Bill Clinton's Mystery Tokyo Speaking Fee

[Mulboyne]

Chicago Tribune: Fee paid Bill Clinton by firm in 2003 raises questions
Last month, after his wife was nominated to be secretary of state, former President Bill Clinton attempted to put an end to speculation about his overseas fundraising by disclosing the names of some 208,000 donors to his foundation, which has collected more than $500 million to pay for a presidential library and to combat AIDS, malaria and other scourges. But nowhere on that list was the name Sakura Capital Management Co. Ltd. In 2003 Sakura, a shadowy, short-lived Japanese-American start-up company, paid Bill Clinton $500,000, the highest cash fee he has yet reported receiving for a speech, for a talk he never delivered...The Sakura money is shrouded in mystery and unanswered questions. Why was the fee so high, twice or three times what he was paid for other speeches on the same trip? Why was the speech canceled by Sakura, and why was Clinton paid the full amount anyway? The company itself is murky. Sakura's former president, a New York securities dealer, says he only knew the last name of the partner who is said to have provided the money for the speech. The Panama-based former chairman of the company was the chairman of a bankrupt flooring company. Another figure in the company, a Japanese businessman, was accused in a 1998 lawsuit of helping defraud Casio Computer Co. Ltd. of $100 million...Bill Clinton's involvement with Sakura was announced in a July 2003 press release written by veteran New York publicist Ken Sunshine. Sunshine said he wrote the releases at the request of John Matthews...For his part, Matthews insisted that he had only a minor role in Sakura. "I was peripherally involved," he said...Matthews said he invested no money in the company and understood that financing came from a "Mr. Tanaka" in Tokyo. Matthews said he never met Tanaka, didn't know his full name and had no telephone number or other contact information for him...more...

[TennoChinko]

[TennoChinko]

[gkanai]

Wow... what a star-studded team.

[gkanai]

Here's the website of the Japanese attorney in question. Let's see Congress subpoena Hidaka.

http://homepage3.nifty.com/k-h-law/

[TennoChinko]