Thread by @DavidCranmerUn1

CBS Building - Wikipedia

The CBS Building, also known as Black Rock, is the headquarters of the CBS broadcasting network at 51 West 52nd Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The 38-story, 491-foot-tall (150 m) building, the only en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS_Build…

skyscraper designed by Eero Saarinen, was constructed from 1961 to 1964. The interior spaces and furnishings were designed by Saarinen and Florence Knoll.

Just before the building's construction, the site was occupied by five apartment buildings of four stories each, as well as

a 25,000-square-foot (2,300 m2) parking lot. William Zeckendorf had acquired all of these structures but sold them to CBS before he could develop them.

William Paley had believed Sixth Avenue to be "more stimulating" than Park Avenue, which was three blocks east. The site

cost $7 million, of which Zeckendorf received $5 million. The building would not include broadcast studios, which instead were to be consolidated at the CBS Broadcast Center, simultaneously being planned on 57th Street.

Paley and Saarinen both wanted to erect a skyscraper that

was distinct from International Style works such as Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's Lever House and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building. As Saarinen's wife Aline B. Saarinen said after his death, "After all, that's why they came to Eero and not to Skidmore."

By the early

1990s, CBS had downsized to about 4,700 employees and no longer required the entire building for its use. The law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz signed a lease for floors 27 to 33, and brokerage firm Edward S. Gordon advertised floors 4 to 14 for outside tenants.

The firm

was founded in 1965 by Herbert Wachtell and Jerry Kern, who were shortly afterwards joined by Martin Lipton, Leonard Rosen, and George Katz. The four named partners met at New York University School of Law where they were editors on the New York University Law Review together.

The firm rose to prominence on Wall Street when many brokers and investment bankers were launching small firms, but received little attention from established white-shoe law firms, such as Sullivan & Cromwell, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

It has had

key roles in the resurrection of Chrysler in the 1970s, the acquisition of Getty Oil by Texaco, and the negotiation of the master development agreement for the World Trade Center after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Notable alumni:

Robert Morgenthau, of counsel — former

New York County District Attorney

In 1991, Robert Mueller declared the government had been investigating BCCI since 1986 resulting in intense media coverage.
In 1992, United States Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown became the co-authors of a report on BCCI, which was delivered

to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

The report found that Clifford and his legal/business partner Robert A. Altman had been closely involved with the bank from 1978, when they were introduced to BCCI by Bert Lance, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget,

to 1991.

Clifford and Altman testified that they had never observed any suspicious activity, and had themselves been deceived about BCCI's control of First American. However, the federal government and Morgenthau contended that the two men knew, or should have known, that BCCI

controlled First American.

Morgenthau and the federal government brought indictments against Clifford and Altman, but did not pursue Clifford due to his age and deteriorating health (he died in 1998). Altman was indicted and tried in New York, though he was ultimately acquitted

following a jury verdict of not guilty.

Bin Mahfouz was a non-executive director of Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a financial conglomerate later convicted of money laundering, bribery, support of terrorism, arms trafficking, and many other crimes. Mahfouz personally

owned a 20% stake in BCCI. He was indicted by a New York state grand jury for fraud but denied any culpability. The fraud charges were settled for $225 million in lieu of fines.

James Woolsey, former Director of CIA, testified to a congressional subcommittee that Khalid Bin

Mahfouz was a brother-in-law of Osama Bin Laden. He later on told Los Angeles Times 'I don't know what to say other than there was some confusion, but I never meant to refer to Bin Mahfouz's sister'. "[9]
The Wall Street Journal issued a correction. “None of Khalid bin Mahfouz's

sisters is, or ever has been, married to Osama bin Laden."

Khalid bin Mahfouz was the second eldest son of Salem Ahmed bin Mahfouz, a Saudi who rose from being an illiterate moneychanger to the founder of the first bank in his country, the National Commercial Bank of Saudi

Arabia (NCB). Salem Ahmed then became the personal banker of the Saudi royal family. The bank was founded in December 1953 under the name of the National Commercial Bank “NCB”. In 2021, SNB has emerged as a banking champion after completing one of the largest mergers in the

region between the National Commercial Bank and Samba Financial Group. First National City Bank (Citibank) opened its Jeddah branch in 1955, and its Riyadh branch in 1966. Citibank created SAMBA, in which it took a 40% share, to take over its branches in Saudi Arabia, pursuant

to a Royal Decree on February 12, 1980. The former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shaukat Aziz, was the Managing Director of the bank in the 1990s. In the 1990s, Aziz worked closely with the governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif to help negotiate economic relief packages

and aid to Pakistan, while maintaining diverse relations with Pakistan's Armed Forces who would also visit the United States as part of Sharif's and Benazir Bhutto's state visits.

In a book, Global Financial Warrior, written by John B. Taylor, Aziz had substantial access to

the US Treasury, World Bank and many other world financial institutions. Aziz worked closely with the United States in order to finance U.S. war games and operations. Aziz knew the volumes of secretive methods of transferring funds in and out of South Asia, particularly

clandestine financing of nuclear weapons programmes of India and Pakistan at its most, Taylor maintained.

Shaukat Aziz had been a president of Citi Private Bank in New York before returning to Pakistan in 1999. Shortly, General Pervez Musharraf arrived for a small personal trip

to the United States after staging a coup d'état to deposed the people-elected prime minister Navaz Sharif on 12 October 1999.

Aziz reportedly returned with Musharraf in November 1999 and took charge of the Finance ministry as its Finance Minister. Aziz took control of the

economy with responsibility for Finance, Economic Affairs, Statistics Division, Planning and Development, and revenue divisions.

After the 11 September attacks in the United States and Pakistan's role in the War on Terror, Aziz travelled to the United States in order to

negotiate a relief and U.S. aid to Pakistan. He closely worked with US Secretary of the Treasury (Larry Summers/Paul O’Neill) on the detail of the devised plan on how to remove the Taliban from Afghanistan, cancellation and debt relief, loans from the World Bank, and direct

support from U.S. Aid for national public development.

In 2002, Aziz worked with U.S. administration to help advise the United States to finance the war in Afghanistan.

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was an international bank founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan

Abedi, a Pakistani financier.

BCCI was created with capital of which 25% was from the Bank of America and the remaining 75% from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

Abedi pioneered close economic collaboration in the private

sector between Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The UAE President, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, extended his patronage to UBL operations both in Pakistan and abroad.