When Russia Bought US Uranium Mines
How Hillary Clinton secretly engineered a sweetheart sale to Vladimir Putin
“Few could have imagined in the past that we would own 20 percent of US [uranium] reserves.” Rosatom CEO Sergei Kiriyenko to Russian President Vladimir Putin, January 2013
“We are committed to the strategy of developing Uranium One as a platform for the global growth of ARMZ’s business,” said Vadim Jivov, Chairman of JSC AtomRedMetZoloto (ARMZ) Uranium Holding. Jivov was celebrating the January 2013 agreement to purchase the remaining stock it did not already own of Uranium One, a Canadian firm that had extensive mine holdings in the United States, for a price of $1.3 billion. JSC ARMZ was a subsidiary of Rosatom, the $70 billion Russian government-owned nuclear energy company.
In June 2010, Rosatom (Russian State Atomic Nuclear Agency) announced its purchase of 51 percent majority share of Uranium One. Some of the holdings of Uranium One were US uranium mines, a strategic asset that required US government scrutiny. The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 mandated that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission make a determination if a license transfer was in the security interest of the United States.
Three months earlier, in March 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met privately with then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev to discuss several issues, including nuclear matters. Those private talks may have included discussions of Rosatom’s intention to purchase Uranium One.
US government scrutiny included more than just the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The heads of several major US government agencies are members of the Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States. This committee has responsibility to review all sales involving a strategic US asset.
Several cabinet secretaries and other agency heads were members of the committee, including: Hillary Clinton (State), Tim Geithner (Treasury), Gary Locke (Commerce), Robert Gates (Defense), Steven Chu (Energy), Janet Napolitano (Homeland Security), Eric Holder (Attorney General), Ron Kirk (US Trade Representative), and John Holdren (Office of Science and Technology Policy).[i]
As is typical in similar committees, the principal members could appoint a subordinate as a proxy to carry out their wishes. Clinton instructed Jose Fernandez to act on her behalf as her committee representative. Suggestions made later that committee principals were not knowledgeable on the topic and had no idea how their subordinates would vote are patently absurd.
In October 2010, the nine-member Committee for Foreign Investment unanimously approved the first-ever sale of US uranium mines to the Russian government. After the purchase of the remaining 49 percent of the stock was announced in January 2013, Rosatom chief executive officer Sergei Kiriyenko said to Russian President Vladimir Putin, “Few could have imagined in the past that we would own 20 percent of US [uranium] reserves.”
Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming was among those in Congress most concerned regarding the sale. Six uranium mines in Wyoming were sold to the Russians, as well as mines in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and a uranium processing facility in Texas. “Russia has a disturbing record of supporting nuclear programs in countries that are openly hostile to the United States,” Barrasso wrote in a December 21, 2010, letter to President Barack Obama. Barrasso continued, “Russia has directly aided Iran’s nuclear development and agreed on October 15, 2010, to help Venezuela’s nuclear program. This record is at great odds with our own national security.”[ii]
Other members of Congress were concerned that uranium from US mines could make its way to Iran. The Russian government helped build Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant and Iran would need uranium to keep operating.
US uranium assets have been a target of Russian statecraft for decades. In 1992, Russia used its considerable uranium assets to economically damage the US uranium mining industry. The Commerce Department found Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the Ukraine had been dumping uranium on the worldwide market at less than half the price of its actual value. The dumping at prices below what it cost to actually mine uranium caused severe financial hardships, resulting in the closure of several US mining operations.
The 2010 sale of one-fifth of US uranium mines to Russia had its origin several years earlier. In 2004, a pair of Canadians, Frank Giustra and Ian Telfer, partnered to create Canadian uranium mining company UrAsia Energy Limited. Giustra was the founder and chief executive of movie studio Lions Gate Entertainment before he made the switch to running an investment firm and then becoming a mining tycoon. Telfer had partnered with Giustra on several earlier investment deals.
UrAsia was a very rare uranium mining company in that it did not own any uranium mines, nor did it have any experience in uranium mining. However, what UrAsia founder Giustra did have was a former US president as a loyal and valuable benefactor.
In September 2005, Bill Clinton flew to the Kazakhstan capital of Almaty with Giustra aboard the would-be mining executive’s private MD-87 jet, an airline jetliner that typically hauls more than 135 passengers.
Upon arrival, the pair had a banquet with Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev. At the event, Clinton offered high praise and endorsed Nazarbayev’s bid to head an international democracy organization. Days later, Giustra was given the right to purchase three government-owned uranium mines.
It is well established that big business deals occur in Kazakhstan only with government approval. Moreover, a strategic asset, such as uranium, would not land in the hands of a start-up shell company over bigger, established mining companies with impeccable reputations of success unless Nazarbayev personally approved the deal.
Nazarbayev, who had held office since 1990 and would be routinely reelected with nearly 100 percent of the vote, was an iron-fisted despot. Even his opponents claim they voted for him. He was a Socialist Party official before the break-up of the Soviet Union. He had reportedly stashed away billions of dollars he plundered from his nation. His regime was guilty of rampant human rights abuses. Regime critics were often jailed. That a former US president would publicly praise Nazarbayev was shocking. Clinton’s glowing remarks contradicted the official US narrative of the Kazakhstan despot. The United States has maintained cool-at-best relations with Kazakhstan since it became apparent the country was democratic in name only.
Nazarbayev stepped down as president in 2019, but held the title of Elbasy (“Leader of the Nation”) until January 2022.
Before Clinton and Giustra flew to Almaty to close the deal with the Kazakh dictator, there was some backroom dealing going on. Senator Hillary Clinton had lobbied Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov to approve UrAsia’s mine purchase or risk the consequences.[iii]
After Clinton and Giustra returned to the United States, Giustra made one of the biggest donations ever to the Clinton Foundation of more than $31 million. Several months later, Giustra pledged an additional $100 million to a Clinton Foundation offshoot named the Clinton-Giustra Partnership.
In December 2008, as a condition of becoming US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton signed an agreement to report all donations given to the Clinton Foundation. But she did not honor the agreement. Giustra’s more than $130 million in donations to the foundation were kept secret.
In February 2007, South African mining company SXR Uranium One and UrAsia Energy Limited struck a deal to merge and become $5 billion company. The merged company would become the world’s second-largest publicly traded uranium mining company. Two months later, the deal was completed, with UrAsia owning 60 percent of the new company. In less than three years, Giustra and Telfer’s UrAsia went from a shell company to a global uranium-mining conglomerate.
Telfer was named chairman of the new company. Giustra stepped down from the new company’s board due to a conflict of interest. In addition to his leadership position in UrAsia, Giustra also headed Endeavour Financial, which scored a $12 million payday as financial advisor for the merger. Telfer served as Uranium One chairman of the board until 2015.[iv] Both Giustra and Telfer owned millions of shares of stock and millions of dollars more in stock options in the new Uranium One.
Uranium One experienced a bumpy road in the early going. In 2009, only two years after the merger, Uranium One found itself in a precarious situation with the Kazakhstan government. There was concern the mining company might be taken over by the former Soviet republic as fallout from a corruption investigation of Giustra business associate, Moukhtar Dzhakishev. Clinton, Giustra, and Dzhakishev had been wheeling and dealing together for at least a couple of years.
Dzhakishev was a Kazakhstan official who was present when Clinton and Giustra flew into Almaty in 2005. It was Dzhakishev who coordinated the UrAsia purchase of the three Kazakh mines. In early 2007, Dzhakishev flew to the United States and met with Giustra and Clinton at the former president’s Chappaqua, New York, home to discuss business issues in which the Kazakhstan government needed US government support.
By 2009, Dzhakishev had fallen out of favor with the Kazakhstan government amid corruption allegations. Concerned over the possibility of a Kazakh government takeover, Uranium One officials met with US Embassy staff in the Kazakhstan capital city and requested US officials intercede on behalf of the Canadian company. Amazingly, they did just that.[v] US State Department officials acted on behalf of a Canadian-owned company in its business transactions with the Kazakhstan government. At this time, Hillary Clinton was the US Secretary of State. About the same time, Uranium One chairman Ian Telfer made a $1 million contribution to the Clinton Foundation.
In June 2010, Rosatom proposed purchasing a majority share in Uranium One, thereby triggering a review by the Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States. The very same month, Bill Clinton was offered a $500,000 speaking fee by Renaissance Capital, an investment bank with Kremlin ties that was selling Uranium One stock.
Clinton’s previous Moscow speech was five years earlier for less than $200,000. In 2005, when Bill Clinton last gave a speech in Moscow, Hillary Clinton was only one of one-hundred US Senators. In 2010, she was the sole US Secretary of State. The Uranium One-Rosatom deal received the Committee for Foreign Investment approval and the purchase was completed in December 2010. Telfer then made his first contribution to the Clinton Foundation for $1 million.
By 2013, when the rest of Uranium One was sold to the Russians, Telfer and entities directly tied to him had given the Clinton Foundation about $2.35 million. All totaled, Giustra, Telfer, and several other individuals who profited from the various UrAsia, Uranium One, and Rosatom deals gave about $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.[vi] None of these donations were disclosed by the Clinton Foundation as Hillary had promised in the 2008 memorandum of understanding she signed.
After the initial Uranium One sale to Rosatom was approved, Congress became deeply concerned that the Russian government now controlled one-fifth of all US uranium assets. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) assuaged their concerns by repeatedly claiming neither Rosatom nor its subsidiary, ARMZ, would be given a license to export uranium from the US mines to a foreign country. The NRC promise allayed concerns that the Russians would drain the United States of valuable uranium assets.
However, there was some regulatory sleight-of-hand taking place. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission secretly modified an existing license by a third party to transport abroad US uranium on behalf of Rosatom.
While the Rosatom takeover of Uranium One was playing out, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was quietly investigating Vadim Mikerin. He was the chief representative of Rosatom in the United States. In 2009, the FBI learned Mikerin was engaged in extensive racketeering including bribery, extortion, and kickbacks. Either the FBI did not inform the Committee for Foreign Investment of this information, or it did, and the committee dismissed it as irrelevant when considering Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One. The Justice Department did not negotiate a plea deal with Mikerin until August 2015, long after the Rosatom-Uranium One deal was finalized.[vii]
This article is adapted from the book Washington Babylon: From George Washington to Donald Trump, Scandals That Rocked the Nation. On sale now.
Mark Hyman is an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist.
[i] James K. Jackson, The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, July 3, 2018), 14.
[ii] Senator John Barrasso, “Letter to President Barack Obama,” December 21, 2010.
[iii] Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, (New York: Harper, 2015), 29.
[iv] Uranium One, Audited Annual Consolidated Financial Statements for the years ended December 31, 2014 and 2013.
[v] Jo Becker and Mike McIntire, “The Clinton Connection to Russia’s Mining Empire,” New York Times (International), April 24, 2015.
[vi] Schweizer, Clinton Cash, 34-36.
[vii] United States v. Vadim Mikerin, Docket No: 8:14-CR-00529-TDC (2015).