Foundation X: A conversation in the House of Lords

[Magda Hassan]

I keep seeing a new Nigerian email scam but bigger. :dancing2:

[Carsten Wiethoff]

As has been noted, the speech of Sir James is interesting on several layers, not only by the revelation that a mysterious foundation wants to save the British economy.
One point I struggle with is the mentioning of Foundation X being on the gold standard.

He said that this cannot be right because these people said at the meeting with him that they were still effectively on the gold standard from back in the 1920s and that their entire currency holdings throughout the world, which were very large, were backed by bullion. My noble friend Lord Strathclyde came back and said to me that he had an analyst working on it and that this had to be stuff and nonsense.

So what does that mean? Does it mean that if the "foundation" has X British Pounds in currency (like the promised 5 Billion) it also has the equivalent in real, physical gold in a vault somewhere? This makes absolutely no sense, unless Foundation X would be an organisation issueing its own currency, backed by the equivalent amount of gold.
Can someone enlighten me, what this gold standard stuff is supposed to mean?

[Peter Lemkin]

Calling D.G.! Could 'Foundation X' be a country; or a non-company/foundation entity - even not bounded by the normal notion of existing within the structure of any state?

[David Guyatt]

I find it fascinating, of course, that Lord Sassoon seems involved in the matter.

http://www.politics.ie/united-kingdom/14...world.html

The sassoon family
David Sassoon was born in Baghdad, Iran in 1792. His father, Saleh Sassoon, was a wealthy banker and the treasurer to Ahmet Pasha, the governor of Baghdad. (Thus making him the "court Jew" - a highly influential position.) In 1829 Ahmet was overthrown due to corruption and the Sassoon family fled to Bombay, India. This was the strategic trade route to interior India and the gateway to the Far East. In a brief time the British government granted Sassoon "monopoly rights" to all manufacture of cotton goods, silk and most important of all - Opium - then the most addictive drug in the world!

The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1905, states that Sassoon expanded his opium trade into China and Japan. He placed his eight sons in charge of the various major opium exchanges in China. According to the 1944 Jewish Encyclopedia: "He employed only Jews in his business, and wherever he sent them he built synagogues and schools for them. He imported whole families of fellow Jews. . . and put them to work."

Sassoon's sons were busy pushing this mind-destroying drug in Canton, China. Between 1830 - 1831 they trafficked 18,956 chests of opium earning millions of dollars. Part of the profits went to Queen Victoria and the British government. In the year 1836 the trade increased to over 30,000 chests and drug addiction in coastal cities became endemic.

In 1839, the Manchu Emperor ordered that it be stopped. He named the Commissioner of Canton, Lin Tse-hsu, to lead a campaign against opium. Lin seized 2,000 chests of Sassoon opium and threw it into the river. An outraged David Sassoon demanded that Great Britain retaliate.

Most interesting Linda. As you know the annual revenue from narcotics is well in excess of $1 trillion (a figure I got back in the 1990's from the Old Lady - so a great deal more these days). The sums involved mean that the banking system must launder this money to make it clean.

Not to put too fine an edge on it, we might ask from what activity did the duly laundered IRA £1 billion derive? PIRA were well known to run drugs, so that seems to fit for me.

[David Guyatt]

Calling D.G.! Could 'Foundation X' be a country; or a non-company/foundation entity - even not bounded by the normal notion of existing within the structure of any state?

It's possible Pete. There are any number of quite confidential foundations that are effectively the tools of middle eastern oil royals and others, like the Sultan of Brunei etc.

----

Carsten, my guess is that we're not talking cash money but gold-backed certificates - although there are no fully gold-backed currencies around (to my knowledge anyway), there is a contender for the future, notably the Islamic gold dinar. Then we have the Euro, which is partially backed by gold.

But the whole tenor of his Lordship's speech shouted OITC to me. Ordinarily this entity would have been closed down years ago for all the smoke they puff up people's fundaments.

But they seem protected by God.

Or is it SIS?

[Linda Minor]

Crown Agents -- The Queen's Managers

by Dean Andromidas
Printed in The Executive Intelligence Review, August 22, 1997.

Crown Agents, officially known as Crown Agents for Overseas Governments and Administration, occupies a non-descript office block in Surrey, in the suburbs of London. According to its literature, Crown Agents is a not-for-profit, private corporation, which carries out mundane logistical and administrative sub-contract work for the British Overseas Development Administration, and various development agencies and foreign governments. This is typical British understatement--i.e., strategic deception.

Crown Agents is exactly what its name implies, an agent of Her Majesty the Queen. It was founded in 1833 as Crown Agents for the Colonies, and historically played a vital role in the creation and management of what British historians call the Third Empire. [1] While Lord Palmerston, Cecil Rhodes, Prince Edward Albert (``The Prince of the Isles''), and Lord Milner were providing the geopolitical theory and ideology to justify Britain's global empire, Crown Agents ran the day-to-day affairs. Crown Agents printed the stamps and banknotes of the colonies; provided technical, engineering, and financial services; served as private bankers to the colonial monetary authorities, government officials, and heads of state; served as arms procurers, quartermasters, and paymasters for the colonial armies. In effect, Crown Agents administered the British Empire, which at one point in the nineteenth century, encompassed over 300 colonies and nominally "independent countries'' allied to the British Crown.

According to its charter, Crown Agents is an "Emination of the Crown.'' This gives Crown Agents a status close to the monarchy, yet outside the official government structures of the United Kingdom. Through much of its existence, it was overseen by the Colonial Secretary and, later, in the so-called post-colonial era, by the Minister of Overseas Development. Although not formally a department of the government, Crown Agents' entire debt was guaranteed by the Exchequer.

In 1996, as the British were in the process of unleashing the dogs of war in Africa, as the cutting edge of its final assault against the nation-state system worldwide, Crown Agents was "privatized,'' under the new name, Crown Agents for Overseas Government and Administrations Ltd., with its own board of directors and management. In turn, Crown Agents functions as a holding company for dozens of operating companies and joint ventures. Its shares are held in trust by the Crown Agents Foundation, which is presided over by a board of directors and councillors, bringing together an impressive collection of governmental and non-governmental organizations, corporations, banking and business organizations, and so on (see article which follows)--all from the inner core of the Club of the Isles and the formal Crown apparatus.

Providing functions in "difficult areas"
According to its 1996 annual report, Crown Agents' numerous subsidiaries still carry out the same wide array of governmental functions, from printing postage stamps and bank notes, to running worldwide commercial shipping and air freight operations, to procuring arms and other logistical supplies. Crown Agents, according to spokesmen, specializes in providing these functions in "difficult areas.''

And, indeed they do. Today, Crown Agents functions as "agents'' for over 150 foreign governments and organizations, which they refer to as "principals.'' In some instances, they manage vast real estate and financial portfolios, specializing in offshore banking "services.'' According to its recent public statements, Crown Agents manages over $3 billion worth of projects. Its asset management business alone, has a portfolio valued at over $1 billion.

Typical of Crown Agent's current "discreet'' operation are the following:

* It manages the entire customs service for the government of Mozambique;

* Through its chairmanship of a quasi-public entity called Europe SA, it is in charge of all economic reconstruction procurement for Bosnia;

* Through a joint venture with a Monaco-based company called ES-KO, Crown Agents provides all of the food for United Nations peacekeepers in Angola and Bosnia. ES-KO also provides logistical services to private petroleum and mining companies in such ``difficult'' areas as Algeria and Colombia, and manages the privatization of the state sector of Ghana.

Her Majesty's Murder, Inc.
By now, it may have dawned on some readers that Crown Agents' range of "services''--arms procurement, border controls, offshore banking--also nicely fit the "administrative requirements'' of the world's organized crime cartels.

In fact, a careful review of some of the more sordid aspects of the recent history of Crown Agents, suggests that the firm has been at the center of the British Crown's highly sensitive patronage of global organized crime--what EIR long ago dubbed Dope, Inc.

Crown Agents' extensive links to international organized crime surfaced in the mid-1970s, when the firm's over-extended real estate portfolio, particularly its London real estate investments, blew sky high. At the time that the London commercial real estate market collapsed, Crown Agents was managing a portfolio of assets, loans, and other financial paper, totalling more than £4 billion. Despite the fact that Crown Agents held no banking charter, it owned a string of banks all over the world, including some unsavory outfits in some of the most notorious hot-money havens of the Commonwealth.

Much of the capital through which Crown Agents built up its real estate portfolio came from Third World governments, which made the unfortunate mistake of placing their trust in the Queen's favorite service agency. Crown Agents heavily leveraged its investment capital, building up debts far beyond its resources. When the 1973 oil shock hit, and the real estate market was one of the first of the bubbles to pierce, Crown Agents, along with many other institutions that were heavily leveraged in the secondary banking markets, went broke.

The Bank of England stepped in to bail out Crown Agents to the tune of several hundred million pounds--more than a decade before the U.S. government would carry out a similar bailout of the savings and loan institutions, ravaged by similar commercial real estate speculation. The collapse of Crown Agents' real estate portfolio led to three governmental and parliamentary investigations.

The surfacing of a wide criminal conspiracy was averted with the timely death of one of the key witnesses, the director of Crown Agents' money market operations, who purportedly blew his brains out shortly before he was to face trial on charges of corruption. According to news accounts at the time, this fellow, whose signature appeared on many of the most outrageous transactions, happened to be a heavy gambler. He had been a member of Crockfords, an elite gambling club, and two other casinos. He was a fixture at London casinos, often signing £1,000 checks. He had a home in Westminister, one of the most expensive sections of London, a country house, and three cars--all on a middle-level civil servant's salary of £5,OOO a year.
http://american_almanac.tripod.com/agents.htm

http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=100...6661299356

http://www.crownagents.com/The-Crown-Age...ation.aspx
The Crown Agents Foundation
The President of the Foundation is Peter Berry, CMG and the current membership comprises:

Permanent Members

Aga Khan Foundation (Geneva)
Charities Aid Foundation
The Chartered Institute of Building
The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply
Christian Aid
Institute of Development Studies
International Business Leaders Forum
International Chamber of Commerce UK
The Royal Commonwealth Society
The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce
Mr Sam Sharpe (for the Department for International Development)
Nominee to be advised (for Japan International Cooperation Agency)

Elected Members

AMREF - African Medical and Research Foundation (Nairobi)
BBC World Service Trust
British Council
British Expertise
British Standards Institution
British Telecommunications plc
CARE International UK
Caribbean Council for Europe
The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (UK)
Commonwealth Business Council
Concern Worldwide (Dublin)
The Co-operative Bank
FirstCaribbean International Bank (Barbados)
IFU - The Industrialisation Fund for Developing Countries (Copenhagen)
Stuart Kerr, Legal & Regulatory Director, Millennium Challenge Corporation (Washington DC)
Leeds Metropolitan University
Practical Action
Standard Chartered Bank
State University - Higher School of Economics (Moscow)
Tate & Lyle plc
Transparency International (Berlin)
Unilever plc
Aga Khan Foundation (Geneva)
Charities Aid Foundation
The Chartered Institute of Building
The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply
Christian Aid
Institute of Development Studies
International Business Leaders Forum
International Chamber of Commerce UK
The Royal Commonwealth Society
The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce
Mr Sam Sharpe (for the Department for International Development)
Nominee to be advised (for Japan International Cooperation Agency)

[Peter Lemkin]

Wow! Linda, great post! So, the Crown Agents must have been involved long ago in the Opium trade and no doubt in more recent times in other drugs, weapons, black arts and ops, etc. Amazing that they fly under the radar, even to most in the UK! This model seems to be the one also being used for certain entities in the US, if a bit more covertly....but both with their debts guaranteed by the PTB and their treasury....and doing the bidding and black jobs for their guarantor; as well as turning a handsome profit. Amazing how much of 'government', 'business' (especially banking), and 'foreign policy' are done sub rosa, and not for the benefit of the citizenry. So much for 'democracy'....it is just a facade - lately a crumbling one - with gaping holes only the fool and self-delusional can not see into.

[Magda Hassan]

Crown Agents for Oversea Governments and Administrations Ltd

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The Crown Agents for Oversea Governments and Administrations Ltd Type Private limited company Founded 1833. UK statutory public corporation, 1980-1997
21 March 1997 (Ltd.) Headquarters Sutton, England, UK Area served Worldwide Key people Paul Batchelor
(Chairman)
Keith White
(CEO) Website www.crownagents.com The Crown Agents for Oversea Governments and Administrations Ltd is a Greater London, UK based company. Prior to 1979, the Crown Agents was an autonomous body working for the British and other governments, and for multilateral development and funding institutions. Between 1979 and 1997, Crown Agents was a UK public statutory corporation, overseen by the British Ministry of Overseas Development.[1]
Contents

• 1 International development company
  
• 2 The Crown Agents Foundation
  
• 3 Industries
  
• 4 History
  
• 5 Comment
  
• 6 References
  
• 7 Sources
  
• 8 External links
  

[edit] International development company

Crown Agents is an international development company providing direct assistance, consultancy and training for public-sector modernisation, particularly in financial management, banking and supply chain management. Crown Agents works with clients in more than 100 countries, major multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank[2], European Commission, United Nations agencies and bilateral donors such as DFID, KfW, SIDA, CIDA and the Danish, Japanese and U.S. governments. It has provided governmental services as large as the Customs system of Angola [3]and the Value added tax (VAT) system of Lesotho.[4] It works on sustainable development promoting more effective trade and transit corridors[5]
Projects include improving the livelihood of poor and vulnerable people in South East Asia (SEACAP) and addressing the challenges of providing reliable access for poor communities in Africa (AFCAP)
[edit] The Crown Agents Foundation

Crown Agents is owned by "The Crown Agents Foundation", a company limited by guarantee, whose objectives include the alleviation of worldwide poverty. Crown Agents allocates sums from its income to the Foundation's social and developmental objectives and applies these at the Foundation's direction.
Members of the foundation are organisations with a keen interest in international development and include firms, non-governmental organisations and international bodies.
These include: British Expertise,The Aga Khan Foundation, The Chartered Institute of Building, The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, Christian Aid, International Business Leaders Forum, International Chamber of Commerce, The Royal Commonwealth Society, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency. The British Department for International Development is represented among the Foundation's members.
[edit] Industries

Crown Agents and its subsidiaries work across a large range of industries, providing Public Financial Management, Humanitarian and Crisis Response, Engineering, Procurement & Logistics, IT consulting and training, and International Recruitment and training. Subsidiaries include the Crown Agents Bank and Crown Agents Investment Management.
[edit] History

Crown Agents originated as a body conducting financial transactions for British colonies. Agents were first appointed in 1749 to transfer and account for grants made to colonies from the British Treasury.[6] These representatives were known as 'crown agents' from at least 1758, and were accountable to colonial governments, though selected on the recommendation of the British government.[7] A single body was created in 1833, when the crown agents' business was consolidated under two Joint Agents General for Crown Colonies with an Office of several staff.[8] In 1861, the Office was renamed Crown Agents for the Colonies.[9] Crown Agents' responsibilities on behalf of colonial governments included accounting for Treasury grants, purchasing supplies, recruiting certain staff and raising capital on the markets. Crown Agents also oversaw specific colonial projects, such as certain postage stamp issues and some infrastructure construction.[10]
As decolonisation accelerated, the Office was renamed Crown Agents for Oversea Governments and Administrations in 1954, and the rules were changed to allow it to take on projects for independent states.[11] Crown Agents expanded its activities to include more international development projects and investment management. It was brought to the brink of bankruptcy in 1974 by the secondary banking crisis, and had to be bailed out by the British government.[12] Its anomalous status as an autonomous body with close links to government came into question, and in 1979 Crown Agents was brought under government control as a statutory corporation.
From 1987, shifting attitudes to state ownership of business and changes in British international development strategy led the government to support full privatisation of Crown Agents. It became a private company in 1997, ending its formal ties to the British government.[13]
[edit] Comment

Crown Agents describes itself as an invaluable aid to international development, having been a counter to corruption and inefficiency when in government, and now "it is promoting transparency and probity across the entire globe.[14]
[edit] References

1. ^ Change of status - Crown Agents becomes a statutory corporation
   
2. ^ Crown Agents Newsletter Managing Debt (World Bank website)
   
3. ^ Customs reform and modernisation in Angola (Kenya Revenue Authority website)
   
4. ^ Introduction to CA's work
   
5. ^ Linking Dar to Durban (This is Africa, FT magazine)
   
6. ^ Our story begins (Crown Agents website)
   
7. ^ First recorded usage of the term 'crown agent' (Crown Agents website)
   
8. ^ The first Joint Agents General for Crown Colonies are appointed (Crown Agents website)
   
9. ^ Reforms lead to recovery and expansion, and a new name (Crown Agents website)
   
10. ^ Crown Agents timeline 1836-1870 (Crown Agents website)
    
11. ^ Another name change… and ‘the Colonies’ disappear (Crown Agents website)
    
12. ^ David Sunderland (2007). Managing British Colonial and Post-Colonial Development: The Crown Agents, 1914-1974.
    
13. ^ The statutory corporation is privatised (Crown Agents website)
    
14. ^ Honesty for Hire (Hoover Institute)
    

[edit] Sources

• Sunderland, David (2004). Managing the British Empire: The Crown Agents, 1833-1914. Boydell. ISBN 0861932676.
  
• Sunderland, David (2007). Managing British Colonial and Post-Colonial Development: The Crown Agents, 1914-1974. Boydell. ISBN 1843833018.
  

[edit] External links

• Crown Agents main corporate website
  
• Crown Agents USA website
  

[David Guyatt]

I'd be interested to know if there is any connective tissue between Crown Agents and the foundation mentioned in the speech by Lord James?

Historically, there seems to be a lot of deep mire and smelly stuff surrounding CA, the least being the one mentioned above. I have a quite detailed file on alleged connections between CA and the Meyer Lansky organization that appears also to connect to the Vatican and also connects directly to a certain US Treasury CUSIP - that, it was alleged, was issued specially to launder mafia/organized crime money. From the paperwork I was given, the CA alleged role was as an offshore facilitator for selling/placing the CUSIP via the central bank allocation of US Treasuries.

In the above file were what I can only describe as "fencing" letters exchanged between a certain individual who appeared to represent the deceased trustee of the Lansky networked CUSIP and Bankers Trust who - it was claimed - acted as a repository for the securities. The trustee, it was said, worked for CA.

Although I conducted a lot of work on this story it proved impossible to stand it up, and so I decided not to write about it. However, it has remained with me as being a quite likely and plausible scenario with the necessary in-built deniability. And the timing of this affair looks to me to be about the right time when a decision was made to repatriate the ever increasing sums of criminal money back into the official banking system.

[Mark Stapleton]

And the timing of this affair looks to me to be about the right time when a decision was made to repatriate the ever increasing sums of criminal money back into the official banking system.

So David, are the criminals giving the money back?

Or are they just investing in a criminal enterprise which has superior expertise?