The Swiss bank UBS increased its donations to the Clinton Foundation by tenfold after then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intervened to settle a dispute with the IRS.
Donations from UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, to the Clinton Foundation increased from less than $60,000 at the end of 2008 to $600,000 by the end of 2014, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.
Clinton met with the Swiss foreign minister in Geneva in early 2009 to discuss the impact of an IRS suit against UBS in which the IRS was looking to get identities of Americans with secret bank accounts. If the case proceeded, UBS could face prosecution in the U.S. and Switzerland, by either violating Swiss bank secrecy laws by handing over names to the IRS, or by refusing to do so and facing criminal charges in U.S. federal court.
A few months after the meeting, Clinton had arranged a tentative settlement in which UBS gave up information on 4,450 accounts, about 8.5 percent of the accounts the IRS was seeking.
In return for the favor, the bank also lent $32 million through entrepreneurship and inner-city loan programs it launched together with the family's charitable foundation, while at the same time paying former President Bill Clinton $1.5 million to participate in a series of Q&A sessions with UBS Wealth Management Chief Executive Bob McCann.
Fox News notes that there is no evidence of wrongdoing, however, numerous reports of questionable ties between the Clinton Foundation, large corporations and foreign governments have raised suspicions as Clinton makes a bid for the White House.
The UBS case is noteworthy because it shows the nation's top diplomat "intervening on behalf of a major overseas bank in a situation where federal prosecutors and the Justice Department had been the lead entity," says Fox. The State Department does not usually handle such negotiations.
Speaking to reporters after an AFL-CIO labor meeting in Silver Springs, Maryland on Thursday, Clinton dismissed the reports "categorically false" and "just the kind of unfortunate claim or charge that you see in campaigns," reported Bloomberg.
Clinton's campaign told Fox earlier that she did intervene, but only because the Swiss raised the issue. "Secretary Clinton is proud of her time at the State Department, and about the work she did and the decisions she made for the betterment of our security and our prosperity," campaign spokesman Nick Merrill told Fox. "Any suggestion that she was driven by anything but what's in America's best interest would be false. Period."
