| From: StockDung | 2/20/2006 9:11:02 PM | | | | | | Court rejects Chandraswami's request
New Delhi, Feb 20: A court here today dismissed godman Chandraswamy's application seeking to summon Saudi Arabia-based international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi as a witness in a FERA (Foriegn Exchange Regulation Act) case.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Kamini Lau rejected the application of the controversial godman, which had requested the court to examine Khashoggi, who lives in Riyadh, via video conferencing as his defence witness.
Chandraswami is being tried on a complaint made by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for acquiring and transferring Pounds Sterling 6,000 in violation of FERA provisions. (Agencies)
Published: Monday, February 20, 2006
chennaionline.com. |
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| From: StockDung | 2/20/2006 11:12:18 PM | | | | | | THE GENI LENDERS: How a Saudi Arms Dealer and His Cronies Used a Penny Stock to Wipe Out a Minnesota Brokerage Firm
By Stephanie Ayres
June 2005
Los Angeles, California
GenesisIntermedia.com Inc was a small company based in Van Nuys, California whose main business activity was placing internet kiosks in shopping centers. But to penny stock traders and a group of high-stakes manipulators, it was GENI, a Nasdaq stock with some shady associates which was used as the vehicle of two manipulation scheems which collided abruptly when GENI's stock price crashed just after September 11, 2001.
In addition to the large losses this caused to public shareholders, there was also news that GENI's crash somehow had also brought down two securities firms, one in New Jersey and the other in Minnesota. These were not penny stock boiler rooms. How could a single penny stock manipulation cause so much havoc?
The GENI Founders
The miniscule GenesisIntermedia.com Inc filed for its initial public offering (IPO) of common stock in June 1999. The company planned to issue 2 million shares with the almost equally unknown Millennium Financial Group as its lead underwriter. The company's CEO was identified as Ramy El-Batrawi (who is reported to sometimes use the name Remy Al-Batswani), not exactly a household name to attract attention. For most people, including some who would later be affected by the stock's rise and fall, GENI's IPO was a non-event.
It was not until some eight months later, about February 2000, that El-Batrawi's somewhat more notorious business associate emerged from the shadows to begin buying enormous quantities of GENI stock. This big buyer was Ultimate Holdings, a Bermuda company controlled by reputed Saudi Arabian arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who had been a key figure in the clandestine dealings of the late 1980s known as the "Iran-Contra Affair." The Iran-Contra scandal encompassed a series of events in which which certain US government officials had allegedly schemed with Khashoggi and others to illegally sell military parts to the Government of Iran (which was subject to a US embargo on such trade) and then misappropriate the proceeds of those sales to secretly make illegal payments to support a Central American paramilitary group known as the "Contras," who were also subject to a Congressional ban on receipt of US military assistance.
In the course of the controversial congressional hearings to sort out the underground financial and arms networks which were used to carry out these deals, Khashoggi, an independent international arms dealer, was identified as a facilitator in the secret deal between the Americans and the Iranians. Since the days of Iran-Contra, Khashoggi acquired another type of notoriety.
For years he has been a fugitive from the Government of Thailand, which charged him as one of the key figures in the collapse of the Bangkok Bank of Commerce, described by the Thais as one of the largest financial scandals in the history of their country. A former official of the Bangkok Bank of Commerce, Rakesh Saxena, is also wanted by the Thai government and has been reported living in western Canada under the surveillance of the Canadian government.
El-Batrawi is frequently identified in court documents related to the GENI case as a longtime business associate of Khashoggi, but the exact nature of that relationship, what deals they worked on, or the origins and background of El-Batrawi, for that matter, are all somewhat murky.
All of this lends an air of intrigue to the GENI scheme which sometimes distracts attention from what the schemers were up to. This was no ordinary pump-and-dump scheme. Apparently not content with the mere millions that the average stock manipulation can generate, the GENI schemers seemingly had larger ambitions. Their plan involved a practice called securities lending. It was truly devious.
How stock lending works
The loaning of stocks among brokerage firms is an activity largely unknown to small investors. Some securities firms allow wealthy customers to sell stocks short. Short sellers expect a stock's price to drop, borrow stock to sell with the intention of replacing the stock when the price does drop. If the price rises instead, the short seller must still replace the stock, but will have to do so at a loss instead of a profit.
A brokerage firm may need to borrow stock from another broker to accomodate short-selling customers, and there are other legitimate activities that may cause a firm to need shares which it does not currently hold. Many brokerages which borrow or loan securities have accounts with a clearinghouse called the Depository Trust Company through which loaned securities pass on their way from one brokerage to another.
Securities lending among properly-licensed securities firms (who are the only ones who are legally eligible to do this) is subject to regulation by the SEC. It is effectively an exception to the restriction on lending activities by brokerage firms and investment banks adopted as a reform after the 1930s Depression.
Investigations of the 1929 stock market crash singled out margin lending (where brokers loan customers the money to buy stocks) as an important factor aggravating the widespread impoverishment which followed the crash. Not just the wealthy, it was found, but many average Americans had been borrowing to gamble on the stock market in the 1920s. They lost not only their own money, but ended up owing debts on stocks that became worthless.
Because of this problem, the ability of brokerages to loan money to individuals to buy stocks has been strictly limited since then. Loans between brokerage firms are treated differently. The firm borrowing stock will put up cash or cash-equivalent collateral (such as certain US Treasury securities) equal to the stock's market-value at the time of the loan.
This is an important feature for the GENI story. If during the course of the loan the market value of the borrowed securites changes significantly, the borrower must adjust the collateral amount accordingly. (1)
For example, if 10,000 shares of a stock called ABC was loaned when the market price was $10 per share, the borrower would put up $100,000 of collateral. If the price went up to $15 per share, the borrower would have to put up an additional $50,000 of collateral with the stock lender. If the price went down to $5 per share, the stock lender would return $50,000 of collateral to the borrower. This is illustrated in the following diagram:
Lending GENI
Herein lies the key to the alleged GENI manipulation scheme. The GENI principal El-Batrawi and his associate Khashoggi's Ultimate Holdings held a majority of the company's shares. They loaned shares of GENI stock to a brokerage firm, which loaned them to another brokerage firm. which loaned them to another brokerage firm, which loaned them to yet another brokerage firm. This last firm, which was the real borrower, put up the cash collateral, which was passed from firm to firm back down the line to the lenders, El-Batrawi and Ultimate Holdings.
Meanwhile, El-Batrawi and Ultimate began issuing upbeat public statements about GENI's prospects. They allegedly made secret payments to at least one television stock commentator, Courtney Smith, who reportedly touted GENI on networks such as CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. As the public pump-and-dump scheme got underway, the buying pushed the price up. This meant more collateral for the lenders-- El-Batrawi and Ultimate. (2).
But when the stock price crashed-- the lenders (El-Batrawi and Ultimate)-- were then supposed to return much fo the collateral they had received to adjust for the lower market price. But when GENI's stock price crashed, they had disappeared.
In the meantime, the original securities borrower had passed the securities to other firms in the chain and recovered its collateral from them. So the firms in the middle of the chain were the ones who were stuck with the almost worthless GENI stock and unable to recover the collateral which had ballooned to over $200 million by September 2001. Here was the really big squeeze, which according to lawsuits filed over this case, was intentionally engineered by the GENI principals and a group of brokerage firm insiders.
The Brokerage Insiders
It would take more than the usual network of penny stock boiler rooms and promoters to pull off such a scheme. For this GENI hooked up with some allegedly corrupt insiders. One of these insiders, Richard Evangelista, worked at Native Nations Securities in New Jersey, the brokerage that borrowed the GENI stock from Ultimate and El-Batrawi. Another was Wayne Breedon, who managed securities lending at the Toronto, Ontario office of Deutsche Bank Securities, which became the "real" borrower in the chain, the last to receive the GENI stock and which put up the cash collateral.
Guarding the gate to this fraudsters' goldmine was Kenneth D'Angelo, a New Jersey businessman and convicted felon whose experience with fraudulent stock-lending schemes dated back to the 1980s. Before going with Deutsche Bank, Breedon had worked at D'Angelo's RBF International, a company which drew on D'Angelo's particular expertise to act as a finder of securities for lending purposes.
In the GENI scheme, D'Angelo brought El-Batrawi and Ultimate to Native Nations which borrowed large quantities of GENI stock from them. Native Nations re-loaned the stock (via several intermediaries) to Deutsche Bank Securities, where Breedon allegedly arranged for the cash collateral to flow back to Native Nations and then to El-Batrawi and Ultimate. As the stock price rose, Deutsche Bank sent additional cash collateral down the line to El-Batrawi and Ultimate.
A lawsuit filed by the bankruptcy trustee of the firm hardest hit by the scheme alleges that El-Batrawi and Khashoggi never intended to pay back this "collateral," that D'Angelo, Evangelista, and Breedon were aware of this, and planned to receive large payoffs for helping them loot the brokerage firm that was stuck with covering the collateral on the GENI stock.
If this was the case, then who would return Deutsche Bank Securities' cash collateral, which had soared to over $200 million as the firm piled up over 5 million shares of GENI and the stock price soared from its IPO value of $8.50 per share to about $60 per share by 2001? The GENI figures had allegedly absconded with the cash they received (what they did with it is still a mystery), and Native Nations Securities did not have enough cash to cover the loss.
There were other securities firms in this stock-loaning chain who, alleged the bankruptcy trustee's case, were being set up for the squeeze. First in line was MJK Clearing Inc of Minneapolis. Evangelista, the Native Nations conspirator, contacted MJK's securities lending manager, Thomas Brooks, and convinced him to borrow GENI stock which was to be re-loaned to several other brokerage firms.
MJK was to be merely a conduit. Since this was not unusual and Deutsche Bank was to be the final borrower, MJK presumably had no reason to be concerned and agreed to participate. Thus MJK Clearing and several other brokerage firms became borrowers and lenders of GENI. Cash collateral passed through their hands on its way from Deutsche Bank to Native Nations and on to El-Batrawi and Khashoggi.
Sometime in mid 2001 Breedon at Deutsche Bank Securities began to reduce the bank's exposure to loss by returning GENI stock to some of the other firms in the chain. These firms returned Deutsche Bank Securities' collateral and replaced Deutsche Bank Securities as the final borrower of the stock.
When GENI's stock price crashed in the confusion following the events of September 11, 2001, these firms looked to MJK Clearning to recover collateral because of the price drop. MJK in turn looked to Native Nations, which had nowhere to look because the alleged recipients of the cash-- El-Batrawi and Ultimate-- were nowhere to be found.
The Aftermath
Native Nations had no cash to pay MJK and closed down. MJK was still being pressed for a collateral payment of about $60 million by brokerages holding GENI stock. MJK had insufficient cash to cover this and notified NASD and the SEC of the shortage. The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) was called in . SIPC is an organization which insures against the failure of brokerage firms. MJK Clearing quickly became the largest case in the SIPC's history. MJK Clearing filed bankruptcy on or about September 27, 2001.
A trustee appointed by the bankruptcy court was charged with presiding over the orderly liquidation of MJK's affairs and also of investigating the situation that had led to its rapid demise. Out of this investigation came a major lawsuit filed by the MJK trustee, Minnesota attorney James P. Stephenson, against Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Bank Securities, Breedon, RBF, D'Angelo, Evangelista, GenesisIntermedia.com Inc, El-Batrawi, Ultimate Holdings, Khashoggi, and Bradford Keiller, a Las Vegas attorney and businessman who had allegedly participated int he public trading of GENI stock which helped drive the price up.
When the stock crashed, MJK was being called upon for about $60 million of collateral, but it was owed about $209 million by Native Nations, which was forced into bankruptcy in 2002 (3). The firm had claimed in public statements that a "rogue broker" (presumably Evangelista) had altered its books to cover up information about the stock lending scheme.
Evangelista had been with the firm since about 1993 as a senior officer. Until early 2001 Native Nations had been called Freeman Securities Inc. A change of ownership resulted in the name change. Freeman/Native Nations had been cited in an SEC action in 1993 over stock-loan dealings with Kenneth D'Angelo. According to the MJK trustee's complaint, Native Nations had been the weak link in the scheme. The conspirators allegedly had tried to avoid a decline in the GENI price so that no one would demand collateral from Native Nations.
Clues about inappropriate securities lending came with the outside audit of Native Nations financial statements for the year 2000. Someone reportedly altered stock loan information on the firm's records to show that the stock which had been borrowed from Ultimate and El-Batrawi had come instead from other other securities firms. Auditor confirmation letters sent to these firms revealed that they were not the lenders of the GENI stock. Confronted with this information, Native Nations allegedly prepared a formal stock lending agreement with the real lenders of the GENI stock, such as Ultimate Holdings, falsely identifying Khashoggi's Ultimate as a securities broker-dealer.
The complexity of this scheme served to prolong the time needed to investigate it. Except for the bankruptcy trustee's civil case, there have been isolated actions by authorities against several, but not all, participants in the scheme:
1. Native Nations Securities: filed bankruptcy in August 2002. The MJK trustee reported filing a creditor claim for about $226 million to enforce a June 2002 court judgment against Native Nations in favor of MJK.
2. MJK Clearing Inc: assumed the brunt of the scheme's effects (along with the SIPC) which covered certain of its customer accounts. MJK filed bankruptcy almost immediately after the GENI crash and ceased operations, causing the sudden and unexpected loss of about 200 jobs of its former employees.
3. Thomas Brooks: MJK's stock loan manager was sued by the SEC in June 2003. The complaint alleged that Brooks contributed to the fraud by letting Native Nations talk him into not demanding collateral from the New Jersey firm as part of the lending arrangement over the GENI stock and the ICII bonds. The SEC also alleged that Native Nations promised to pay MJK higher fees for this consideration, and that Brooks was in a position to profit personally from this, since MJK reportedly paid him 30% of its revenue from the stock-lending conduit activities his department generated. The SEC also alleged that Brooks falsified records at MJK concerning the arrangement with Native Nations.
4. Kenneth D'Angelo: pleaded guilty in September 2003 to criminal charges of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud in a federal case in Los Angeles. D'Angelo and RBF International were sued by the SEC in September 2003.
5. Courtney Smith: arrested February 7, 2005 after being charged in a nine-count indictment by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles, including one count of conspiracy and eight counts of federal securities law violations for his alleged conspiracy with GENI principals to tout the stock on national television and elsewhere in exchange for undisclosed compensation laundered through his girlfriend's business.
6. GenesisIntermedia.com Inc: GENI stock was relegated to the "pink sheets." The MJK trustee reports that neither El=Batrawi or Khashoggi filed answers in his lawsuit and reportedly haven't filed answers in a class action securities suit over GENI in which they were named. Their whereabouts were apparently unknown. What they did with the approximately $160 million they made off with is also unknown.
***
(1) The practice is called "marking the securities to market."
(2) El-Batrawi and Ultimate Holdings were identified in most court fiings as the only holders of enough shares to have been able to provide the quantities of stock that were actually loaned.
(3) Most of the $209 million owed by Native Nations to MJK Clearing for securities loan collateral was for loans of GENI stock. However a smaller portion of this total related to lending of the corporate bonds of Imperial Credit Industries Inc. (ICII), the parent company of Southern Pacific Bank of Torrance, California.
In a type of subplot to the GENI story, two businessmen, Michael Riley and William Curtis, schemed to get control of ICII by buying up its corporate debt, an old robber baron tactic, except that Riley and Curtis used the Native Nations-Deutsche Bank securities-lending chain to finance the purchase of the bonds themselves.
Riley and Curtis arranged to buy ICII bonds. Before the settlement date when they had to pay for these bonds, Riley and Curtis loaned them to Native Nations-- in exchange for cash collateral which ultimately came from Deutsche Bank via MJK Clearing and other firms. According to the MJK bankruptcy trustee's complaint, Riley and Curtis used the cash they received to pay for the bonds they had already loaned. Allegedly they obtained control of over 50% of ICII's outstanding bonds and bullied their way onto the company's board.
ICII was vulnerable because it had been incurring large losses, over $150 million in both 2000 and 2001, much of this related to subprime automobile loan financing and other activities of its subsidiary, Southern Pacific Bank, which was closed in February 2003 by the California Commissioner of Financial Institutions. According to a February 7, 2003 statement from the FDIC, Southern Pacific Bank had about $1 billion of assets (outstanding loans) and about $850 million of deposits. The FDIC estimated the cost of its failure to the Bank Insurance Fund at about $134.5 million.
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FINANCIAL CRIME NEWS, June 2005
© STEPHANIE AYRES 2004-2005 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED |
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| To: StockDung who wrote (516) | 3/19/2006 3:00:40 AM | | From: Dr. von Paleske | | | | Dr. von Paleske
In the evening of 27th December 2005 the Financial Editor of the leading German Business Daily “Financial Times Deutschland” received a phone call from Africa. I told him that am phoning him from Gaborone in Botswana.
"Are you aware, that the biggest German Bank, Deutsche Bank is involved in a huge and dirty scandal, that involves Saudi Arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, the Uncle of Dodi Fayed, the last partner of Diana Princess of Wales and a slew of criminal stockbrokers in the US?” I asked him.
The editor was in disbelief.
However the material that I had collected and faxed on that very evening convinced him, this was a scandal and two days later it was front page.
The head of the lending department at Deutsche Bank in Toronto/Canada, Wayne Breedon, in cohort with a slew of dubious stockbrokers, one of them a convicted felon for stock fraud, in a complicated lending scheme had allegedly fraudulently pumped up the stock of a company by the name of Genesis Intermedia.
The Company, then listed on the New York Stock exchange, was built around a book by a John Gray “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus” He certainly forgot to add, that criminal stockbrokers and arms dealers are from hell.
The company was owned by another company by the name of Ultimate Holdings, based on the Bahamas and owned by Adnan Khashoggi.
Adnan Khashoggi has quite a bit of luggage to carry.
He was involved in the Iran-Contra affair in the 80s, in which weapons were sold to Iran by the Pentagon and the returns were used to finance a rebel group in Nicaragua, the Contras, everything illegal of course.
Just half a year, before the Genesis Intermedia fraud started, he and his old friend Rakesh Saxena, had allegedly linked up together with the international boiler room gangster Amador Pastrana for a huge international fraud.
Saxena is the man, who allegedly defrauded the Bangkok Bank of Commerce together with it’s then CEO Jalichandra to the tune of 2.2 billion US Dollars and thereby caused the Asian Banking Crisis in 1997.
His friend Khashoggi also benefited and allegedly got a 140 million US Dollar "non repayable" loan from the Bangkok Bank of Commerce.
To avoid being arrested, Saxena left Thailand just in time and fled to Canada with allegedly 88 million US Dollars "pocket money", not to retire there, but to continue his stressful work.
First involved with Tim Spicer, then CEO of Sandline, a mercenary company, in a coup in Sierra Leone which was later called the "Arms to Africa Affair" that nearly brought down the Blair government.
Tim Spicer is now the boss of the AEGIS mercenary company, busy on a 293 million Pentagon contract in Iraq, making headlines, his mercenaries were allegedly killing civilians. Involved in the Sierra Leone coup also Tony Buckingham, former owner of the mercenary company Sandline, and also a director and founder of Heritage Oil, listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
That was obviously not enough. Saxena was until recently allegedly fraudulently active in Britain (West Shore Ventures) South Africa (Platinum Asset Management) and then Botswana (Investor Relations) , as the Sunday Standard and I here revealed in August 2005.
He is refugee in Canada since 1996, constantly on the phone from self paid house arrest, snail justice to an extradition request from Thailand.
Khashoggi, Saxena and Pastrana together bought a bank in Vienna/Austria by the name of General Commerce Bank, from where they allegedly organized international fraud to the tune of 1 Billion US Dollars in 2000/2001, until the bank was forcibly closed by the authorities. With them the convicted criminals Regis Possino, Sherman Mazur and Raoul Berthaumieu.
Victims came from many countries including Australia, Britain, South Africa.
Even though the fraud at the General Commerce Bank was known, when Deutsche Bank executive Breedon started his fraud allegedly with the knowledge of his superiors, nobody stopped him. Money talks.
Breedon managed to offload Khashoggi’s shares of Genesis Intermedia with massive help of Deutsche Bank in Toronto not on the stock market, where the price would have collapsed, but by lending them to other brokers after he and his accomplices had pumped up the stock .
Khashoggi and his accomplice El Batrawi were grateful for the ill gotten gains.
They organized prostitutes, parties, dinners, sports tickets and cash for the Breedon-Gang.
Come 9/11, the stock price collapsed, the Broker Houses wanted to give the shares back to Khashoggi for cash, but Khashoggi was nowhere to be found.
He and El Batrawi had walked away with 130 million US Dollars cash to carry
As a result, several broker houses suffered heavy losses, two of them went bankrupt, amongst them MJK in Minneapolis, where 200 employees lost their jobs.
Deutsche Bank denied any wrongdoing.
However the taped telephone conversations of the Breedon-Gang allegedly showed the opposite.
The court date was set for 18th January 2006.
Facing overwhelming evidence against them, straight away from the beginning, Deutsche Bank finally before Christmas settled out of court, after four years of denying any responsibility , now paying for everything and still denying any wrongdoing. They promised to pay 270 million US Dollars plus costs. This settlement has been accepted by the bankruptcy court in Minneapolis/Minnesota/USA on 18th January 2006.
Meanwhile the CEO of Deutsche Bank, Ackermann, is preparing himself for another round in the criminal court case in connection with a sale of a German Mobile Phone company to Vodafone.
All scandals, including the one in connection with the closure of the “Open Property Fund “ have not led to his dismissal, to the contrary. His contract was renewed recently and his position elevated. A scandal in it’s own right.
Dr. Alexander von Paleske
Head, Department of Oncology
Princess Marina Hospital
Gaborone/Botswana/Africa
Ex-Barrister-at-Law, High Court Frankfurt (M) E-Mail avpaleske@botsnet.bw
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| To: StockDung who wrote (490) | 3/27/2006 2:44:10 PM | | From: DrAvPaleske | | | | Dr. Alexander von Paleske
Head, Department of Oncology
Princess Marina Hospital
Gaborone/Botswana
Ex-Barrister-at-Law, High Court, Frankfurt (M), Germany
E-Mail avpaleske@botsnet.bw
The continuously rising price of Gold, now above 540 US Dollars per ounce, has driven mine companies to search for Gold.
The “yellow metal” is predominantly found in the Southern Hemisphere,
and often the production of gold is accompanied by destruction of the environment, because it needs Cyanide, a very toxic substance, two teaspoons of a 2% solution kill a man. An overflow of cyanide containing fluid from a gold mine in Romania a couple of years ago led to massive pollution of a river, killing all the fish, reminding us to the perils of gold production..
In focus are now two gold mines of a Canadian mining company by the name of Barrick, one in Chile, Pascua Lama, and the other one in Australia, close to Lake Cowal.
Lets first of all have a look at the company and it’s actors.
Barrick Gold was founded and largely financed by Adnan Khashoggi in conjunction with a Peter Munk in 1983 in Toronto/Canada.
Khashoggi has quite a bit of luggage to carry.
He is well known as an international arms dealer, however let’s focus also on his financial deals, or his crooking, to be precise.
Apart from being involved in the Iran Contra Affair, in which weapons were sold to Iran via Israel by the Pentagon and the proceeds were used to finance a right wing terror group in Nicaragua, called the Contras, Khashoggi was deeply involved in the Bank of Credit an Commerce International (BCCI), a massive washing machine for dirty Dollars from shady arms deals and drug cartels.
The Medellin drug cartel of Columbia was a most welcome client of that bank.
The bank was forcibly closed in 1992.
No problem for Khashoggi, he knew other crooks to work with.
Next came Rakesh Saxena, adviser to the Bangkok Bank of Commerce, together with the CEO Krirkiat Jalichandra, who was sentenced to 30 year in prison one year ago for defrauding the bank to the tune of 2,2 billion US Dollars and thus causing the Asian Banking Crisis in 1997.
Khashoggi got from the duo Jalichandra/Saxena a "loan"amounting to 140 million US Dollars in 1994. He is therefore now wanted by the Thai authorities for fraud.
And he continued to work with Saxena, who fled from Thailand to Canada just in time.
They bought in 2000 the General Commerce Bank in Vienna/Austria, together with the international stock fraudster Amador Pastrana and the convicted criminals Regis Possino, Raoul Berthamieu, and Sherman Mazur, and turned it into a center of international stock fraud, the fraud amounting, according to press reports, to one billion US Dollar.
The bank was forcibly closed in 2001.
One billion in one year
Khashoggi was also involved in a stock lending fraud-scandal in the US around the company "GenesisIntermedia" in 2001 , together with a convicted fraudster by the name of d'Angelo and a slew of criminal stock brokers plus a strip bar owner in Las Vegas.
Khashoggi and his friend El-Batrawi in the end walked away with 140 million US Dollars, two broker houses filed for bankruptsy and 200 employees lost their jobs in Minneapolis/Minnesota/USA.
The other cofounder and now boss is Peter Munk. He also has a bit of luggage to carry.
He owned a stereo equipment producing company in Nova Scotia/Canada, supported with public funds, and at the brink of bankruptsy he quickly sold the shares before they plunged, stock fraud or insider trading is another word for that.
Doesn’t matter, what is more divine, than to forgive and despite this scandal and through the connections of his partner in bankruptsy he rose from the ashes – in the aristocratic circles of London and then in Australia and finally came back home to Canada with Adnan Khashoggi, two dubious birds of the same feather albeit different faith, founding Barrick Gold.
The company was rumbling along until G.H.W. Bush, the senior, came for help and for less than 10.000 Dollars they bought from the state a piece of land, whose underground had gold worth 10 billion US Dollars, later on this was called by US President Bill Clinton’s Interior Secretary Babbitt “the biggest gold heist since the days of Butch Cassidy”. And with this “Gold Heist” Barrick shot from insignificance to a global player.
After Bush lost the elections to Bill Clinton in 1992, he became a direct player on board of Barrick, a new home away from home and well paid.
With him Karl-Otto Poehl, former President of the German Federal Reserve Bank (Bundesbank) and member of the Social Democratic Party and the former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
Now the ship Barrick with its prominent officers could set sail and travel to it’s next destination, Africa, Zaire to be precise. This country, now called Democratic Republic of Congo, was at the brink of civil war-doesn’t matter, better prices for the mineral rights especially when you negotiate with two parties, old robber Mobuto Sese Seko and new stealing hand, Laurent Kabila.
However the civil war lasted too long, so let’s go for the next destination, Tanzania.
The company Sutton, at this time advised and later on owned by Barrick was owning a mine by the name of Bulyanhulu.
A good thing to exploit, if there were not thousands of small scale miners with their families, who were digging legally already there for gold.
Sutton chased them away with Bulldozers and police, allegedly 50 miners died during this clearing operation, buried alive in the shafts.
Barrick does not want to hear the allegations, because, according to them, they are untrue. May be it was a festival?
However investigative journalist Greg Palast in conjunction with the human rights lawyer Tundu Lissu in Dar-es-Salaam brought a report in the British newspaper “Observer” and called it nothing else than a scandal..
Barrick sued, Greg Palast and Lissu insisted and a delegation of NGO’s, visiting Tanzania in 2002 had discovered some indications, that the story was in fact true, however their work was not actively supported by the Government, to say the least.
With Bush’s and Mulroney’s support, Barrick got a huge World Bank loan, to develop the mine, a friend in need, even when on the payroll, is a friend indeed.
Now Barrick is active in Australia and Chile, in both countries facing massive resistance, bigger than the poor miners in Tanzania could build up.
In Chile, Barrick wants to dig for gold high up in the Andes Mountains and remove glaciers there, that are vital for the water supply of a community in the desert.
And in Australia Lake Cowal is habitat for endangered species.
It looks, as if Barrick is facing stiff resistance globally now. |
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| From: StockDung | 4/8/2006 2:15:03 PM | | | | | | DISPATCHES - The house that Kashoggi built
nationmedia.com
Story by BERTHA KANGONGOI
Publication Date: 3/17/2006
I had bought into the saying that money can’t buy happiness, until I visited the Ol Pejeta House, which stands in a private game reserve, a few kilometres from Nanyuki town.
Exquisite is no word strong enough to describe the house. But there’s more to the magic of this place than the marvel of grace and tranquillity: It used to be one of the holiday homes of the Saudi Arabian billionaire Adnan Khashoggi.
If it is claimed that Khashoggi was famed for his flamboyant spending, then this is part of the testimony to the claim. Adnan Khashoggi was, and perhaps still is, larger than life.
He built the Ol Pejeta house after acquiring 22,000 acres of land as his private game reserve where he kept lions and cheetahs at the house’s entrance.
His staff, it is said, would slaughter a cow everyday for the four lions. Reality or fiction, it is hard to tell. But in his heyday, Kashoggi was said to be the world’s biggest arms dealer.
Well money is one thing and taste is quite another but Khashoggi seems to have been well-endowed in both.
From the outside, the Ol Pejeta house looks just like another massive house. The striking thing from this point is the extensive private grounds and a beautiful brick terrace just outside the front door.
But once inside, everything takes on a grand scale. The reception is palatial, with a huge, round mahogany table where the rich and the famous would sip their drinks as they waited to meet the billionaire.
The living room alone fits one and a half tennis courts and is not cluttered with all sorts of collections and hangings on the wall. There is only one big painting hanging on the wall, called “Leopard Rain’. It’s the picture of a halfway spotted leopard, with more spots raining on it from above.
Here art imitates life as it is at the Ol Pejeta conservancy, on which the house stands. It is prohibited to wander outside the house’s fenced compound to avoid running into a wild animal. It is also that sense of closeness to danger when you are so safe, that makes the house a magical adventure.
For a man idolised in songs and novels in the 70s, coming into this house makes it easy to imagine how Khashoggi lived. I figure the diminutive billionaire walking from the living room, through the TV hall and out into his private pool, glass of wine on one hand and a model on the other.
But when everyone talks about Khashoggi, it becomes hard to separate fact from fiction.
Eunice Kahindo, the Ol Pejeta housekeeper who was a teacher at a nearby school when Khashoggi visited the school only remembers a few things about the man.
“He came here for holiday only twice a year,” she says. “He came with a group of women, usually his girlfriends while the wife and the kids would visit at another time in the year”.
Like the popular line, Khashoggi spared no treasure to live in pleasure. But nothing beats his innovation in self-amusement.
In his dining room is a pulley whose belts were missing. This, the housekeeper explains used to pull a boat-shaped big basket whose belts ran across the room. “He would put fruits, sweets or chocolates in the basket and would use the pulley to lower the basket onto the dining table to amuse his guests. But that was not as far as it went. For his own amusement, it said, he would have one of his girlfriends get into the basket and would move her around the room using the pulley before lowering her onto the dining table.
The pulley remains but the belts and the boat shaped basket are missing.
From the dining room is the kitchen, which alone comes in three rooms. There is first the utensils room, which is just cupboards with plates and mugs and all sorts of cutlery. The next is a small room with two big sinks — this I call the cleaning room. Lastly there is the biggest of all the three rooms that make the kitchen – the cooking area. I’ve only seen this kind of kitchen in movies or royalty documentaries.
Here I was standing in one and I just couldn’t believe how much space food and eating it occupied in some people’s life. If space were to determine the amount of food eaten in a house, I am almost at starvation point! And the kitchen door leads outside to more sinks, perhaps for cleaning the uniforms of the 120-plus stalwarts who worked for Khashoggi.
Today, there are only about ten workers in the house. They cater for the guests who hire the house for exclusive events. The running theme of the house is wood furnishings, rugs and simple elegance – elegance in simplicity.
There is a wall-to-wall dirty-white Persian rug in the living room, matching the cream of the elegant seats. The fireplace is decorated to detail with two bronze lion heads at its base while the wooden plank over the fireplace is done in abstract carving giving the whole place a rare originality.
When we come into what used to be Mrs Khashoggi’s bedroom on the first floor, on one wing of the house, photojournalist Joan Pereruan goes into moaning. “This is not only breath taking but also depressing,” she says.
The massive bed is one of the main wonders of the house. It is a 12 by 12 ft affair, a little raised from the floor and with impressions at the head that look like clouds. Like it is in most rooms, there are banana shaped lampshades by the two sides of the bed. Closets line one side of the room. But on opening them, one discovers that they are actually part of an escape door that leads down stairs.
Khashoggi lived large and dangerously. For all its beauty, two tennis courts and a paved path that leads to the airstrip, this must have been one of the least of Khashoggi’s properties. It is said that after he was declared persona non grata by Kenyan government, Khashoggi staked the house and all the private reserve in a poker game in Spain, which explains how the house changed hands.
But since last year, the house, and the Sweet Waters tented camp, five kilometres from the house came under the management of the Serena hotels.
“We hire the house out for exclusive social groups,” says Dixon Ondieki the general manager of both the camp and the house.
“This house has a way of changing people,” says Eunice Kahindo, the housekeeper. “I see people come in looking beaten or otherwise indifferent but once they get into the house, that changes. They brighten up. Perhaps it’s the vastness, the brightness and the magic of the place,” she says. “Whatever it is, something just happens”
I think it’s the magic of the larger-than-life Khashoggi that rubbed off on the house!
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| To: StockDung who wrote (519) | 4/14/2006 12:38:03 AM | | From: Glenn Petersen | | | | S.E.C. Accuses Saudi Financier and Executive of Stock Fraud
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
Published: April 14, 2006
A Saudi Arabian financier and a former executive of a defunct California telemarketing company were sued yesterday by federal regulators over claims that they orchestrated a $130 million stock loan and manipulation scheme.
The suit was filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission against Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi financier, and Ramy El-Batrawi, who was chief executive of GenesisIntermedia, a telemarketing company formerly based in Van Nuys, Calif. Mr. Khashoggi and Mr. El-Batrawi owned 85 percent of GenesisIntermedia.
According to the lawsuit, filed in United States District Court in Los Angeles, the two men lent 15 million GenesisIntermedia shares to Deutsche Bank Securities while artificially inflating the stock price.
"El-Batrawi, Khashoggi and others also drove up the price of the stock by engaging in large numbers of buys and sells," the S.E.C. said in the suit. "The buys and sells were often done in small lots of 100 to 500 shares, amplifying the false appearance of general investor interest."
A California jury acquitted a financial commentator, Courtney D. Smith, last year of charges he failed to disclose payments he received from GenesisIntermedia to promote the company's stock.
Lawyers for Mr. El-Batrawi and Mr. Khashoggi could not be immediately located for comment. An S.E.C. lawyer, Kara Brockmeyer, said the agency had not determined who their lawyers were. Mr. El- Batrawi has no listed telephone number in Los Angeles, and Mr. Khashoggi's whereabouts is not known, according to the complaint.
Trading in GenesisIntermedia was halted in September 2001 after the shares fell 65 percent. The wreckage caused the failure of the intermediary brokers that handled the loans to Deutsche Bank Securities and saddled the Securities Investor Protection Corporation with a $42 million payout.
Mr. Khashoggi is best known as an arms broker in the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980's, when he served as middleman for illegal sales of weapons to Iran.
nytimes.com |
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| From: StockDung | 5/1/2006 9:54:43 AM | | | | | | Asean ex, Saxena, to stay in jail
2006-04-28 14:49 ET - Street Wire
by Stockwatch Business Reporter
Fugitive Thai financier Rakesh Saxena has lost his last-ditch effort to get out of jail, and his flight back to Thailand may not be far off, depending on the final appeal of his extradition. Mr. Saxena's stand-in lawyer, Neil Cobb, was in court trying to argue for another review of the financier's bail conditions, conditions that once allowed him to live in relative luxury under self-imposed house arrest.
The house arrest ended in March, when Mr. Saxena lost an appeal of his extradition order to Thailand. With that loss, a judge decided he imposed a flight risk, and ordered him jailed while the extradition fight went to a final appeal.
Mr. Saxena pulled all the stops to try getting out of jail. His lawyer asked the court to consider a judicial review of the jail decision, but a three-judge panel of the court of appeal has struck that down.
Mr. Saxena is wanted in Thailand for allegedly looting $88-million from the Thailand Bank of Commerce before it collapsed in 1996, leading to a financial crisis in that country. Prosecutors say Mr. Saxena, along with the bank's former president, Krirk-kiat Jalichandra, and Saudi arms merchant Adnan Khashoggi, embezzled about $2.2-billlion from the bank.
Mr. Saxena, who was arrested in Whistler, has been fighting extradition for 10 years. He argues he will not get a fair trial in Thailand. His lawyer has until May 3 to file the materials for his final appeal, which will be in the hands of the Supreme Court of Canada. |
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| To: StockDung who wrote (521) | 5/4/2006 11:30:08 AM | | From: DrAvPaleske | | | | Dr. Alexander von Paleske
Saxena just married
According to information posted on the Stockwatch website, Saxena married in prison a couple of days ago.
This is really great, freshly married to put up another hurdle against his extradition.
Lets have a short rerun of his activities from an African perspective:
- Wanted in India for culpable homicide.
- Allegedly crooking with Krirkiat Jalichandra at the Bangkok Bank of Commerce from 1989 to 1996. Jalichandra was sentenced to 30 years in prison one year ago and got another prison sentence earlier this year. Damage: 2.2 billion US Dollars. Running away to Canada with 88 million US Dollars pocket money.
- Allegedly crooking with his friend Adnan Khashoggi, giving him a "loan" of 140 million US Dollars from the Bangkok Bank of Commerce, the Thai authorities want Khashoggi for fraud.
- Allegedly buying the General Commerce Bank in Vienna with Khashoggi, Amador Pastrana and the convicted criminals Sherman Mazur, Regis Possino and Raoul Berthamieu. Turning it into a center of international stock fraud, the damage: One billion US Dollars.
- Allegedly forging a corrupt relationship with leading Canadian Politician John Reynolds in connection with the fake company Wave Tech.
- Running Boiler rooms in Britain (West Shore Ventures) and South Africa, later Botswana (Platinum Asset Management). Total damage unknown.
- Sponsoring a coup in Sierra Leone/Africa together with Tim Spicer, now head of mercenary company Aegis in Iraq and Tony Buckingham, owner of mercenary company Sandline and founder of and director in Heritage Oil, listed on the Toronto Stock exchange.
Dr. Alexander von Paleske
Head, Department of Oncology
Princess Marina Hospital
Gaborone/Botswana
Ex-Barrister-at-Law, High Court Frankfurt (M), Germany
E-Mail avpaleske@botsnet.bw
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| To: DrAvPaleske who wrote (522) | 5/25/2006 9:30:43 AM | | From: StockDung | | | | In a world of uncertainty, a reliable record of shady self-dealing
But SkyWay, which only lost $40 million of investors money, is an absolute paragon of excellence, corporate governance-wise, when compared to the DC9's previous owner...
Genesis Aviation is one of several dozen company fronts, all of which contain the name “Genesis” in the title, controlled by one of the key figures in the Iran Contra scandal, Saudi billionaire and long-time CIA asset Adnan Khashoggi.
Last month the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Khashoggi and Ramy Al Batrawi, his lieutenant for the past 20 years, with stock fraud in U.S. District Court for Central California. The men are accused of orchestrating a $130 million fraud involving the stock price of GenesisIntermedia.
When the helpful Khashoggi worked with Oliver North to sell arms to Iran, Ramy El-Batrawi was there, as president of a Khashoggi company, Jetborne International, indicted for illegally ferrying TOW missiles to Iran, an “enterprise” which netted someone—though not the U.S. Government or the Contras it was supposedly funding—a tidy bit of change.
Apparently neither man learned that crime doesn’t pay, because Adnan and Ramy’s recent pilferage make the Kovars look like kids stealing a candy bar from a 7-11 after school.
“Just three months after the company’s Initial Public Offering (IPO), the nearly $17 million raised in the offering was gone,” read one wire service story.
“The creative dealings of defendant El-Batrawi partly explains how this money disappeared so quickly,” reported the AP.
Making money disappear since before you were born
“El-Batrawi had a side deal called "Trade Your Way to Riches," and he thus arranged to have its mailing lists sold to Genesis for $3.8 million of the proceeds lifted from the IPO. Additionally El-Batrawi gave himself $362,149 for flying himself around in his private plane to promote the deal on the IPO. road show.”
Another area where Glenn and Brent Kovar might learn something from past master Khashoggi is how, in your financial fraud’s aftermath, to make yourself scarce…
“Lawyers for Mr. El-Batrawi and Mr. Khashoggi could not be immediately located for comment,” reported the L.A. Times. “An SEC lawyer, Kara Brockmeyer, said the agency had not determined who their lawyers were. Mr. El- Batrawi has no listed telephone number in Los Angeles, and Mr. Khashoggi's whereabouts is not known, according to the complaint.”
The SEC may be interested to learn what The MadCowMorningNews discovered El-Batrawi doing a year ago. The high-roller was spending millions gambling in Vegas, where he flew by private jet. The TV show “Casino Diaries” even profiled him in action.
The DC9 has also been “owned” by Finova Capital, revealed in the early 90’s as a CIA front which also “owned” the C123 military cargo plane used by notorious drug smuggler and CIA pilot Barry Seal, which was later shot down over Nicaragua with Eugene Hasenfus onboard. |
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| To: StockDung who wrote (523) | 5/25/2006 12:50:32 PM | | From: PaleskeDrAv | | | | Adnan Khashoggi, Rakesh Saxena, Tony Buckingham and others, the broader picture.
First to mention is a veteran of arms and shady deals, a close friend of the bin Laden family for decades, an uncle of the late Dodi Fayed, the last partner of Diana Princess of Wales and brother-in-law of the owner of Harrod's Supermarket in London, Mohamed Al Fayed, his name: Adnan Khashoggi, once called the richest man on earth.
His origin is Saudi Arabia, his favorite place to live is Marbella in Spain and his favorite business are arms deals and the stock market, especially in Vancouver/Canada.
At present, however, he likes more the sand of the beaches of the United Arab Emirates, a better, because safer place to be, when arrest warrants and extradition requests are piling up.
He was involved in the Iran-Contra Affair in the 80s, in which the Pentagon sold weapons to Iran and the profits were used to buy weapons for a CIA sponsored group in Nicaragua, the Contra Rebels. Everything illegal of course, but an army man by the name of Oliver North was day and night putting documents into the shredder, when the scandal was about to be made public. It is good to have such trustworthy people in your house.
Khashoggi was also involved in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), a massive washing machine for illegal money from the Medellin drug cartel, Manuel Noriega, and other druglords.
The bank was forcibly closed in 1992 after investigations by a committee of the US senate.
However Khashoggi, likeable as he is, had and has friends all over the world, so lets forget about the BCCI-Affair and move on to Thailand, to the Bangkok Bank of Commerce.
The CEO of that bank was in the 90s Krirkkiat Jalichandra. A promsing young man of Indian origin, by the name of Rakesh Saxena was introduced to him.
Saxena was wanted in India for culpable homicide, who cares, was a communist before, while studying in India, who cares and according to the slogan, who is not a communist at age 20 hasn't got a heart, and who is still a communist age 40 hasn't got a brain, and Saxena had brains, he forgot Marx and Engels and concentrated on fraud and corruption the big way and advised his "brother in fraud" Jalichandra accordingly both together a "duo infernale", so to speak.
Money was pumped into a labyrinth of fake companies and "small gifts" in cash and kind were handed out to politicians and friends, a non repayable loan was given to Saxenas friend Adnan Khashoggi, amounting to only 134 million US Dollars, peanuts, so to speak.
However such big fraud, that triggered eventually the Asian Banking Crisis in 1997 cannot go on forever one time the bubble has to burst and in 1996 the scheme collapsed, however Saxena, clever as he was, left in time the sinking ship and fled to a much cooler place, Canada.
Not forgetting, allegedly to take some pocket money with him, only the laughable sum of 88 million US Dollars laughable, because the damage he and Jalichandra allegedly caused amounted to more than three billion US Dollars.
Jalichandra was not so lucky, he got arrested and has been sentenced to 30 years in prison one year ago.
Thailand wanted Saxena extradited, but Saxena did not want, had money enough to hire the best of the best of lawyers and he convinced the Government of Canada, a banker is a banker, that it would be cheaper to put him in self paid house arrest, than into a prison.
So he is still in Canada and until a few weeks ago, when he was put back into prison he was not resting, to the contrary. He was as busy as ever.
First came Tim Spicer, the mercenary, Ex-Lieutenant Colonel, OBE, hated by the Irish because soldiers of his unit, when he was stationed in Northern Ireland, killed an innocent Irishman by the name of McBride. These soldiers were later convicted for murder.
However Spicer campaigned and lied for them, so that they were early released and then reinstated in the British Army, they are now on patrol in Iraq, where killing of innocent civilians is rather a day to day event.
Spicer needed money, Saxena had money for his adventure in Sierra Leone.
Tony Buckingham, former Special Forces (UK) man, founder of and director in the company "Heritage Oil", listet on the Toronto Stock exachange was the owner of the mercenary company Sandline, of which Spicer was the chief executive until 2000
Sandline offered their service, in exchange for diamond mining rights, to ousted President Kabbah with old apartheid soldiers from the infamous South African apartheid 32. Buffalo Battalion, and Koevoet, well known killer units, their motto: shoot to kill, and their battleground in those days were the newly independent state of Angola with the refugee camps of SWAPO and the illegally occupied Namibia.
The unit, named Executive Outcomes, was founded and headed by Eeben Barlow, former member of the Buffalo Battalion and then of the Civil Cooperation Buraeu (CCB) the latter an South African apartheid death squad, which can take credit for countless extrajudicial killings inside and outside South Africa including hundreds of SWAPO freedom fighters allegedly killed with poison delivered by a Dr. Wouter Basson and the bodies thrown out of a plane over the Atlantic Ocean.
Saxena offered 10 million US Dollar, he had mining interests there as well, bought with money from the Bangkok Bank of Commerce, and with Saxenas/Bangkok Bank of Commerce money Spicer bought tons of weapons in Bulgaria and elsewhere.
This was the start, of what was later called the Arms to Africa Affair. Active in this scheme there were also Simon Mann and Nick du Toit, both in prison now, one in Zimbabwe, the other one in Equatorial Guinea after the failed coup attempt in 2004, in which allegedly also Mark Thatcher was involved.
Ths military intervention in Sierra Leone was in flagrant violation of an UN arms embargo, who cares, and with the approval of the resident British High Commissioner, Penfold. When the things came out, it nearly brought down the Blair Government in 1998.
Already before their Sierra Leone job , Spicer, Mann and Buckingham had gone global in 1997, this time to the other end of the globe, Papua New Guinea for a lump sum of 36 million US Dollars to be paid by one of the poorest states on earth.
The Government there fought unsuccessfully against a rebel group on the Island of Bougainville to get hold of a copper mine, owned by the British company Rio Tinto. The fight erupted because of the environmental disaster, caused by the mine, that threatened to destroy the livelihood of the people there.
Buckingham, Spicer and Simon Mann offered "help", the mercenary way via Sandline and Sandline subcontracting the dreck of the Ex Out mercenaries. Also with them Lafras Luitingh, another former member of the Apartheid-CCB, who can take credit for having been involved in the murder of ANC activist Dr. David Webster on 1st May 1989 in Johannesburg and SWAPO Advocate Anton Lubowski in Windhoek on 12 October 1989.
This time round, however, things did not work out, the army under General Singorok rebelled, the Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan had to resign and Spicer was arrested and later left the country only with the help of the discrete diplomatic pressure by the British government.
Still they made their fortune, as a lot of money had been prepaid .
Meanwhile mercenary godfather and mining baron Tony Buckingham was also active in many African countries, apart from Sierra Leone and Angola, namely Congo Brazzaville, DR Congo, Uganda, Kenya Namibia to name a few.
He was specifically welcomed in Namibia, where the government made him a director of the state owned Offshore Development Company (ODC) and he used his contacts to introduce Ranger Oil Canada to the Government, successfully, Ranger got huge exploration rights. Ranger and Buckingham were close business partners for quite some time.
As a Thank You Buckingham made government officials shareholders in his company Oceanica Fisheries, and the government granted him mining rights in a Tourmaline mine near Karibib, Indigo Sky Gem and Camelthorn Mining, and allowed him to dislodge 1000 small scale miners there and to throw them onto the roadside.
Who greases well, drives well.
And South Africa's Mine Minister Mrs. Mlambo-Ngcuka gave a prospecting license with much fanfare in 2001 to Ranger Oil, despite the well known connection to Buckingham and his mercenaries
In Kenya Buckingham appointed Sanjivan Ruprah, a well known arms dealer, head of his mining company Branch Energy.
Sanjivan Ruprah became also a close confidant of Charles Taylor in Liberia and of Victor Bout, with whom he worked closely together. Sanjivan Ruprah helped arming the child soldiers in Sierra Leone on behalf of Charles Taylor, those, who committed horrific mayhem amongst the civilian population, including mass killings, hacking of limbs, rape, torture.
Victor Bout, called "Africa's Merchant of Death" is a Russian, who runs a fleet of 50 russian made transport planes. He delivered weapons to the Taleban and Al Qaeda before 2001 and organized chartered flights to Afghanistan, , certainly not for tourists. Bout was fuelling virtually each and every armed conflict in Africa for the last 15 years with his weapons transport and Diamonds as payment, especially in Liberia, Sierra Leone Angola, DR Congo.
After the invasion of Iraq he was hired by American companies. Money talks and a plane is a plane. He was also busy transporting goods to Afghanistan after 2002, who cares.
Ruprah knows Khashoggi, because they shared an office address in London. Kashoggi is a friend of Saxena, Saxena is a friend of Spicer and so forth.
And Khashoggi and Saxena were not just watching, what was happening in Africa, they had also had serious business to do, Khashoggi in America and Saxena in Canada, before both joint forces and went to Vienna Austria.
In 2001 Khashoggi, via his company Ultimate Holdings, based on the Bahamas with a complicated lending scam allegedly pumped up the stock of a Nasdaq bubble company by the name of Genesis Intermedia, in which Ultimate Holdings was the majority shareholder.
The company was built around a book by a John Gray, "Women are from Venus and Men are from Mars".He forgot to add that arms dealers and mercenaries are from hell.
Involved in that scam were Deutsche Bank in Toronto and a slew of criminal stockbrokers and after the scam collapsed in 2001, Khashoggi and his friend El Batrawi were 130 million US Dollar richer, broker houses filed for bankruptcy , the damage amounting to more than 300 million US Dollars.
Deutsche Bank has now settled out of court and is paying, still denying any responsibility, of course.
Meanwhile Saxena in Canada was busy as well. He appointed the leading opposition MP in the Canadian Parliament, John Reynolds as board member in a flimsy company called WaveTech while fighting at the same time an extradition request from Thailand in the courts of Canada. A simple word for that is most likely corruption. A friend, even when bought, in need is a friend indeed.
And he was involved in boiler roms around the world, amongst them Westshore Ventures in the UK and Platinum Asset Management in South Africa and later Botswana and was exposed in August 2005 here by me and the local Sunday Standard.
However shared success is doubled success, so he went to good old Europe in 2000 with his friend Khashoggi. Khashoggi in person, and him being under house arrest via the phone. They linked up with a Filipino by the name of Amador Pastrana.
Pastrana had already earned himself the reputation as being a king of the boiler rooms earning him more than a billion Dollar.
Boiler rooms are cramped small offices, from where selling of shares to unsuspecting clients is organized. They apply high pressure sales pitches on their victims.
Those clients have money but no banking experience, they are neither banker nor broker
The shares they sell to pensioners, and medium income earners are worthless, artificially pumped up Penny stocks and the clients never see their money again.
The most effective and sophisticated fraud scheme to date.
Saxena, Khashoggi and Pastrana bought together the WMP Bank AG in Vienna, Austria renamed it General Commerce Bank and turned it into a boiler room, the fraud organized there amounts, according to press reports, to roughly one billion US Dollar. With them the convicted criminals Regis Possino, Raoul Berthaumieu and Sherman Mazur.
In 2001 the Bank was closed.
1 billion in one year.
Meanwhile Spicer did not rest either. He opened a new mercenary company after he left Sandline by the name of Aegis and the Invasion of Iraq brought him a fat contract by the Pentagon to the tune of 293 million US Dollar.
He is now overall in charge of all the mercenaries in Iraq, totaling more than 20.000, quite a few former Executive Outcome dreck.
And Tony Buckingham is busy in Iraq as well.
In 1995 he paid a courtesy call to Iraq, walking in the Hotel lobby of the Al Rasheed Hotel over a distorted picture of former US president Bush and exploring with former Iraq's Oil minister possible oil ventures.
After he Invasion he is back, go with the flow, having good contacts with Iraqi Oil ministry officials and getting a prospecting license in Kurdistan for his company Heritage Oil.
And he quickly closed Sandline on 16th April 2004 after the failed coup in Equatorial Guinea.
The list would be incomplete, without mentioning a group of dealers of weapons of mass destruction.
Gerhard Merz, German, alleged transport officer in the failed coup in Equatorial Guinea, who was arrested in Malabo and died a few days later amidst allegations of torture, transported from 1992 to 1994 nerve gas components for Mustard and Sarin and "know how" for their production from China to Iran with an Israeli international criminal by the name of Regenstreich alias Regev and the support of the Israeli secret service Shin Bet.
Parallel to this group another group headed by an Israeli Nahum Manbar and a British Mi6 agent by the name of Richard Tomlinson also transported nerve gas components and KnowHow from China to Iran with the active support of the Shin Bet and the Mi6.
At the same time the UN weapons inspectors were searching for these weapons in neighboring Iraq
Simon Mann meanwhile is in Chikurubi Maximum Prison in Harare, Buckingham and Spicer in Iraq, Sandline closed down and Aegis opened, hiring mercenaries and doing what they did in Sierra Leone, Angola and now in Iraq: Killing innocent civilians with impunity.
Dr. Alexander von Paleske
Head, Department of Oncology
Princess Marina Hospital
Gaborone/Botswana
Ex-Barrister-at-Law, High Court Frankfurt (M), Germany
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