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WASHINGTON — Last month, from his wife was nominated to be in possession of being writer of state, former President Clinton attempted to simpleton an end to supposition about his overseas fundraising by disclosing the names of some 208,000 donors to his groundwork, which has collected more than $500 million to pay for a presidential library and to combat AIDS, malaria and other scourges.

But nowhere on that list was the name Sakura Capital Management.

In 2003 Sakura, a shadowy, short-lived Japanese startup gang, paid Bill Clinton $500,000, the highest cash fee he has yet to receive for a oral communication, for a talk he in not at all degree delivered.

As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee takes up Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s nomination today, she is expected to parry questions about whether she might be influenced by any of her save’s donors by pointing to his fresh openness. But as the Sakura tale illustrates, the disclosure does not answer all questions in an opposite direction Bill Clinton’s associations.

The Sakura money is shrouded in mystery. Why was the fee so to a great height, two or three times what he was paid for other speeches on the trip? Why was it canceled by Sakura, and why was Clinton paid in full anyway?

The company itself is murky. Sakura’sitting former president, a New York securities trader, says he knew only the last name of the partner who is said to have on condition the money for the speech. The Panama-based former chairman of the company was the presiding officer of a bankrupt flooring set. Another company figure, a Japanese businessman, was accused in a 1998 action of helping defraud Casio Computer of $100 million.

Bill Clinton’s spokesman at the William J. Clinton Foundation, Matt McKenna, declined to make answer greatest in quantity questions about the speech, though he confirmed the reward from Sakura to Bill Clinton. The former president then donated the money to the foundation without taking a tax deduction, the spokesman said, which he said is why Sakura’s family did not wear the appearance in last month’s disclosures.

The payment was listed in the manner that private revenue to her married man in Hillary Clinton’s Senate financial-disclosure form for 2003, he pointed out.

Clinton’s involvement with Sakura was announced in a July 2003 news release written by veteran New York publicist Ken Sunshine.

Clinton’s Sakura engagement was to have been scheduled around appearances in South Korea on Nov. 14, 2003, and in Japan on Nov. 19. His Sakura fee was double the $250,000 he was paid for the South Korea and Nisshin City, Japan, speeches and besides than three times repeated the $140,000 for a Kyoto appearance, according to Hillary Clinton’s disclosure forms.

Sunshine aforesaid he wrote the releases at the request of John Matthews, a New York securities dealer who was listed as Sakura’s president.

But Matthews said he invested no money in the firm and understood that financing came from a “Mr. Tanaka” in Tokyo. Matthews said he none met Tanaka, didn’t know his full entitle and had no phone number or other contact information.