A leftist Swiss billionaire is bankrolling a lobbying campaign for President Joe Biden’s $1.85 trillion Build Back Better bill, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Corporation and lobbying records show Swiss healthcare mogul Hansjorg Wyss’s foundation has been funneling money into Democratic dark money organizations that are now lobbying for BBB.
Wyss, who has been dubbed the new George Soros, has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Fund for a Better Future, a leftist group that operates several other dark money funds, including the environmentalist group Climate Power.
Climate Power is one of the main leftist organizations pushing for the passage of BBB, according to the Free Beacon.
Foreign nationals are prohibited from contributing to federal campaigns, but they are able to circumvent this rule by donating to nonprofit political advocacy organizations instead, as Wyss has done.
A conservative watchdog group, Americans for Public Trust, filed an ethics complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Wyss in May, alleging that most of his donations amount to “campaign contributions from a foreign national, running afoul of federal law.”
“Hansjörg Wyss has been indirectly funding American politics for years, so the news that his foreign money is tied up in this latest dark money campaign to pass President Biden’s legislative agenda comes as no surprise,” Americans for Public Trust executive director Caitlin Sutherland said in a statement.
One of Wyss’s past U.S. campaigns included former attorney general Eric Holder and his attempt to force Republican legislatures to redraw their electoral maps. The advocacy arm of Wyss’s foundation, Berger Action Fund, donated $3 million to the National Redistricting Action Fund, a lobbying group that helped push Holder’s partisan efforts.
Wyss admitted in 2014 that he does not have permanent residency status in the U.S., but in a recent New York Times profile he refused to clarify questions about his citizenship.
