Indicted Saudi (Bush Pal) Gets $80 Million US Contract

[DogPoundPup]

The Financier Has Been Indicted For His Alleged Role in a Scandal Costing US Taxpayers $1.7 billion

The US military has awarded an $80 million contract to a prominent Saudi financier who has been indicted by the US Justice Department. The contract to supply jet fuel to American bases in Afghanistan was awarded to the Attock Refinery Ltd, a Pakistani-based refinery owned by Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon is wanted in connection with his alleged role at the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the CenTrust savings and loan scandal, which cost US tax payers $1.7 billion.
Gaith Pharaon

The Saudi businessman was also named in a 2002 French parliamentary report as having links to informal money transfer networks called hawala, known to be used by traders and terrorists, including Al Qaeda.

Interestingly, Pharaon was also an investor in President George W. Bush's first business venture, Arbusto Energy.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4996285&page=1
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These high roller friends of the Anti-American American highly powerful are killing us (U.S.) softly/silently.

:grr:

[spanone]

1. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[blm]

2. Aren't we all PLEASED that the BCCI report and its outstanding matters were deep-sixed in the 90s?

Yep - nothing in those matters has EVER caused further harm to the United States, right?

Yep - no harm from a Bush2 regime, no lasting harm from 9-11, right? It's really time we move on from unpleasant things that require scrutiny that makes us feel uncomfortable.

We really should just move on from this as it is too inconvenient to think about these things, let alone examine them further.

Right?

[appleannie1]

3. Reason we never went after Bin Laden and the real terrorist group?

The Bush family connection. Now we are rewarding them for their efforts in attacking us.

[sarcasmo]

4. More corruption from these corrupt Bastards.

[gullwing300]

5. Only 80 mil? Somebody dropped the ball there for sure...

:eyes:

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

6. I forwarded this to Keith Olbermann. And all I can say is....

and the beat goes on.

[Zodiak]

7. And Obama has to listen to argument that he is a terrorist sympathizer

...because he sat on a board with a guy from the Weather Underground.

Here Bush is business partners with a person who runs part of the international terrorist infrastructure and awards the guy 80 million dollars for a contract that the American people pay for? And he is WANTED for bilking us ut of 1.7 billion before????

The double standard used here is big enough to choke two horses.

I am glad it is being reported, but this is top story material. It should be on every news show for a month, much like the Dubai port deal.

[starroute]

8. Here's a golden oldie -- a thread from 2006

Titled "PLAME= IRAN/CONTRA REDUX - Planted WMD from Ghorbanifar & Ledeen," its main subject might be of interest today in connection with the Senate Intel Committee revelations about the machinations of those two gentlemen. (And isn't it wonderful how we at DU have *always* know the stuff that everybody else is just catching up with now.)

But it also includes some interesting side remarks on Pharaon, linking him at just one remove to the atomic proliferation activities of A.Q. Khan.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x66847

{BCCI founder} Abedi had money to spare to underwrite the protocol department: In 1981 Ghulam Ishaq Khan granted BCCI a special tax-free status allowing Abedi to avoid tens of millions of dollars in taxes and to pour his huge Pakistan profits into one of his front companies and into Pakistan's atomic bomb project. Most of the millions that flowed through the foundation went to two uses: first, to investments - patently noncharitable - in a company called Attock Cement, owned by Abedi's associate and U.S. front man Ghaith Pharaon. The second beneficiary was something called the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology. According to its brochures, the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute trains young scientists and engineers. The reality is a little more ominous . . .

The director of the institute is Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man most closely linked with Pakistan's efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Khan, a German-trained metallurgist, once worked as a classified enrichment plant in the Netherlands, where he gained access to key plans. So important is he to the Pakistani national interest that even his whereabouts are considered a national secret.(