Posted on 10/13/2001 12:09:56 PM PDT by Wallaby
1) I don't recall the U.S. press mentioning at the time of the U.S.S. Cole bombing that Bin Laden was born in Yemen, or that he was "revered" by many of its citizens.
2) I seem to recall quite a PR campaign after the "aspirin factory bombing" that the Muslim owner had been unfairly maligned, etc. It might be interesting to check the FR archives to look at the specifics.
3)What are we now to make about the "aspirin factory" claims? Maybe it was more of a legitimate target than previously thought. Why the press spin?
4)BCCI again and again and again. I wonder why. (I am having trouble keeping track of all of the names.)
I'd love to know if Carlyle has a piece of this. It sounds right up their alley.
I agree with you that these money trails need to be followed up. And the intelligence implications. What did the Saudis know when they bought this guy out and dumped him?
Ciller's Consultant Tamraz May Testify in Congress
Tamraz linked to BCCI scandal
By Ugur Akinci / Turkish Daily News
WASHINGTON -- Roger Tamraz, the CIA-informant oil executive and banker who impressed then Prime Minister Tansu Ciller in 1995 with his promises of making the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline a reality (for an hefty fee) may soon show up in front of a Congressional committee investigating the allegations surrounding Democratic fund raising practices.Tamraz has contributed $177,000 to Democratic National Committee (DNC) to gain access to President Clinton and Vice President Gore.
Tamraz, who reportedly was very close to the Ciller family, told Los Angeles Times that "I had no trouble with access to Ciller."Tamraz was reportedly paid an undisclosed sum by Turkey in return for his help with the Baku-Ceyhan line.Since then nothing happened with the pipeline which Washington also supported in principle.
What Tamraz might also be questioned by U.S. lawmakers is his close links to the BCCI banking scandal and Ghaith Pharaon, his classmate from Harvard Business School.
In an extensive investigation of Tamraz' questionable links to Saudi money, The American Spectator monthly, in its May 1997 issue, exposed many of the links that Ciller's consultant had with a serious of bank bailout operations that he pulled off with his Arab partners.
The collapse of Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), one of histories most expensive bank failure that cost $12 billion to its shareholders when it was closed down in 1991, shows the active role played by Pharaon.
In 1973, Tamraz forms his own investment bank, First Arabian Corporation backed by such powerful Saudi investors as Sheikh Kamal Adham, also known as "Al-Turki" since he was raised in Istanbul.Adham is the brother of late King Faisal's wife Queen Iffat and known as Saudi Arabia's top intelligence officer with strong links to CIA.
Other shareholders in Tamraz' bank include Prince Abdullah bin Musaid bin Abdul Rahman; Sheikh Salem bin Ladin; and Ghaith Pharaon.The relations between Tamraz and Pharaon grew stronger after Tamraz bailed out Pharaon's Bank of the Commonwealth in Detroit in 1975.
In 1977 Pharaon becomes part-owner of Main Bank of Houston.Co-owners of the bank include John Connally, Governor of Texas who was riding the same car when President Kennedy got shot in Dallas in 1963, and Saudi banker Khaled bin Mahfouz.
Mahfouz' father was the founder of Saudi Arabia's largest privately owned bank, the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia.
"Pharaon's troubles started in late 1977 when he bought the shares in the National bank of Georgia belonging to [then Governor] Jimmy Carter's political confidant, T. Bertram Lance," American Spectator story reads.Attending Pharaon's lavish parties in Georgia were likes of Carter himself and Alexander Haig, the former SACEUR of NATO [and later to become Secretary of State under President Reagan] who is well-known to the Ankara establishment.
It later turned out that National Bank operation was a front for BCCI and Pharaon was acting in fact on behalf of his BCCI backers."BCCI lost money steadily, seeking high profits by providing services to drug lords, arms dealers, spies, and terrorists -- and covering its deficits by fraud," Spectator said.
"BCCI concealed the fraud [to the tune of $12 billion] by dazzling Westerners with lists of wealthy Saudi shareholders, prominent among them Tamraz's partner Kamal [Al Turki] Adham and Main Bank investor Khaled bin Mahfouz.Both Adham and bin Mahfouz later arranged plea bargains with Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, the most aggressive of the BCCI's investigators," said American Spectator.
Bin Mahfouz hired for himself a public relations firm in New York City, Abernathy MacGregor Scanlon (AMS), for "public relations and [facilitation of] media coverage," according to the U.S. Department of Justice records.
Incidentally, the AMS happens to be the same foreign lobby company that Tansu Ciller contracted in 1994 to provide communications counseling to the Turkish Prime Ministry.
Pharaon kept on buying and selling a number of banking ventures, including BCCI-controlled Washington D.C. bank chain First American Bankshares, and Miami's Centrust Savings Bank.Miami bank ended up losing $2 billion, making it one of the most costly S&L failures in American history.
Tamraz, although keeping his distance from Pharaon after the Bank of Commonwealth bailout, organized Paris-based Banque Arab et Internationale d'Investissments (BAII) which said to have provided cover for BCCI.In 1990 BAII was taken over by Banque Nationale de Paris after losing $100 million.
"Tamraz re-entered BCCI's orbit after it was seized in 1991," the Spectator said."He offered to pick up the pieces of the bank and pay depositors 90 cents on the dollar.But his still unidentified backers soon learned how much this offer would really cost, and the deal collapsed."
Pharaon is now a fugitive from federal and New York State bank fraud charges.Federal Reserve Board fined him $37 million for lying over taking over many of the banks he purchased on behalf of his Arab backers.
Tamraz and his links to BCCI and Pharaon were forgotten until Tamraz resurfaced in 1995, contributing vast amounts to the Democratic Party and trying to purchase his way into the Oval Office.This is also the same time when he told then PM Tansu Ciller that he was going to see President Clinton soon and talk to him about Baku-Ceyhan "peace pipeline," leaving the impression that the meeting would be between the two of them.Tamraz denies he ever said so to Ciller.
With his wide ranging links to Nagorno-Karabakh's hardliner self-proclaimed "president" (and now Armenian prime minister) Robert Kocharian, on the one hand, to Chinese state oil company officials who were supposed to bankroll the Baku-Ceyhan line, on the other, Tamraz continues to fascinate American observers as someone who could be holding the key to explain many questions in the scandal brewing around Democratic National Committee.His rumored testimony on Capitol Hill is awaited eagerly by his friends and foes alike.
By the way, how far from the World Trade Center is that investment banking outfit that Jordan went to work for in 1999?
In a separate but related deal, billionaire financier George Soros shelled out more than $245 million to buy 8.4 million shares of Globalstar stock from Loral for $29.17 per share. The investment represents a 4 percent stake in the proposed global mobile satellite venture. Loral purchased its shares from founding service partners DACOM, Daimler-Benz Aerospace, Elsacom, Hyundai, TESAM and Vodafone. Those service providers deposited $210 million, or half the sale proceeds, into an escrow account to fund the purchase of Globalstar gateways and user terminals. |
"Our founding service provider partners maintain a significant interest in Globalstar while taking advantage of an opportunity to realize earlier-than-expected gains on a portion of their initial investments in this venture," Schwartz said. "Second, Loral has been able to increase its equity ownership to 42 percent. In addition, Globalstar benefits strategically by the addition of the Soros funds as a strong new shareholder with an international scope." (Jeanette Clonan, Globalstar, 212/338-5658.) |
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
With production in excess of some 2 million bpd at the time and an ambitious exploration program covering the entire Kingdom, Saudi Aramco proved that it has the technical and financial resources needed for the world's top producer. |
Yet despite that, the Kingdom decided to open up for foreign investment as part of its liberalization program aiming at attracting foreign investments and encouraging the private sector to take an additional role in economic development. With that in mind, it seems quite natural to have a special campaign to attract private Saudi oil firms working abroad. Over the past decade, three Saudi groups have emerged in oil business. The one most noticeably successful is Corral Petroleum, owned by Muhammad Hussein Al-Amoudi. It became known after it acquired the Swedish oil firm OK Petroleum, in 1993 and divided it into two companies, one dealing with distribution and retailing and the other with exploration and development. Corral and its subsidiaries are now active in such countries as Morocco, the United Kingdom, Angola, Lebanon and Lithuania in addition to Sweden. The second is Nimr Petroleum, founded in 1991 by the Mahfouz family. It has made production sharing agreements in Yemen, Romania, Malta; it also has dealings in Libya and the former Soviet republics. The third and the oldest of the private Saudi oil firms is Delta which is backed by some fifty businessmen and is involved in an ambitious upstream project in partnership with the American company, Unocal, to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. The project seems to have got under way recently, though without the participation of Unocal. Now with the opening up of the Kingdom's hydrocarbon sector to foreign investors it seems logical to attract from abroad those private Saudi businesses that are active there. It is a new window and an investment opportunity to attract some of the huge amounts of private Saudi money that is outside the Kingdom. Even more important is the added value of helping to mature and strengthen the Saudi hydrocarbon industry by adding vital private elements to it. |
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