Free Republic

The Underworld Bank scandal is oozing out all over. Conceived in Karachi, financed in Abu Dhabi, the conspiracy reached into the world's Western capitals and perhaps the U.N. under the protection of high-paid lobbyists and naive spooks. The B.C.C.I. scandal involves the laundering of drug money, the illicit financing of terrorism and of arms to Iraq, the easy purchase of respectability and the corruption of the world banking system. For more than a decade, the biggest banking swindle in history worked beautifully. Between $5 billion and $15 billion was bilked from governments and individual depositors to be put to the...

Twenty-five years ago, Trisha Meili—“the Central Park jogger”—was a 28 year-old employee for a prestigious Manhattan investment banker when she was mercilessly beaten, raped, and left for dead by thugs. Meili lost approximately 80 percent of her blood. Her skull was fractured to the point that her one eye had popped out of its socket. On the scale of 3 to 15 that neurologists use to gauge brain functioning, Meili’s was assigned a rating of 4. She spent nearly the next two weeks in a coma, with experts expecting her to die. This crime became a racially explosive issue,...

In 35 years as Manhattan DA, Robert Morgenthau has gotten along with every mayor of New York -- except the current one. Mike Bloomberg, says Morgenthau, "doesn't want anybody around who doesn't kiss his ring, or other parts of his body." In a wide-ranging interview with the Wall Street Journal, the 90-year-old, who leaves office Thursday, addresses everything from his feud with the mayor to the international crimefighting role his office has played during his tenure. As usual, he pulls no punches: On enforcing economic sanctions against Iran and its business partners: "The president is smoking pot or something if...

When Jihad Came to America by Andrew C. McCarthy On May 2 and 3, 1990, the U.S. embassy in Cairo alerted its counterpart in Khartoum that Egypt’s “leading radical,” Omar Abdel Rahman, was on his way to Sudan. Warning that his ultimate plan might be to seek exile in the United States, the Cairo embassy asked its colleagues to pass along any information they might learn about his activities on Sudanese soil. What did U.S. officials already know about Abdel Rahman in 1990? As the 9/11 Commission would later determine, they knew that he had been arrested repeatedly in Egypt...

WASHINGTON -- New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau left his home turf and came to the nation's capital on Tuesday to sound the alarm about a "blossoming relationship" between Iran and Venezuela. Comparing the situation to the lead up to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, Morgenthau warned of growing threats--involving missiles, nuclear ventures and terrorist training--that Iran and Venezuela are now cultivating, together, "in our backyard." "Axis of unity" is the label that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez have themselves chosen for their alliance. The rise of this partnership, according to Morgenthau, dates from Ahmadinejad's...

NEW YORK (AP) - A Virginia oil trading company has pleaded guilty to grand larceny in the United Nations oil-for-food scandal, prosecutors said Thursday. Midway Trading of Reston, Va., was accused of being part of a scheme to pay kickbacks to Iraq in connection with oil purchases made under the program, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said. The company will pay a $250,000 fine for its guilty plea to first-degree grand larceny, Morgenthau said. Midway and a trading partner, Bulf Oil, are accused of paying more than $440,000 in kickbacks to Iraqi officials in connection with oil purchases, but falsely...

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's likely quest for a 10th term got a big boost last week, as he quietly picked up the backing of two of the city's largest unions, The Post has learned. Service Employees International Union Locals 1199 and 32BJ have pledged their support for the 85-year-old Morgenthau in his battle against fellow Democrat and former State Supreme Court Justice Leslie Crocker Snyder.

POST WORLD EXCLUSIVE WASHINGTON — Billionaire Marc Rich has emerged as a central figure in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal and is under investigation for brokering deals in which scores of international politicians and businessmen cashed in on sweetheart oil deals with Saddam Hussein, The Post has learned. Rich, the fugitive Swiss-based commodities trader who received a controversial pardon from President Bill Clinton in January 2001, is a primary target of criminal probes under way in the U.S. attorney's office in New York and by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, sources said. "We think he was a major player in this...

Toogood Reports [Monday, December 16, 2002; 12:01 a.m. EST]URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/ December 5, 2002 is a date that shall live in infamy. On that day, Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau issued "get-out-of-jail-free" cards to all of New York City's young black thugs. In response, we can expect even more brazen racial attacks on whites, and an increase in whites leaving the city to protect themselves and their loved ones. On December 5, Morgenthau submitted a work of legal fiction disguised as a brief, to New York State Supreme Court Judge Charles Tejada, calling for the convictions of Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond...

On December 5, I sent the following letter to the New York Times. You can bet the ranch the newspaper, which stopped printing my letters five years ago, will never publish it. To the Editor: In your December 6 editorial ("Injustice in the Jogger Case") supporting Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau's call to exonerate the five men convicted in the 1989 Central Park Jogger case, you write, "Fair-minded people are appalled by the prosecutorial missteps and overreaching that led to the faulty convictions of five teenagers..." I submit that fair-minded people who have followed the case since its bloody inception, are...

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) - Shares of Tyco International lost more than a quarter of their value Monday after Dennis Kozlowski resigned as chairman and chief executive of the diversified conglomerate amid reports that he is under criminal investigation for allegedly avoiding New York sales taxes. The company said in a statement that Kozlowski had decided to leave the company for "personal reasons." John Fort, who served as Tyco chairman and CEO from 1982 to 1992, will assume executive responsibilities until a permanent replacement can be hired. The stock had tumbled $5.94, or 27 percent, to $16.01 by late afternoon trade....