Role of Hillary Clinton’s brother in Haiti gold mine raises eyebrows

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www.washingtonpost.com/politics/role-of-hillary-clintons-brother-in-haiti-gold-mine-raises-eyebrows/2015/03/20/c8b6e3bc-cc05-11e4-a2a7-9517a3a70506_story.html?utm_term=.c48072f7e588

By Kevin Sullivan and Rosalind S. Helderman March 20, 2015

MORNE BOSSA, Haiti — Drive down the rutted dirt road a couple of miles to the guardhouse, then hike 15 minutes up to the overgrown hilltop, and there it is: a piece of 3 1/2 -inch-wide PVC pipe sticking out of the ground.

This is what, at least for the time being, a gold mine looks like.

It also has become a potentially problematic issue for Hillary Rodham Clinton as she considers a second presidential run, after it was revealed this month that in 2013, one of her brothers was added to the advisory board of the company that owns the mine.

Tony Rodham’s involvement with the mine, which has become a source of controversy in Haiti because of concern about potential environmental damage and the belief that the project will primarily benefit foreign investors, was first revealed in publicity about an upcoming book on the Clintons by author Peter Schweizer.

In interviews with The Washington Post, both Rodham and the chief executive of Delaware-based VCS Mining said they were introduced at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative — an offshoot of the Clinton Foundation that critics have long alleged invites a blurring of its charitable mission with the business interests of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their corporate donors.

VCS Mining has been taking samples via this piece of PVC pipe sticking out of the ground on a hillside in Morne Bossa, Haiti. (Andres Martinez Casares/For The Washington Post)

Asked whether he attends CGI meetings to explore personal business opportunities, Rodham responded, “No, I go to see old friends. But you never know what can happen.”

All sides deny that the Clintons had any role in Rodham’s appointment to the VCS advisory board.

Rodham said he has not been involved in any other deals through connections made at CGI. He said that he has never spoken to his sister or her husband about the Haiti project and that he does not think VCS chief executive and president Angelo Viard, a Democratic donor, approached him because of his family ties. Rodham declined to say who introduced him to Viard; Viard said he could not ­remember.

“I’m a very accomplished person in my own right,” Rodham said. He said his work with the company is to try to find investors, which he said has been challenging because of a lack of interest in Haiti.

“I raise money for a lot of people,” he said. “That’s what I basically do.”

Rodham, a former repo man, prison guard and private detective, has long been a source of controversy for the Clintons. Among other things, he and his brother, Hugh, caused consternation in the Clinton White House in 1999 for trying to operate a hazelnut-processing business in the Republic of Georgia with political opponents of the Georgian president, who was a U.S. ally at the time.

[Tony Rodham linked to Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe ]

VCS Mining’s collected samples of rocks are bagged on the hillside in Morne Bossa. (Andres Martinez Casares/For The Washington Post)

Viard said that he paid to become a member of CGI so he could attend two of the organization’s meetings, and that he met Rodham at a gathering in 2012. (Foundation officials said Viard paid a $20,000 membership fee in 2013.)

“You try to be a member so you can meet people in the same industry,” Viard said. He said he attended CGI as “a pure marketing operation.”

He said he ultimately stopped attending CGI meetings after realizing that they were largely designed for charities to mingle with possible donors. He said he thinks commitments made at CGI have done a lot of good in the developing world.

Rodham joined the board in October 2013, nine months after Hillary Clinton stepped down as secretary of state. Viard said he put Rodham on the board not because of his family connections, but because he worked for a firm, Gulf Coast Funds Management, that had access to ­investors.

Viard said that he and Rodham never discussed the Clintons, and that he never talked to the Clintons about Rodham. A spokesman for the Clinton Foundation said that Bill Clinton does not know Viard, and a spokesman for Hillary Clinton said she also does not know him.

In December 2012, VCS won one of the first two gold-mining permits the Haitian government had issued in more than 50 years. The project was immediately slammed by members of the Haitian Senate, who called it a potential environmental disaster and “a waste of resources.” The backlash caused the government to put the permits on hold.