Mexico Elite Paid Hefty Price to Hear Bill Clinton Speak Dolia Estevez - Forbes | |
go to original August 27, 2014 |
At least 10 top Mexican business groups and corporations, both public and private, paid millions of dollars for Bill Clinton to speak at their events between 2002 and 2012, according to a review of the family’s federal financial disclosures published by The Washington Post in June.
Over more than a decade, Clinton delivered 14 speeches to 11 different Mexican sponsors. He was paid $3.2 million. One of his first paid appearances in Mexico was in October 2003 when the 42nd President was invited by Mexico’s Central Bank. His price: $150,000.
As the flak his reputation had taken around the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal wound down, the demand for the charismatic former President in the global high-end speech circuit doubled — and so did his fees. In April 2012, while his wife Hillary Clinton was still in charge of the Obama Administration’s diplomacy, Clinton gave the keynote speech at Mexico’s National Association of Bankers’ annual convention in Acapulco. His fee: $340,000.
Yet his most lucrative trip to Mexico was in November of 2008, soon after the Democrats recovered the White House. On that date, the Post’s review shows, Clinton addressed separately three groups: Casa de Bolsa Value Group, Mexican Friends of Zaka and Mexico’s National Tourism Business Council. His total pay: $600,000.
Two years later, in October 2010, Clinton was invited by Mexico Business Summit, an influential businessmen’s club led by a well-connected PRI politician, to deliver the keynote speech “Embracing Our Common Humanity,” at their annual convention in Toluca, the capital of the state of Mexico. The Post’s records show that Clinton actually gave two presentations the same day to the same group for which he charged a total of $400,000.
The three-day event was attended by some of Mexico’s most powerful politicians, businessmen and authors, including then President Felipe Calderón and the then Governor of the state of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto (host of the event), as well as billionaires Carlos Slim Helú and Alberto Bailleres. Slim was also a speaker.
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