Catch a falling...
C.V. STARR
A Sighting from The Catbird Seat
~ o ~
August 13, 2007
Goldman Sachs Hedge Fund
Has $3B Bailout
By JOE BEL BRUNO, AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - Goldman Sachs Group on Monday said a group of investors that includes Eli Broad and Hank Greenberg will sink $3 billion into one of its biggest hedge funds that has seen its value plunge amid market volatility.
The investment bank said its Global Equity Opportunities fund "suffered significantly" as global markets sold off on worries about debt and credit. The fund lost as much as 14 percent of its value during the past 12 months, according to media reports, and is currently worth about $3.6 billion.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will lead the group of investors to help bail out the hedge fund, which relies on computer-driven trading strategies. Other investors include Broad, Greenberg's C.V. Starr & Co., and Perry Capital LLC.
In addition, the investment bank said that two other hedge funds it manages _ Global Alpha and the North American Equities Opportunities Fund _ have also suffered during the market dislocation. Goldman said it "reduced risk and leverage" in the funds to stem losses.
"At their current levels of equity capital, we believe the funds are positioned to actively pursue market opportunities," Goldman said in a statement.
http://www.wtopnews.com/index.php?nid=111&sid=1217072
See also: The Great Nest Egg Robberies
October 2, 2006
Rumsfeld: Venezuela build-up
is concern
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press
The recent military build-up in Venezuela by U.S. nemesis President Hugo Chavez has other countries in the region worried that the weapons could end up in the hands of terrorists, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday.
"I can understand neighbors being concerned," said Rumsfeld, who is attending a meeting of Western hemisphere military leaders here this week.
Asked whether he believes Venezuelan officials' contention that the weapon buys are strictly for defense and not a threat to the region, Rumsfeld said, "I don't know of anyone threatening Venezuela — anyone in this hemisphere."
Venezuela's defense minister Gen. Raul Isaias Baduel, who is also attending the meeting, said Monday that his country's recent military spending spree wasn't "an arms race," despite Washington's protests.
Chavez, however, has repeatedly charged that United States is planning to invade his country, a claim American officials dismiss as preposterous. And he said Sunday that he's heard the Bush administration is plotting to assassinate him or topple his regime.
U.S. Army Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, chief of U.S. Southern Command, called the accusation "mindless" and "way over the top." But he also agreed that Venezuela's recent deal to buy roughly $3 billion worth of arms from Russia — including rifles, jet fighters and helicopters — is triggering "more concern from more countries."
Rumsfeld did not meet privately with Baduel, but did briefly exchanged pleasantries with him.
"I have spoken to Mr. Rumsfeld to convince him that he should try smoking Venezuela's good tobacco," Baduel told the Associated Press. "He said he doesn't smoke, that his wife wouldn't let him."
Meanwhile, Craddock and other officials said Monday that they don't see a credible threat in Venezuela's call for the creation of an anti-U.S. military coalition with other leftist countries in the region. Craddock said Brazil's defense minister told the gathering he doesn't see a need for a regional military organization.
Gen. Moises Omar Hallesleven, the commander of the Nicaraguan military, told U.S. reporters he is not concerned about the Chavez effort.
Venezuela, he said through an interpreter, has very weak influence in the region. Hallesleven also vowed that as long as he is its leader, the Nicaraguan military will remain apolitical and professional — even if Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega wins the upcoming presidential election.
Chavez grabbed headlines recently when he called Bush "the devil" and slammed U.S. leaders for trying to block his country from taking a seat on the U.N. Security Council.
U.S. officials have long considered Chavez a destabilizing force. And they have suggested that Venezuela would make the Security Council unworkable if the nation were to win its bid against U.S.-backed Guatemala for a rotating council seat.
Rumsfeld, in his formal remarks to the gathering, also made a reference to the other main U.S. antagonist in the region: Cuba.
He said he hoped that one day soon "the final holdout in our hemisphere against the democratic sweep of history will give its citizens the right to choose their own destiny and will participate in our conference."
Rumsfeld also called for more regional cooperation in the fight against terrorism.
"These new challenges can be solved only if we work together to protect our free democratic institutions and to provide economic opportunities for our people," Rumsfeld said.
The military conference, along with a NATO defense ministers meeting and other military visits in the Balkans last week, have largely kept Rumsfeld out of Washington for the past week, where there is renewed debate on his stewardship of the Iraq war.
He said he will not resign, and openly questioned why reporters were so focused on a new book, "State of Denial" by Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, that is critical of the defense chief.
Clearly frustrated with repeated questions about his job security, Rumsfeld told reporters he has not read Woodward's book and is not likely to.
< < < FLASHBACK < < <
October 16, 2005
INTELLIGENCE REPORT:
US "private military contractors"
already in Venezuela
By Roy S. Carson, Portland Independent Media Center
Intelligence agencies are revealing that US private military contractors, active in Colombia "under various contract umbrellas, including counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency" are building up to yet another attempted coup d'etat against Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.
Carefully described as "private military contractors", the PMCs are known already to have conducted several incursions across the Colombia-Venezuela border to link up with rebel units of the Venezuelan military operating along the border badlands between the two countries.
Senior officials at the US Pentagon have authorized the intruder operation as part of a plan to make it appear that Chavez is militarily assisting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The US mercenaries have also established close links with right-wing Colombian paramilitaries (AUC) and their associated drug cartels to smuggle weapons into Venezuela.
Attached to the Pentagon's Joint Staff, a Colombian General is participating in a joint foreign military "interaction plan" sponsored by the US Defense Department in Washington D.C. to coordinate "force development" and "scenario simulation" invasive techniques at the behest of the US Joint Staff Command.
Intel sources also say that an Opus Dei (Roman Catholic) espionage and political assassination team operating in the United States is in the background of a case where a former Marine aide, Leandro Aragoncilla ... a US Vice Presidential staffer and FBI agent ... has been accused of espionage at the White House.
Aragoncilla was arrested recently on charges of illegally obtaining classified documents from US Vice President Dick Cheney's office and FBI computer which were passed to Philippine opposition figures linked to Opus Dei in the Philippines in preparation for a coup d'etat against that country's President, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Opus Dei elements are known also to have played a major role in supporting the April 2002 coup d'etat against Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias which continues a wider espionage and political black bag operation with support and logistics approved by highest levels within the Pentagon and the FBI.
A classified intelligence report leaked to this e-publication shows that the espionage ring has operating out of US Vice President Dick Cheney's office with the implicit approval from within the Bush administration.
Intel sources are also revealing more paper trails linking George H. W. Bush to the now defunct Al Taqwa ("Fear of God") bank operated on behalf of Osama Bin Laden, his family, and some of his closest business associates.
The network of Swiss-based terrorist financiers is also linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and prominent European fascist leaders. The Al Taqwa bank was headquartered in the Italian Swiss enclave Campione d'Italia and had offices in the Bahamas. It ceased operations after assets were blocked by a US Treasury Department order, its assets were frozen by the Swiss government, and its banking license was revoked by the Bahamas.
Al Taqwa subsequently changed its name to Nada Management Organization. Al Taqwa and a complex web of affiliate front companies and brass plates in Switzerland, the Bahamas, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Jersey, Isle of Man, Turkey, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, the United States (Delaware and Texas), Germany, Belgium, Albania, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Austria, Bahrain, Singapore, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Liechtenstein were reportedly involved in funding terrorist operations around the world, including the procurement of nuclear material from the former Soviet Union through Baltic intermediaries.
According to a EUROPOL diagram obtained by WMR, these companies included Iksir Holding, SA (Italy), Asat Trust (Liechtenstein), Iksir Ltd. (Bahamas), Gulf Center (Italy), NASCO (Turkey), Nasreddin International Group (Liechtenstein), Akida Bank (Bahamas), MIGA (Switzerland), and Nasreddin Foundation (Liechtenstein).
According to intelligence sources in the United States and Europe, the Al Taqwa network intersected with tranches in Geneva and the Isle of Man that involve front companies associated with George H. W. Bush and Enron: Topaz Liberty, Bluelake World, and Potomac Capital.
Iranian fraudster and neocon Pentagon contact Manucher Ghorbanifar, Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi and members of the Bin Laden family are reportedly linked to Geneva-based Potomac Capital ... a front company created by George H. W. Bush when he was CIA Director in 1976.
Interestingly, it was George W. Bush, who, in November 2001, cited Al Taqwa as part of Al Qaeda's money-laundering activities.
However, Bush's neocon allies at The Washington Times and World Net Daily quickly altered course and drew attention away from Al Taqwa's Saudi and Kuwaiti investors and began to erroneously link Al Taqwa to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Further criminal investigations of Al Taqwa's principals were also quickly dropped.
Potomac Capital appeared on the radar screen of Federal investigators during the Iran-Contra investigation conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The Al Taqwa connection to weapons of mass destruction proliferation, Bin Laden, and George H. W. Bush and his business associates stands as another reason the George W. Bush administration leaked the CIA's Brewster Jennings & Associates counter-WMD network. The CIA counter-proliferation team was getting uncomfortably close to tying members of the Bush family and their business associates to the same financial networks that fund Osama Bin Laden and his "Al Qaeda" network.
Intel sources have also traced a possible second connection between the Swiss network connected to George H. W. Bush and other 9/11 hijackers.
The first connection concerned hijacker Fayyaz Ahmed and a US$50,000 check he received from a tranche connected to the Swiss network. The second is the listing of Ahmed Mesfer Ahmed Alghamdi as a shareholder of Al Taqwa on a Central Bank of the Bahamas document dated April 15, 2000. Ahmed Alghamdi and Hamza Alghamdi were two of the Saudi hijackers on board United Flight 175, which struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Saeed Alghamdi was one of the hijackers on board United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after being shot down by US military fighter planes (according to an NSA employee who was on duty in the National Security Operations Center on the morning of 9/11).
According to the FBI, the Alghamdi hijackers used a number of aliases. Ahmed Alghamdi used the names Ahmed Saeed Saleh Alghamdi, Ahmed Mohammed Alghamdi, Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmed Saleh, and Juan Poncho Bennett. Hamza Alghamdi used Saleh Alghamdi Hamzah. Saeed Alghamdi used Mohsalih Alghamdi, Mokhlidmazid Almotairi, Saeedayed Alghamdi, and Saeed H. Alghamdi. Other Alghamdis wanted by the FBI for involvement with "Al Qaeda" include Nora Alghamdi, Ali A. Alghamdi, Abdulrahman Alghamdi, Othman Alghamdi, Sadda Alghamdi and Tareqsaeed Alghamdi.
Now, more information has been gleaned from knowledgeable intelligence sources about the secret UNOCAL, Enron, and Taliban negotiations over the Central Asian Gas pipeline (CentGas). The source of the $10 billion was the Saudi Royal family and the recipient was Enron's LJM1 off-the-books partnership, also known as LJM Cayman, LP. LJM1 was primarily set up to finance the CentGas pipeline deal.
Convicted Enron Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Andrew J. Fastow was the managing member of the LJM1 partners. In addition to Barclays, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was also allegedly used to transfer the $10 billion to the Enron account.
Two criminal investigations in New York are getting close to exposing a major Bush family and associates' international money-laundering operation that has spanned more than a generation and has been used to illegally fund US elections since the Nixon era.
According to CIA sources, most Bush family assets are tied up in off-shore accounts that are masked from investigators through the use of pass through companies and secretive interlocking board directorships.
The investigations of the secret Bush money tranches are coming to the fore as New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer focuses in on the scandal involving Maurice "Hank" Greenberg and the inflation of the worth of American Insurance Group (AIG) through shady affiliates, including AIG reinsurer Coral Re of Barbados.
Greenberg was the CEO of AIG but was forced to step down amid the Spitzer probe. AIG was founded from Asia Life/CV Starr, a Shanghai-based international import/export and insurance firm founded in 1919 by Cornelius V. Starr*, an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative in Southeast Asia during World War II.
AIG's largest shareholder is Starr International Company (SICO), an off-shore corporation incorporated in Panama with headquarters in Bermuda.
* Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who prosecuted President Clinton, is the nephew of Cornelius Starr.
Greenberg inherited the CEO job and Chairmanship from Starr as well as the $3.5 billion Starr Foundation.
Another probe by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau is focused on long-time Bush backers Sam and Charles Wyly of Texas and a Bank of America off-shore account in the Isle of Man. According to intelligence sources, that probe is getting very close to an Isle of Man multi-billion dollar account controlled by the Bushes through an off-shore contrivance known as Five Star Trust.
Charles Wyly serves on the board of the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO). Critics have charged that hundreds of millions of dollars of UTIMCO's $11 billion in public funds have been steered to investment funds run by Bush family friends and supporters.
A number of UTIMCO's past and current directors are members of George W. Bush's "$100,000 Club." These include, in addition to Wyly, former UTIMCO chairman Tom Hicks, a vice chairman of Clear Channel and head of Muse, Tate & Furst, Inc.; L. Lowry Mays, the chairman of Clear Channel; former Texas Representative and current lobbyist Tom Loeffler (who received illegal laundered campaign contributions from the failed Vernon Savings & Loan); A. W. Riter, a former chairman of NCNB Bank in Tyler, Texas; A. R. "Tony" Sanchez, Chairman of Sanchez-O'Brien Oil & Gas, owner of the Texas border-based International Bank of Commerce and the failed Tesoro Savings & Loan; and Woody Hunt, Chairman of Hunt Building Company.
Some of UTIMCO's investments were directed to firms with close ties to Bush "Pioneer" contributors Lee Bass (Bass Brothers Enterprises), Henry Kravis (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts), and Charles Wyly (Maverick Capital Fund), as well as George W. and H.W. Bush (The Carlyle Partners II Fund, managed by The Carlyle Group).
Texas money laundering is the tip of an Bush family financial iceberg that extends below the surface to shady financial deals around the globe.
However, investigators who dare venture into Texas will have their jobs cut out for them. The Bushes have been major recipients of campaign cash from senior partners the largest law firms in Texas -- Vinson & Elkins, Baker Botts (law firm of James Baker III), Andrews Kurth (the law firm of contentious US District Judge Priscilla Owen), Jenkins & Gilchrist, Haynes Boone and Bracewell & Patterson -- that have also been involved in defending those Texas companies and principals who have benefited from massive illegal financial flows.
Roy S. Carson
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/10/326824.shtml
For more, GO TO > > > The Starr Foundation
MORE TO COME
Meanwhile, to sight more vultures in this flock...
GO TO
\/
AIG: The Un-American Insurance Group
A Connecticut Yankee in King Kamehameha’s Court
BCCI: The Bank of Crooks & Criminals International
Confessions of a Whistleblower
The Consuelo Zobel Alger Foundation
Dirty Money, Dirty Politics & Bishop Estate
Gensiro Kawamoto: How to Pluck a Billionaire
Office of the U.S. Trustee vs. Harmon
Sukamto Sia: The Indonesian Connection
The Silence of the Whistleblowers
The Vampires in Executive Life Insurance Co.
The Vultures in Maunawili Valley
Vultures of the Sandwich Isles
MORE OF THE CATBIRD'S FAVORITE LINKS
FAIR USE NOTICE. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml . If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Last Updated on September 13, 2007 by The Catbird