Reply #26: So now they try blackmail

[intaglio]

but curiously I doubt whether these same donors will withold money from the Florida Dems because they were the ones who cocked it up first.

Cejas owns a healthcare company, is a "multi-millionaire" and there seems to be some doubt about his qualifications to be Ambassador to Belgium. He seems to be active in the "anti-Castro" community and, according to a report from Time http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,985376,00.html?promoid=googlep

Four years ago, senior State Department diplomats hoped Clinton would breathe fresh air into U.S.-Cuban relations. Miami's fiercely anti-Castro Cuban-American community had long blocked any thaw, though the Pentagon had concluded that Havana posed no threat to the region, and Washington had made peace with almost all its cold war enemies. But half a dozen Cuban-American Democrats who raised huge sums for Clinton in 1992 convinced the new President he could win Florida in '96 if he became even more anti-Castro than Ronald Reagan or George Bush had been.

Senior Clinton aides call the cabal the "core group." It includes Maria Victoria Arias, a Miami lawyer married to Hugh Rodham, the First Lady's brother; and wealthy businessman Paul Cejas, who occasionally stays overnight at the White House. Arias telephones Hillary frequently and often sends Clinton clippings from Florida newspapers. In regular meetings at the Colonnade Hotel in Coral Gables or at Little Havana's Versailles Restaurant, the core group plans strategy and prepares appeals, which are sent by way of private notes to Clinton's top political aides. "When an issue comes up, we try to get a consensus and present a united front," says core-group member Simon Ferro, a Miami Democratic activist.

Christopher Korge is a lawyer and "Property Developer" He has been mired in scandal about Miami International Airport from a report by Granma

/snip
the company privately agreed to give Korge 10 percent of its profits at MIA -- a laughably obscene fee for ''political consulting.'' But that wasn't all. To help Host win the concessions ontract, a bunch of Korge's buddies formed a ''disadvantaged business enterprise'' called World Wide /Concessions, ostensibly to be minority participants.

The group was supposed to open and manage eight restaurants, and during the first year MIA reported an impressive $12.3 million in sales. As it turned out, the reports were bogus. Not a single restaurant had yet opened.

Later, it was revealed that Host quietly agreed to pay $33,225 a month to the so-called minority group, so that Host itself could keep running the food concessions.

There is a lot more at http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2004/marzo/mar9/heaasen.html