- Back in 1992, it was the Whitewater real estate deal
that plagued the Clintons, though fortunately for them, Jeff Gerth's initial
expose in the New York Times on March 8, 1992, was incomprehensible.
Hillary Clinton and her lawyer Susan Thomases muddied the trail by maintaining
falsely that Mrs Clinton's billing files - which would have disclosed her
numerous conferences with Madison Guaranty - could not be located.
-
- If Hillary wins the nomination Republicans will once
again plow through the vast acreage of questionable deals and evasive responses
developed by the Clintons down the years, the latest ones, such as Bill's
financial cavortings with the <http://www.counterpunch.org/ballinger01312008.html>Canadian
mining entrepreneur, still as fragrant as freshly turned manure.
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- Barack Obama has already felt the hot breath of investigators
for his property deal in 2005 on the south side of Chicago. This one will
have legs as long as Obama is in the race for the Democratic nomination.
If he wins that prize, the scrutiny will get more intense, as Republicans
link him with an Iraqi millionaire who has been linked to Saddam Hussein
from the earliest years of the Iraqi dictator's bloodstained rise to power.
-
- In 2005, Obama bought a Georgian mansion in Chicago's
elite Kenwood neighborhood. He paid $1.65 million for it. The same day
Rita Rezko, the wife of Chicago property operator Antoin "Tony"
Rezko, bought the adjacent undeveloped lot, which had once been part of
the mansion's garden. Rezko paid $650,000 for the parcel which at present
can only be accessed from the Obama property and which Obama's garden crew
has been keeping tidy. Obama got his house for $300,000 under the asking
price. Rezko paid full asking price. Later, Obama bought a sixth of Rezko's
parcel for $100,000.
-
- Obama has known Rezko ever since the latter contacted
him as a possible associate in the real estate business after Obama got
the top slot at the Harvard Law Review and was an obvious comer in Chicago
politics. Rezko, like all major real estate players, has made a career
of playing insider politics and forming political alliances advantageous
for his dealings. He's contributed to Obama's campaigns down the years.
Answering questions from the Chicago Sun-Times in 2005, specifically about
the allegation that the newly elected US senator contacted Rezko when he
first thought of buying the Kenwood mansion, Obama said very carefully,
"I don't recall exactly what our conversations were or where I first
learned, and I am not clear what the circumstances were where he made a
decision that he was interested in the property. I may have mentioned to
him the name of [a developer and] he may at that point have contacted that
person. I'm not clear about that."
-
- At the time of the 2005 transaction Rezko's legal problems
had already surfaced and Obama told the Sun-Times that involving Rezko
"was a mistake". Rezko is now under indictment by US Attorney
Patrick Fitzgerald (Scooter Libby's special prosecutor). He faces trial
in federal court on February 25. On January 29 a federal judge, Amy J.
St Eve, ordered Rezko held behind bars for violating the terms of his bail
and for being a flight risk.
-
- Though, as part of his bail terms, Rezko was required
by the court to disclose any changes in his financial status the FBI, using
a "cooperating individual" identified only as "C14",
claims to have established that Rezko did not reveal that in April, 2007,
he appeared to have been the beneficiary of a $3.5 million wire transfer
from General Mediterranean Holding S.A., a company run by a business associate
of Rezko's, N. Auchi. General Meditarranean has been partner with Rezko
in a 62-acre property deal in Chicago.
-
- Nadhmi Auchi lives in the U.K.,is extremely rich and
politically well connected. In November 2003 he was the subject of unsparing
criticism by Nick Cohen in The Observer. Cohen claimed that:
-
- He was charged in the 1950s with being an accomplice
of Saddam Hussein, when the future tyrant was acquiring his taste for blood
... One reason why journalists have shied away from Auchi is that he has
expensive lawyers. They have always denied that their client had met Saddam.
No one has been able to contradict them, but we do know that Auchi was
charged with being a plotter for the Baath Party as it prepared to seize
power. In October 1959 he stood trial for conspiring to assassinate the
Iraqi Prime Minister, Abdul Karim Qasim. The attempted murder became a
revered part of Saddam's cult of personality ... In 1959 Auchi admitted
to playing a minor part in the drama. The conspirators had collected a
machine gun from his house before the attack, he said, but he had not used
the weapon and knew nothing of what was being planned.
-
- Auchi prospered when the Baath Party seized control of
the state. When Saddam assumed total power he moved to Britain ... the
execution [of his brother] did not inhibit Auchi's business dealings with
Iraq which, he says, didn't stop until the Gulf war of 1991. His first
coup in the West was to broker a deal to sell Italian frigates to the Iraqi
Defence Ministry, for which he received $17m in commission. Italian investigators
claimed that a Panamanian company owned by Auchi was used to funnel allegedly
illegal payments. Auchi denied he had done anything wrong.
-
- The Observer's website featuring Cohen's story
also supplies a link to a statement in which Auchi's lawyers say their
client "was never close to Saddam Hussein or his regime. He never
met or even spoke to Saddam Hussein. Mr Auchi has never to his knowledge
had any involvement in money stolen by Saddam Hussein and/or Colonel Gadaffi
and he has never sheltered funds for Saddam Hussein. During the time when
Iraq was considered to be a friend of the west, Mr Auchi conducted business
with entities in Iraq. On sanctions being imposed against Saddam Hussein's
regime, Mr Auchi ceased conducting such business."
-
- Cohen says that in the fall of 2003 Auchi "was convicted
of illicit profiteering by the Paris Criminal Court and received a 15-month
suspended sentence."
- Obama is certainly aware that Rezko is a political liability.
Thus far the most tangible benefit from his association unearthed by reporters
has been some $50-60,000 in campaign contributions from Rezco down the
years (Obama's estimate) plus the adjacent-lot property deal in Kenwood
which does smell. One inference back in 2005 might have been that Rezko
would finally have conveyed the undeveloped lot to Obama in some manner
advantageous to the senator. Apparently Obama scented peril as the spotlight
came on his association with Rezko and had a substantial fence (which Rezko
promised to pay for) erected between the two parcels. The Rezko parcel
is supposedly scheduled for a house.
-
- In terms of political mudslinging, if Obama continues
to prosper politically this year, we can expect ongoing probes for political
favors he might have done for Rezko down the years. For the political hit
squads the money shot, so to speak, is any headline that links Barack Hussein
Obama with an Iraqi millionaire not only linked to the oil-for-food scandal
but to the Baath Party and to Saddam Hussein.
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