Mining magnates deny trying to influence deal
Giustra and Telfer respond to report over uranium firm sale to Russia
A pair of Canadian mining magnates are denying suggestions that they donated to the charitable foundation of former president Bill Clinton and his family to help win U.S. approval to sell a uranium company to Russia.
Frank Giustra said the allegations have nothing to do with him, and are merely an attempt to “tear down” presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her election campaign. Ian Telfer, meanwhile, said he committed the funds before he ever realized he would do the deal with the Russians.
The New York Times reported on the donations in an explosive article this week. The story involves a former Canadian mining company called Uranium One Inc., in which Giustra and Telfer were two of the key principals.
In 2010, Uranium One began a process to sell itself to Rosatom, a state-controlled nuclear giant in Russia. Uranium One had assets in Kazakhstan and the United States, and multiple U.S. government departments had to sign off on the deal. One of them is the State Department, which was led at the time by Hillary Clinton.
Uranium is considered a strategic resource, and it would be unthinkable today for the U.S. government to consider selling the country’s uranium reserves to Russia. But the Uranium One sale happened prior to Russia’s incursions into Ukraine last year, and Telfer said in an interview that getting it approved did not require lobbying. “There was no lobbying,” he said. The Times story noted that between 2009 and 2013, Telfer donated US$2.35 million to Clinton’s foundation. This coincided directly with the period in which Rosatom gradually took control of Uranium One. Telfer was Uranium One’s chairman at the time.
In the interview, Telfer said he agreed to contribute US$3 million to the Clinton Foundation back in March 2008, shortly after Giustra and Clinton set up their sustainable growth initiative for the natural resource sector. That was before Uranium One had any negotiations with the Russians, and the donations he has made since then were part of that initial pledge, he said. He denied they had anything to do with influencing U.S. government officials around Uranium One.
“There were no plans for us (in March 2008) to ever have Rosatom as a majority shareholder of the company,” he said. “So therefore, there was never any thought of influencing anyone because there was nothing to influence.”
Giustra’s direct involvement with Uranium One ended back in 2007, when he sold his company UrAsia Energy Ltd. to Uranium One for about US$3 billion. UrAsia held the key Kazakhstan assets that formed the backbone of Uranium One, and there have been prior allegations that Giustra used his friendship with Bill Clinton to help secure those assets when the two men were in Kazakhstan together in 2005.
Giustra has subsequently contributed US$31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation and pledged US$100 million more, according to the Times.
In a statement on Thursday, Giustra said there “is not one shred of evidence” to back up claims that he tried to influence the U.S. government to approve the Uranium One sale to Rosatom. He called the Times piece a “wildly speculative, innuendo-laced article.” He also said that he sold all his Uranium One shares in 2007.
“I would note that those (shares) were sold at least 18 months before Hillary Clinton became the secretary of state. No one was speculating at that time that she would become the secretary of state,” he said.
In addition to Giustra and Telfer, the Times noted that other people with ties to Uranium One made contributions to the Clinton Foundation: Neil Woodyer, Frank Holmes, Paul Reynolds (who recently died in a triathlon incident) and GMP Securities Ltd.
Many of the details in the Times story come from an upcoming book called Clinton Cash, written by Peter Schweizer, which will be released on May 5. The book examines how Bill and Hillary Clinton allegedly made millions through relationships with businesses and foreign governments.