The spring before his wife began her White House campaign, former President Bill Clinton earned $700,000 for his foundation by selling stock that he had been given from an Internet search company that was co-founded by a convicted felon and backed by the Chinese government, public records show.

Mr. Clinton had gotten the nonpublicly traded stock from Accoona Corp. back in 2004 as a gift for giving a speech at a company event. He landed the windfall by selling the 200,000 shares to an undisclosed buyer in May 2006, commanding $3.50 a share at a time when the company was reporting millions of dollars of losses, according to interviews.

A spokesman for the William J. Clinton Foundation declined to identify the buyer who was willing to pay so much for a struggling company’s stock, saying only that the transaction was handled by a securities broker. It occurred seven months before Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her bid to run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

The spokesman, Ben Yarrow, declined last week to say whether Mr. Clinton knew about the Chinese government’s connection to Accoona or the felony fraud conviction of one of the company’s founders.

“President Clinton gave a speech; he did not endorse a product,” Mr. Yarrow said.

The $700,000 capital gains was listed on the tax returns of Mr. Clinton’s foundation that were reviewed by The Washington Times.

The lack of disclosure about the buyer and the general activities of former presidents’ foundations troubles some ethics experts.

Sheila Krumholz, executive director for the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which studies political money and ethics, said even though the law doesn’t require former presidents to disclose donations and stock transactions to their foundations, they should do so to avoid the appearance that money was buying special access.

“We’re in a unique period where the wife of a former president is running for the job of the son of a former president,” she said, referring to Mrs. Clinton and the current President Bush.

Accoona offered its own Internet search engine as a rival to giants Google and Yahoo, and Mr. Clinton was the keynote speaker at the company’s Dec. 6, 2004, launch in New York. He even joked about the price of the stock that he was given that day as compensation for his speech.

“So I hope you get a big run-up in your stock price, I hope you have a great time doing it, but remember you’re doing something profoundly good for humanity and the future as you do,” Mr. Clinton told Accoona executives.

Accoona, based in Jersey City, N.J., was co-founded by Armand Rousso, who as of last year held more than 14 percent of the company’s shares. He pleaded guilty in 1999 to federal money laundering and other charges in a fraud investigation in New Jersey.

After being jailed for 19 months and cooperating with government investigators for several years, he was sentenced to probation in 2006 and was barred from working in the securities industry.

Rousso “does not get involved in the management of this company; if he did, I would not be here,” Accoona’s chief executive, Valentine J. Zammit, said in an interview. “I didn’t come on board to be told what to do. … We’ve made a lot of changes.

The China Daily Information Co., or CDIC, a subsidiary of the Chinese-controlled newspaper China Daily, holds nearly a 7 percent stake in Accoona, records show. Mr. Zammit said CDIC also has no management role.

Still, the company has touted its ties to China to potential investors.

“CDIC’s market knowledge and its parent’s ownership by the Chinese government gives us an advantage over companies that do not have such a relationship,” the company said in a prospectus filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last year.

The stock

Accoona officials have declined to discuss the arrangement they had with Mr. Clinton. “Obviously, we’re a private company. … I’m not about to give out that [information],” said Mr. Zammit, who wasn’t with the company when Mr. Clinton got the stock.

Mr. Clinton’s foundation has raised more than $250 million for the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and other charitable causes since 2004.

“The foundation is proud of the work that it does, and its tremendous successes — including its success on previously intractable problems such as the cost of AIDS medicine in the developing world — would not be possible without the generous support it receives from donors,” Mr. Yarrow said.

Before calling off a plan to raise money on the stock market last year, Accoona said in a detailed prospectus filed with the SEC that it had issued 200,000 shares of common stock in 2004 for what it called “marketing services,” valuing the deal at 66 cents per share. The documents do not name a recipient.

When Mr. Clinton’s foundation sold its 200,000 Accoona shares in 2006, the transaction was worth $3.50 per share. The IRS document doesn’t name the buyer, and officials did not respond to a request for more information about the transaction.

There is no established market price for the stock because the company is private. But records show that the company posted at least $60 million in losses during the period from 2004 to 2006.

The Chicago Tribune, reporting the stock transaction on Tuesday, quoted a business agent for former Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov, saying his client also was paid in stock options after attending Accoona’s launch in 2004.

However, the agent said, Mr. Kasparov did not exercise the options because financial advisers said the shares were worth less than the $1 option price, according to the report. The agent, Owen Williams, declined to comment when contacted by The Times.

Pat Huddleston, former branch enforcement chief for the SEC, did not describe the $3.50 per share paid to the Clinton Foundation as inappropriate but speculated that Accoona may have agreed in 2004 to buy back the stock at a predetermined price.

“A private company still owes a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder, … but the definition of fair price in a private company is what a willing seller and what a willing buyer agree on,” he said.

“I wonder if there wasn’t an agreement where whoever is arranging the former president’s [speaking] engagement is saying, ‘I’m going to take stock, but you agree that when I sell it, you’re going to have to buy it at such and such a price,’ ” Mr. Huddleston said.

The concerns

Not all political leaders have been as enthusiastic about Accoona as Mr. Clinton. One prominent member of the British Parliament raised concerns about the company’s close ties to the Chinese government after it introduced a European search engine.

Derek Wyatt, who chaired a House of Commons committee on Internet-related issues, reportedly called on advertisers at the time to “shun” the company.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Wyatt told The Times that he was concerned that the company was too close to China, which has been criticized by human rights groups for restricting Web sites critical of the Chinese government.

“You can’t have a search engine and restrict the search,” Mr. Wyatt said.

Larger search engines have faced scrutiny over cooperation with the Chinese government. Reporters Without Borders in 2005 accused Yahoo of acting as a “police informant” for China in the arrest of a Chinese journalist.

Mr. Zammit said the company does not keep information on its users, adding, “We haven’t been approached by the Chinese government to provide any information.”

In an SEC filing, the company said, “We are required to report any suspicious content to relevant government authorities and to undergo computer security inspections.”

Despite Accoona’s connections in China, the company has struggled to turn a profit. Last year, the New York Times reported that plans to raise $80.5 million through a stock offering halted when an underwriter withdrew from the deal.

Accoona disclosed Rousso’s criminal history in a prospectus filed with the SEC. The document says Rousso was convicted of securities fraud in France in 1999 and separately pleaded guilty to securities fraud and money laundering in federal court in New Jersey.

Rousso worked for at least two years as an outside consultant to Accoona through New York-based SPBD Consulting, which was paid millions of dollars. Attempts to reach Rousso through the business were unsuccessful.

“SPBD and Mr. Rousso are no longer consulting for Accoona Corporation,” the company said in an e-mail last week, adding that Rousso would not comment on any Accoona-related matters.

“The principal underlying activities occurred during a period ending over nine years ago and are themselves completely unconnected to us,” Accoona said in its SEC filing.

Rousso has been credited with helping secure 11 criminal convictions and $7 million in forfeited assets during the years that he spent cooperating with the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey, according to court records.

“Before I was arrested in January 1999, my conduct was illegal and I deeply regret it,” Rousso told a judge in federal court in Newark at his sentencing in 2006.

“The 19 months I did in jail between January 1999 and August 2000 was the best thing that could happen to me. It gave me the strength and courage to carry on,” he said.

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