Former Malaysian PM's trial reveals $626M in payments to a private bank account. Much of it from the Saudi Ministry of Finance & it's minister Faisal al Turki!
Razak is on trial for the One Malaysia Development Board corruption that stole billions through corruption. He was getting payments from then Saudi Finance Minister Faisal al Turki. He had previously been the head of Saudi Intelligence before taking over the Kingdom's money!
It looks like some of this money may have been paid from Saudi Finance Ministry accounts & then refunded to Prince al Turki! That might explain why he is not Finance Minister anymore! straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/m…
The Prince headed Saudi Intelligence from 1972 & resigned on 9/1/1. Ten days before Al Qaeda's attacks on NYC & Washington! His resignation was stunning because he had been appointed to another 4 year term in May of 2001! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turki_bin…
Following that, he was appointed to be the Saudi Ambassador to the U.K. from January 2003- July 2005.
He seems to have become a great friend of Tony Blair during that time period.
Because in 2010, the Prince used Tony Blair to help form a lucrative partnership with his brothers company PetroSaudi & the Chinese.
The middleman? Nawaf Obaid, one of the bankers who set up #1MDB & worked for the Prince!
Tony Blair & the Prince were going to use their contacts to grease the skids for business deals in Africa & China for fun & profit! They even had a former Goldman Sachs executive on the PetroSaudi team!
The DOJ is currently negotiating with Goldman Sachs with prosecutors recommending that the banking firm must plead guilty for crimes related to funding of #1MDBthreadreaderapp.com/thread/1121810…
The Saudis hired Blair to lobby China for them, but had misgivings that the payment splitting between two Blair companies made the deal look shady.
Looks like the kind of arrangement you would want to move money through different entities to make it hard to track. Using one name to work for businesses & the other to work with government agencies.
The Saudi's worried about the financial structure of Tony Blair's businesses. But Varun Chandra, a former Lehman Brothers banker and director of TBA sold them on it. The Saudis went along because Blair was getting Chinese senior leaders to warm up to PetroSaudi.
Remember at the same time Blair was the world's representative working with Middle East leaders to achieve peace. While pimping for the son of the then King of Saudi Arabia's company!
So the company was claiming to be an arm of the Saudi royal family & government, while Blair was asking for $100,000 a month retainer to woo the Chinese government leaders!
Of course at the same time, Blair was establishing a partnership between Peking University & his Faith Foundation! I'm sure that is all on the up and up just like his friend Bill Clinton's foundation!
All while Blair was lobbying the Chinese, getting partners for his Foundation, & running the Middle East Peace Process that failed. Fortunately, the Saudi leadership eventually shifted in another direction!
The #1MDB scandal also impacts US politics. There have been charges & investigations linking money laundered from #1MDB was used to fund political donations to Obama & Hillary but the cases were squashed. Then they tried to "influence" Trump & got busted!
Princes over the years have allegedly stolen at least $100B dollars from the kingdom through corruption & embezzlement. Approximately 200 were detained in a November 2017 crackdown on the corruption.
This was based on an investigation starting in 2014, the same time a lot of the global money laundering cases were started by the FBI under James Comey.
President Trump even took to Twitter to support the corruption crackdown!
Among those arrested in the crackdown? Prince Faisal al Turki's brother, who was the founder of PetroSaudi the company Tony Blair was lobbying China for...
Bringing it back full circle, because PM Razak was arrested for trying to order investigators to change an audit into his money laundering with Jho Low.
Jho Low, a money launderer who used Hollywood as a means to launder money to both Obama & Clinton in the hopes of keeping the lid on the #1MDB investigation! #ButNothingsHappening
Breaking!
Neustar's access to government networks was worse than we thought!
And I thought they had everything!
It appears Neustar was subcontracted for EOP by Verisign, Inc. who had the federal contract to provide DNS services for ALL .gov websites! #ButNothingsHappening
Verisign Inc. was providing DNS services for the entire .gov system under a contract with GSA.
The earliest contract that makes clear that they are managing the .gov domain for the federal government is in 2010 or 2011, but there are contracts earlier. usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD…
Here is the contract from 2016 that was recently extended until June of 2022.
In 2014 when Neustar got access to do DNS services at the Executive Office of the President, Verisign was the contractor for all .gov domains. If Neustar was a subcontractor, it was for Verisign.
Durham then takes a shot at the fake news people on both the left & the right who have "overstated, understated, or misinterpreted facts" from his motion!
The worlds Swampiest commodities firm Glencore warns investors it is setting aside $1.5 Billion to pay fines in the US, UK & Brazil over corruption!
Glencore was run for 40+ years by Marc Rich of Clinton Pardon infamy.
They're connected to Russiagate too #ButNothingsHappening
Glencore connects to almost every Swamp on the planet, which is why Clinton had to pardon Marc Rich to sabotage decades of cases prior to 2001.
But they kept doing the same deals, including involvement in Chad.
As expected, Sussmann's attorney's filed their motion for dismissal today.
Focusing on the materiality of his lies to the FBI, it's not going to work but this is meant for public consumption not the judge.
Let's see if he forces Durham to reveal more! courtlistener.com/docket/6039058…
But Sussmann did provide a false tip, the Alfa Bank information was false. At a minimum Sussmann knew the results were misleading & he was attempting to get the FBI to investigate Trump so he could leak that to the media & influence the 2016 election.
Judges almost always leave these decision to the trial & don't dismiss cases before the evidence is presented.
Another example of the #CollegeAdmission scandal revealing parents that may be linked to other crime.
Gamal Abdelaziz was convicted of bribery for admissions.
But he's a Wynn Casino exec who used to run their Macau casino. Macau is a Chinese money laundering hub.
Wow, Charlie Savage saying @nytimes readers aren't smart enough to understand the issues so they aren't covering it up. They just aren't covering it because their readers can't handle the truth because it is too complex.
So just tell them a fairy tale that it is misinformation.
@nytimes Where it gets interesting is that it is NYT's who started the story that Sussmann gave the CIA information from spying upon the White House.
Were they throwing Sussmann under the bus to distract from a bigger story?
This could all be false information trying to spin the NYTimes. But the researchers are claiming they were spying on the Obama White House, not the Trump White House, so why take that to CIA in Feb. 2017?