New York: In what could prove to be embarrassing for White House hopeful Hillary Clinton, a media report says a firm which donated to former President Bill Clinton's charity is now accused of collaborating with the Chinese government in its crackdown on Tibetan activists.

Noting that Senator Clinton has spoken out against the communist nation's action, the Los Angeles Times today said that her recent stern comments on Beijings internal crackdown collide with the former president's fundraising relationship with a Chinese Internet company accused of collaborating with Beijing's censorship of the Web.

Last month, the firm, Alibaba Inc., carried a government-issued "most wanted" posting on its Yahoo China homepage, urging viewers to provide information on Tibetan activists suspected of stirring recent riots, the Times said.

Alibaba, which took over Yahoo's China operation in 2005 as part of a billion-dollar deal with the US-based search engine, arranged for the former president to speak at a conference of Internet executives in Hangzhou in September 2005.

Instead of taking his standard speaking fees, which have ranged from US $ 100,000 to US $ 400,000, Clinton accepted an unspecified private donation from Alibaba to his international charity, the William J. Clinton Foundation, the paper said.

The former president's charity has raised more than US $ 500 million over the last decade and has been lauded for its roles in disaster response, AIDS prevention and Third World medical and poverty relief.

But the Times says Clinton's reliance on influential foreign donors and his foundation's refusal to release its list of donors have led to repeated questions about the sources and transparency of his fundraising, even as Senator Clinton has talked about relying on him as a roving envoy if she is elected president.

Source : PTI