Judicial Watch Begins Interrogatories on Hillary’s Team

Interviews of Clinton aides in email case to begin this week

 Lukens  Mills

 Mull  Pagliano

 Abedin  Kennedy
TheHill: A conservative legal watchdog’s interviews with current and former aides to Hillary Clinton about her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of State will begin Wednesday and stretch into late June, the group announced.

The first person to be deposed as part of a court case concerning Clinton’s bespoke email setup is Lewis Lukens, a former executive director of the State Department’s executive secretariat, Judicial Watch said in a court filing Tuesday.

Sworn testimony with Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff, is set to follow and has been scheduled for next Friday.
In subsequent weeks, the watchdog group will question former department executive secretary Stephen Mull, IT expert Bryan Pagliano, an official representative from the State Department, longtime Clinton adviser Huma Abedin, and sitting Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy.

Kennedy’s interview, scheduled for June 29, is slated to be the final interview as part of the Freedom of Information Act case.

Each interview could last for as long as seven hours, Judicial Watch predicted.

The depositions are the first of two separate court-ordered processes for Judicial Watch to obtain evidence as part of different open records cases concerning Clinton’s email setup. The twin court cases were launched to obtain separate documents from Clinton’s time in office but have evolved as judges have raised questions about whether the likely Democratic presidential nominee’s arrangement allowed her to circumvent open records laws.

“This court-ordered testimony could finally reveal new truths about how Hillary Clinton and the Obama State Department subverted the Freedom of the Information Act,” Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch’s president, said in a statement Tuesday.

In addition to the officials scheduled to testify as part of the Judicial Watch lawsuit, Judge Emmet Sullivan has said that Clinton herself could be forced to answer questions under oath, depending on information learned through other interviews.

In the second Freedom of Information Act case launched by Judicial Watch, the organization has asked a federal judge to interview Clinton about her email setup. The request would have to be approved by the judge and is likely to face opposition from the State Department.

If it is granted, Clinton’s testimony has the potential to dramatically upend the presidential race, given the simmering concern about her email practices while in office.

Clinton and her campaign have dismissed concerns about the setup, claiming that it was used merely for convenience and that all work-related emails have been handed back to the State Department for record keeping.

Panama Papers: Soros Beyond the Reach of Scrutiny

Perspective of Soros political donations in 2012

May 2016: George Soros donates $8 million to boost Hillary

2014 was the year that launched the full ‘climate change’ mission.

TheHill: Adviser to President Obama John Podesta met with billionaires Tom Steyer and George Soros for a lunchtime meeting at the White House in February, according to meeting records. The White House visitor documents show that shortly after Steyer had committed to spend upward of $100 million on the 2014 election cycle for environmentally friendly candidates who helped put climate change on the map, he met with Podesta and Soros. The three met to discuss global climate change negotiations, and the process of the 2015 United Nations climate change convention to be held in Paris, a White House official told The Hill in an email.

The administration is looking to build momentum going into the talks where 120 nations will work to form a global climate treaty, and set emission reduction targets. President Obama will attend the UN climate summit in New York next month to build on negotiations.

Records show that Steyer met with Podesta again in March. The administration has received criticism from Republicans for its ties with the hedge fund manager turned climate activist.

Panama Papers reveal George Soros’ deep money ties to secretive weapons, intel investment firm

FNC: Billionaire George Soros, who has spent millions of dollars financing Democrats and left-wing causes, used a controversial Panamanian law firm to establish a web of offshore investment partnerships that operate around the world and out of the scrutiny of U.S. regulators, according to leaked documents.

The so-called Panama Papers, a trove of 11.5 million financial documents tracing the Mossack Fonseca law firm’s efforts to help politicians, celebrities and criminals shield their money from taxes, contain links to Soros, who funds the journalism group that is disseminating the information. So far, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has been silent on its benefactor’s ties to the law firm.

Three offshore investment vehicles controlled by Soros are catalogued in the Panama Papers. Soros Finance, Inc. was incorporated in Panama; Soros Holdings Limited was set up in the British Virgin Islands and a limited partnership called Soros Capital was created in Bermuda.

The laws of Panama, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands and a score of “tax havens” allow foreign firms to hide ownership of cash, real estate and other assets from securities regulators and tax collectors in the countries where they are physically headquartered.

On May 9, client data stolen from the Mossack Fonseca law firm in Panama was published online by the ICIJ as part of its Offshore Leaks database. The searchable database contains a portion of the offshore financial records given to the journalists by anonymous whistle-blowers since 2013; it does not include leaked emails and other explanatory data that ICIJ reporters use to write about the offshore financial holdings of newsworthy individuals.

News stories about offshore bank accounts revealed by the Panama Papers brought down Iceland’s prime minister last month. Heads of state, Hollywood stars, heiresses, arms dealers and drug lords who established secret offshore companies and bank accounts are outed almost daily by the ICIJ. Incorporating a business offshore is not illegal, but President Obama has called for the tax loophole to be sealed shut, saying everyone should “pay their fair share.”

Soros, 86, is worth an estimated $25 billion. His Open Society Institute is one of ICIJ’s main funders, granting it $1.5 million last year. The Panama Papers data reveals only the tip of Soros’ offshore iceberg, the Quantum Group of Funds. The ICIJ’s leader, journalist Gerard Ryle, said he had not noticed Soros’ companies in the Offshore Leaks database until FoxNews.com called the matter to his attention.

“I suspect we would have more information [on Soros] because the public database … does not contain the underlying data,” Ryle said in an email FoxNews.com.

FoxNews.com has requested access to that data.

Because it is based offshore, the Quantum Group of Funds is not normally subject to regulation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. But in the mid-1990s, Soros Capital bought several SEC-regulated firms, an act which required it to disclose the basic design of the Quantum network of interlocking offshore companies and bank accounts that shield Soros’ billions.

Soros Capital set up an offshore company in the Cayman Islands for the purpose of investing private equity with the Carlyle Group, alongside members of Saudi Arabia’s Bin Laden family. Carlyle’s partners include ex-heads of state and former CIA officials. The private equity partnership specializes in buying and selling weapons manufacturing and intelligence gathering companies with government and military contracts and it also uses secret offshore companies to conduct business.

Offshore Leaks does not include SEC information, but it reveals Soros Capital as a major investor and corporate officer of AIF (Indonesia) Limited. AIF combines private investments with public funding contributed by Asian governments to develop massive infrastructure projects. The database links Soros Capital to Dongya Ports Limited, owned by a tangle of offshore entities.

Soros is certainly newsworthy. In 1992, the self-styled philosopher-economist nearly bankrupted the Bank of England by manipulating the price of the pound. Five years later, he exacerbated a regional economic crisis by betting against Thai and Malaysian currencies. Billions of dollars in profits from Soros’ currency-pummeling moves flowed through the Quantum Group of Funds.

Soros is the sole proprietor of Manhattan-based Soros Fund Management LLC, which controls his offshore empire. In July 2011, Soros closed the multibillion-dollar fund to all but members of his immediate family, allowing him to escape the Dodd-Frank Act mandate for hedge funds to disclose investors and conflicts of interest. A few months later, Soros lost the final appeal of his 2002 conviction by a French court for insider trading. But he remains a potent political force.

In 2014, Soros donated $381 million of Quantum Group of Funds shares to his Open Society philanthropy. The New York-based charitable foundation supports hundreds of advocacy groups, academic research and investigative journalists that align with Soros’ oft-stated goal to promote globalized capitalism and democracy.

On the other hand, the Panama Papers’ leaker, known as John Doe, said that he had exposed the vast cluster of offshore firms and bank accounts, because “income inequality” and “massive, pervasive corruption” are “the defining issues of our time.”

Soros’ offshore companies may not pay U.S. taxes (his spokesperson, Michael Vachon, declined to answer that question), but the billionaire donates lots of money to Democrats who write and enforce the tax laws. In the 2004 presidential election, he contributed $24 million to George Bush’s opponents. He is the largest donor to Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency, plunking down $8 million, so far. He has donated “up to $1 million” to the Clinton Foundation. And Secretary of State Clinton’s emails reveal that Soros has lobbied her on behalf of his interests, which encircle the globe, mostly in the dark.

*****

There is more, and it deals with Hedge Funds, Soros and even political action committee cooperatives.

HuffPo: On the list of the largest U.S. companies by market value, those in the $30 billion to $45 billion range are household names: Capital One Financial, DirecTV, Phillips 66, Yahoo.

But far fewer people know much, if anything, about Citadel Multi-Strategy Equities Master Fund Ltd., with a gross asset value of $33 billion, or Elliott International, L.P., at $30.8 billion, or AQR Style Premia Master Account, valued at $16.6 billion. All are hedge funds organized under the laws of the Cayman Islands.

They’re also just a handful of the funds under the control of some of the biggest political donors in the nation: Kenneth C. Griffin, Paul Singer and Cliff Asness.

Hedge funds — partnerships of big-money investors that, put simply, try to beat the market by pursuing riskier-than-normal investments, often using debt and other forms of leverage — have boomed in recent years, with many producing huge financial gains for an elite pool of individuals, pension funds or other repositories of great wealth. Private and exclusive, the funds are not for the average American; often, the customers are not Americans at all.

The industry has made certain Americans very, very rich, though — and has helped create a new class of megadonors in U.S. politics. Besides Griffin (of Citadel Advisors LLC), Singer (Elliott Management Corp.) and Asness (AQR Capital Management), they include Robert Mercer and James Simons (Renaissance Technologies), Donald Sussman (Paloma Partners) and Seth Klarman (Baupost Group). These seven individuals who lead six hedge fund firms have together given at least $60 million to candidates, super PACs and political party committees since the beginning of 2015.

(The fund once managed by George Soros, another major industry donor, is now a family office and has no SEC Form ADV on file.)

The release of the Panama Papers has brought fresh reminders of the stunning amount of wealth held offshore, but that’s a world these donors and their firms navigate routinely as part of a rarefied investment community far more wealthy and sophisticated than the market to which most people have access.

OpenSecrets Blog analyzed hundreds of pages of reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by the six firms. The reports give new insight into these donors whose money is increasingly dominating political giving, thus allowing them disproportionate access to policymakers.

All told, the value of their 151 hedge funds is as high as $390 billion. Most of that is in the funds based overseas, mostly in the Cayman Islands. Of the 151 funds in the firms’ SEC reports, 67 are organized under the laws of the Caymans, where the firms manage some $282 billion in current asset value. About $103 billion of the wealth is held in Delaware-based hedge funds.

The six management companies reported that they themselves owned stakes in the hedge funds totaling approximately $38 billion. Don’t even think about trying to buy in with a few hundred thousand you may have lying around: The average minimum ante for an “accredited investor” is $5.4 million.

A quarter of the funds report greater than 50 percent ownership by non-U.S. investors (which could include offshore holding companies and other entities), and foreign investors own at least part of 41 percent of the funds. By far, most of the funds catering to these offshore entities are organized in the Cayman Islands.

In the presidential contest, hedge fund managers have played an enormous role in plumping up the coffers of several candidates’ super PACs. Sussman, for instance, who has given out more than $7 million this cycle in all, has contributed $4 million to Priorities USA Action, the group backing presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Sussman and Simons combined have given Priorities $16 million in the past two cycles. (Priorities supported President Barack Obama’s second campaign for the White House before it pivoted to Clinton.)

Mercer, who socked $13 million into Keep the Promise I, one of the super PACs supporting Sen. Ted Cruz‘s (R-Texas) recently suspended run for the White House, is the largest individual donor to super PACs so far this cycle. Griffin provided $5 million to Conservative Solutions PAC, which backed Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio‘s presidential bid before he dropped out; add in gifts from Singer, Asness and Klarman and the total jumps to $11.6 million.

These seven major hedge fund industry donors whose firms filed Form ADVs with the SEC in recent months have made $135 million in political contributions since 1989, as far back as the Center for Responsive Politics’ data go. But it’s only since 2010, when super PACs came into being in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, that the big money has really flowed.

Every firm but Renaissance has funds organized in a tax haven like the Caymans or Bermuda. But their offshore dealings don’t mean they’re engaging in tax evasion or anything similarly nefarious, says Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and an expert on tax policy. Rosenthal wrote in 2012 that while managers can benefit from organizing their investment vehicles overseas, they often do so to cater to special kinds of clients like tax-exempt entities and foreign investors.

The larger point, though — rather than any illegal or hidden activity by the hedge fund managers — remains one of a few staggeringly affluent individuals investing heavily in the political system, giving many times what the average American could imagine contributing.

Their largess, in turn, could have an impact on how the government treats the rich — especially when it comes to the tax code. Capital gains tax rates levied on investment returns, for instance, are far lower than taxes on income. Indeed “tax issues affecting hedge funds” was one of the top issues listed on Renaissance Technologies’ lobbying reports in 2015, for example. (Sussman, the Priorities USA Action donor, it should be noted, has supported closing the carried interest loophole that allows hedge fund managers’ income to be taxed at the capital gains rate.)

“The world of capital is divided between those who have it and those who don’t,” Rosenthal said. “we’re taxing capital lightly. We tax labor fully. And so I think it fuels a lot of inequality.”

“I think the problem is how we look at capital,” he said. “When you look at the size of these investments by hedge funds, it’s eye-boggling.”

The Ferguson Effect is Real

FBI Director James Comey described what is happening across the country to law enforcement and he called it the Ferguson Effect. Police have backed off due to threats, retribution by the left and organizations and to for sure save their own lives. The criminals have weapons and they have a deadly objective.

 

Washington, D.C. May 16, 2016
  • FBI National Press Office (202) 324-3691

Preliminary statistics released today by the FBI show that 41 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed in the line of duty in 2015. This is a decrease of almost 20 percent when compared with the 51 officers killed in 2014. By region, 19 officers died as a result of criminal acts that occurred in the South, nine officers in the West, five officers in the Midwest, four in the Northeast, and four in Puerto Rico.

By circumstance, eight officers were investigating suspicious persons/circumstances; seven were engaged in tactical situations; six officers were conducting traffic pursuits/stops; four were killed as a result of ambushes (entrapment/premeditation); three officers were killed as a result of unprovoked attacks; three died from injuries inflicted while answering disturbance calls (all three being domestic disturbance calls); three officers were killed while answering robbery in progress calls or pursuing robbery suspects; two were handling, transporting, or maintaining custody of prisoners; two officers were handling persons with mental illness; one sustained fatal injuries while performing an investigative activity; one was answering a burglary in progress call or pursuing a burglary suspect; and one officer was killed while attempting other arrest.

Offenders used firearms in 38 of the 41 felonious deaths. These included 29 incidents with handguns, seven incidents with rifles, one incident with a shotgun, and one incident in which the firearm type was not reported. Three victim officers were killed with vehicles used as weapons.

Thirty of the 41 killed officers were confirmed to be wearing body armor at the times of the incidents. Six of the 41 slain officers fired their own weapons, and six officers attempted to fire their service weapons. Three victim officers had their weapons stolen; three officers were killed with their own weapons.

Forty-one victim officers died from injuries sustained in 38 separate incidents. Thirty-six of those incidents have been cleared by arrest or exceptional means.

An additional 45 officers were killed in 2015 in line-of-duty accidents, which include officer deaths that are found not to be willful and intentional. This total is the same number of officers who were accidentally killed in 2014. By region, 29 officers died due to accidents in the South, six in the Midwest, five in the Northeast, and five in the West.

Twenty-nine of the officers died as a result of automobile accidents, seven were struck by vehicles, and four were fatally injured due to motorcycle accidents. Two of the 45 officers were killed from accidental shootings, one from an aircraft accident, one due to a fall, and one from an all-terrain vehicle accident.

Of the 29 officers who died due to automobile accidents, 18 officers were wearing seatbelts. Eight officers were not wearing seatbelts (four of whom were ejected from the vehicles), and seatbelt use was not reported for three of the officers who were killed due to automobile accidents.

Final statistics and complete details will be available in the Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s publication, Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, 2015, which will be published on the FBI’s Internet site in the fall.

 

The Clinton’s and Panama Papers Friends

There has been a constant recent argument that if you are a conservative and don’t vote Trump then you are effectively voting for Hillary. That is a straw man argument when the matter is twofold.

 

Newt Gingrich argued with Congressman Huelskamp over the weekend and admitted Trump is not a ‘Reagan conservative’ but he is better than Hillary. Of course that statement is true. The other matter is why are the Trump fans so fearful that Hillary will get the nomination? Of course she will. Are Republicans so terrified that Hillary cannot be defeated in the general election? If so, then where is the mettle and fire in the belly and force multiplier and a voting army defeat Hillary? If the will is there, the achievement can be so great such that no Democrat will successfully take over the Oval Office for perhaps up to 3 election cycles and it should that way given the last 8 years.

In case this argument needs more ammunition, here are some more political arrows for the quiver relating to the elitist circle of the Clintons. This demonstrates the alternate universe of collusion, money and favors.

Inside Panama Papers: Multiple Clinton connections

Washington/McClatchy:

Hillary Clinton recently blasted the hidden financial dealings exposed in the Panama Papers, but she and her husband have multiple connections with people who have used the besieged law firm Mossack Fonseca to establish offshore entities.

 

Among them are Gabrielle Fialkoff, finance director for Hillary Clinton’s first campaign for the U.S. Senate; Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining magnate who has traveled the globe with Bill Clinton; the Chagoury family, which pledged $1 billion in projects to the Clinton Global Initiative; and Chinese billionaire Ng Lap Seng, who was at the center of a Democratic fund-raising scandal when Bill Clinton was president. Also using the Panamanian law firm was the company founded by the late billionaire investor Marc Rich, an international fugitive when Bill Clinton pardoned him in the final hours of his presidency.

The ties are both recent and decades old, not surprising

for the Democratic presidential front-runner and her husband, who have been in public life since the 1970s.

Each is listed in the massive leak of data from Mossack Fonseca, a law firm with expertise in registering offshore companies, which can have legitimate business purposes, but can also be used to evade taxes and launder money. Several heads of state were found in the leak, leading to the departure of the leader of Iceland and investigations in several other countries.

McClatchy Newspapers and about 350 other journalists working under the umbrella of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists have searched an archive containing more than 11.5 million Mossack Fonseca documents, including passports, financial records and emails. After a series of articles earlier this month revealed how business owners and politicians used offshores, authorities raided the law firm’s offices in Panama. The law firm has denied all accusations of wrongdoing.

Hillary Clinton condemned what she called “outrageous tax havens and loopholes that super-rich people across the world are exploiting.”

“Now, some of this behavior is clearly against the law, and everyone who violates the law anywhere should be held accountable,” she said, speaking at the AFL-CIO convention recently. “But it’s also scandalous how much is actually legal.”

The Clintons themselves do not appear to be in Mossack Fonseca’s database, nor does it appear that their daughter, Chelsea, or her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, who co-founded a hedge fund, are listed. But Bill and Hillary Clinton’s connections to people who have used offshores is fuel for her Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders.

Clinton has struggled throughout her campaign to show that she can relate to working Americans, while Sanders has cast her as a wealthy out-of-touch Washington insider who has accepted hefty paychecks for speeches and received millions of dollars in campaign contributions from those tied to big businesses. Her connection to the Panama Papers, even if indirect, could magnify that perception.

Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in New York, said it would draw voters’ attention once again to Clinton’s ties to big money. “It certainly would play into Sanders’ narrative,” he said.

Sanders said Clinton’s support of a free-trade agreement between the U.S. and Panama – one that he claims has allowed the wealthy to avoid paying taxes – should disqualify her from being the Democratic nominee for president.

“I don’t think you are qualified if you supported the Panama free trade agreement, something I very strongly opposed, which has made it easier for wealthy people and corporations all over the world to avoid paying taxes owed to their countries,” Sanders said recently.

To be sure, a long life in politics has allowed the Clintons to accumulate relationships to wealthy people and businesses across the globe.

One such connection is to Jean-Raymond Boulle, a one-time diamond miner from the volcanic island nation of Mauritius whose company was once based in Bill Clinton’s hometown of Hope, Ark. In the mid 1990s, Boulle was listed as a director of Auk Limited, a British Virgin Islands offshore company, and Gridco Limited, a Bahamas offshore company.

After two meetings with Boulle, Bill Clinton, then-governor of Arkansas, signed legislation allowing his company to engage in exploratory mining in the state. Later, Boulle and his wife attended Clinton’s first inauguration. Boulle’s company did not respond to a message.

“Obviously there’s no wrongdoing – it’s a question of perception and values,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. “They’ve been in public life so long; when you enter that sphere you have these connections.”

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon declined to answer specific questions about her connections but referred to Clinton’s earlier comments that criticized the behavior last week. Bill Clinton’s office and the Clinton Foundation declined to comment.

Also among the Clinton connections is Fialkoff, now a senior adviser to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and director of the city’s Office of Strategic Partnerships. She, her brother, Brett, and her late father, Frank, are listed as shareholders of UPAC Holdings Ltd, a British Virgin Islands offshore company incorporated in June 2012.

Gabrielle Fialkoff said in an email that she has “no knowledge” of the company and referred questions to her brother.

Brett Fialkoff, who serves as chief operating officer at his family’s business, Haskell Jewels, a New York-based designer, marketer and distributor of costume jewelry, initially told McClatchy he didn’t know why his family would be in the documents. Later, he said that someone must have opened an account in their names.

Still, later, he said he set up an offshore company to export accessories from China to the United States. The documents indicate the company’s files are registered in Beijing.

But, he said, he abandoned the new business to give more attention to his family’s jewelry company. He said there’s no money in any bank account overseas and declined to provide details about his compliance with U.S. tax laws.

“I have news for you: There is no money,” he said in a phone interview. “We’re not like Vladimir Putin, trying to hide money.”

The most recent Mossack Fonseca information of December 2015 shows the company remains active, registered on behalf of the Fialkoffs in the British Virgin Islands by a Hong Kong-based consulting company on June 6, 2012. Brett Failkoff acknowledged the company is still “legally alive” but said it does not – nor has it ever – conducted any business.

Gabrielle Fialkoff, a longtime friend of de Blasio, was finance director for Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, which de Blasio managed. After serving as Haskell’s president and chief operating officer, she chaired de Blasio’s inauguration and led New York’s unsuccessful bid to host the Democratic National Convention in 2016.

She has been a regular donor to Democratic candidates, including Clinton, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics. She also donated between $250 and $1,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Her father donated to Clinton as well. Her brother contributed money to Republicans, including presidential candidates Ben Carson and Rand Paul.

Another connection is Giustra, the director of UrAsia Energy Ltd, a British Virgin Islands offshore company registered in May 2005.

The company wanted to “conduct uranium exploration, development, production and marketing operations and related activities in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan,” according to a draft of the shareholders’ agreement.

UrAsia, based in British Columbia, Canada, finalized a deal in September 2005 to buy uranium mines for $500 million in Kazakhstan, according to published reports.

The deal came after Giustra joined Bill Clinton in Kazakhstan for the launch of a Clinton Foundation health initiative and dined with him and Kazakhstan’s president, among others. The timing prompted questions about whether Bill Clinton played any role in the agreement. Giustra denied that, saying it came after months of negotiations.

The following year, Giustra, who is also involved in filmmaking and founded Lionsgate Entertainment, made a donation of more than $30 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to published reports.

In total, Giustra has committed $100 million to the foundation, according to at least one report, though foundation records don’t give an exact amount, saying only that he is one of the largest individual donors giving more than $25 million. In 2007, he started an affiliated charity that bears his name and initially kept its donors secret despite a 2008 agreement between the Clintons and the Obama administration to make public foundation contributors.

Bill Clinton has flown around the globe on Giustra’s plane, sometimes with him, including to Kazakhstan.

Giustra’s attorney David S. Brown wrote in a letter to McClatchy that his client “had no dealing with the law firm of Mossack Fonseca.”

He also said the use of a company such as UrAsia Energy Ltd. is common in international mining transactions and was used at the direction of an international accounting firm.

“Far from being secretive, opaque or clandestine, UrAsia Energy Ltd. BVI was fully disclosed to the public and to the applicable regulators in 2005 _ to be clear, there was absolutely nothing untoward in the use of this entity,” he wrote.

He declined to answer additional questions.

Former fugitive billionaire Marc Rich’s name doesn’t appear in the Panama Papers, but his company does. The Bahamas offshore Industrial Petroleum Limited was registered in 1992, established by the commodities firm Glencore International in Switzerland, inactivated in 2001.

The allegations against Rich, who died in 2013, ranged from tax evasion to trading with Iran despite bans to selling oil to South Africa’s apartheid government. He fled to Switzerland in 1983, but before the pardon, his ex-wife Denise made a $450,000 donation to Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock.

Rich’s business partners appear in the data too. And they also give generously to the Clinton Foundation.

Sergei Kurzin, a Russian engineer and investor, appears in a draft shareholders agreement in partnership with Giustra in the British Virgin Islands offshore UrAsia Energy Ltd. Kurzin worked closely with Rich in the 1990s looking for opportunities in the former Soviet Union when it was opened to mining and oil investment.

Kurzin, who has given the Clinton Foundation between $50,000 and $100,000, appears in the Panama Papers as the director and chairman of various oil companies. Kurzin was also a partner in the uranium deal involving Giustra.

In a 2009 interview with Forbes, the British-Russian dual citizen boasted of giving generously to a Clinton-Giustra initiative, noting: “I wrote a check for a million dollars. I don’t think you can call it a small amount.”

Messages left for Kurzin were not returned this weekend.

Also in the Panama Papers is Ronald Chagoury, who along with brother Gilbert leads the Chagoury Group, a Nigerian family-run construction business. The brothers were associated with Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, who died in 1998, and did business with Glencore and Rich, according to news reports.

Ronald Chagoury appears in the Panama Papers as the main shareholder of Echo Art Ltd. in the British Virgin Islands.

In 2009, the Chagoury Group pledged $1 billion in coastal erosion projects to the Clinton Global Initiative, an offshoot of the foundation, according to the initiative’s website.

The Chagoury Group is building Eko Atlantic, a peninsula city adjacent to Lagos that will be reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean. The company’s website cites the Clinton Global Initiative’s praise for it as an “environmentally conscious city” under construction.

Gilbert Chagoury’s ties to the Clintons stretch back years. He has given to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns and has donated between $1 million to $5 million to Clinton Foundation, foundation records show. In 2003 he organized a trip to the Caribbean where Bill Clinton was paid $100,000 for a speech.

Messages left for the Chagourys were not returned this weekend.

Another businessman in the Panama papers, Ng, is listed as a shareholder of two British Virgin Islands companies – South South News International Group Ltd in May 2010 and GOLUCK Ltd. in 2004.

He leads a real estate development company in Macau, China, and is one of the world’s wealthiest people. He was accused in 1996 of sending more than $1.1 million to a Little Rock restaurant owner who then contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic National Committee, according to a 1998 Senate committee investigation.

The restaurant owner, Charlie Trie, pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws. Ng was not charged. Another congressional report criticized Ng and others for failing to cooperate during the investigation.

Published reports say Ng visited the White House 10 times from 1994 to 1996, had his photograph taken with Bill and Hillary Clinton, sat beside Bill Clinton at an event at a Washington hotel, and rode in an elevator with Hillary Clinton.

Last year, Ng was charged with bribing a United Nations official and lying about what he was doing with $4.5 million in cash he brought into the U.S. over two years. Investigators say instead of spending it at casinos or on art, antiques or real estate, he used the money for bribes as he sought investments in Antigua and China. Another man listed in the same criminal complaint is president of the New York-based South South News, the same name of the British Virgin Islands company.

Ng’s lawyer, Kevin Tung, has said that his charges are based on a misunderstanding. Tung, Benjamin Brafman and Hugh Mo, two others who are or have represented Ng, did not respond to requests for comment.

In 2011, Sanders predicted in a Senate speech that the Panama trade deal would make it easier for the wealthy to hide their cash in Panama.

“I wish I had been proven wrong about this, but it has now come to light that the extent of Panama’s tax avoidance scams is even worse than I had feared,” he said in a statement earlier this month.

Hillary Clinton had opposed the deal in 2008 when she was running for president. But later, as secretary of state, she helped push the agreement through Congress. Her supporters, however, say that the trade pact did not open the door to additional tax evasion.

A Democrat-controlled Senate approved the trade deal. In October 2012, then-Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., lauded the deal’s “strong language to crack down on tax evasion and money-laundering in Panama.”

Both Clinton and Sanders have vowed to go after Americans who try to hide their wealth.

Clinton said she would shut down what she called the private tax system for the wealthy while Sanders has said he would end the trade deal with Panama within six months and investigate U.S. banks, corporations and individuals stashing their cash in Panama to avoid taxes.

“We’re going after all these scams and make sure that everyone pays their fair share here in America,” she said. “I’m going to hold them accountable, and we’re going to have a special effort to track all these resources wherever they might lead.”

McClatchy has much more here and it is worth the long read to understand more not only on the Clintons but of the elites around the world that our own elites entertained, manipulated, approved of and how some laws and sanctions were waived.

80,000 More 9/11 Pages at Tampa FBI

Like these journalists, I have been watching this for at least 4 years myself. Even more so, I used to live in Sarasota and came close to building a home in Prestancia.

I have one personal encounter with the Tampa FBI office several years ago, calling them to talk about a subject I was exploring on CAIR, the duty agent asked if I was an Islamophobe….what? He then hung up on me. Sheesh…Meanwhile, lets go beyond the 28 pages in question regarding the Saudis involved in the 9/11 plot and attack. There are more out there then were have been told and at least 80,000 are in the Tampa FBI field office. Hummmm…. to be sure however, there are thousands of foreign nationals who own and or rent houses in the United States. Some are here under a falsely applied diplomatic cover while others are here under that EB5 visa program or one of 38 others.

If memory serves me, 2 of the hijackers rented a home in Nokomis, just a few miles south of Sarasota and took flight lessons at the Venice, Florida airport, also within just a few miles. Both hijackers are well known, Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi.

 

Further, Esam Ghazzawi, a longtime adviser to Sultan’s father, Prince Fahd, owned the Sarasota home and there were some flights before 9/11 and after 9/11 that included the original city of Lexington, Kentucky that flew to Saudi Arabia. More here.

 photo courtesy of Bill Warner

The FBI Is Keeping 80,000 Secret Files on the Saudis and 9/11

DailyBeast: The secret ‘28 pages’ are just the start. The FBI has another 80,000 classified documents, many of which deal with Saudi connections to the 9/11 terror plot. What’s the Bureau got?

The Obama administration may soon release 28 classified pages from a congressional investigation that allegedly links Saudis in the United States to the 9/11 attackers. A former Republican member of the 9/11 Commission alleged Thursday that there was “clear evidence” of support for the hijackers from Saudi officials.

But in Florida, a federal judge is weighing whether to declassify portions of some 80,000 classified pages that could reveal far more about the hijackers’ Saudis connections and their activities in the weeks preceding the worst attack on U.S. soil.

The still-secret files speak to one of the strangest and most enduring mysteries of the 9/11 attacks. Why did the Saudi occupants of a posh house in gated community in Sarasota, Florida, suddenly vanish in the two weeks prior to the attacks? And had they been in touch with the leader of the operation, Mohamed Atta, and two of his co-conspirators?

No way, the FBI says, even though the bureau’s own agents did initially suspect the family was linked to some of the hijackers. On further scrutiny, those connections proved unfounded, officials now say.

But a team of lawyers and investigative journalists has found what they say is hard evidence pointing in the other direction. Atta did visit the family before he led 18 men to their deaths and murdered 3,000 people, they say, and phone records connect the house to members of the 9/11 conspiracy.

The FBI did initially suspect something was off when their agents descended on the Sarasota house shortly after the attacks, tipped off by suspicious neighbors who had always found the family aloof.

Investigators found signs that the occupants had left in a hurry. Food was left on the counter and the refrigerator was stocked. Toys were still floating in the back-yard swimming pool. Dirty diapers were left in a bathroom. It also looked like the people who lived there weren’t coming back. The mail was piling up outside, and the door to an empty safe was wide open. Three cars remained parked in the garage and driveway.

The FBI later said it came up with reasonable answers to explain this odd behavior. But not until after the Tampa field office opened an investigation that claimed to find “numerous connections” between the family and the 9/11 hijackers.

The final answers about what really happened in Sarasota may lie somewhere in those 80,000 pages. To be sure, not all of them concern the FBI’s investigation of the Saudi family. The documents represent the entire case file of the 9/11 attacks at the Tampa field office. But some subset surely will reveal more about what the FBI knew, and when, and why it reached a different conclusion.

For the past two years, U.S. district court judge William Zloch has been going through the files, page-by-page, to determine what information that pertains to the Saudi case can be released.

But based on about three dozen pages that had been made public already under the Freedom of Information Act, and the work of the reporters, this is the picture that emerges of life at 4224 Escondito Circle, a three-bedroom house in an exclusive community called Prestancia, in the weeks before 9/11.

 photo courtesy Bill Warner

The house was occupied by a Saudi couple, Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii and his wife Anoud, and their three small children. Anoud’s father, Esam Ghazzawi, a financier and interior designer, owned the home, along with his American-born wife, Deborah.

The family largely kept to themselves. A neighbor told the Tampa Bay Times that Abdulazzi said he was a student, and that his wife was religious. “He would come over for a cigarette and a drink and to get away from that praying every two hours,” the neighbor said.

But the family’s behavior, and undoubtedly their national origin, drew new suspicion after the 9/11 attacks. In April 2002, “based upon repeated citizen calls,” the FBI opened an investigation, which “revealed many connections” between a member of the family “and individuals associated with the terrorist attacks,” according to one of the few released documents.

Those jaw-dropping claims remained largely unknown for years. In part, that’s because the FBI now says that the initial reports came from an agent who couldn’t support his suspicions. Investigators later interviewed members of the family and found they had left the U.S. because Abdulazzi had just graduated and gotten a new job in Saudi Arabia.

The Sarasota family also had no connections to the 9/11 terrorists, the FBI concluded. (Their names are redacted in the reports, for privacy, but they have been publicly confirmed.)

Case closed? Hardly. In 2011, a pair of Irish journalists, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, who were publishing a book on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, contacted Dan Christensen, a veteran Florida reporter. They’d heard about the Sarasota family and had a confidential source—an unnamed counterterrorism official—who claimed to have detailed knowledge of the FBI’s investigation into the couple, including analysis of phone records that showed calls to and from the house connected to the hijackers. What’s more, the source also said that visitor logs from the security gate of the community showed that Atta, along with co-hijacker Ziad Jarrah, had come to the house, and that those logs had been turned over to the FBI.

The journalists teamed up and published an exposé on Christensen’s independent news site, FloridaBulldog.org, and on the front page of the Miami Herald. The story was an instant sensation, prompting the FBI to publicly declare that the case had been investigated and found to have no merit.

Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who had led the congressional inquiry that produced those 28 pages on Saudi connections, was stunned by the Sarasota allegations. The FBI hadn’t given Graham’s committee any information about the family or their suspected ties to Atta and other hijackers. Even the initial reports the FBI later said proved wrong weren’t disclosed to congressional investigators, Graham said. The journalists findings “open[ed] the door to a new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11,” Graham said at the time.

The FBI continued to publicly knock down the Sarasota connection. Graham eventually confronted the bureau and asked to see files from the Tampa field office. As he told The Daily Beast’s Eleanor Clift for a forthcoming article, Graham saw records that did show alleged contacts between the family and three hijackers, and further lines of inquiry that investigators could follow.

Later, Graham himself was confronted by the FBI’s then deputy director, Sean Joyce, who told him, “Basically everything about 9/11 was known and I was wasting my time and I should get a life,” Graham said.

For his part, Christensen took the government to court, suing under the Freedom of Information Act for the files and records to substantiate—or refute—his sources’ claims.

Thomas Julin, Christensen’s lawyer, told The Daily Beast that initially the FBI claimed it had no records. But when Julin told officials that Graham was willing to testify that he’d actually seen some, the Justice Department admitted to having found 35 pages of material, which it released.

It’s those pages, many of which bear heavy redactions, that show the FBI agents’ initial suspicions, the fact that an FBI case was open, and that investigators had found “many connections” between the family and the hijackers. There are also letters and memos from FBI officials dismissing the 9/11 connection as unfounded.

Those 35 pages were all the FBI could find about the alleged Sarasota conspiracy, officials insisted.

Zloch, the judge in the case, was not persuaded. He ordered the FBI to conduct a new search of its files, using a method that Christensen and his lawyer suggested. This time, they hit the mother lode.

“The FBI found some additional responsive documents which it produced,” Julin said. “But it also found 80,266 pages of material in the Tampa Field Office of the FBI which had been marked with the file number for the FBI’s PENTTBOM investigation.”

 

PENTTBOM, which stands for Pentagon/Twin Towers Bombing, is the codename for the FBI’s investigation of the 9/11 attacks.

The judge ordered the FBI to hand over all 80,000-plus pages on May 1, 2014. He is still going through them to determine which may be released and has given no indication when he might finish.

Zloch’s task is made all the more painstaking by the strict security rules governing review of classified documents, even for a sitting judge. The files are kept in a secure facility, and he can only remove a portion at a time.

It’s still not clear how many of the files from the Tampa field office relate to the investigation of the Saudi family and the house on Escondito Circle. But Christensen believes those files will reveal the underlying reasons for the FBI’s early suspicions. And he’s prepared to be proven wrong.

The FBI, for instance, says that phone records searches showed no links to the house and the hijackers. Christensen’s confidential source says the opposite is true. If the FBI is right, Christensen asks, then why not just release the information and put the dispute to rest?

“I’ve spent five years on this. I’ve got other things to do. If there’s nothing to this, then tell me,” Christensen told The Daily Beast.

The public record so far has hardly allayed Christensen and others belief that there’s more to the Sarasota story than the FBI is telling. Indeed, they say, the FBI is contradicting its own investigators. Graham told The Daily Beast that the FBI questioned the reliability of the agent who filed the first reports about the family and possible connections to the attackers. They said he was “not a good writer and should not be taken as the last word,” Graham said.

But that agent was reportedly promoted after the 9/11 attacks and assigned to a counter-intelligence task force. The bureau doesn’t usually give new jobs to agents who can’t do basic field work, particularly on the biggest case in FBI history.

As far as Christensen is concerned, the truth will out. But the FBI’s silence is telling.

Not to be content with just the 80,000 pages, though, Christensen has also been pressing to get those 28 pages from the congressional inquiry released. They currently have an appeal pending before the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, an obscure group within the National Archives that has the power to declassify the material, in whole or in part.

An Archives official wouldn’t comment on the appeal, except to say that the panel has yet to officially take it up. According to a public docket, the appeal was filed in July 2014.

President Obama could elect to declassify the pages himself. Or he could defer to the judgment of the panel. Doing so would give him some political cover. It would also allow the president to make good on his commitment to finally let the public see what those pages have to say.

If that day finally comes, credit will surely go to Graham, who has pressed for their release for years. But some share may also be claimed by Christensen and Julin, whose hunt for the Sarasota connection led them to shake loose the 28 pages, too.

Both men said that the release of that better-known material may ultimately help bring the Sarasota files to light.

“If the 28 pages are declassified, that might persuade the judge to move forward,” Julin said. He doesn’t think the congressional report has anything to say about Sarasota—because, after all, Graham has said the FBI gave his committee nothing on the case—but “the material might help Judge Zloch see the wider significance of the events in Sarasota and persuade him that some or all of the records have not been properly classified,” Julin said.

Christensen noted that the Obama administration didn’t publicly acknowledge that it might soon release the 28 pages until after Graham and other lawmakers appeared in a recent episode of 60 Minutes about the controversy. He said he hopes the judge saw the show, and that the “intense national interest” that’s brewing around Saudi connections to 9/11 might resonate with him.

Two years or waiting for the judge’s ruling may be close to an end. “I believe this is not a stalling tactic at all. The judge is doing what he he as to comply” with rules for handling classified information, Christensen said. “But I would urge him to speed it up.”