An ex-President, a mining deal & a big donor

Late on September 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian...

Late on September 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited — deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world.

Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former President Bill Clinton.

Upon landing on the first stop of a three-country philanthropic tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous midnight banquet with Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan A Nazarbayev.

Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s bid to head an international organisation that monitors elections and supports democracy. Clinton’s public declaration undercut both American foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among others, Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Within two days, corporate records show that Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements, giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.

The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Giustra.

Just months later, Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the William J Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Giustra a place in Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with Clinton has its privileges.

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Giustra was invited to accompany the former President to Almaty just as the financier was trying to seal a deal he had been negotiating for months.

In separate written responses, both men said Giustra traveled with Clinton to Kazakhstan, India and China to see first-hand the philanthropic work done by his foundation.

Clinton’s spokesman said the former President knew that Giustra had mining interests in Kazakhstan, but was unaware of “any particular efforts” and did nothing to help.