Newsweek: Here an F.O.B., There an F.O.B. (Clinton & uranium miner)

January 30, 2008

There is no shortage of tycoons looking to do Bill Clinton favors. Another is Frank Giustra, a Canadian entrepreneur who founded Lions Gate Entertainment, the movie production company. Giustra has given millions to the Clinton Foundation, and is currently planning a March fund-raising gala for the charity in Toronto.

A spokesman for Giustra tells NEWSWEEK the two men first became acquainted in January 2005, when Giustra organized a tsunami-relief fund-raiser. He asked the former president to provide a videotaped thank you to the event's contributors. The men became friends. Later that year, Giustra, whose broad business interests include mining, was negotiating a deal to mine uranium in Kazakhstan. In September 2005, Giustra and Clinton flew to Kazakhstan on Giustra's jet. Clinton gave a press conference announcing an AIDS initiative with the Kazakh government. He also took the opportunity to praise the country's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, an authoritarian ruler with a poor human-rights record, for "opening up the social and political life of your country."

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http://www.newsweek.com/id/105650/page/3