Free Republic

Nine days after registering his presidential exploratory committee last November, Rudolph Giuliani appeared in Singapore to help a Las Vegas developer make a pitch for a $3.5 billion casino resort. Though the bid ultimately failed, and there was nothing illegal about the involvement, it drew Giuliani into a complex partnership with the family of a controversial Hong Kong billionaire who has ties to the regime of North Korea's Kim Jong Il and has been linked to international organized crime by the U.S. government. ... Giuliani's public involvement in the gaming bid began at a September 2006 news conference in Singapore...

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had such expensive tastes that he demanded gifts in the form of cigars to dip into Cointreau liqueur, a Jerusalem court heard today. Netanyahu is undergoing a blockbuster corruption trial on charges of fraud and breach of trust for allegedly accepting luxury gifts from billionaires Arnon Milchan and James Packer worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, advancing the former's various interests in return. An aide to the two billionaires testified that she had been ordered to buy cigars and Cointreau - among other items - to satiate the former prime minister and his wife...