Harken Energy Had a Web Of Mideast Connections;In the Background: BCCI
Entree at the White House
Wall Street Journal
Thomas Petzinger Jr., Peter Truell And Jill Abramson
December 6, 1991
PAGE A1
. . . The mosaic of BCCI connections surrounding Harken Energy may prove nothing more than how ubiquitous the rogue bank's ties were. But the number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken -- all since George W. Bush came on board -- likewise raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son.
Among those relationships:
Sheik Khalifah bin-Salman al-Khalifah, the prime minister of Bahrain and a brother of the country's ruling emir, is identified on an October 1990 shareholder list as one of the 45 investors who own parent company BCCI Holdings (Luxembourg) S.A. The emir played a role in approving the Harken transaction.
Sheik Abdullah Bakhsh, a major Harken shareholder represented by Mr. Othman on the company's board, has been a co-investor in Saudi Arabia with alleged BCCI front man Ghaith Pharaon, and used Khalid bin-Mahfouz, until recently a principal BCCI shareholder, as his banker. .
[End of Partial Transcript]
Other Bush Kinfolk Also Had Dealings In Projects Abroad
The Wall Street Journal
By Jill Abramson and Peter Truell
December 6, 1991
PAGE A4
Prescott Bush , 68, forged a lucrative but ill-fated alliance in 1989 with a company linked to the Japanese mob. Members of his family say he had no idea that West Tsusho Co. was part of the empire of Susumu Ishii, who headed Japan's second largest underworld syndicate before his death in September. Prescott Bush didn't return several messages left for him.
Mr. Bush set up a consulting business in 1984 after a long career with a New York insurance brokerage firm. In 1989 his Prescott Bush & Co. helped arrange two U.S. investments for West Tsusho . That firm paid $3.8 million for a stake in Quantum Access Inc., a Houston software firm headed by a nephew of Mr. Bush , Draper Kauffman; and it paid $5 million for a 38% stake in Assets Management International Financing & Settlement, a New York firm on whose advisory board Mr. Bush had served.
[End of partial Transcript]
"s/212,140 at 4 to Lee for Bush."
Lee M. Bass
How George W. Bush Scored Big With the Texas Rangers
"The commissioner, a GOP donor himself, wanted the deal approved before his term expired at the end of 1989, and so he and then-American League president Bobby Brown took it on themselves to line up Fort Worth financier Richard E. Rainwater.
Rainwater and Bush weren’t exactly strangers. Rainwater was a contributor to his father’s presidential campaigns and, later, an overnight guest in the Bush White House. Until 1986, he was the chief money manager for the Bass brothers, Fort Worth billionaires who financed drilling in Bahrain by the Harken Energy Corp., a company that in 1986 had bought out Spectrum 7, one of Bush’s oil companies.
Lee Marshall Bass - Social Network Diagram
Bass Family - Social Network Diagram
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