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New York Times: Clintons Benefited from Public Company NewsMax.com Wires The New York Times is offering new details regarding Bill and Hillary Clinton's links to a businessman facing allegations that his public company not only aids scam artists who target the elderly, but has showered money on the Clintons with little to show for it.
NewsMax's most recent Insider Report disclosed that the firm infoUSA was accused of repeatedly renting marketing databases to unscrupulous persons who used the information to engage in fraud.
This weekend the New York Times reported in a page one story that the company and its chairman, Vinod Gupta, have been hit with a lawsuit from shareholders who maintain that Gupta wasted the firm's money trying "to ingratiate himself" with high-profile persons.
The paper stated these persons included Bill and Hillary Clinton. Story Continues Below
Among the expenses cited in the lawsuit – filed in Delaware late last year – is a family vacation the Clintons took in January 2002 in Acapulco, Mexico, with infoUSA paying $146,866 to fly the Clintons, Gupta and others to Mexico and back on a private jet.
Over the next four years, Nebraska-based infoUSA spent nearly $900,000 to fly Bill Clinton around the world for his presidential foundation work and to fly Hillary to campaign events, according to the lawsuit reported by the Times. Ethics rules for senators and candidates state that the recipient of a flight must reimburse the provider only at a rate equal to a first-class ticket, even though private air travel costs significantly more than commercial fares.
After Bill Clinton left the White House, he agreed to enter into consulting arrangements with billionaire investor Ronald Burkle and with Gupta.
The lawsuit asserts that Clinton signed the consulting agreement with Gupta's company in April 2002 "to provide confidential advice and counsel to the chairman and C.E.O. of the company for the purpose of strategic growth and business development."
InfoUSA paid Clinton $2.1 from July 2003 to April 2005, and in October reached a new 3-year agreement to pay him $1.2 million.
The new deal also gave him an option to buy 100,000 shares of infoUSA stock, with no expiration date.
The suit notes that the contracts with Clinton are "extremely vague," and that under the agreement Clinton will not lobby for infoUSA and the company cannot use his name for any business purpose.
The shareholder lawsuit, brought by two hedge funds, charges that Gupta's spending on the Clintons is part of "a pattern of improper company expenditures for things like luxury cars, jets and houses, as well as a yacht that is notable for being one of the few to have an all-female crew," the Times reports.
The New York Sun has also reported on Gupta's links to the Clintons. The disclosures from the Times and the Sun include:
As for the allegations that infoUSA was involved with unscrupulous telemarketers – a finding of authorities in Iowa – the Federal Trade Commission has indicated that it is considering opening an investigation of its own. Among other charges, infoUSA allegedly provided telemarketers with list of consumers described as "mature" and "impulsive." Chris Hoofnagle, an attorney at the University of California who studies marketing issues, told the Sun: "‘Mature' and ‘impulsive' are keywords for ‘Come rob me, come swindle me.'"
© NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved. Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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