Clinton sugar daddy steps down

By Andrew Zajac

Footnote to the Democratic primary: Among the worries of the party faithful about New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the business baggage of Bill Clinton, including his lucrative relationship with Vinod Gupta, founder and CEO of the infoUSA database and marketing firm.

Make that former CEO.

Gupta was replaced as chief executive of the Omaha-based firm as part of a proposed settlement of a shareholder suit which accused him of misspending millions in company funds, part of that on the Clintons.

Gupta, who still owns a hefty chunk of infoUSA shares, remains a board member, but turns over the reins of the company to one of its outside directors, according to an infoUSA announcement this morning.

Under Gupta, infoUSA paid for use of a corporate yacht with an all-female crew, a jet, a box at the University of Nebraska football stadium and condominiums in Hawaii and California.

Gupta also donated about $1 million to the Clinton presidential library, spent $900,000 in corporate funds flying the Clintons to various domestic and international venues and paid Bill Clinton $3.3 million in consulting fees.

Alleged misuse of corporate assets wasn't the only management issue confronting Gupta.

In 2005, authorities in Iowa found that infoUSA had sold lists of senior citizens to telemarketing criminals who used them in theft schemes.

The firm also has been under SEC investigation in connection with its spending and with company stock transactions.

Gupta was a major donor to Bill Clinton, spending a night in the White House's Lincoln bedroom as a thank you for his fundraising prowess. He also was an important benefactor of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid.

In a preliminary ruling on the suit, a Delaware judge said the consulting payments to the former president were within Gupta's discretion as CEO. But that did little to settle broader questions of Gupta's stewardship of infoUSA or of the appropriateness of the Clintons' ties with him.

A further footnote:
Today's AP story on Gupta's departure contains an error, and to Clinton supporters perhaps a bit of wishful thinking which may cut especially deeply on the threshold of the Democratic convention:

"The shareholder lawsuit alleges the company misspent millions some of it on former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee."