Clinton Foundation admits mistake in tax forms, denying role of Hillary

The Clinton Foundation on Sunday acknowledged that the organization made mistakes in its tax forms, but also defended its commitment to transparency amid intense media scrutiny.

While stressing that the total revenue of the organization was accurately reported, Maura Pally, acting chief executive of the Clinton Foundation, admitted in a statement that the organization had failed to separate grants by foreign governments from other donations on its tax filings.

"Our error was that government grants were mistakenly combined with other donations ... So yes, we made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do, but we are acting quickly to remedy them, and have taken steps to ensure they don't happen in the future," said the statement, adding that after an external review is completed, the foundation would likely refile forms for some years.

"Those same grants have always been properly listed and broken out and available for anyone to see on our audited financial statements," it added.

The statement came at a time when the Clinton family's charitable organization's finances were facing intense scrutiny after former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced her 2016 presidency bid earlier April.

The former First Lady resigned from Board of Clinton Foundation shortly after announcing her presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, the statement dismissed allegation that Hillary Clinton took actions as U.S. secretary of state to meet interests of donors to the Clinton Foundation, saying the foundation had taken "unprecedented steps to avoid potential conflicts of interest" by disclosing all donors on the website.

"Today, our donor disclosure and foreign government contributor policy is stronger than ever," said the statement. "We have committed to disclosing all of our donors on a quarterly basis."

The statement highlighted relationship between the Clinton Foundation and an independent Canadian charity called the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (CGEP), which shares the same name as one of the 11 initiatives under the Clinton Foundation, explaining why it did not publicly identify donors who donated through the Canadian charity CGEP.

The U.S. daily The New York Times on Thursday reported after scrutinizing donations by the Canadian charity CGEP that the Clinton Foundation received 2.35 million U.S. dollars in donations from a Canadian company involved in an acquisition deal with Rosatom, a Russian atomic energy agency, without revealing the donors' identity.

Since the acquisition deal gave the Russians access to uranium mining sites in the United States, it had to be approved by a committee of representatives from U.S. government agencies, including the State Department. The U.S. State Department, then with Hillary Clinton at the helm, eventually signed off the deal.

The statement said though the Canadian charity CGEP was publicly listed as a donor, the charity's own individual donors were not listed on the website of the Clinton Foundation because Canadian law prohibits disclosure of individual donors without permission from each donor.

"This is hardly an effort on our part to avoid transparency," said the statement. Endi