Former US President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, the current Democratic Party presidential nominee, have attracted billions of dollars to their own foundation to trade power and influence, Wall Street investor and analyst Charles Ortel told Sputnik.

© AP Photo / John Amis After Hillary Criticises Comey, FBI Releases Documents on Bill Clinton Corruption Investigation

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Charles Ortel is a veteran Wall Street investment analyst who has carried out major studies into the operation of the Clinton Foundation and its legal status, and runs a blog monitoring its activities. Ortel was the whistleblower that blew the lid off the General Electric financial discrepancies in 2008.

"The Clinton Foundation has been a gigantic slush fund," Ortel said. "People can donate relatively small sums to the Clinton regime and get gigantic concessions worth hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars back."

During the four years that Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, hundreds of millions of dollars flowed into the Clinton Foundation from governments around the world, many of which then enjoyed favored treatment from the US State Department, Ortel noted.

"To the world at large, the Clintons are open for business," he stated.

The US corporate media always refused to subject the Clinton Foundation to any kind of serious or skeptical coverage, in part because of fear of alienating the Clintons, Ortel explained.

"This is such a big story that the US press is not doing its job. What we have in ‘Clinton Incorporated,’ is Tammany Hall on steroids," he said.

Tammany Hall was the corrupt Democratic political organization that ran New York City for most of a century after the 1861-65 Civil War.

"If you are in the US press, you have got to have access to the president of the United States and the federal government… I have little confidence that the US media would do the work necessary in investigating the workings of the Clinton Foundation as our media is in thrall to the Clintons," Ortel added.

Ortel maintained that the operations of the Clinton Foundation and the actions of Hillary Clinton as Obama’s first secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 needed to be understood as part of a long-term master plan to regain and exercise political power by the Clinton family.

"The Clintons put together a long-term plan decades ago. They were already planning when Bill Clinton stepped down at the end of his second term that Hillary would run for president and eventually Chelsea will too," he said.

Ortel welcomed the decision of FBI Director James Comey to reopen the federal probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of private server for official business while secretary of state, and said the manner in which it had been done suggested the federal investigators believed they would find important revelations.

"To reopen an investigation is a massive decision so there must be a massive set of reasons for doing so. If it were a small matter, they would have waited until after the presidential election. It is also significant that this decision was announced publicly," Ortel noted.

An FBI investigation proceeds very carefully and methodically, and is thorough and sweeping. Therefore, Comey’s decision to reopen the emails probe was a very serious decision, Ortel pointed out.

"To then reopen an investigation 11 days before a presidential election involving a major candidate and their family is virtually unprecedented," he said.

Ortel also predicted that if Republican nominee Donald Trump defeats Hillary Clinton in the presidential election next Tuesday, current President Barack Obama would likely be urged to issue a blanket pardon to Clinton before Trump took office.

"If Trump wins, there would be great pressure on Barack Obama to pardon the Clintons before Trump could enter office. … [However] I believe she will never be elected president," he said.

Ortel also noted that the Clinton Foundation had never made the legal preparations and commitments that US law requires of any charity before it can carry out international activities outside the United States.

"The Clinton Foundation is engaging in illegal activities around the world. The Foundation was only authorized to be a presidential archive and research facility based in Little Rock [in the US state of Arkansas]. Every activity other than that has been unauthorized by federal authorities," he explained.

In 2001, the Clinton Foundation started operating internationally even though they had not applied for or been granted the legal status to do so, Ortel recalled.

"That is illegal: A charity must get an international accounting firm to verify its results when operating internationally. The Clinton Foundation did not do that. They have declared that they have raised billions of dollars while making false and misleading statements to authorities," he stated.

Today, there are hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation that remain unaccounted for, Ortel added.

"In 2013 an Indian company associated with the foundation initiative called Ranbaxy paid a$500 million penalty for such practices as inventing test results and adulterating (AIDS) medicines. Nobody still knows the true magnitude of this," he said.

None of the major initiatives that the Clinton Foundation had launched to uncritical and overwhelmingly favorable media coverage around the world remained valid when subjected to close scrutiny, Ortel maintained.

"The Clinton Climate Initiative is a fraud, the AIDS medicine initiative is a fraud. Everything is a fraud. No part of the Clinton Foundation is validly operated. I have suspected that this is a $100 billion fraud," he noted.

Ortel cited Doug Band’s 2011 email for the law firm of Simpson Thacher, exposed by WikiLeaks as proving beyond doubt the improper procedures under which the Clinton Foundation operated.

"There is $2 billion of declared donations at least. But the trick with a charity in dealing with a gullible public is to, first, trick — or divert — portions of the incoming revenue stream," he said.

Ortel also expressed concern about what happened to the billions of dollars that had been raised for the Clinton Foundation to help rebuild Haiti following the devastating 2010 earthquake in that country.

Bill Clinton is co-chairman with former Haiti Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission to channel aid to help the country recover from the devastating earthquake of 2010.

"Estimates of the amount of money raised run from a minimum of $6 billion to as high as $14 billion. However Clinton and Bellarive refuse to account for the money and Haitians have not seen anywhere near $ 6 billion invested in their country," Ortel remarked.

Clinton Foundation websites fail to record key documents and disclosures and the entire enterprise has never been subjected to any serious government oversight, Ortel concluded.

Hillary Clinton stated during the third presidential debate with Donald Trump on October 20 that everything she did as secretary of state was in furtherance of American interests.

She also noted then that she is proud of the work of the Clinton Foundation and characterized the organization as a world renowned charity with highest ratings given by foundation watchdogs. She pointed out that the Foundation has enabled, among other pursuits, treatment for 11 million people infected with HIV/AIDS.