J's Cafe Nette

In light of the recent developments surrounding the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign, the media appears to be digging further into campaign contributions she has received. The Washington Post is on the trail of another donor to the Senator.

Sant S. Chatwal, an Indian American businessman, has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaigns, even as he battled governments on two continents to escape bankruptcy and millions of dollars in tax liens.

The founder of the Bombay Palace restaurant chain, Chatwal is one of a growing number of fundraisers in the 2008 presidential campaign whose backgrounds have prompted questions about how much screening the candidates devote to their “bundlers” while they press to raise record amounts.

Chatwal’s case reached from his native India to New York City. The IRS pursued him for approximately $4 million in unpaid business taxes, while New York state placed a lien seeking more than $5 million in taxes. He forfeited a building to New York City on which he was delinquent on property taxes and was sued by federal regulators seeking to recoup millions of dollars in loans from a failed bank where he served as a director.

What is particularly interesting here though, are the answers not only of a person on Mrs. Clintons staff but that of a friend of Mr. Chatwal. Pay close attention to the first sentence of the final paragraph in the blockquote below.

Asked whether anything in Chatwal’s background caused concerns about his activities on behalf of the campaign, Clinton spokesman Phil Singer answered, “No.” He declined last week to be more specific, saying only that major fundraisers are routinely vetted “through publicly available records.”

Rajen Anand, a longtime friend of Chatwal and another Clinton fundraiser, said the campaign encourages strict vetting for fundraisers. “They advise me to be very careful not to associate the campaign with people where there is something wrong,” he said.

Anand said, however, that Chatwal may have slid through any vetting, no matter how vigorous, because of his longtime friendship with the Clintons. The Clintons maintained a close association with Chatwal; both attended one of his sons’ weddings in 2002, and the former president attended another son’s wedding in 2006.

You must read the entire piece at the WaPo to understand why some might question the association of this man with any campaign in this country. It has also been discovered that Chatwal is a Trustee of the William J. Clinton Foundation and serves on the “Hillary Clinton for President Exploratory Committee”.

If Mrs. Clinton is questioned at any point about Mr. Chatwal I hope she is very forthcoming in her answers as there is already enough information out there for any obscure reply to be challenged.

In 1997, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. sued Chatwal over his role as a director and a guarantor of unpaid loans at the failed First New York Bank for Business. The government alleged that his loans had “resulted in losses to the bank in excess of $12 million,” and it questioned his claims that he could not repay the debts.

The regulators also questioned why Chatwal continued to rent a spacious penthouse apartment in New York in the midst of his financial turmoil. “The debtor has managed to continue living in luxurious style in the same penthouse apartment he resided in at a time he claimed a net worth of tens of millions of dollars without adequate explanation of how his family’s limited income is able to support such a lifestyle,” the government said in a 1997 filing.

In September 2000, Chatwal hosted a half-million dollar fundraiser at that Upper East Side penthouse for Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign.

A few months later the FDIC abruptly settled the case, agreeing on Dec. 18, 2000, to let Chatwal pay $125,000 for the loans that it had said caused at least $12 million in losses.

While the final paragraph may be speculative on the part of the WaPo writer (in the sense in implies the Clintons may have had a hand in this settlement), I believe anyone reading the entire piece might come away with the same thoughts. Friends in high places have been beneficial to many, but illegal activities are just that and it should make no difference who you “know.”

If Mrs. Clinton should win her party’s nomination and go on to be elected to the Presidency, I trust some of the individuals recently shown to have close ties to her will no longer be welcome to share her company.

HT: Macsmind

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