CLINTON WORLD

Bill Attended Charity Night ‘for $500k’

Accepted an award.

The Clinton Foundation invoiced a charity slated to give Bill Clinton a lifetime achievement award for $500,000—something the group’s former execs now believe was a “quid pro quo” arrangement. They say the money would have been able to build 10 Indonesian preschools. The fee, paid out by model Petra Nemcova’s school-building charity, Happy Hearts Fund, took a quarter of the fundraiser’s earnings. “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 Sue Veres, a former executive director. According to Veres, the money was headed to small groups with concrete missions—not mega-foundations. She was fired a few weeks after the gala because of conflicts about the event and other issues, and the Clintons and Nemcova both dispute that the foundation required the fee. They say the money will be used for projects in Haiti.