Thursday, September 01, 2016

The corrupt Lebanese businessman who funded the Clinton political enterprises

"Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury, one of Africa’s richest men, has built a reputation as a giant of global philanthropy.  His name is on a gallery at the Louvre and a medical school in Lebanon, and he has received awards for his generosity to the Catholic Church and St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. He owns a seven-bedroom hilltop mansion in Beverly Hills, and he has a high-level network of friends from Washington to Lebanon to the Vatican, where he serves as an ambassador for the tiny island nation of St. Lucia. His website shows him shaking hands and laughing with Pope Francis. “I never imagined what the future would hold for me,” Chagoury once said of his boyhood in Nigeria. “But I knew there was a vision for my life that was greater than I could imagine.… I consider it a duty to give back.”  Since the 1990s, Chagoury has also cultivated a friendship with the Clinton family — in part by writing large checks, including a contribution of at least $1 million to the Clinton Foundation."  By the way, politically--as this article implies--he belongs to the camp which supports the Syrian regime in Lebanon.  His closest ally is not Aoun, as the LA Times suggests but Sulayman Franjiyyah.