*snip*
Rezko’s relationship with Barack Obama goes back to at least 1990, when Obama’s law firm did work relating to thousands of now-decaying Rezko apartment units in South Chicago. Rezko was a key early-money fundraiser in Obama’s state Senate campaigns and his failed run at the U.S. Congress.
According to The Times of London, “Mr. Auchi first met Mr. Rezko after the 2003 Iraq war and they have a business relationship.” At the time Auchi was facing the possibility of extradition to France. The Times of London explains: “Mr Auchi was convicted of corruption, given a suspended sentence and fined £1.4 million in France in 2003 for his part in the Elf affair, described as the biggest political and corporate scandal in post-war Europe. He, in a statement from his media lawyers, claims he is appealing against the sentence.”
In 2003, Nick Cohen of the UK Guardian wrote:
Allow me to introduce you to Nadhmi Auchi. He was charged in the 1950s with being an accomplice of Saddam Hussein, when the future tyrant was acquiring his taste for blood. He was investigated in the 1980s for his part in alleged bribes to the fabulously corrupt leaders of post-war Italy. In the 1990s, the Belgium Ambassador to Luxembourg claimed that Auchi’s bank held money Saddam and Colonel Gadaffi had stolen from their luckless peoples.
In 2002, officers from the Serious Fraud Squad raided the offices of one of Auchi’s drug companies as part of an investigation of what is alleged to be the biggest swindle ever of the (British National Health Service). With allegations, albeit unproven, like these hanging over him, wouldn’t you think that British MPs would have the sense to stay away?
But after threats from Carter-Ruck, Cohen’s “defamatory” article became one of six Guardian and Observer articles scrubbed from the Internet this April.
Blogger “A Jacksonian” received a similar demand on or before June 24. His article is still up. It details much of the information contained in the six deleted Guardian/Observer articles.
Source of Wealth
Auchi in 1967 began an Iraq Oil Ministry career eventually rising to be Director of Planning and Development under the Baathist dictatorship. He formed GMH in 1979 and then left Iraq. A key source of weapons procurement for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, GMH became the largest single private shareholder of Banque Nationale du Paris (BNP) which later merged with Paribas to form BNP-Paribas. BNP and BNP-Paribas, at Saddam Hussein’s insistence, handled all Oil-for-Food transactions until 2001 when the incoming administration of George W. Bush demanded change.
Investigative journalist Bill Gertz explains:
“A 2004 Pentagon report obtained by The Washington Times identified Auchi as a global arms dealer and Iraqi billionaire ‘who, behind the facade of legitimate business, served as Saddam Hussein’s principle (sic) international financial manipulator and bag man.’
Rest here
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/iraqi-billionaire-threatens-reporters-investigating-rezko-affair/
I would wager Auchi’s money and Obama/US govt and NGOs are connected to many powerful enterprises and exert great influence in today’s Iraq situation, and who knows: maybe in OUR despicable Obamacare and govt bureaucracies.
Auchi was very involved in the Oil For Food scam and I would bet dollars to donuts that some of that Oil For Food loot ended up in Obama’s pocket via Rezko and Auchi. Obama was one of the very few US state senators and politicos screaming about going into Iraq from the very beginning(just like many of those in Europe and here who were being paid by Saddam’s men to lift the sanctions). I believe that is one of the bombshells that the punk is hiding.
Color me surprised .. from Chicagoan James Warren in the NYT:
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*snip*
The absence of Christopher Kelly, a confidant and chief fund-raiser for Mr. Blagojevich, deprived us. Indicted three times and convicted twice, Mr. Kelly was to go on trial with Mr. Blagojevich. Not long after telling the news media, “My life is over,” he killed himself.
Having declined to flip for the government, imagine the secrets he took to the grave. What did he know that we don’t?
*snip*
without testimony from Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., we wonder about a Loop restaurant meeting Mr. Jackson held with Ragu Nayak and Rajinder Bedi, loyalists who allegedly angled to give Blago money if he picked their guy for the Senate. Is it benign blue-skying or illegal conniving?
Then there’s no Tony Rezko, the convicted swindler and once-respected developer deemed so untrustworthy that neither side beckoned him from prison.
The defense sees Mr. Rezko as a slimy manipulator who was putty in Mr. Blagojevich’s hands. But his absence leaves much unclear, including details on a $10 billion state bond issuance in 2003 to bolster pension funds.
It’s the sort of under-the-radar deal that we in the news media rarely mention or understand. We’re left hanging as to what was going on between Mr. Rezko and Robert Kjellander, a Springfield lobbyist and former Republican National Committee treasurer.
Rest here
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/us/politics/01cncwarren.html
James Warren pic