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+--- Thread: Interesting timing What Blagojevich was doing right before he was indicted (/thread-537.html)
Interesting timing What Blagojevich was doing right before he was indicted - Magda Hassan - 17-12-2008
Another interesting video from Brasscheck TV. Blagojevich was charged recently by the FBI for apparently trying to sell Barak Obama's seat in the Illinois senate. Blagojevich has the power to appoint any one to that seat in the mean time until it goes up for election. The bank he is referring to, Bank of America, has received funds from the bail out but is not giving credit to the window manufacturing firm (Republic). Workers have taken over the factory (Argentina?) until they receive back wages and other entitilements guaranteed them by law but it looks like they will not receive them. The bank seems okay about that and maybe the company too as I heard they were going offshore to increase profits. They may use the present events to go bankrupt and take the workers money.
Anyway, even if this guy is a corrupt man as portrayed, and he may well not be despite what we hae been shown, he seems to have stepped on some one's toes and is not playing the game right. Not too often you see a polititian putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to supporting workers over corporations. In fact I'm having trouble remembering any.
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/501.html
Coincidence?
December 8 - Governor Rod Blagojevich announces the State of Illinois will cease doing business with Bank of America.
December 9 - Governor Rod Blagojevich, who has been reportedly under investigations by the federal government for three years is indicted based on a recent wire tap.
If he is as dirty as he is being portrayed, why did it take three years to find something on him?
Also...
When is the last time you saw a governor take a high profile stand for a small business and working people against a multinational bank?
The FBI sure shut that down quick.
What convenient timing they have.
Interesting timing What Blagojevich was doing right before he was indicted - Dawn Meredith - 17-12-2008
Interesting....could this be another Eliot Spitzer deal? I saw the governor's attorney on tv last night and he seemed very confident that this is a weak case...
But what about the million dollar offer, bribe or whatever that is for that Senate seat? (And who is THAT person?)
A JFk assassination researcher I have known for decades and re-connected with about 5 years ago- Jerry Policoff- predicted that Fitzgerald would come up empty with one fall guy in the Plame matter, that the VP would never be mentioned, nor would be Rove, in other words not to trust this "spotless" special prosecutor.
So this will just continue to be more and more interesting.
Dawn
Interesting timing What Blagojevich was doing right before he was indicted - Paul Rigby - 17-12-2008
Magda Hassan Wrote:Another interesting video from Brasscheck TV. Blagojevich was charged recently by the FBI for apparently trying to sell Barak Obama's seat in the Illinois senate....When is the last time you saw a governor take a high profile stand for a small business and working people against a multinational bank?
The FBI sure shut that down quick.
What convenient timing they have. [/SIZE][/FONT]
Great post, Magda: FBI as domestic corporate goon squad? How very surprising.
Interesting timing What Blagojevich was doing right before he was indicted - David Guyatt - 18-12-2008
Paul Rigby Wrote:Great post, Magda: FBI as domestic corporate goon squad? How very surprising.
Yep, it makes you wish J Edgar Hoover was back in charge doesn't it...
Interesting timing What Blagojevich was doing right before he was indicted - Myra Bronstein - 18-12-2008
Magda Hassan Wrote:...
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/501.html
Coincidence?
December 8 - Governor Rod Blagojevich announces the State of Illinois will cease doing business with Bank of America.
December 9 - Governor Rod Blagojevich, who has been reportedly under investigations by the federal government for three years is indicted based on a recent wire tap.
If he is as dirty as he is being portrayed, why did it take three years to find something on him?
Also...
When is the last time you saw a governor take a high profile stand for a small business and working people against a multinational bank?
...
Thank you for posting this Maggie. Thank you thank you thank you.
The second he came out for a UNION he was toast.
I've been wanting to post about this for days but you beat me to it.
I'm guessing that even if this Gov, or any other pol, is corrupt it's irrelevant to his situation. What's going to get a pol in trouble is not the corruption, it's siding with workers over the corporate bosses.
More significantly Blagojevich sided with unionized workers at the Republic Windows and Doors factory. The owners of the Republic factory are busting the union and moving it to the non-union ("right to work") state of Iowa. That's the bottom line here.
This is a must read: http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/556
This is just like the current attack on the United Auto Workers. Using the economy to justify the abhorrent policy the corporate gov't wants anyway (aka The Shock Doctrine)--to bust unions. Union busting is THE road map to world politics. It also dovetails with THE rosetta stone of world politics--the 1963 coup.
Magda Hassan Wrote:...
When is the last time you saw a governor take a high profile stand for a small business and working people against a multinational bank?...
Change a couple of words, "President" instead of "Governor," "US Steel" instead of "bank," and insert the word "UNION" and we have a question with the following answer: The last time was in with President Kennedy in 1962.
War on organized labor is THE real war. Again, what is the first thing Hitler did after seizing power? Bust the unions. It's what his industrial backers, like Fritz Thyssen, wanted.
Interesting timing What Blagojevich was doing right before he was indicted - Myra Bronstein - 18-12-2008
Myra Bronstein Wrote:...
This is a must read: http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/556
...
Here is the entire piece:
"Echoes of Injustice Travel from Chicago to Iowa: The Story Behind the Republic Window Settlement Submitted
by meg on Wed, 12/17/2008 - 4:20pm. A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White
The standoff at Republic Windows & Doors finally ended last week. The Chicago company that said it couldn't get the money from its bank to pay its fired workers had no more excuses, and members of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE) Local 1110 left the factory they'd been peacefully occupying since the beginning of the month.
The enormous pressure applied by leaders all over the country, along with support from President-elect Barack Obama, opened the floodgates. Bank of America finally agreed to pay out a $1.35 million settlement to laid-off workers. JP Morgan Chase, which owns a minority share in the now-defunct company, pitched in an extra $400,000. The money went straight into two funds: one to pay workers the severance and vacation pay owed to them by Republic, and the other to try and write a new chapter in the story of the decades-old factory.
This was the heartening headline splashed on newspapers across the country. But a more sinister tale may just be beginning for workers in another Midwestern state.
As BuzzFlash reported at the time, after finding out they'd be out of work in three days at the beginning of December, workers at Republic Windows & Doors Inc. staged a sit-in at the factory to secure the benefits the company said it couldn't pay. Politicians all over the state threatened to stop doing business with Bank of America and its subsidiaries until they paid out a loan to Republic so management could comply with its legal obligations to its former workers.
Negotiations have been ongoing, as has the sit-in, since the plant shut down. According to The New York Times, Republic CEO Rich Gillman demanded that any settlement with the bank also include money to pay for the leases on his BMW and Mercedes, as well as eight weeks worth of his salary. The final deal, announced last Wednesday, did not include such additions. Republic filed for bankruptcy that Friday.
Gillman was widely quoted to have blamed Republic's collapse on the broader economy and the credit freeze, calling the situation "a microcosm of what is happening to many large and small businesses" during the sit-in. But now it seems that Republic's story isn't all that representative.
There were signs that the company had been planning on leaving Chicago well before they broke the news to workers. During Gillman's brief tenure as CEO of Republic, the workforce was nearly halved by layoffs. The New York Times reported that union leaders noticed management had been making off with equipment weeks before the announcement.
Complaining about the high production costs in Chicago, Gillman had previously tried to purchase another plant in Ohio, but Bank of America turned him down for the loan. According to Republic's own statements, the company approached Bank of America back on October 16 about an "orderly wind down" culminating in its closing the factory in January.
The most obvious clue of Republic's intentions was carried out very quietly. Weeks before Republic's closing, Echo Windows & Doors LLC was incorporated in Illinois. Chitown Daily News reported that Echo was incorporated in Iowa about one week later. Neither list Rich Gillman as the head of the business, but the Iowa incorporation is under his wife's name. Echo then proceeded to buy a window and door manufacturing plant in Red Oak, IA, previously owned by a faltering company called Traco.
It seems that, despite fears of the Illinois Attorney General, Republic's customers aren't much affected by the shutdown of the Chicago factory. A glass trade publication article cites industry dealers as saying they've simply moved their orders from Republic to Echo. Another industry publication is reporting that the former vice president of sales at Republic is now the main contact for www.echowindows.com.
With such a sequence of events, it's natural to wonder whether Republic was run into the ground in order to set up elsewhere for cheaper. Leah Fried, an organizer with UE that is working with the former Republic workers, said it's impossible for her to say what the former owners of Republic have been planning, since the union has always had a tough time getting the truth from them.
"The management -- especially Rich Gillman -- has been very dishonest," Fried said in a telephone interview with BuzzFlash. Of Gillman, she said "he's never straight with us."
Local news reports quote city organizers and other Iowans as nervous about labor problems at the former Traco plant, now that the Gillmans are relocating to Red Oak. According to an article from Midlands News Service, the Iowa workers hired after the buyout of Traco had to sign confidentiality agreements and have already seen an increased workload since the takeover. The article goes on to say the workers are not unionized, and are paid $10 to $12 an hour.
Fried said she couldn't be sure if Iowa could count on Echo to be a positive factor in the manufacturing landscape in Red Oak.
"With Rich Gillman, anything is possible," she said wryly.
She also noted that, while there are UE members in Iowa, it is a "Right to Work" state, and Illinois is not. The Right to Work law makes organizing a union more difficult, often resulting in lower pay. Fried called the law "anti worker."
"There are pro-union people everywhere; it's just a matter of if there are laws to support their rights," she said.
No matter what happens in Iowa, the workers in Chicago are likely glad to be rid of the Gillmans. The Window of Opportunity Fund, set up with some of their settlement money, will be used to create new jobs for the workers.
The executive board, comprised of former workers at the plant, has been meeting over the last few weeks to decide how they can re-open the plant. Fried said they haven't determined yet whether to forge a partnership with a new management team, or possibly re-open the plant under a union-run cooperative, but the ultimate objective is to get the quiet factory humming again.
"This is a place that should've stayed open," Fried said, adding that because the skilled workers make energy-efficient products, the factory can be economically viable for the long term. "The goal is to reopen the plant and create employment."
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS"
Interesting timing What Blagojevich was doing right before he was indicted - Magda Hassan - 20-12-2008
I think there may be lots more to this than is being told. He may be a totally corrupt politician. Or he may be being set up. Or he may be a totally corrupt politician being set up. Why him and why now? Others are corrupt and untouched. Apparently Pelosi's husband got a big contract for her keeping impeachment off the table. Feinstein's husband got a contract for her co-operation in pushing though the new AG. Harry Reid got land real cheap and sold real high and doesn't want to talk about it. Blagovich is recorded on tape but it wouldn't be the first time a tape is edited or taken out of context. Given some of the company he has kept over the years there may be many big secrets kept but for how long? Is history being wiped clean for the new golden boy from Illinois? Inconvenient facts removed. I think he is a small fish and right out of water in the big boys game. There are tie ins here with the UK and Nadhmi Auchi and France's ELF oil company, the fraudulent activities in Iraq with the granting of telecommuniations licences, BNP Parabas who was the sole financial institution receiving 'oil for food' money during Saddams time. Stories about all this have been disappared from the UK papers because of the Libel Tourism matters recently brought up in the Commons. Documents following below.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/19/blagojevich-press-conference/#comment-5390408
Blagojevich: ‘I will fight, I will fight, I will fight until I take my last breath.’»
In his first appearance since being accused of engaging in a “political corruption crime spree,” Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich defiantly rejected the many calls for him to resign from office. Blagojevich insisted that he would “fight” the “political lynch mob”:
I’m here to tell you right off the bat that I am not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing, that I intend to stay on the job, and I will fight this thing every step of the way. I will fight, I will fight, I will fight until I take my last breath. I have done nothing wrong. … And I’m not going to quit a job that people hired me to do because of false accusations and a political lynch mob.
Watch it:[url=javascript:void(0);]Download video![/url]
[url=javascript:void(0);]Download video![/url]
“I am dying to tell you how innocent I am,” he said. “I am absolutely certain I will be vindicated.”
UpdateBlagojevich cited Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” in his defense. Perhaps another of Kipling’s works “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” -- story of a mongoose who defeats a snake -- would have been more appropriate.
________________________________________________________________________
“
I first began to fathom the extent of Nadhmi Auchi's reach and corrupting influence when I was given responsibility for monitoring illegal transfers of technology and munitions to Iraq as well as overseeing all coalition transportation and communications reconstruction in Iraq.
„ JOHN A. SHAW (Opinion: former senior official of US Defense, State, and Commerce departments)
October 10, 2008
Barack Obama has been appropriately strident in his condemnation of the mortgage-based financial corruption which nearly led to the collapse of the investment banking system in the United States. But there are some strong smelling financial skeletons in his own closet. Obama has his own personal housing crisis that is tied not into Fanny Mae, but into a corrupt international financial combine headed by Nadhmi Auchi, the convicted Iraqi billionaire at the center of the Elf Aquitaine corruption trial in France. Auchi has been shown to be the fountainhead of a source of corruption flowing from Iraq, to France, Italy, and the United States. His financial network, under a Luxembourg company called General Mediterranean Holdings, spread from Baghdad and the Middle East to Paris, (where Auchi successfully posited Saddam's UN Oil for Food scheme), London, Washington, and Chicago, making very few ripples and raising no concerns.
Auchi is suave, cosmopolitan, brilliant, and ruthless, and he has bottomless pockets. His business is international banking, which is complexly organized and appropriately camouflaged to conceal any criminal activity. He is the Godfather, but speaks in an Iraqi, not a Sicilian, dialect. A British survey credits him with being toward the bottom of a list of the two hundred richest men in the world. But in such a rendering Auchi would both feign modesty and ensure that any such accounting show only the tip of his financial iceberg. Other sources credit him with being the fifth richest man in the world. His methodology, however, is straightforward: Under cover of seeking legitimate business, buy whoever is necessary in the political decision chain to control the process and the outcome. As his longtime telecommunications partner Ala al-Hawaja, candidly put it to a potential competitor in Cairo, "there is nothing that cannot be accomplished with a suitcase full of money". So far he has been proven correct.
Auchi has claimed to have been "a visitor to two White Houses", and his London web site flashes a picture of him at the Clinton White House between Bill Clinton and Al Gore (a long way from his early days with Saddam Hussein as part of a Baathist assassination squad.) Auchi is, however, also the shadowy puppet master to Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a Syrian American with whom he partnered for more than a decade in schemes from Baghdad all the way to Chicago. Their relationship began in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, when the US was cultivating Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Rezko is now in federal prison awaiting sentencing for 16 counts of corruption involving Illinois officials. Buying influence is his métier, guided and financed by his master, Auchi. Rezko has also been a White House visitor, with his picture taken with Bill and Hillary Clinton for his contributions out of Chicago to the Clinton political war chest. Was Rezko then and now merely the main Chicago conduit for Auchi money? Or was he part of a larger Iraqi scheme dating back to Saddam to buy access to US government contracts and influence? What specifically was Auchi buying and where else did his money go? Was Obama, like the governor of Illinois, a recipient of Auchi's favors as part of Rezko's scheme to purchase government contracts through kickbacks from campaign contributions? There is no question that Obama, as a fledgling state senator, was a target of the Iraqi corruption combine, but did he become one of its pigeons? Was Rezko simply the front man for Auchi and Iraqi funding (whether it came from Saddam, Oil for Food, or General Mediterranean Holdings) over his entire Chicago career?
Rezko had identified Obama as a good political target before he graduated from Harvard Law School. He was both the source of Obama's employment and of his largest political donations during his short political career. Rezko had no financial source apart from Auchi, his partner of over a decade. Rezko was also the source of the financing for Obama's $2.3 million mansion despite his having no clear source of funding apart from Auchi. What did he get from Obama in return?
As the Wall Street Journal showed several weeks ago, Obama has been anything but forthcoming about his real relationship with Rezko and Auchi. And the public has no idea how extensive and how corrupt the network that Auchi has developed across the world is. Let me count the ways: Like organized crime, the network shows no public profile beyond legitimate business activities, and has a small army of lawyers threatening any critics with libel actions in Britain, Auchi's adopted residence where there is no First Amendment protection.
Billionaires can buy anonymity at the same time they buy influence and politicians. In 2000, although Nadhmi Auchi had spent two decades as Saddam Hussein's broker in the international oil and armament worlds, he was seen from the United States as essentially a European go-between, who worked the highest levels of the Italian and particularly the French and British governments. He had bought an aura of respectability by buying senior politicians and favorable press, and threatening any critics, a pattern he had begun to introduce in the United States with British assistance a decade earlier. I first began to fathom the extent of Nadhmi Auchi's reach and corrupting influence when I was given responsibility for monitoring illegal transfers of technology and munitions to Iraq as well as overseeing all coalition transportation and communications reconstruction in Iraq.
My office had two key responsibilities, international technology security and international arms and technology trade (essentially keeping good things out of the hands of bad people), with the latter function given the reach of the DoD Inspector General's office. Our investigations surfaced some salient facts about Nadhmi Auchi and his underreported activities: that Auchi had been Saddam Hussein's senior arms dealer and had morphed into his principal international financial bagman, and had become the Godfather of the UN Oil for Food scheme. (As a former State Department Inspector General overseeing all US foreign assistance and foreign military sales, I had had thirty years experience dealing with technology and armament sales, most of it in the Middle East.). I was therefore startled to also discover in addition that Auchi had surfaced as the financier and a principal beneficiary of the entire Iraqi cellular telecommunications tender, worth some $3 billion.
Through the customary combination of facilitating payments spread among political figures in Iraq and elsewhere, Auchi was able to fix the three contracts for three companies which in turn benefitted three of the most senior Iraqi politicians. $435 million was found missing from the Coalition Provisional Authority communications account along with all records. Multimillion dollar bribes were paid to various Brits and Americans to facilitate both the fix and its cover up.
The official DoD report of May 11, 2004, which Auchi has spent four and a half years trying to discredit, encountered cover up efforts within the DoD. These in turn prompted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on December 10, 2004 to transfer the case to the Department of Justice to assure the integrity of the continuing investigation. The FBI is still working on the case with the continuing assistance of my office, and Auchi's US visa to come to the United States was cancelled.
The Rezko trial in Chicago, moreover, has highlighted Auchi's reach into other ministries to provide bribes for contracts. In the Ministry of Electricity the Rezko-Auchi combine was seen in action offering million dollar bribes for multi-million dollar contracts to Ayham al-Samarra'i, an Iraqi American who had become Electricity Minister. In addition, recent evidence has surfaced that an Auchi subsidiary, the Iraqi German Hospital (IG Hospital), has been awarded a billion dollar contract at the Ministry of Health thru the influence of Dr. Adel Mohsen, the notoriously corrupt arbiter of health ministry contracting. "Dr. Adel" is close to Prime Minister Maliki and is his point man on the appropriately named Iraqi Committee on Public Integrity. While Auchi was a frequent visitor to the Green Zone in Baghdad during the CPA era, and, according to reliable Iraqi sources, met numerous times with CPA viceroy L. Paul Bremer, that was a useful but temporary expedient. Auchi is now said to be an advisor to Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki as well as being the representative of major oil and commercial interests seeking contracts in Iraq. If Auchi now owns Maliki, he now owns everything.
As the above shows, Auchi has parlayed his long time presence on the Iraqi scene into a position of even greater wealth and influence than he enjoyed under Saddam. But it is his skill in buying his way to foreign leaders and funneling that advantage into a position of paramount influence into Iraq that is truly impressive. He simultaneously developed access to the nascent Iraqi leadership in London while he was buying access to the British leadership, and through that got access to US leadership and the Coalition Provisional Authority. It was done largely through lavish donations and largesse to the British establishment over several decades, and to the Labour party in particular. Auchi's purchase of respectability included the grant of a coat of arms from the Queen, and the support of very senior members of the cabinet, some of whom sat on his GMH board. On the 20th anniversary of GMH activities in Britain, Auchi was given a print of the Houses of Parliament signed by virtually everyone with any political pretentions in the House of Commons. His London sponsors then opened the doors to Washington, to the Pentagon and ultimately, to the White House.
But he had bought his way into France as well: As a major arms dealer for Saddam he had cultivated President Mitterand and President Chirac, as well as key members of their cabinets. In September 2003, however, a French court had found him guilty of corruption and of receiving improper commissions of $100 million in the Elf Aquitaine scandal. The trial showed that Auchi had developed direct relationships with the key players in the French political and business establishment, and was the largest single stockholder in the bank BNP Parisbas. He received a slap on the wrist in the form of a multimillion dollar fine and a suspended jail sentence.
By that time, however, he had moved to the US market. Thanks to his British network, he established relationships with Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis I. "Scooter" Libby, and others in the Bush I Department of Defense at the time of the first Gulf War, and deftly carried his insider utility and his reputation of being helpful in Iraq over to the Clinton administration in 1993. He arrived with a laying on of hands from Lord Cavendish, the former head of British intelligence, and soon was a member of the Kennedy School board of Advisors at Harvard. He became, thru charitable donations and investments in the US, largely in the Chicago and Detroit areas, the embodiment of the Good Iraqi and the Good Arab. He established an Auchi chair at the American University of Cairo, and there have been reports that he was a large donor to the Clinton library.
His seemingly innocent investments with Rezko in the Middle West, however, went hand in hand with Rezko's extensive scheme to trade off campaign donations to Illinois politicians for jobs and multimillion dollar state and city contracts. That strategy appears to have tied in as well to Joseph A. Cari, Jr., a Clinton administration official who served as Democratic National Committee Finance Chairman in 1993-94, and who, like Rezko, was found guilty of extortion of Illinois officials in 2006, and similarly is awaiting sentencing. Cari was Clinton's national finance chairman when Rezko and Auchi made their White House visits. Cari is now managing director of a Middle East trade and investment fund in New York. How many of Rezko's donations and US investments originated with and were dependent on Auchi? Is there any evidence that Rezko had any other major source of funding? How long had the Auchi network been in place in Chicago? And what were Auchi's connections to the Iraqi spy ring about to go to trial in Detroit, who in late 2002 paid two Democratic congressmen to go to Iraq and oppose the war, and which flourished on UN Oil for Food vouchers?
So we have a pattern of buying influence which tied directly into the Illinois Democratic Party, the Daley machine, and the Democratic National Finance Committee. It is no wonder that Barack Obama "has no recollection" of being at a welcoming dinner feting Auchi at Rezko's house in April 2004. At that moment Auchi was flying high despite his corruption conviction in France: He was then still the darling of the neocon cabal at the defense department, which was so heavily invested in Iraq. He had been a welcomed guest at two White Houses, and appeared to own the entire Illinois government. We still do not have any sense of the full extent of his influence.
A month later, however, his five year visa to the United States was revoked because of the findings of the DoD report on his central role in fixing the contracts for the entire Iraqi telecommunications system. In the ensuring four and a half years the outlines of his role as an ongoing arms dealer responsible for importing and exporting munitions into and out of Iraq, and as the financial ringmaster of reconstruction corruption in Iraq, have become increasingly evident, despite extensive efforts to cover up his role by Iraq reconstruction authorities and a submissive and buyable media. Auchi simply bought everyone he needed to buy in Iraq and the United States to carry out his Iraq agenda. Before his sentencing at the end of this month, however, Rezko may broaden our understanding of Auchi's larger agenda.
But his underwriting of the purchase of Obama's multimillion dollar Chicago mansion may have been the step too far which finally brought down Auchi's grand scheme of empire and intrigue. It was, however, cheap at the price to buy a putative United States Senator. Nothing boneheaded about that decision at all. What is a candidate worth? This was Chicago, after all. On the other hand, however, if Barack Obama becomes President of the United States, the sky may be the limit for Nadhmi Auchi.
John A. Shaw is a former senior official of the Defense, State, and Commerce departments, and served on several White House staffs. He is a specialist in international technology transfer and arms sales, and in the economic development of the Middle East.
____________________________________________________________________________
Labour blocks extradition of
Iraqi tycoon
French authorities furious at refusal to deport fraud
case billionaire
Martin Bright and A ntony Barnett
Sunday February 2, 2003
The Observer
Investigators working on the biggest fraud trial in French
history have called for the extradition of a British-based
Iraqi billionaire with links to the Blair government.
Opposition MPs have demanded a full explanation for
Britain's refusal to deport Nadhmi Auchi, one of Britain's
richest men, who was once a senior official in the Iraqi oil
ministry.
The French magistrate leading the investigation, Renaud
van Ruymbeke, is furious with the British authorities for
failing to deliver Auchi.
Questions will also be raised over the precise nature of
the billionaire's relationship with the Baghdad regime. The
Observer has discovered that Auchi met Saddam's
number two, Tariq Aziz, as recently as last October at a
gala dinner in Beirut. But Auchi also has links with British
intelligence, through the former senior MI6 officer
Anthony Cavendish, who acts a consultant to Auchi's
business empire.
An international arrest warrant was issued for Auchi three
years ago, after he was alleged to have received a multi-
million-franc kickback from the oil giant Elf-Aquitaine
during the sale of a Spanish refinery. The Interpol arrest
warrant issued by the French in 2000 states that Auchi is
suspected of 'complicity in the misuse of company assets
and receiving embezzled company assets'.
In March he is due to stand trial for his role in the affair,
but has refused to go to France for questioning. The
Government's refusal to deport Auchi flies in the face of
legislation going through Parliament to introduce a
fast-track extradition process to all European countries.
Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman Simon
Hughes said: 'This failure to extradite seems to
undermine all the strong statements by the Government
about the need for solidarity across Europe in enforcing
criminal justice. At the very moment that the new
extradition Bill is is going through Parliament, making the
case for more streamlined measures, there should be an
immediate explanation why the principles are not bring
applied in this case.'
Despite continued questions about his relationship with
Baghdad, Auchi remains well placed to act as a
middle-man in any negotiations with Western companies
over Iraq's oil fields. Sources close to his empire claim
that Tony Blair met him to discuss Iraq shortly before his
Christmas holiday in Egypt. A Downing Street
spokesman said: 'We have no record of a meeting with
the Prime Minister.' But he said that he could not rule out
the possibility that they may have met socially.
In April 1999, Science Minister Lord Sainsbury presented
Auchi with a painting of the Commons, signed by Blair
and leading parliamentarians, to celebrate the 20th
anniversary of Auchi's General Mediterranean Holdings.
Sainsbury later said he did this as a favour for the
controversial former Minister Keith Vaz, who acted as
Auchi's political fixer. As a junior Foreign Office Minister,
Vaz made inquiries about the extradition procedure after
a request for help from Auchi.
Auchi's relationship with the Iraq regime has always been
shrouded in mystery. He came to Britain in the early
1980s after falling out of favour with the Saddam
regime.
He claims that two of his brothers were killed by the Iraqi
dictator, but, in the early years of the Ba'athist
revolution, he was in a senior position in Baghdad. While in
exile, Auchi received a $16.5 million (£10m) commission
on an Italo-French bid to build a pipeline for Saddam in
1986, say Italian fraud investigators.
Auchi is Britain's 13th richest man, with an estimated
£1.2 billion hotel and shipping empire. The opening of his
latest venture, Le Royal, a luxury hotel in the Jordanian
capital, Amman, modelled on a famous Iraqi spiral
minaret, was attended by King Abdullah and the speaker
of the Scottish Parliament, Sir David Steel.
Interesting timing What Blagojevich was doing right before he was indicted - Myra Bronstein - 20-12-2008
Magda Hassan Wrote:I think there may be lots more to this than is being told. He may be a totally corrupt politician. Or he may be being set up. Or he may be a totally corrupt politician being set up. Why him and why now? Others are corrupt and untouched.
...
Ex-actly. I hope to hell he hangs tough and doesn't allow them to force him out. First 'cause he's supposedly innocent until proven guilty. Second 'cause this smells real bad.
If he's being targeted for his union support, or some other bogus reason, I wish he'd say so. Then again maybe he has said so and the mainstream media refuses to report it. Just speculating.
Interesting timing What Blagojevich was doing right before he was indicted - Peter Lemkin - 20-12-2008
'Business' as usual in America. You can be as corrupt as your wildest dreams allow, just as long as you 'go with the flow' of the Oligarchy; and you can be as clean as a whistle, but will be set-up to take a 'fall' if you don't 'go with the flow'. And this kind of 'democracy' and model they try to export!....hey, its rotten before it gets 'canned' for export!
:mad::mad::mad: If there was any patriotism left in the military they'd invade the Beltway and Wallstreet and select boardrooms and estates and liberate US! - but they're in on it too, of course and busy serving-up the rotten export.
Interesting timing What Blagojevich was doing right before he was indicted - Myra Bronstein - 20-12-2008
Peter Lemkin Wrote:...and you can be as clean as a whistle, but will be set-up to take a 'fall' if you don't 'go with the flow'. ...
Yes, as the Eliot Spitzer case illustrates.
I'm convinced that adult prostitution remains illegal to enable the system to entrap people like Spitzer. His encounters in a hotel room should have been an issue between he and his wife, not a Governor-toppling scandal.