Clinton arrives for award; foundation gets $500,000

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Petra Nemcova, a Czech model who survived the disaster by clinging to a palm tree, decided to pull out all the stops for the annual fundraiser of her school-building charity, the Happy Hearts Fund.

She booked a luxury restaurant in Manhattan. She flew in Sheryl Crow with her band and crew for a 20-minute set. The gala cost $363,413.

But the real splurge? Bill Clinton.

The former president of the United States agreed to accept a lifetime achievement award at the June 2014 event after Nemcova offered a $500,000 contribution to the Clinton Foundation. The donation, made late last year after the foundation sent the charity an invoice, amounted to almost a quarter of the evening's net proceeds -- enough to build 10 preschools in Indonesia.

Happy Hearts' former executive director believes that the transaction was a "quid pro quo," which rerouted donations intended for a small charity with the concrete mission of rebuilding schools after natural disasters to a large foundation with a broader agenda and a budget 100 times bigger.

"The Clinton Foundation had rejected the Happy Hearts Fund invitation more than once, until there was a thinly veiled solicitation and then the offer of an honorarium," said the former executive director, Sue Veres Royal, who held that position at the time of the gala and was dismissed a few weeks later.

Communications officers for Nemcova and for the Clinton Foundation said Thursday that the foundation had not solicited the donation and that the money would be used for projects in Haiti that are as yet undetermined.

Never publicly disclosed, the episode provides a window into the way the Clinton Foundation relies on the Clintons' prestige to amass donors large and small, offering the prospect, as described in the foundation's annual report, of lucrative global connections and participation in a worldwide mission to "unlock human potential" through "the power of creative collaboration."

Similarly, Nemcova, like other celebrity philanthropists, uses her fame to promote her charity -- which has financed more than 110 schools, mostly kindergartens -- just as she uses Happy Hearts to position herself as a model-humanitarian.

In her letter of invitation to Bill Clinton, Nemcova, then chairman of her charity's board, said she wanted to show her appreciation for his "inspirational leadership" after disasters.

When the tsunami struck in December 2004, Nemcova, who had been featured on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue the previous year, was vacationing in Thailand with her boyfriend, fashion photographer Simon Atlee. They were swept from their beach cottage and separated in the turbulent waters. Atlee died.

Happy Hearts rebuilt two schools in Thailand while Bill Clinton was the United Nations' envoy for tsunami relief and reconstruction. Most of the charity's rebuilding has been in Indonesia after the earthquakes of 2006 and 2009.

After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Nemcova turned her attention there, where both Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, as secretary of state, played outsized roles in the earthquake relief effort.

In fall 2011, many players in Haiti's rebuilding effort, including Nemcova, attended the Clinton Global Initiative's membership meeting in Manhattan.

At the meeting, Nemcova signed a memorandum of understanding with the president of the Inter-American Development Bank to finance schools in Haiti. The development bank also has donated to the Clinton Foundation -- just more than $1 million.

Almost four years after Happy Hearts and the development bank made their commitment, they have yet to complete a single school together, partly because of problems finding suitable land. Five schools are under construction.

Happy Hearts has collaborated in Haiti with the Digicel Foundation, whose founder, Irish billionaire Denis O'Brien, is a multimillion-dollar supporter of the Clinton Foundation and whose parent telecommunications company benefited from grants from Hillary Clinton's State Department.

Digicel also made a commitment at the 2011 meeting to build schools. The commitment was a formality, though, as Digicel had already taken the lead in Haiti in that realm. It has built 150 schools there over the last seven years. Happy Hearts has built six schools in joint or side-by-side ventures with Digicel.

One of those schools, operated by the Haitian group Prodev, was featured in the Clinton Foundation's most recent annual report as "built through a Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action." The Clinton Foundation's sole direct contribution to the school was a grant for an Earth Day celebration and tree-planting activity.

Happy Hearts Fund first asked Bill Clinton to be its honoree in 2011. Trying again in 2013, Nemcova sent her first formal letter of invitation in July, asking Clinton to be the primary award recipient at a Happy Hearts gala on Nov. 4, 2013, celebrating Indonesia. She was cordially rejected again.

The invitation letter was revised and sent again at the end of August. That letter moved the gala to 2014, dropped the focus on Indonesia and shifted it to Haiti, and proposed the $500,000 donation.

A Section on 05/30/2015

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