Carter's Arab Financiers

Hasib J. Sabbagh
Sabbagh was born in 1920 in Palestine and graduated from the American University of Beirut in 1942. He is founder, director, and chairman of the Consolidated Contractors Group of Companies (CCC Group), one of the Middle East’s largest and most respected construction companies. In addition to his business interests, he has long been associated with political and philanthropic causes including chairman of the Palestinian Student Fund and deputy chairman of the Health Care Organization of the West Bank and Gaza.

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Palestinian Builder CCC Dodges Mideast Conflicts, Reaps Profits

July 25 (Bloomberg) -- Yasser Arafat smiled for the cameras as he held hands with Enron Corp.'s Middle East chairman, David Haug, and Palestinian-born entrepreneur Said Khoury on June 18, 1999. They were celebrating an agreement to build the first Palestinian power plant, a $150 million, 140-megawatt project that would supply a fifth of the power needed by the 3.6 million residents of Gaza and the West Bank.

A year later, the plant's prospects soured. The Israeli- Palestinian conflict flared up, causing the loss of 4,700 more lives. Then Enron collapsed in 2001 in the second-biggest U.S. bankruptcy. Thanks to Khoury, whose company bought Enron's stake and persuaded engineers from Paris-based Alstom SA to stay and work even amid violence, the Gaza plant opened in 2002, two years late. It's been generating power ever since, though its client, the Palestinian Authority, isn't paying in full.

Khoury's company, Athens-based Consolidated Contractors International Co., known as CCC, has been negotiating political minefields in the Middle East for more than half a century. Khoury, now 82, and his cousin Hasib Sabbagh, 85, founded the construction company in Lebanon when they were young Palestinian engineers in exile. Today, CCC has annual revenue of $1.56 billion and more than 60,000 employees in 35 countries from Kuwait to Kazakhstan.

``They're a Palestinian icon because they're one of the few businesses of Arab-Palestinian origin that succeeded internationally,'' says Kamel Husseini, 39, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority's $1.36 billion investment fund. Khoury's 44-year-old son, Samer, was an Arafat-appointed director of the fund until earlier this year.

Thanks for posing this. I remember it well. Bert Lance was a truly awful person.

Bert Lance was the chairman and chief stockholder in The National Bank of Georgia a/k/a "The Georgia". He used the bank as a piggy bank for his family and friends.

When he got in hot water for this he had to sell the bank and did sell it to 1st American Bancshares, who in turn was owned/conreolled by BCCI. Clark Clifford was Chairman of 1st American Bancshares along with his partner in Clifford & Warnke, Robert Altman.

BCCI's counsel in the United States was Clifford & Warnke, whose lead partner was of course Clark Clifford.

See how this hangs together? I watched Clark Clifford testify in Congress about this and he swore up and down that he did not know of BCCI's actions with 1st American, yet he was senior partner in Clifford & Warnke.

The Feds let him get away with that, but the old sleezebag was dirty as they come.

You say: "Most presidents surround themselves with cabinet members and advisers smarter than themselves. Carter surrounded himself with morons and mental health patients."

So you are saying Carter did the same thing as other presidents, right?

Maybe you have a point.

Note: this topic is from 12/21/2006. Thanks venizelos.

I'm sure I'd not seen this before, and definitely was not the one who revived it in the keywords (well, until more recently).

Rand Slams Congress for Funding Egypt's Generals: 'How Does Your Conscience Feel Now?'
Sen. Rand Paul is hammering his fellow senators for keeping billions in financial aid flowing to Egypt's military -- even as Cairo's security forces massacre anti-government activists. [by "anti-government activists" is meant church-burning Christian-murdering jihadists]
[Posted on 08/15/2013 5:44:10 PM PDT by Hoodat]