The Clintons complied at the time with federal law by reimbursing Gupta for a portion of the costs for the flights Hillary Clinton took to political and other events. The Clintons do not have to reimburse InfoUSA for any of Bill Clinton’s travel, and they had to pay only first-class airfare for her travel, a fraction of the actual cost.

The dispute over Gupta’s bankrolling of the Clintons offers new detail about how successfully Clinton has leveraged the inner circle of donors he cultivated during his tenure in the White House to his personal financial benefit since he left office. In addition, it suggests the degree to which Hillary Clinton’s political career is also benefiting from those connections.

Jay Carson, a spokesman for the former president, declined to discuss the consulting arrangement. Carson described Gupta as a “longtime friend and supporter”.

Stormy Dean, InfoUSA’s chief financial officer, confirmed the flights and that payments went to Clinton but said that the company believes the shareholder complaints are without merit. “Our position is that these expenses are legitimate business expenses,” he said.

Gupta met Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s and quickly became a generous patron. And in return, Clinton offered him two diplomatic posts—as US counsel general to Bermuda and as US ambassador to Fiji—that he didn’t take. The president appointed him to the John F Kennedy Center Board of Trustees during his last week in office.

Both Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed to lend their names to technology schools that Gupta financed in rural India.

... contd.