‘How did the chair of the House ethics committee end up on a corporate-backed African safari?’
March 19th, 2013Via: Mother Jones:
In August 2012, as most members of Congress were hitting the campaign trail, three Republican lawmakers were enjoying an all-expenses-paid retreat at Ol Jogi, a private 66,000-acre ranch in Kenya’s lush highlands. This “African Versailles” features a golf course, racetrack, dozens of man-made lakes, around 120 miles of road, more than 200 major buildings, and some 350 employees. The representatives—including Alabama’s Jo Bonner, then the chairman of the House ethics committee—were ostensibly there to learn about threats to the ranch’s idyllic landscapes and herds of wild animals, which were made famous in the Oscar-winning 1985 film Out of Africa.
Ol Jogi is owned by a trust benefiting the Wildenstein family, a secretive, embattled Franco-American aristocratic line; the clan has been accused of buying art looted by the Nazis, among other misdeeds. Over five generations, the Wildensteins have amassed a fortune estimated to be worth as much as $10 billion by dealing art, breeding horses, and—according to French authorities—evading a reported $800 million in taxes. One family member received a multimillion-dollar mansion for her 17th birthday; another has spent millions on plastic surgery to make herself look more like a cat. Since 1990, the Wildensteins and a family firm have given nearly $150,000 to Republican candidates and campaign committees.
Given the family’s history of support for the party, it’s no surprise that Bonner, along with top GOP fundraiser Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) and Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), chose to overlook their hosts’ legal difficulties and visit the site of Meryl Streep and Robert Redford’s African love affair. What’s more intriguing is who paid for the 10-day, $47,000 adventure for the legislators (as well as Bonner’s and Black’s spouses and Granger’s son): the International Conservation Caucus Foundation, a mysterious charity based out of a two-story townhouse in the posh Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC.
It may not have a glass-and-steel headquarters, but the ICCF counts among its supporters some of America’s most powerful corporations and special interests. The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the World Wildlife Fund helped launch the group and are the only members of its Advisory Council. Meanwhile, the foundation’s Conservation Council includes ExxonMobil and six other Fortune 500 companies, as well as trade groups (like the American Petroleum Institute and the Malaysian Palm Oil Board) that represent environmentally destructive industries.
The ICCF’s mission statement says it aims “to advance US leadership in international conservation…and to develop the next generation of conservation leaders in the US Congress.” The group’s corporate backers, however, hear a different story. A company that supports ICCF gets “an unparalleled opportunity for access and visibility, to have its voice heard and its perspective appreciated by many of the most powerful leaders in Congress,” according to a confidential summary of the foundation’s schmoozing with lawmakers sent to members in September and obtained by Mother Jones.
