The Clinton Foundation’s Canadian affiliate says it is barred from disclosing its donor identities under Canadian law, but it will ask individual contributors who have given over $200,000 for "permission" to reveal their names.
Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, the Canadian arm of the Clinton Foundation, has failed to disclose the names of 1,100 donors, despite Hillary Clinton’s transparency agreement with the Obama administration before becoming Secretary of State.
The head of CGEP, billionaire mining tycoon Frank Giustra, told Bloomberg that Canadian privacy laws prevent the group from revealing its contributors.
But Canadian legal experts said they had never heard of such a law being applied to foundation donors:
Canadian tax and privacy law experts were dubious of this claim. Len Farber, former director of tax policy at Canada's Department of Finance, said he wasn't aware of any tax laws that would prevent the charity from releasing its donors' names. "There's nothing that would preclude them from releasing the names of donors," he said. "It's entirely up to them."
Mark Blumberg, a charity lawyer at Blumberg Segal in Toronto, added that the legislation "does not generally apply to a registered charity unless a charity is conducting commercial activities... such as selling the list to third parties."
Giustra said he would try to get around Canada’s supposed legal barrier by seeking permission from each individual contributor to reveal their names—but he can’t promise they’ll agree.
"We’re not going to go to 1,100 people," Giustra told Bloomberg. "But we’re certainly going to go to the big ones—a couple hundred grand and up—and just see what they say. Now, they can say no. But we’re going to try."