Obama news April 23, 2012, Daniel Frawley ties to Obama and sentencing ignored or downplayed by media, Why was Daniel Frawley sentencing delayed?
“Why was the sentencing of Daniel Frawley, former partner of Tony Rezko, delayed?”…Citizen Wells
“There is an epidemic of messenger shooting in this country.”…Citizen Wells
“The past, he reflected, had not merely been altered, it had
actually been destroyed. For how could you establish, even
the most obvious fact when there existed no record outside
your own memory?”…George Orwell, “1984″
Daniel Frawley, former business partner of Tony Rezko, was finally sentenced last week to one year in prison. Unless you were paying attention you would not have been aware of the sentencing or of Frawley’s ties to Barack Obama. Reporting on Daniel Frawley and his Obama connections has been almost non existent since Obama became a serious nominee in mid 2008.
Some have stated that Frawley had little credibility and was a controversial figure. However, those are the types of personalities involved in crime and therefore subject to being witnesses. Stuart Levine, the primary witness in the Tony Rezko trial, was of dubious character and had a severe drug problem.
Here are some facts regarding Obama, Rezko, Frawley, Nadhmi Auchi, et al.
From the Chicago SunTimes.
February 10, 2008.
“In the media, Obama made it sound like he rarely saw Rezko, saying they met for breakfast or lunch once or twice a year. However, the FBI mole John Thomas helped investigators “build a record of repeat visits to the old offices of Rezko and former business partner Daniel Mahru’s Rezmar Corp., at 853 N. Elston, by Blagojevich and Obama during 2004 and 2005,“
In a March 14, 2008 interview, the Times told Obama.
“Thomas is an FBI mole and he “recently told us that he saw you coming and going from Rezko’s office a lot.””
“And three other sources told us that you and Rezko spoke on the phone daily.””
From the Tony Rezko trial.
April 14, 2008.
“Stuart Levine, the prosecution’s star witness, said he and Obama were at a party Rezko threw at his Wilmette mansion on April 3, 2004, for Nadhmi Auchi, a controversial Iraqi-born billionaire who Rezko was trying to get to invest in a South Loop real-estate development.
Auchi, now a citizen of the United Kingdom, has faced criminal charges in Europe. He also figured in the revocation of Rezko’s bond early this year after attempting to wire him more than $3 million. Upon learning of that attempt, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve declared Rezko a flight risk and ordered him held in a federal jail in the Loop.
The Rezko party in 2004 was designed to induce Auchi to pour money into the South Loop investment. Obama’s presence at the party was not previously known. At the time, Obama was fresh off a surprise win in the Illinois Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and was riding a crest of national publicity.”
From the Chicago SunTimes originally published on Aug. 7, 2007.
“Frawley and Rezko owned Companion, according to two sources.”
“Alsammarae, who lives in the Chicago area and was a college classmate of Rezko, is a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen. He left his post as Iraq’s electricity minister in May 2005, about a month after Companion got the contract. Alsammarae was accused of financial corruption by Iraqi authorities and jailed in Iraq last year before escaping and returning here.”
“As Frawley sought to revive the contract in spring 2006, Blagojevich’s chief of staff, John Harris, directed the state’s homeland security adviser, Jill Morgenthaler, to find “a military site for the training of Iraqi police forces,” Morgenthaler wrote in an April 26, 2006, e-mail. She wrote the letter in June 2006 offering the Savanna site.
Two months later, Frawley sought help from Obama, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who is now running for president. Frawley met with Seamus Ahern, who runs Obama’s Moline office. Frawley and Ahern discussed the proposal over a period of about six months.”
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/6452990-418/tony-rezkos-50-million-iraq-deal.html
Compelling passages from the Daniel Frawley deposition presented at Citizen Wells on July 15, 2011.
“Attorneys Franklin & Schutte represent Frawley, plaintiff.
Attorney Konicek represents George Weaver, defendant.
Frawley: “George told me that he had a meeting at his office on LaSalle Street with Dan Mahru, with some people from First Bank–I didn’t know how many at the time–and himself. And George instructed me not to attend.”
Konicek: “So who said it to you, and where was it said to you?”
Frawley: “Dan Mahru told me that First Bank was agreeable to a settlement.”
Konicek: “In March 13, 2006, you had a conversation with Mr. Weaver where you say he instructed me not to cooperate.”
Frawley: “Yes, I had a conversation with Mr. Weaver where he instructed me not to cooperate.”
Frawley: “I was on the phone, making a phone call to Tony Rezko. I had a luncheon engagement with him.”
“George was outside of the room where I was making the telephone call, and the purpose of the call was for me to keep my luncheon engagement with Tony Rezko and to go over and to record Tony Rezko.”
“George saw and heard me on the phone, came running in and went like this [demonstrating]: Cut it,”
Franklin: “For the record, the deponent is crossing his hands across his throat.”
Konicek: “And Tony Rezko was where when you were speaking to him?”
Frawley: “He was on the other end of the phone. I don’t recall where he was.”
Konicek: “I’m assuming the information is about the payments made by Rezko to Obama, so we know we’re talking about the right conversation, right?”
Konicek: “Am I correct it was about Obama being paid by Rezko?”
Frawley: “I’m not answering that question, based upon my attorney’s instructions.”
Konicek: “But on March 13, 2006, you’ve already indentified for me being at 219 South Dearborn. You’re talking to Tony rezko on the phone, and Mr. Weaver makes this gesture to you, right?”
Frawley: “Mr. Weaver made the gesture and told me to get off the phone, to end the phone call.”
Konicek: “Okay. And then where were you instructed not to cooperate?”
Frawley: “In the same building, at 219 South Dearborn….in a different room.”
Konicek: “Did you bring to Mr. Weaver in Hinsdale a statement showing payment to Tony Rezko in the amount of $ 1.5 million?”
Konicek: “Are you going to answer?”
Frawley: “No.”
Konicek: “Are you asserting your Fifth Amendment privilege?”
Frawley: “Yes.””
https://citizenwells.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/obama-corruption-buddies-ghosts-of-christmas-past-rezko-levine-blagojevich-frawley-mahru-cellini/
On October 28, 2008 FrontPageMag connected the dots from Nadhmi Auchi and Saddam Hussein to Obama.
“In three steps, these corrupt businessmen tie the Democratic Party presidential candidate to the executed Iraqi tyrant:
Saddam Hussein made use of Auchi: Auchi’s fortune largely grew through his Iraq government connection, much of it sub rosa. In the 1980s, he procured Italian military ships. By 1993, the Italian banker Pierfrancesco Pacini Battaglia testified about Auchi bribing Iraqi officials for an Italian engineering company and called Auchi “one of the most important intermediaries in the affairs of Middle Eastern countries.” Auchi is also a major shareholder in BNP Paribas, the French bank deeply implicated in the U.N.’s corrupt Iraq oil-for-food program.
Auchi made use of Rezko: Rezko lobbied for Auchi to be allowed into the United States. A wholly-owned GMHSA subsidiary, Fintrade Services Inc., transferred a loan of $3.5 million on May 23, 2005 to Rezko.
Rezko cultivated Obama: Rezko offered Barack Obama a job in 1990, which Obama declined. Still, Rezko persisted, hiring him for legal work and hosting in 2003 an early fundraiser that, writes David Mendell in Obama: From Promise to Power, proved “instrumental in providing Obama with seed money” for his nascent U.S. Senate campaign. Then, on June 15, 2005, just twenty-three days after receiving Auchi’s $3.5 million, Rezko partnered with Obama in a real estate deal: while Rezko’s wife paid the full asking price, $625,000, for an empty adjoining lot which they then improved, subdivided, and partially sold to Obama, Obama acquired a mansion for $1.65 million, $300,000 under the asking price.
Summing up: Barack Obama’s house purchase depended on favors from Rezko, flush with a “loan” from Auchi, whose fortune derived in part from Saddam Hussein’s favor.”
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=32878
Got the picture?
The Chicago SunTimes, one of the few mainstream media outlets to cover the Frawley sentencing had this to say on April 19, 2012.
“Over three years, Daniel T. Frawley would meet with government agents in an “off-campus,” secret location.
There, he divulged details used in at least a half-dozen different investigations, including the federal government’s case against Tony Rezko, a onetime fundraiser for ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Barack Obama before he became president.
He’d also get wired-up.
In the heat of the investigation by the Chicago’s U.S. Attorney’s office, Frawley secretly recorded Rezko, with whom he once partnered in business.
Some of those details were revealed in a sentencing hearing on Thursday where U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman sentenced Frawley to one year and one day in prison and ordered him to repay $4.4 million in restitution in a loan fraud case.
Frawley, 60, of Westchester won a break on what could have been a sentence of more than five years because he gave the government details on other crimes.
Assistant U.S. Attorney William Ridgway said Frawley’s cooperation helped develop information that led to Rezko’s bond being revoked before his 2008 trial. Frawley, though, wasn’t a witness at Rezko’s trial, which saw the onetime adviser and fundraiser of Rod Blagojevich convicted. Rezko is serving a 10 ½ year sentence.
Frawley wired up on people other than Rezko as did Frawley’s sister, according to the government, but ultimately no other public charges were brought.
Still, it was a risky endeavor, according to his lawyers, Jeffrey Steinback and Thomas M. Durkin.
“There were people who had a lot to lose if they found out what he was doing,” Steinback said. “That’s why we were off-campus in these debriefings.”
Durkin referenced “several significant public corruption cases” and said there was “some element of danger” to the cooperation.
Frawley once ran a company called Companion Security with Rezko.
The Sun-Times has previously reported that Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity gave a $50 million contract to Companion Security in 2005 to train Iraqi security guards.
That deal soon fizzled after a regime change.
Frawley’s charges in federal court, however, deal with another company, called Frawley Trading Co., which had an office in Hinsdale.
He admitted to obtaining a fraudulent $4.5 million loan from First Bank and making false representations to the bank in 1999 and 2000.
Ridgway said Frawley’s scheme “involved a number of phony documents and was rather complex.”
In a booming voice, Frawley apologized for his crimes: “I give my word that these unlawful and disgraceful actions will never occur again.”
A sentence of greater than one year makes a defendant eligible for time off for good behavior, which usually means serving about 85 percent of the term in federal prison.
Guzman said the character letters he received showing substantial support of his having good character. Guzman also mentioned receiving a packet of information from Frawley’s cousin, Theresa Seibert, who has claimed that he threatened her husband, after he gave information about Frawley.
Guzman did not say he considered the information when sentencing Frawley. Guzman said his strongest consideration for giving a lighter sentence was that so much time had lapsed between his March 2006 arrest and sentencing.
“It’s not clear to me why this took such a long time,” Guzman said. He called it “fundamentally unfair” to charge someone, give time to rehabilitate, then have them serve their punishment. Guzman ordered him to undergo a mental health evaluation and to serve time in a facility that has mental health services.
Guzman waived the interest Frawley would have to pay on the restitution after Steinback said his client would likely spend the rest of his life repaying it.
The Chicago Sun-Times has previously reported that Frawley filed a “whistleblower” lawsuit in federal court last July that remains under seal. In it, he accuses seven members of his politically connected family of government-contract fraud. He says they fraudulently obtained millions of dollars in contracts from the city of Chicago, Chicago Public Schools and other governments by falsely claiming their businesses were owned and operated by women or minorities, though white men actually ran the companies.”
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/12012776-418/rezkos-business-partner-who-wore-wire-gets-one-year-prison-sentence.html
Contrast the SunTimes article with the facts above it and the following article.
From American Thinker March 6, 2008
“Obama’s Iraqi Oil for Food connection
By Andrew Walden
Out on bail awaiting trial, dual US-Syrian citizen, Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko, was rousted out of bed by police pounding on the doors of his Chicago mansion the morning of Monday, January 28. According to the Associated Press:
“U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve jailed Rezko…saying he had disobeyed her order to keep her posted on his financial status. Among other things, he failed to tell her about a $3.5 million loan from London-based Iraqi billionaireNadhmi Auchi — a loan that was later forgiven in exchange for shares in a prime slice of Chicago real estate. Rezko gave $700,000 of the money to his wife and used the rest to pay legal bills and funnel cash to various supporters.”
Funds from Auchi’s loan may have helped finance a complex series of transactions between Rezko and Democratic Presidential candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama involving the 2005 purchase of Obama’s Chicago mansion and Rezko’s purchase of an adjoining landlocked parcel.
The Times of London reports:
“A company related to Mr. Auchi, who has a conviction for corruption in France, registered the loan to Mr. Obama’s bagman Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko on May, 23 2005. Mr. Auchi says the loan, through the Panamanian company Fintrade Services SA, was for $3.5 million.
“Three weeks later, Mr. Obama bought a house on the city’s South Side while Mr Rezko’s wife bought the garden plot next door from the same seller on the same day, June 15. Mr. Obama says he never used Mrs. Rezko’s still-empty lot, which could only be accessed through his property. But he admits he paid his gardener to mow the lawn.”
Rezko’s relationship with Barack Obama goes back to at least 1990, when Obama’s law firm did work relating to a Rezko housing development. Rezko was a key early-money fund raiser in Obama’s state Senate campaigns and his failed run at the US Congress. In June 2005, when the mansion was purchased, Rezko was widely known to be under federal investigation. Rezko also is a key fundraiser for Illinois Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich.
The sudden emergence of Auchi into this story indicates Rezko’s deals may include a money trail leading back to dead Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Auchi’s Saddam links trace back to a failed 1959 assassination attempt on the life of then-Iraqi-prime-minister Abdul Karim Qasim.
Auchi’s General Mediterranean Holdings company was also the largest private shareholder in Banque Nationale de Paris which later merged with Paribas to become BNP Paribas. At Saddam’s insistence, billions of dollars of Oil for Food transactions passed through BNP from its 1995 inception until 2001.
In January 2004, Iraqi newspaper Al-Mada published a list of 270 Oil for Food beneficiaries. The list was translated and published on line by The Middle East Media Research Institute. Hundreds of millions of dollars of Oil for Food money was illegally diverted to buy Saddam favor from the United Nations, possibly reaching as high as Secretary general Kofi Annan’s son. Also receiving million’s from Saddam’s slush fund were heads of state and their associates from Russia, France, China, and numerous Islamic countries.
The Auchi-Obama links go beyond the mansion deal. The Times of London February 1 reports uncovering, “state documents in Illinois recording that Fintrade Services, a Panamanian company, lent money to (an) Obama fundraiser in May 2005. Fintrade’s directors include Ibtisam Auchi, the name of Mr. Auchi’s wife.”
Auchi, a Chaldean Christian, was later pardoned by Qasim. As Saddam’s Baath party took power, Auchi prospered. He went to work for the Iraqi Ministry of Oil in 1967. He rose to be Oil Ministry Director of Planning and Development before leaving Iraq in 1979. His brother was apparently killed by Saddam’s regime as were family of many high-ranking Baathists. But there are also claims that Auchi continued secretly working for Saddam’s intelligence services, a kind of dual reality not uncommon in the twisted world of Saddam’s upper echelons.
What is certain is that Auchi prospered mightily collecting “commissions” on sale of weapons and other goods to Iraq in the 1980s and 1990s. Living in the UK, he is now listed as Britain’s 18th-richest man. The Times of London reports, “On the 20th anniversary of his business in 1999, Mr. Auchi received a greeting card signed by 130 politicians, including (Prime Minister) Tony Blair, (Conservative Party leader) William Hague and (Liberal-Democratic Party leader) Charles Kennedy….”
In spite of his British connections and an earlier 2004 US visit, Auchi was denied entry into the US in 2005. It is believed that he was attempting in 2005 to win a US visa with the help of Rezko several as-yet-unnamed Illinois political figures. Among Auchi’s many international awards is a 2005 election as an “Honorary Member in the International College of Surgeons in Chicago, Illinois.” Obama has denied trying to help Auchi.
Auchi has played a role in BNP since the late 1970s. When BNP was privatized by the French government in 1993, Auchi acquired stock in the banking giant through his Luxembourg-based company, General Mediterranean Holdings. Auchi played a key role in BNP’s 2000 merger with Paribas. According to the New York Times, “As recently as 2001, General Mediterranean Holdings described itself in an annual report as one of largest single shareholders in BNP Paribas.” Saddam used Oil for Food fraud to channel millions of dollars to heads of state, activists, terrorists, and journalists–many of whom returned the favor by backing Saddam in 2003 when the US finally invaded.
In 2003 Auchi was convicted in France for receiving about $100 million in illegal commissions as part of a scandal involving the French oil giant Elf Aquitane. The UK Guardian wrote:
“(Elf was) the biggest fraud inquiry in Europe since the Second World War. Elf became a private bank for its executives who spent £200 million on political favours, mistresses, jewellery, fine art, villas and apartments.”
Auchi’s General Mediterranean Holdings also has connections to the new Iraq-connections which lead right back to Tony Rezko. Auchi’s company helped finance a 250 megawatt power plant in the Kurdish town of Chamchamal, Iraq, teaming up with Rezko and Iraq’s former Minister of Electricity, Aiham Alsamarrae. Alsamarrae, a Chicago resident with dual US-Iraqi citizenship is accused of graft involving Iraq reconstruction projects-an embarrassing connection for the war critic Obama.
Returning in 2003 to post-Saddam Iraq, Alsamarrae had been made Minister of Electricity under the occupation government of Paul Bremer. Alsamarrae escaped in what he called “the Chicago way”from the Green Zone in December, 2006 after being held for four months in relation to a $2 billion Iraqi reconstruction corruption case. He is now living in his Chicago mansion.
Writing in Human Events, March 3, 2008, John Batchelor reports on an Alsammarae-Obama-Rezko connection:
“…in April 2005, one month before Mr. Alsammarae left his post, his Ministry of Electricity signed a contract for $50 million with Companion Security to provide training to Iraqis to guard electrical plants by flying them to Illinois for classes.
“Companion Security was headed by a former Chicago policeman with a troubled history, Daniel T. Frawley, in partnership with Mr. Rezko and in association with Daniel Mahru, the lawyer for the original contract and Mr. Rezko’s former business partner. In April 2006, Mr. Frawley entered negotiations with Governor Rod Blagojevich’s staff to lease a military facility in Illinois to be a training camp. In August 2006, Mr. Frawley started negotiations with Mr. Obama’s U.S. Senate staff to complete the contract….
“The timeline of Companion discussions in 2006 is important to note: April 2006 Frawley speaks to governor’s office; August 2006 Frawley speaks to senator’s office; October 2006 indictment of Rezko revealed; October 2006 Rezko arrested upon return from Syria; October 2006 Alsammarae convicted in Baghdad and makes his first escape attempt; December 2006 Alsammarae escapes from Baghdad. …
“(In 2004) Mr. Auchi traveled by private aircraft to Midway Airport in Chicago and then to a fete at the Four Season Hotel, where he met with his business partner in Chicago real estate, Mr. Rezko, as well as with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Also present that night, according to a fresh report by James Bone and Dominic Kennedy of the London Times, was State Senator Barack Obama, who had recently won the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat….”
Most politicians try to keep their financial backers out of trouble until after the election. But Rezko, is already indicted by a federal grand jury. And now his trial has begun in a Chicago federal court.
Rezko, along with Ali Ata and Abdelhamid Chaib, face federal grand jury charges presented in October 2006 by U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald. The case revolves around allegations of fraud between 2000 and 2004 in the sale of 17 Papa Johns’ Pizza parlors in Detroit, Chicago and Milwaukee. The case may begin with pizza but it could easily lead back to Europe, Syria, Iraq, and the UN Oil for Food program.
Fitzgerald is the prosecutor who won perjury convictions against Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, in March, 2007. Chaib is an officer of several of Rezko’s restaurant chains including Chicagoland Panda Express franchises. Ata was appointed Executive Director of the Illinois Finance Authority by Governor Blagojevich. Ata was also a former president of the Chicago Chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and had a financial interest in Rezko’s restaurants. Ata reportedly donated as much as $60,000 to Blagojevich and $5,000 to Obama. Rezko reportedly raised as much as $500,000 for Blagojevich and at least $70,000 for Obama’svarious campaigns. Obama has redirected as much as $150,000 in donations “bundled” by Rezko.
Rezko has other unsavory financial ties. Arab American Media Services reports:
“In 1997, Panda Express won the right to open a lucrative concession at O’Hare International Airport under the city’s Minority Set-Aside program which directs large contracts to companies owned by Women, African Americans or Hispanics. The city awarded a 10-year contract for O’Hare Airport to Crucial Inc. in 1999, which the city believed was owned by an African American, Jabir Herbert Muhammad, the son of the late Elijah Mohammad.”
Elijah Mohammad led the Nation of Islam until his death in 1975. Jabir Herbert Muhammad wassued in 1999 by boxer Muhammad Ali for unauthorized use of his name in connection with the so-called Muhammad Ali Foundation. Rezko served as Executive Director of the Foundation.
Jay Stewart of the Better Government Assn. in Chicago told the LA Times:
“Everybody in this town knew that Tony Rezko was headed for trouble. When he got indicted, there wasn’t a single insider who was surprised. It was viewed as a long time coming. . . . Why would you be having anything to do with Tony Rezko, particularly if you’re planning to run for president?”
At a March 3 news conference in San Antonio, Texas, Chicago-based reporters peppered Obama with some of the questions the national news corps has avoided for over a year. Obama claims he had already answered the questions in the Chicago media. He said: “These requests, I think, could just go on forever. At some point, what we need to try to do is respond to what’s pertinent.”
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote:
“Reporters, however, had a different idea of what was pertinent, and the questions about Rezko, NAFTA and other unpleasant subjects continued to come. An aide called out ‘last question,’ and Obama made his move for the exit — only for reporters to shout after him in protest. ‘C’mon, guys,’ he pleaded. ‘I just answered, like, eight questions.'”
Obama has refused to sit down at length with the Chicago reporters who have worked this story for years. But as Milbank pointed out, “The questioning…has only just begun.” With old-time Chicago corruption now going international-and Presidential–finding those answers is more urgent than ever.
on “Obama’s Iraqi Oil for Food connection””
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/obamas_iraqi_oil_for_food_conn.html
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Citizen WElls 