You're reading: Will Clinton’s Pinchuk ties damage her candidacy?

It turns out that Russia and Ukraine are likely to be top foreign policy issues in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. For Democratic Party candidate and early front-runner Hillary Clinton, connections to Ukraine now under the microscope may not help her win the presidency.

Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, one of the biggest contributors to the Clinton Foundation, stands accused of violating an international trade ban in place against Iran – accusations that Pinchuk denies and whose statement the Kyiv Post published in full.

Pinchuk owns Interpipe, a manufacturer of steel railways and pipes used in the oil and natural gas sectors.

A story published by Newsweek on April 18 says that Interpipe made a number of shipments to Iran in 2011 and 2012, including one worth $1.8 million in May 2012, which included railway parts and products commonly used in the oil and gas sectors. The allegations were based on a review of declarations and documents that Newsweek’s journalists claim to have got from Ukraine.

However, as part of the global effort to punish Iran and prevent it from building a nuclear weapon, sales worth more than $1 million are banned to the Iranian petrochemical industry.

In written comments to the Kyiv Post, Interpipe says the documents published by Newsweek “were not agreed with Interpipe and the company doesn’t know why Newsweek believes the information is verified.”

The company, however, didn’t provide precise information on shipments made to Iran. In a statement published by the company on April 21, Interpipe said it hasn’t violated an international trade ban in place against Iran.

The allegation was followed by a recent investigation by The New York Times that says Hillary Clinton, as U.S. secretary of state, approved the Russian acquisition of a uranium company in Canada that controlled one-fifth of America’s uranium production capacity after a major donation to the Clinton Foundation. The state department was one of the government agencies that needed to approve the deal because uranium is considered as strategic asset with implications for national security.

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Sourcing Canadian records, the journalists reported that the chairman of Russian-owned Uranium One gave more than $2 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation. The foundation didn’t publicly identify the donors. The journalists, however, are not sure whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal.

Experts believe that such cases call into question Clinton’s ethics.

Brian Mefford, a Kyiv-based political consultant and Republican Party activist, says the controversy around Hillary Clinton “reinforces the perception that the Clintons have always had double standards in which they say one thing and do the other. However, the Clintons have weathered many storms and this is likely to be a brief storm in an otherwise sunny career.”

Reno Domenico, the head of Democrats Abroad Ukraine in Kyiv, says the report alleging that Clinton donor Pinchuk may have violated U.S. sanctions on Iran, is “not kind of news any candidate would want.”

But Domenico said: “It’s an allegation that has to be proven. We have to see what comes out of it. And I don’t think Hillary Clinton would be responsible for something Pinchuk does.”

While of interest to Ukrainians, the Pinchuk allegations may not harm Hillary Clinton’s election chances, Mefford says. “Fortunately for Hillary, foreign policy issues rarely are a factor in presidential elections,” he says.

However, Mefford said that the contribution made by the Russian-owned company “may potentially be a liability” for Hillary Clinton.

“After all it was Hillary who was the author of the ‘reset’ policy with Russia which not only failed to achieve its goal, but instead emboldened [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to challenge the West and de facto intervene in Ukraine,” Mefford said. “Almost all candidates in the presidential race have taken a tough stance against Putin and in support of Ukraine. The Republican nominee will clearly try to pin the failure of ‘reset’ on Hillary Clinton to question her judgment.”

However, if Clinton wins the elections, Ukraine could probably benefit as Clinton is now calling on the West to boost financial and military assistance to Ukraine.

“I think we need to provide more financial assistance for the government of Ukraine, as it is trying to make the transition from a non-professional, corrupt system to a system that operates according to the global rules,” Clinton said in her recent address. “I think we need to provide more help to Ukraine to protect its borders. The United States and NATO are still very reluctant to do it.”

Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected]