Oratory fetches Bill Clinton $10.2m in 2006

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From Fazle Rashid
NEW YORK, June 15: Former US president Bill Clinton earned $10.2 million by delivering speeches in 2006. Fearing personal finances could become a political liability the Clintons sold stocks worth millions of dollars in April, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported today. Clintons had invested in oil, pharmaceutical, military contractors companies and Wal-Mart.
Clintons net worth is between $10 million and $50 million. Bill Clinton received honorarium between $75,000 and 450,000 apiece for speeches he delivered in 2006. He made as many as 60 speeches in 2006.
Financial statement of the Clintons came as US law makes it mandatory for all the members of the Congress to disclose family income each year. When Clinton left White House at the end of his two-terms he had a liability of legal fees amounting to $1.0 million. Clintons are now worth at least $10 million.
Clintons investments include $5.0 million in Citibank, $5.0 million in blind trust, an investment of $100,000 and $250,000 in London-based jewelery retail outlet, $15,000 invested in a company that processes foreign utility bills in India and more than $250,000 of unexpected stock options in a firm that specialises in mailing list.
Most of the investments are in Bill Clinton's name. Hillary Clinton earned $350,025 and $80,503 as royalties for her books -- Living History and It Takes a Village. Hillary Clinton is far from the most wealthies presidential candidate. Republican hopeful Mitt Romney is worth between $190 million and $250 million.

Meanwhile Kofi Annan, the immediate past UN Secretary General has accepted the job of the chairman of the Alliance of a Green Revolution in Africa, a $150 million undertaking to be jointly financed by Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and the Rockeffeler foundation.
Alliance will augment productivity of the millions of small scale farmers in Africa where per capita food production lags behind population growth.
A third of the population in Africa suffers from chronic hunger. African nations have agreed to sell all the stock of the ivory but the nine year freeze on further sales will stay. The arrangement will allow South Korea, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to empty government investories in a single sale to Japan. Revenues from the sale will be invested for conservation programme.
Banking authorities in America and Macao have initiated transferring millions of dollars to North Korea, a cash starved country, to end the dispute that had blocked an agreement to dismantle Pyanyong's nuclear programme. Macao had frozen the money under pressure from the US which objected to North Korea becoming a nuclear power.