Clinton Foundation Donor Received $13 Million From State Department

The State Department doled out $13 million in grants for longtime friend and Clinton Foundation donor Muhammad Yunus during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, according to federal records.

The grants were provided in 18 separate transactions from the U.S. Agency for International Development to the Bangladesh-based Grameen bank, according to a Sunday evening report from the Daily Caller News Foundation, for which Yunus served as a founding board member. Groups associated with Yunus through business relationships received an additional $11 million.

Yunus oversaw the distribution of microcredit loans to impoverished borrowers for the bank for over 30 years. Thanks in part to years of lobbying by former president Bill Clinton, Yunus received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for what the committee called “efforts through microcredit to create economic and social development from below.”

When the Bangladeshi government in 2011 began investigating the bank over charges that funds had been mismanaged, Hillary Clinton intervened as secretary of state, contacting the country’s officials directly in addition to holding a news conference in the U.S. to express “concern and hope” that the bank would “continue to function productively.” Yunus was nonetheless forced out of his position later that year by his government.