Reply #54: Othman connected to BCCI, Abdullah Bakhsh, Harken Energy, G.H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Gulf War

[leveymg]

Re: Turkish espionage-linked "Chicago criminal entity" investigated by Sibel Edmond's FBI national security translation unit. Reference to Talat Othman, long-time Bush family benefactor and BCCI figure?

Also, note the names of the Bush family retainers and allies Sibel names: James Baker III, Brent Scowcroft. They pop up over and over again in connection with their dealings with bin Laden family members and other Saudi eminences and dealmakers over the years.

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From Mother Jones, "Harken Energy And Insider Trading"
by Stephen Pizzo, Mother Jones, September / October 1992

:

Sheikh Abdullah Bakhsh, in turn, was a business associate of BCCI front man Ghaith Pharoan; he bought a chunk of Harken's stock and placed his representative, Talat Othman, on Harken Energy's board of directors.

Did Junior or any of the other Harken Energy executives trade on the Bush name in these speculative business deals? None of the principals will answer questions. But this much is known: after the Harken-Bahrain deal was settled, Othman was added to the list of fifteen Arabs who met with President George Bush and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft three times in 1990 -- once just two days after Iraq invaded Kuwait -- while serving on Harken's board of directors.


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The Wall Street Journal - Page A1 Thomas Petzinger Jr., Peter Truell and Jill Abramson December 6, 1991

Two years ago, Talat Othman didn't have the president's ear. But since August 1990, the Palestinian-born Chicago investor has attended three White House meetings with President Bush to discuss Middle East policy.

Mr. Othman's political access coincides with the remarkable ascendance of a little Texas oil company on whose board he serves alongside George W. Bush, the president's oldest son. That company, Harken Energy Corp. -- though it had never drilled a single well overseas or in water -- recently won the rights to drill potentially lucrative offshore wildcat wells in a contract bestowed by the government of Bahrain.

When the Harken deal was announced in January 1990, it attracted only perfunctory notice. More recently, a number of publications have written about the case, raising questions about whether Bahrain might have chosen Harken in part because a presidential son sat on its board.

Now, George W. Bush is emerging as a principal adviser to his father. He was a lead player in the campaign to oust White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, and was cited by his father yesterday as among those who will play "key roles in the reelection effort." Thus, the issues surrounding the Harken deal take on fresh importance.

The White House says there is nothing questionable in this story of petroleum, politics and the presidential son. "There is no conflict of interest, or even the appearance of conflict, in these business arrangements," says spokesman Marlin Fitzwater. The matters had been reviewed and disclosed, he said, adding, "They are legitimate business undertakings."

Indeed, an investigation by this paper has not revealed evidence of wrongdoing or influence-peddling by George W. Bush or anyone else connected to Harken. Yet what does emerge is a complex pattern of personal and financial relationships behind Harken's sudden good fortune in the Middle East, raising the question of whether Bahrainis or others in the Middle East may have hoped to ingratiate themselves with the White House. Even more intriguing, there are numerous links among Harken, Bahrain and individuals close to the discredited Bank of Credit & Commerce International, a banking empire that used Mideast oil money to seek ties to political leaders in several countries.

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 presi- dential 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.

-- Harken's investment bankers helped BCCI gain its foothold in U.S. banking, and they also arranged for a Swiss bank to help rescue Harken from its debt woes in 1987 -- a Swiss bank that was at the time a joint-venture partner with BCCI.

-- Harken's consultant on the Bahrain deal counts Kamal Adham, a principal owner of BCCI, as a close friend and has had a long acquaintance with BCCI's Mr. Pharaon.

As a candidate and later in the White House, President Bush vowed to avoid even the appearance of any conflicts of interest in his administration. He instructed Secretary of State James Baker to cable all U.S. embassies to warn against the appearance of preferential treatment for Bush family investments overseas. The president has also moved to distance himself from the BCCI scandal, denouncing a former aide who recently went to work as a lawyer for BCCI's Mr. Adham, and who resigned in the ensuing furor.

George W. Bush, a managing partner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, declined to be interviewed. He did provide brief responses to written questions through an intermediary. Asked whether his involvement with the Dallas energy company lent it added credibility in the Arab world, he said to "ask the Bahrainis."

Every individual involved denies any influence peddling. Mr. Othman, George W. Bush and people involved in setting up the White House meetings on the Mideast say the president's son had nothing to do with Mr. Othman's being included among the Arab-Americans invited. "Not by any stretch of the imagination," Mr. Othman says.

And Harken investor Mr. Bakhsh rejects any suggestion that his links, past and present, to Messrs. Pharaon and binMahfouz mean he is in any way associated with BCCI. He says through his New York lawyer that he bought Harken stock (in 1987) because it looked like a good investment in a depressed industry.

Harken officials say they resent any suggestion their company somehow has ties to BCCI. They dismiss the circumstantial links to it as purely random and say they were shocked to learn of them. And, in fact, BCCI has proved adept at insinuating itself into centers of influence without the knowledge of those occupying the seats of power.

Harken says it won the Bahrain drilling deal purely on merit, through painstaking geological research and deft negotiating. It says Mr. Bush played no role in clinching the deal.

As for Bahrain, it says it chose tiny Harken partly because it didn't believe a large company would be so fully committed to the project. Other Harken officials, while denying that the Bush name played any specific role, acknowledge that having him on their board is an asset. "You'd have to be an idiot not to say it's impressive," says Alan Quasha, former Harken chairman and its second-largest shareholder. (The largest, with 24.5%, is a Harvard University investment fund.)

Mr. Bush's affiliation with Harken came at the end of a failed attempt to follow in the footsteps of his father. Like him, George W. launched a career in the oil business in Midland, Texas, and like his father he chose a Spanish name for it: Arbusto Energy Inc. "Arbusto" is Spanish for " bush"; the president's company was Zapata Petroleum Co.

Among George W.'s investors was James R. Bath, a Houston aircraft broker who had a flourishing aviation business with sheiks of the Saudi peninsula. Mr. Bath owned a piece of a Houston bank in which Mr. Pharaon, the BCCI front man, had been a controlling shareholder.

Mr. Bath also invested money in the U.S. for Mr. bin-Mahfouz, the Saudi banker who would go on to become a leading shareholder in BCCI. According to Mr. Bath's personal financial statements, produced in unrelated litigation, Mr. Bath invested $50,000 with George W. Bush, becoming a 5% partner in Arbusto. Mr. Bush says he was aware Mr. Bath was representing Saudi investors but that at the time "had never heard of BCCI."

In the oil-patch depression of the mid1980s, Mr. Bush's company merged with another concern, becoming Spectrum 7 Energy Corp. But its fortunes didn't improve. "We lost a lot of money in the oil business," says Philip Uzielli, a director of Spectrum 7 and friend of Mr. Bush . "We had a lot of dry wells. . . . Things were terrible. It was dreadful."

Finding a buyer wasn't easy. But in September 1986, Harken Energy swapped some of its own shares for the shares of Spectrum 7. Mr. Bush's cut was worth roughly $600,000. "Getting Harken stock at that point turned out to be very good," Mr. Uzielli recalls. In addition to becoming a Harken stockholder, Mr. Bush became a director and a consultant at $120,000 a year, later reduced to $50,000. (In mid-1990, Mr. Bush sold two-thirds of his Harken holdings at a significant profit; his remaining stake could still be worth millions if Harken hits a gusher in Bahrain.)

What looked like a dull investment soon looked brighter. The company needed a cash infusion, and Mr. Bush, whose consulting contract listed "equity placements" among his duties, was there when Harken officials got together with Little Rock's Stephens Inc., one of the largest U.S. investment banks outside of Wall Street.

He needed no introduction to Jackson Stephens, having known him since the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign. Mr. Stephens's wife, Mary Anne, would soon become Arkansas co-chairman of the Bush for President campaign, while Mr. Stephens would donate $100,000 to Team 100, a GOP group that collected money for the campaign. Stephens Inc. kicked in another $100,000 to the Bush dinner committee last May.

But on that spring day in Little Rock, cash for Harken was the topic. Ultimately, Stephens put a rescue plan in motion: Union Bank of Switzerland, which ordinarily didn't invest in small U.S. firms, would make an exception, giving Harken $25 million in exchange for a stock interest.

At the time, UBS was a joint-venture partner with BCCI in a Geneva-based bank. And although Harken officials, including Messrs. Bush and Quasha, say they were unaware of it, Mr. Stephens was also well acquainted with BCCI. In fact, he suggested to BCCI in the late 1970s that it try to take over what is now Washington, D.C.'s biggest bank company, First American Bankshares Inc., according to court records produced in connection with the takeover attempt. Mr. Stephens was among the defendants in that suit, aimed at preventing a First American takeover by BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi, BCCI principal Kamal Adham and Abdullah Darwaish, chief financier for the royal family of Abu Dhabi. Mr. Stephens declined to be interviewed for this article.

The Harken financing Stephens was arranging hit a last-minute snag. To comply with U.S. banking laws, the deal assumed a complex new structure, and UBS decided to unload its shares to a third party at the first chance, according to Mr. Quasha. UBS says it planned to sell the shares all along. In any case, Stephens brought in a new patron: a real-estate magnate from Jedda, Saudi Arabia, who bought most of Union Bank's Harken shares. He was Abdullah Bakhsh.

Mr. Bakhsh for several years was chairman of Saudi Finance Co., a Luxembourg-based holding company for Swiss and French financial enterprises. He sold his interest in 1983. Who bought it isn't clear, but corporation records in Geneva show that by 1989 it had come partly under the control of the Gokal family, Pakistani shipping magnates who were early BCCI shareholders and who, according to BCCI's auditors, have failed to service more than $700 million of borrowings from BCCI.

Continue reading at: http://www.random-abstract.com/archives/00000292.html



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Replies to this thread
We know. And for that matter, so does everybody in Washington. Psyop Samurai Jul-22-08 01:20 AM #1
We know, but it's good to be reminded of the original reports, every now and then. K&R leveymg Jul-22-08 09:38 AM #2
Psyop Samurai (873 posts) Tue Jul-22-08 01:20 AM
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1. We know. And for that matter, so does everybody in Washington.
This democracy stuff is tricky business, isn't it?


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leveymg (1000+ posts) Tue Jul-22-08 09:38 AM
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2. We know, but it's good to be reminded of the original reports, every now and then. K&R
Edited on Tue Jul-22-08 10:00 AM by leveymg
There's a wealth of detail here that's worth reconnecting with what we've learned since. For instance, it wasn't revealed until recent years that then CIA Director George H.W. Bush made a political deal in mid-1976 with the head of Saudi external intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal, to allow the Saudis to finance and run the sort of covert operations that the Democratic Congress banned after the Church Committee hearings. That deal with code-named, Safari Club. BCCI was the funding vehicle for that illegal operation. See, http://journals.democraticunderground.com/leveymg/280

The result was a series of massive financial rip-offs, development of a Saudi paramilitary capability that became al-Qaeda, and the AQ Khan nuclear network, all of which the Bush wing of the CIA quietly facilitated. The Safari Club was also the start of Saudi penetration of the US political and banking systems, and huge support of the GOP.

What's useful is to look at the details of old news reports, since the corporate media used to actually report a lot of useful details. For instance, after he was fired as CIA Director by President Carter in early 1977, Bush was appointed Director of Houston-based First International Bankshares, owned in part by Joe Allbriton, with foreign offices in London and Luxembourg. BCCI had its major offices in the same locations. After Bush became VP, Allbriton sold out his shares in First Interbank to his crony, Jim Baker III, who owned Republic Bank. The merger went bankrupt a few years later, which became the largest financial bail-out in US history. That set the model for the S&L rip-off, which was also centered in Southwest bank chains in whch BCCI and the Bush clan had a vested interest. Allbriton went on to buy DC-based Riggs Bank, that along with UBS and other BCCI-linked banks, dispersed much of the funds held in diplomatic accounts by the Saudi Embassy in the name of the wife of Prince Bandar (an old friend of the Bush family) to support al-Qaeda cell members in the U.S. who attacked the US on 9/11. It's a small world, after all.

Thanks for posting that.
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DU AdBot (1000+ posts) Fri Sep 18th 2009, 03:50 PM
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In 1987, Stephens Inc. invested tens of millions to rescue Harken Energy, a struggling Texas oil company with George W. Bush on its board. Over the next three years, BCCI-linked investors and advisers are brought into Harken deals. One of them, Abdullah Bakhsh, purchases $10 million in shares of Stephens-dominated Worthen Bank.

Accused al-Qaeda financer, the Bin Mahfouz family, was part of the BCCI Harken "bailout" for George W. Bush. See, http://www.thedubyareport.com/bushbin.html


"Among W.'s consulting responsibilities were "equity placements." When Harken needed an infusion of cash, Bush turned to family friend and investment banker Jackson Stephens of Little Rock, AK. The firm of Stephens Inc. was at the time one of the largest investment banks outside Wall Street. (The Stephens family was also active in Republican circles: Jackson Stephens would later contribute at least $200,000 to the Bush for President campaign, and his wife would become the Arkansas campaign chair.) Stephens rescue plan was to obtain $25 million in investment capital from Union Bank of Switzerland -- a joint venture of BCCI and the Banque de Commerce et de Placements in Geneva. UBS did not normally invest in small U.S. companies, but it made an exception in this case.

As originally structured, the deal apparently did not comply with U.S. banking regulations, according to the Asian Wall Street Journal. In the course of restructuring the deal, UBS decided to sell its shares as soon as possible, and Stephens obligingly found a new buyer: Sheikh Abdullah Bakhsh, a Saudi Arabian real-estate magnate. Bakhsh's representative is Talat Othman, a Palestinian born Chicago investor.

For several years Bakhsh was chairman of Saudi Finance Co., a holding company based in Luxembourg that operated French and Swiss financial enterprises. Bakhsh sold his interest in Saudi Finance Co. in 1983, although it is not clear to whom. By 1989 the firm was under partial control of the Gokal family of Pakistan -- shipping magnates who were BCCI shareholders. Bakhsh conducted business with the most prominent people in Saudi Arabia, reportedly including two oil ministers and members of the Saudi royal family. Among his notable co-investors was Ghaith Pharaon; Khalid bin Mahfouz was Bakhsh's banker. Bakhsh's stake in Harken was 17.6% in 1991, making him the third largest shareholder. The first, with 24.5%, is a Harvard University investment fund..."

Khalid Bin Mahfouz is also named in the 9-11 suit, as a defendent. So are Prince Turki, Prince Sultan, & the Saudi Binladen Group.

"Baker Botts, Sultan’s law firm, for example, still boasts former secretary of State James Baker as one of its senior partners. Its recent alumni include Robert Jordan, the former personal lawyer for President Bush who is now U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

An internal list of other law firms retained in the case, reviewed by NEWSWEEK , reads like a veritable “who’s who” of the U.S. legal community. Among those firms and their Saudi clients are: Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (Prince Mohammed al Faisal); Kellog, Huber, Hansen, Todd & Evans (Prince Turki al Faisal); Jones, Day (the Binladin Group); Ropes & Grey (Khaled bin Mahfouz); White & Case,(the Al-Rajhi Banking Group); King & Spalding (the Arab Bank and Youssef Nada); Akin Gump (Mohammed Hussein Al-Almoudi); and Fulbright & Jaworski (Nimir Petroleum.)"

James Baker, Prince Sultan, and the Bushes are all business partners in the Carlyle Group. Also "The financial assets of the Saudi Binladen Corporation (SBC) are also managed by the Carlyle Group."