United and a long-time Clinton critic, called for the FBI to look into possible conflicts of interest linked to the long association between Yunus and the Clintons.
‘The mixing of State Department and U.S. government business with Clinton Foundation donors and interests is a prime example of what the FBI could be investigating in addition to the private email server setup,’ Bossie told The DCNF.
Source: New Age
