Posted on 10/17/2008 3:38:24 PM PDT by STARWISE
CHICAGO (CN) - A real estate analyst claims that Mutual Bank fired him because he reported that someone had taken his appraisal of the lot where Antoin and Rita Rezko built a home - and of the famous 10-foot strip of property that the Rezkos eventually sold to their next-door neighbors Barack and Michelle Obama - and replaced it with another document in the bank file, after Rezko's business deals became national news.
Kenneth Conner says that another appraiser overvalued Rezko's vacant lot by about $134,000 in 2005. Rezko bought the land on Greenwood Avenue in June that year for $625,000, with a $500,000 loan from Mutual Bank, Conner says.
Conner says the bank asked him to appraise the lot, and the 10-foot strip of it that the Rezkos were selling to the Obamas, about 6 months later. Conner says he appraised the entire lot at about $491,000.
** After Rezko was prosecuted for his business deals, and made national news, Conner says, someone replaced his document in the Rezko file and replaced it with a third document. **
Conner says that he complained to his bosses that this monkey business could get the bank in trouble. Shortly after that, he says, he was fired for blowing the whistle.
Conner demands $4.2 million for wrongful firing, lost wages, retaliation and pain and suffering. He is represented in Cook County Court by Glenn Gaffney.
Sneed hears rumbles political fund-raiser/fixer Tony Rezko, who is now singing sweetly to the feds from his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, has been talking about his "dealings" with a Chicago bank, which has political connections.
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February 10, 2008
Follow the Money: The Rezko lot (2 updates/questions added)
First of all, the Chicago Tribune reported November 1, 2006, that "Rezko's wife, Rita, bought the adjoining lot the same day, paying the full $625,000 asking price with the help of a $500,000 mortgage from Mutual Bank of Harvey." The Rezkos would not provide any further details to the newspaper about the transaction.
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Can something, anything open up this sleazy can of worms??
~~PING!
bkmark
Mutual Bank will stall this thing and then pay him just before the start of the trial.
Amrish Mahajan is president and chief executive officer of Mutual Bank in south suburban Harvey, IL
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`Uncle Amrish’ helped raise $500,000 for Blagojevich
A Chicago banker whose wife is accused of bilking millions from a no-bid state contract has helped raise more than a half million dollars for Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s campaigns since 2001.
Amrish Mahajan was a driving force behind his wife’s drug-screening company, now facing questions about how it kept its long-standing state contract despite troubles with taxes, licensing and years of alleged fraud.
A review of records and dozens of interviews reveal the company was built on Mahajan’s deep Chicago political connections and its government business grew along with his reputation as a power broker in the city’s Indian community.
snip
Mahajan, 60, the president of Mutual Bank, is courted by city and state politicians as a man who can deliver support and money.
He is referred to as “Uncle Amrish” by the businessmen who line the predominantly Indian corridor along Devon Avenue, by his bank customers, and even by one of the governor’s children.
snip
Mahajan’s wife, Anita, was arrested last week on charges of overbilling millions of dollars on her state contract to provide drug screenings to clients of the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services. Her downtown Chicago company, K.K. Bio-Science Inc., has held the no-bid state contract since the early 1990s.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703140210mar14,0,649520.story?page=2
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WSJ: Obama and Chicago Mores
Snippet:
Still, there are anomalies. Mr. Obama admits that he and Mr. Rezko took a tour of the house before it and the adjoining plot were sold. Financial records given to federal prosecutors a year later show Mrs. Rezko had a salary of only $37,000 and assets of $35,000. In court proceedings at that time, to explain how much his bail should be, Mr. Rezko declared that he had “no income, negative cash flow, no liquid assets.”
So where did the money for Mrs. Rezko’s $125,000 down payment — and the collateral for her $500,000 loan from a local bank controlled by Amrish Mahajan, like Mr. Rezko a Chicago political fixer — come from?
The London Times reports that, three weeks before the land transactions, Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi billionaire living in London, loaned $3.5 million to Mr. Rezko, who was his Chicago business partner. Mr. Auchi’s office says he had “no involvement in or knowledge of” the property purchase. Mr. Auchi is a press-shy property developer (estimated worth: $4 billion) who was convicted of corruption in France in 2003 for his involvement in the Elf affair, the biggest political and corporate fraud inquiry in Europe since World War II. He was fined $3 million and given a 15-month prison term that was suspended provided he committed no further crimes.
Mr. Auchi was also a top official in the Iraqi oil ministry in the 1970s. He has for years vigorously denied charges he had dealings with Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War. However, an official report to the Pentagon inspector general in 2004 obtained by the Washington Times cited “significant and credible evidence” of involvement by Mr. Auchi’s companies in the Oil for Food scandal and illicit smuggling of weapons to the Hussein regime.
In 2003, Mr. Auchi began investing in Chicago real estate with Mr. Rezko. In April 2007, after his indictment, Mr. Auchi loaned another $3.5 million to Mr. Rezko, a loan that Mr. Rezko hid from U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s office. When Mr. Fitzgerald learned that the money was being parceled out to Mr. Rezko’s lawyers, family and friends, he got Mr. Rezko’s bond revoked in January and had him put in jail as a potential flight risk.
In court papers, the prosecutor noted that Mr. Rezko had traveled 26 times to the Middle East between 2002 and 2006, mostly to his native Syria and other countries that lack extradition treaties with the U.S. Curiously, Mr. Auchi has also lent an unknown sum of money to Chris Kelly, who, like Mr. Rezko, was a significant fund-raiser for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (himself under investigation by a federal grand jury as an alleged beneficiary of the Rezko shakedowns). Mr. Kelly is himself under indictment for obstructing an IRS probe into his activities.
Mr. Obama says he has “no recollection” of meeting Mr. Auchi during a 2004 trip the billionaire made to Chicago, and no one believes he knew of his background. While his name will come up in the trial as a beneficiary of Rezko donations (since donated to charity), Mr. Obama will not be called to testify.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120450564143806509.html
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Oooh ... the web .. the conspiracies.
Before being elected state treasurer, Giannoulias was vice president of his family’s North Side bank, Broadway Bank. Rezko was a client.
How many banks have they scammed? The bad old days of Chicago are today.
I think it was Paddy Bauer, Alderman from Chicago, who said, "This town ain't ready for reform". And that was 70 or 80 years ago.
Wow..The page won’t open anymore. You think they scrubbed it already to protect Obama?
We are going to have to do something after this election to protest the media’s corrupt reporting on Obama. It is time to stand up and be heard! Thanks for the ping...going back to read all the great links in the thread.
The New York Times and Washington Post are more concerned with Joe's plumbing license.
Here’s the link to the thread article
Thanks.
[The MSM is much too busy checking out Joe the Plumber to concern themselves with Rezko and Auchi.]
Ping.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2108424/posts
This at post #5:
“The London Times reports that, three weeks before the land transactions, Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi billionaire living in London, loaned $3.5 million to Mr. Rezko, who was his Chicago business partner.”
Lots more:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2108424/posts?page=5#5
I’m wondering why Obama had so many Arab friends and influential ones at that. It doesn’t portend well for Israel should “Osama” Obama be elected to the presidency.
Even worse:
http://blog.barofintegrity.us/2008/10/03/barack-hussein-obama-antoin-rezko-nadhmi-auchi-saddam-hussein—strange-bedfellows.aspx
Barack Hussein Obama, Antoin Rezko, Nadhmi Auchi, Saddam Hussein = Strange Bedfellows
Excerpt:
The Times has, however, discovered state documents in Illinois recording that Fintrade Services, a Panamanian company, lent money to Mr Obama’s fundraiser in May 2005.
Fintrade’s directors include Ibtisam Auchi, the name of Mr Auchi’s wife. Mr Auchi’s spokespeople declined to respond to a question about whether he was linked to this business. as a close friend of Mr Auchi, although Mr Auchi disputes this. The two are involved in a large Chicago land development together. But it is unclear how long the two men have known each other or whether they were linked before the 2003 Iraq war. Neither side would discuss their relationship.
Nadhmi Auchi co-conspired with fellow Baathist Saddam Hussein in 1959 to assassinate then Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim. Rezko and Obama are both financially connected to him.
Mercy.
Thanks LucyT.
Is this being reported anywhere beside the net?
Chicago is the town whose aldermen were at one time called the “Grey Wolves”. And where the Mob had it very own Congressman who sat on the Banking Committee for years. Sam Giancana’s son in law was his chief aide.
As long as the garbage is picked up and the property taxes are fairly low the public doesn’t give a damn.
Oil for food helped Hussein buy his house? That makes perfect sense.
OT Question:
Who do you know that could come from Hawaii to Oxy and end up with two illegal Pakistani roommates? Then room with a cousin of one of them at Columbia? Then travel with one of the former roommates at school break to see his mom, then go to Pakistan for three weeks (i’m not even mentioning the passport issue).
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