Clinton Set Up Saudi Funded Program In Arkansas, Skimmed Moeny From Saudi Oil Dollars!!!

"Early in Bill Clinton's presidency, Saudi Arabia gave a grant to the State of Arkansas for the purpose of endowing a program in Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas. This program is now the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, part of the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. The center provides scholarships for undergraduates of high standing who major in Middle East Studies. The Center also provides graduate assistantships for students in history, anthropology, political science, geosciences, translation, and comparative literature. All of these students must concentrate on the Middle East as part of their research. Our scholarship and assistantship recipients include students from both the United States and the Middle East, and comprise Christians, Muslims, and Jews. (Yeah…Right!)

The center's primary mission is to serve as a resource center on the Middle East and Islamic world for the State of Arkansas. It has partnerships with universities and academic programs in Morocco, Tunisia, Russia, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, and plans other partnerships in Egypt and Turkey." (Exerpted)

#1. Funding actually came when Clinton was Gov. of Arkansas, but construction was delayed for years while various Clinton connected "consultants" skimmed money off top.

#2. If memory serves, Saudis gave about $31 mil, but all but $7 mil vanished before construction.

#3. Clinton's director of the project was a convicted felon, with jail time for fraud.

The Wall Street Journal 03/01/95
by Micah Morrison

As the lens of "Whitewater" pans from tight focus to the full panorama of Bill Clinton's Arkansas, no more intriguing Friend of Bill appears than Edwin David Edwards.

Not that there is any suggestion that Mr. Edwards played a role in the Whitewater land development or Madison Savings & Loan, or any evidence of anything illicit where the Little Rock investment adviser has been involved. But Mr. Edwards keeps popping up, both as one of the president's oldest friends and as a symbol of the Saudi Arabian links that loom surprisingly large on Razorback terrain.

Mr. Edwards has been a Friend of Bill since at least 1969, when he briefly shared an apartment in England with Mr. Clinton and Strobe Talbott, the current deputy secretary of state. He vacationed with the Clintons on the Riviera, according to "Off the Books, " by Robert Hutchison (William Morrow, 1986). Mr. Edwards was instrumental in the Saudi contribution for a Middle East studies center at the University of Arkansas announced just after the presidential election. He was on hand for the president's emotional departure from Little Rock for Washington (see the rendering of an Associated Press photo). On a visit to Little Rock the weekend before the suicide of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster, the president spent a four hour dinner alone with Mr. Edwards.

A Mysterious Investor

Mr. Edwards and his brother Mark now run their own Little Rock investment placement firm, Edwards Brothers. While Mr. Edwards refused repeated requests for interviews for this article, his principal client appears to be a mysterious Jidda investor, Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, who at one time owned nearly 10% of Little Rock's Worthen Bank. Before leaving to form their own firm in 1990, both brothers worked for Stephens Inc., the powerhouse Arkansas investment firm that handled the brokerage when Middle Eastern front men for the Bank of Credit & Commerce International made an early attempt to buy First American Bank in Washington, D.C. While at Stephens, Mr. Edwards also played an important role in securing an offshore drilling contract in Bahrain for Harken Energy Corp., on whose board sat George W. Bush, presidential son and current governor of Texas.

If only as a matter of curiosity, David Edwards is a Friend of Bill worth a few moments of attention. The tales of the university donations and the Harken deal are particularly interesting.

Much of Mr. Edwards's tenure at Stephens was devoted to the investment firm's European and Middle East operations, though his precise role is murky.

In 1989, officials of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville approached Jackson Stephens, the billionaire head of Stephens Inc. and a university board member, for help in raising funds for international studies. Mr. Stephens referred them to his employee, Mr. Edwards, say university officials. Mr. Edwards quickly turned to his Saudi contacts, including Mr. Bakhsh. Two executives associated with the investment firm say Mr. Edwards brought the low-profile Saudi to Stephens in 1987.

Reports in this newspaper and the BCCI book "False Profits," by Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin, say Mr. Bakhsh was a co-investor in Saudi Arabia with alleged BCCI front man Ghaith Pharaon. Khalid bin Mahfouz, another BCCI figure and head of the largest bank in Saudi Arabia, was Mr. Bakhsh's banker. University of Arkansas officials say Mr. Edwards sought to involve Mr. Bakhsh in a project to create a Middle East studies center at the school. In a letter to a university official, Mr. Edwards said he would bring the reclusive Saudi to Fayetteville to talk "about designing a simple mosque somewhere on campus."

In a written statement, Mr. Bakhsh's attorney, Paul Meyer of Rogers & Wells, noted that the Saudi financier "was not involved in any way in any of the matters or transactions that constituted the BCCI scandal." Mr. Meyer added that Mr. Bakhsh "was not a participant" in Mr. Edwards's funding effort for the University of Arkansas.

When the Edwards brothers departed for their own firm, they took the university project with them. But friction was increasing between David Edwards and the university. The globe-trotting investment adviser claimed several hundred thousand dollars in Saudi travel expenses, says a university official. Others at the school found Mr. Edwards's abrasive manner and pro-Arab bias inappropriate for an academic setting. In a letter to university officials written less than a month before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Mr. Edwards commented on rising tensions in the region and complained that "we are giving our money to the Israelis to do what we tell them not to do. "

Gov. Clinton, university officials say, was an enthusiastic supporter of the project, and Mr. Edwards worked closely with him--on at least one occasion conducting business from the Governor's Mansion, according to a document obtained by the Journal. But Gov. Clinton may have had some Saudi resources of his own. Mr. Clinton was a Georgetown University class-mate of Turki bin Feisal, the current head of Saudi intelligence.

Sources in Arkansas say Mr. Clinton's famous networking skills also put him in contact with Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. University officials participated in a Clinton-Bandar meeting in the spring of 1991, when they and Mr. Mr. Edwards joined the governor in delivering a request for a major gift to the ambassador. According to a 1991 gubernatorial disclosure statement, Mr. Clinton and Prince Banal also were together on June 13, when they traveled from Aspen to Little Rock on a jet leased by the Saudis.

Despite such contacts, no progress in raising money was made until Gov. Clinton received the Democratic presidential nomination. One month later, Mr. Edwards handled an anonymous lead gift to the university of $3.5 million for a Middle East studies program. Individuals familiar with the gift say it came from the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce. According to the Cyprus-based Arab Press Service, the gift was approved by Saudi Arabia's King Fahd at the recommendation of Prince Turki.

Under Mr. Edwards's direction, and despite some objections from University of Arkansas officials, the unusual gift was transferred to a university account in the form of Treasury bonds. The resulting confusion was the last straw for university officials. They insisted that Mr. Edwards withdraw from the project. Curiously, documents obtained by the Journal indicate that extra bonds were delivered to the university, with a face value of $3.5 million promised and $3.9 million delivered. A financial administrator at the university says that "excess bonds were put in the account by a mistake in the electronic transfer" and were "returned. "

One month after President Clinton's inauguration, Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker announced that Prince Bandar had delivered a $20 million gift to the University of Arkansas.

A few years earlier, Mr. Edwards provided important help to a company linked by family ties to then Vice President George Bush. In 198, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Bakhsh rode to the rescue of Harken Energy, a struggling Texas oil company that included George W. Bush on its board. Harken's web of Middle East connections was detailed in a 1991 Wall Street Journal report. Stephens officials, including Mr. Edwards, came up with an unusual arrangement to help cash-poor Harken: Union Bank of Switzerland would give the oil company a $25 million cash infusion in exchange for stock. UBS, the Journal noted, was not known as an investor in small U.S. companies and was a joint-venture partner with BCCI in a Geneva-based bank.

When UBS began to hit regulatory snags, it decided to unload its Harken stock Stephens brought in a new buyer: Mr. Bakhsh. The Saudi tycoon ended up with a l%o stake in Harken, and his American representative, Chicago businessman Talat Othman, wound up with a seat on Harken's board. By August 1990, Mr. Othman was attending White House meetings with President Bush to discuss Middle East policy. Mr. Meyer, who serves as attorney for Mr. Othman as well as Mr. Bakhsh, says the Chicago businessman was invited to the meetings only because of his "longstanding involvement in Arab-American affairs. "

In April 1989, the government of Bahrain was looking for an oil company to explore its offshore holdings. According to a 1990 article in Forbes, the Bahrainis turned to Houston oil consultant Michael Ameen, a former head of governmental relations for Aramco. Mr. Ameen, the Journal noted in it's 1991 report is another "BCCI notation in the Harken story." As a top Aramco official, Mr. Ameen "had close-up dealings for years with the Saudi royal family and it's advisors," including Kamal Adliam, a BCCI principal and former head of Saudi intelligence. Mr. Ameen also reportedly is close to Mr. Bakhsh.

Mr. Ameen and Harken officials did not respond to interview requests. But according to Forbes the Bahrainis called Mr. Ameen, looking for a small company that would give them full attention. Mr. Ameen said he didn't know of any. By coincidence, Mr. Ameen's friend David Edwards called 10 minutes later on an unrelated matter. Mr. Ameen mentioned his problem. Mr. Edwards mentioned Harken.

Mr. Ameen negotiated the Bahrain deal, earning a $100,000 consulting fee. George W. Bush says he opposed it. "I thought it was a bad idea, " Gov. Bush said recently, because of Harken's lack of expertise in overseas and offshore drilling. Gov. Bush added that he "had no idea that BCCI figured into" Harken's financial dealings.

In June 1990, Mr. Bush sold some 60% of his Harken stake for about $850,000, earning a handsome profit. In November 1993, he resigned from Harken's board. Four months later, his successor was named: Michael Ameen. Harken has yet to discover any oil off Bahrain.

Mr. Bakhsh appears to have been pleased with Stephens's investment strategies. From February 1989 through October 1990, he purchased more than one million shares in the Stephen's controlled Worthen Bank paying more than $10 million for 9.6% of the stock, according to Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure statements. Mr. Bakhsh's attorney says he no longer is a Worthen shareholder.

Mr. Bakhsh has a wide range of U.S. investments, concentrated mainly in apparel, energy, real estate and financial services. In November, the Chicago Tribune reported that Mr. Bakhsh's First Commercial Financial Group, a commodities brokerage firm, was forced to shed its customer accounts after regulators raised concerns about capital shortfalls and customer complaints. Mr. Bakhsh owns First Commercial through Dearborn Financial Inc., an investment company run by Mr. Othman. Their attorney, Mr. Meyer, says that First Commercial was completing "the final phase of its long-term strategic restructuring plan" by transferring its customer accounts to other firms. Mr. Meyer says that Mr. Edwards was not involved in Dearborn and First Commercial.

Mr. Edwards, though, has long been familiar with complicated financial transactions. In "Off the Books," financial journalist Robert Hutchison details Mr. Edwards's central role in a Byzantine tale of international banking and currency trading, In 1975, Mr. Edwards, then a Citibank junior executive in Paris, accused a senior currency trader of taking kickbacks and raised questions about the offshore parking of foreign-currency transactions. In order to avoid European taxes, Mr. Edwards charged, Citibank was booking fake transactions through its Bahamas branch, concealing them through a series of coded telex messages and other methods.

A Long Investigation

The "Edwards Affair, " as it became known, lasted until 1983, entangling the SEC, Congress, and regulatory officials of six European countries. It concluded with the senior Paris trader cleared of the kickback charges and Citibank paying minor fines and back taxes in several countries. Following a long investigation, in 1982 the SEC declined to take steps against Citibank.

By that time, Mr. Edwards was long gone. In one of his first acts as head of Citibank's International Banking Group, Thomas Theobold fired Mr. Edwards in 1978, saying that Mr. Edwards was unable "to provide any substantive, factual corroboration of the allegations. " Mr. Edwards responded by going to the SEC and filing an ultimately unsuccessful $14 million wrongful dismissal suit.

Citibank officials are bitter about their eight-year wrestling match with Mr. Edwards and worry that he may now be serving as an unofficial adviser to the president. "We fired him for being a lousy trader and he got back at us, " says a former top Citibank official. "The next thing we hear, he's down in Arkansas. Wherever there's a smell rising from the river, Edwards seems to turn up.

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