Shortly after Hillary Clinton left the
President Barack Obama administration, the United States State
Department quietly took steps to purchase real estate in Nigeria from a
firm whose parent company is owned by a major donor to the Clinton
Foundation, records obtained by Fox News show.
On March 20, 2013, William P. Franklin,
an “international realty specialist” at the State Department, emailed
Mary E. Davis, an American diplomat stationed in Africa, instructing her
to “put on Post letterhead” an “expression of interest” by the
department in purchasing property at Eko Atlantic, a massive real estate
development off the coast of Lagos. Franklin further instructed that
the signed letter was to be “delivered to Ronald Chagoury.”
The draft letter, also obtained by Fox
News, was undated and addressed to Chagoury care of his firm, South
Energyx Nigeria Limited, a subsidiary of the larger Chagoury Group that
is spearheading the Eko Atlantic real estate venture.
The State Department letter sought, among other things, to confirm that the department could proceed with “acquisition of the real property…(at) the asking price of $1,250 per square metre.”
The State Department letter sought, among other things, to confirm that the department could proceed with “acquisition of the real property…(at) the asking price of $1,250 per square metre.”
Overtures to real estate developers from
State Department officials scouting locations for embassies, consulates
and other diplomatic facilities would ordinarily not arouse interest.
But in this case, the budding transaction – never completed, the
department now says – raised eyebrows because Ronald Chagoury is the
brother and business partner in the Chagoury Group, of Gilbert Chagoury,
a Lebanese-born businessman whom federal records show has donated
between $1 and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Indeed, Gilbert Chagoury’s friendship
with the Clintons can be traced back to the Clinton presidency. In the
mid-1990s, Chagoury donated nearly $500,000 to a voter-registration
drive designed to help Democratic candidates, attend a White House
dinner for premium donors, and meet with high-ranking officials in the
Clinton White House – including Susan Rice, now President Obama’s
national security adviser – who were shaping US policy toward Nigeria.
More recently, the Chagourys’ close ties to the Clintons generated headlines when a separate series of emails from 2009 – between Doug Band, an aide to former President Clinton, and Huma Abedin, an aide to Secretary Clinton – revealed the eagerness of the State Department to oblige a request for Chagoury to be granted access to senior officials working on Lebanon.
More recently, the Chagourys’ close ties to the Clintons generated headlines when a separate series of emails from 2009 – between Doug Band, an aide to former President Clinton, and Huma Abedin, an aide to Secretary Clinton – revealed the eagerness of the State Department to oblige a request for Chagoury to be granted access to senior officials working on Lebanon.
The State Department’s outreach to the
Chagoury family, looking to buy property from the brothers, came less
than a month after former President Clinton himself toured the Eko
Atlantic project – for the second time. The first occasion was the
ground breaking, in 2009, in which the former president participated. By
all accounts, Eko Atlantic represents a staggeringly ambitious
undertaking: the dredging of millions of tonnes of sand from the sea
floor off Victoria Island and the creation of an estimated 3.5 square
miles of new land, on which the Chagourys aim to establish what they
call a “21st century city … for residential, commercial, financial and
tourist development.”
Mr. Clinton toured the Eko Atlantic site for the second time on February 21, 2013 – 23 days after his wife left the State Department – to celebrate the Chagourys’ reclamation of 5 million square metres of land, a critical juncture in the project.
Mr. Clinton toured the Eko Atlantic site for the second time on February 21, 2013 – 23 days after his wife left the State Department – to celebrate the Chagourys’ reclamation of 5 million square metres of land, a critical juncture in the project.
Smiling and animated, Mr. Clinton was
photographed conferring with Gilbert Chagoury and Jeffrey J. Hawkins,
the consul general for the State Department in Nigeria.
Twenty-seven days later, when William P.
Franklin would order aides to begin exploring the acquisition of land
from South Energyx, the Chagoury-owned company, Hawkins would be one of
four State Department officials copied on Franklin’s email.
“A month after Mr. Clinton visits a
Gilbert and Ronald Chagoury-run land project in Nigeria, the US State
Department wants to buy the same land,” said David N. Bossie, president
of Citizens United, the conservative advocacy group whose litigation
against the State Department pried loose the Franklin email and
accompanying letter. “Who could be so lucky? A major donor to the
Clinton Foundation, that’s who.”
Queried by Fox News about the matter,
the State Department said its officials had “prioritised” the search for
a new consulate location in Lagos back in 2011 – when Mrs. Clinton was
secretary of state – and that an “independent international real estate
firm” had identified Eko Atlantic as a potential site the following
year.
“Our site search process … is managed by career real estate professionals in the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, with input from independent real estate firms and other department stakeholders,” said Elizabeth Trudeau, a State Department spokeswoman, at a briefing for journalists last Monday.
“Our site search process … is managed by career real estate professionals in the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, with input from independent real estate firms and other department stakeholders,” said Elizabeth Trudeau, a State Department spokeswoman, at a briefing for journalists last Monday.
“The department has had conversations
with multiple property owners and their representatives about the
possibility of acquiring property for a new consulate in Lagos,” she
stated
Trudeau could not explain why a
“prioritised” mission had dragged on for five years without success,
noting only that “acquiring property that’s appropriate” for a
diplomatic facility can be “a long process.”
Asked if Secretary Clinton had been aware of her department’s identification of the Chagoury-owned land as a potential site for a consulate, Trudeau replied: “I’m not aware she was.”
Asked if Secretary Clinton had been aware of her department’s identification of the Chagoury-owned land as a potential site for a consulate, Trudeau replied: “I’m not aware she was.”
The Clinton campaign did not respond to a
request for comment. Mark Corallo, a Washington-based spokesman for
Gilbert Chagoury, said in a statement that given the project’s
“state-of-the-art urban design,” including advanced telecommunications
and security features, “it should come as no surprise that the United
States government and other governments from around the world are
considering Eko Atlantic as a new opportunity for locating their offices
that operate in Lagos.”
John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to
the United Nations and Fox News contributor, said the entire series of
events involving the Clintons and the Chagourys appeared, at a minimum,
poorly handled to insulate Secretary Clinton from conflict of interest
charges.
“The impression left is that there’s
favoritism involved,” Bolton said. “And it’s just very unusual in State
Department real estate and housing transactions overseas to have this
kind of focus on someone with such clear financial connections to even
the departed secretary of state. Normally, there’s much more competitive
activity involved, (of) which we haven’t seen any evidence from the
State Department.”
Experts agreed the March 2013 email from
William P. Franklin to Mary E. Davis, triggering the State Department’s
letter to Ronald Chagoury for a possible real estate transaction, would
likely have formed only one set of documents in a longer trail that
would have dated back to 2012 – the year the State Department said Eko
Atlantic had been identified as a potential site for a new consulate.
Such a trail would presumably include
internal correspondence addressing the suitability of the Eko Atlantic
site and, perhaps, flagging the potential conflict of interest that
could be cited, given the longstanding ties between the Clintons and the
Chagourys.
But Citizens United said no other
documents on the consulate-scouting effort were turned over by the State
Department. The group filed its initial Freedom of Information Act
request with the State Department for records relating to Gilbert
Chagoury back in 2014, and, receiving no reply, filed suit in U.S.
District Court for the District of Columbia in April 2015.
•Culled from Fox News
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