IRAQ CONTRACT | Gov's staff offered to let firm train 150 power-plant guards in western Illinois, but now plan's in limbo August 7, 2007
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Two years ago, Iraq's Ministry of Electricity gave a $50 million contract to a start-up security company owned by now-indicted businessman Tony Rezko and a onetime Chicago cop with a checkered financial past.
Within a month, an Iraqi leadership change left the deal in limbo
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Companion beefed up its lobbying efforts in March, hiring a Washington attorney who has contacted the U.S. State and Commerce departments. Frawley wants U.S. officials to persuade the Iraqi government to honor the contract he signed on April 18, 2005, when Aiham Alsammarae, another friend of Rezko's, ran Iraq's electricity agency.
Iraq's current electricity minister has balked, saying Frawley's contract is too expensive, according to a U.S. Embassy official in Baghdad.
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"Frawley originally had two other partners; one of them was a guy named Tony Rezko,'' said security consultant Patrick Goodale. Under the contract Frawley signed, Goodale is to coordinate training of the Iraqi power-plant guards.
Rezko, 52, is fighting federal charges that he solicited kickbacks from companies seeking state business under Blagojevich. Sources in December told the Sun-Times the feds are investigating Rezko's dealings in Iraq, where Rezko once had a contract from Alsammarae's agency to build a power plant.
Alsammarae, who lives in the Chicago area and was a college classmate of Rezko, is a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen. He left his post as Iraq's electricity minister in May 2005, about a month after Companion got the contract. Alsammarae was accused of financial corruption by Iraqi authorities and jailed in Iraq last year before escaping and returning here.
Companion's contract called for it to fly 150 Iraqis to the United States for police-type training. Among the subjects: how to shoot AK-47 rifles.
As Frawley sought to revive the contract in spring 2006, Blagojevich's chief of staff, John Harris, directed the state's homeland security adviser, Jill Morgenthaler, to find "a military site for the training of Iraqi police forces,'' Morgenthaler wrote in an April 26, 2006, e-mail. She wrote the letter in June 2006 offering the Savanna site.
Two months later, Frawley sought help from Obama, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who is now running for president. Frawley met with Seamus Ahern, who runs Obama's Moline office. Frawley and Ahern discussed the proposal over a period of about six months.
Obama and Blagojevich viewed Frawley's efforts as a chance to create jobs in the Quad Cities area.
Blagojevich's spokeswoman, Abby Ottenhoff, said state officials assume Frawley's contract has "gone away" because they haven't heard from Companion since last year.
"We never got far enough along in the process to determine whether their plan was a good one," she said. "We only had preliminary discussions with them."
$100K, guns stolen — or were they? Companion Security lists its headquarters as a small house in La Grange that was the site of a bizarre burglary last year.
It’s the home of Companion owner Daniel T. Frawley’s sister, Maureen Frawley, a Forest Park police officer. She claimed someone broke in on April 27, 2006, and stole $100,000 in cash from her laundry room and three guns.
She told police the money belonged to her older brother, Daniel.
He “became defensive about questions relating to when, where and how he obtained the money,’’ according to a La Grange police report.
He told police he had withdrawn the money — $100 bills in bundles of $5,000 — from a Chicago bank, and his sister was supposed to have put the cash in a safe-deposit box.
Four days later, Maureen Frawley reported that the money and guns weren’t missing any more. She told police someone rang her doorbell, and when she answered, the cash and guns were on her porch, but no one was there.
When police arrived, the money was gone again. Maureen Frawley told officers her brother had taken it to his lawyer, George E. Weaver. Weaver told police the money had been “legally obtained by Daniel Frawley through real-estate transactions.’’
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/rezko/499796,CST-NWS-rezko07.stng
SunTimes Rezko/Alsammarae article link:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/rezko/499796,CST-NWS-rezko07.stng
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New RNC Rezko ad
http://www.paxparabellum.com/2008/10/new-rnc-ad-obamas-and-rezko-lapse-in.html
Send it to RUsh and Hannity....They seem to be the only ones that aren’t afraid of the THUGS.
bttt
There is so much corruption here where do you start.