The New York Times
APRIL 23, 2015
Readers Digest Version
The headline on the website Pravda trumpeted President
Vladimir V. Putin’s latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when
its precursor served as the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: “Russian
Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.”
The article, in January 2013, detailed how
the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company
with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West.
The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought
Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply
chain.
Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the
most lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of
all uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is
considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal
had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of
United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed
off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham
Clinton.
As the Russians gradually assumed control of
Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records
show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s
chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35
million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons,
despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to
publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations
as well.
At the time, both Rosatom and the United
States government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control
of the company’s assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly
broken, records show.
The New York Times’s examination of the
Uranium One deal is based on dozens of interviews, as well as a review of
public records and securities filings in Canada, Russia and the United States.
Some of the connections between Uranium One and the Clinton Foundation were
unearthed by Peter Schweizer, a former fellow at the right-leaning Hoover
Institution and author of the forthcoming book “Clinton Cash.” Mr. Schweizer
provided a preview of material in the book to The Times, which scrutinized his
information and built upon it with its own reporting.
A
Seat at the Table
The path to a Russian acquisition of American
uranium deposits began in 2005 in Kazakhstan, where the Canadian mining
financier Frank Giustra orchestrated his first big uranium deal, with Mr.
Clinton at his side.
The two men had flown aboard Mr. Giustra’s
private jet to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where they dined with the authoritarian
president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev. Mr. Clinton handed the Kazakh president a
propaganda coup when he expressed support for Mr. Nazarbayev’s bid to head an
international elections monitoring group, undercutting American foreign policy
and criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among others, his
wife, then a senator.
Within days of the visit, Mr. Giustra’s
fledgling company, UrAsia Energy Ltd., signed a preliminary deal giving it
stakes in three uranium mines controlled by the state-run uranium agency
Kazatomprom.
If the Kazakh deal was a major victory,
UrAsia did not wait long before resuming the hunt. In 2007, it merged with Uranium
One, a South African company with assets in Africa and Australia, in what was
described as a $3.5 billion transaction. The new company, which kept the
Uranium One name, was controlled by UrAsia investors including Ian Telfer, a
Canadian who became chairman. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Giustra, whose
personal stake in the deal was estimated at about $45 million, said he sold his
stake in 2007.
Soon, Uranium One began to snap up companies
with assets in the United States. In April 2007, it announced the purchase of a
uranium mill in Utah and more than 38,000 acres of uranium exploration
properties in four Western states, followed quickly by the acquisition of the
Energy Metals Corporation and its uranium holdings in Wyoming, Texas and Utah.
That deal made clear that Uranium One was intent on becoming “a powerhouse in
the United States uranium sector with the potential to become the domestic
supplier of choice for U.S. utilities,” the company declared.
Uranium One’s
shareholders were also alarmed, and were “afraid of Rosatom as a Russian state
giant,” Sergei Novikov, a company spokesman, recalled in an interview. He said
Rosatom’s chief, Mr. Kiriyenko, sought to reassure Uranium One investors,
promising that Rosatom would not break up the company and would keep the same
management, including Mr. Telfer, the chairman. Another Rosatom official said
publicly that it did not intend to increase its investment beyond 51 percent,
and that it envisioned keeping Uranium One a public company
American nuclear
officials, too, seemed eager to assuage fears. The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission wrote to Mr. Barrasso assuring him that American uranium would be
preserved for domestic use, regardless of who owned it.
“In order to
export uranium from the United States, Uranium One Inc. or ARMZ would need to
apply for and obtain a specific NRC license authorizing the export of uranium
for use as reactor fuel,” the letter said.
That renewed adversarial relationship has
raised concerns about European dependency on Russian energy resources,
including nuclear fuel. The unease reaches beyond diplomatic circles. In
Wyoming, where Uranium One equipment is scattered across his 35,000-acre ranch,
John Christensen is frustrated that repeated changes in corporate ownership
over the years led to French, South African, Canadian and, finally, Russian
control over mining rights on his property.
Mr. Christensen, 65, noted that despite
assurances by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that uranium could not leave
the country without Uranium One or ARMZ obtaining an export license — which
they do not have — yellowcake from his property was routinely packed into drums
and trucked off to a processing plant in Canada.
Asked about that, the commission confirmed
that Uranium One has, in fact, shipped yellowcake to Canada even though it does
not have an export license. Instead, the transport company doing the shipping,
RSB Logistic Services, has the license. A commission spokesman said that “to
the best of our knowledge” most of the uranium sent to Canada for processing
was returned for use in the United States. A Uranium One spokeswoman, Donna
Wichers, said 25 percent had gone to Western Europe and Japan. At the moment,
with the uranium market in a downturn, nothing is being shipped from the
Wyoming mines.
The “no export” assurance given at the time of the Rosatom deal is not the only one that turned out to be less than it seemed. Despite pledges to the contrary, Uranium One was delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange and taken private. As of 2013, Rosatom’s subsidiary, ARMZ, owned 100 percent of it.
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Capitalism Run Amuck
The United States Environmental Protection
Agency