BajaNews - 6-30-2010 at 01:06 AM
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/29/...
Michael Smith
June 30, 2010
Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico
City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew
suspicious and searched the jet.
They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to
drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.
The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia Corp. and Bank
of America Corp.
This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. San Francisco's Wells Fargo
& Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics
traffickers - including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.
The admission came in an agreement that Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S.
banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years.
Wachovia admitted it didn't do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican currency exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That's
the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history - a sum equal to one-third of Mexico's current gross
domestic product.
"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," said
Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.
Since 2006, more than 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related battles that have raged mostly along the 2,000-mile border that Mexico shares
with the United States.
Among the dead are police, soldiers, journalists and ordinary citizens. In Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, 700 people had
been killed this year as of mid-June.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon vowed to crush the drug cartels when he took office in December 2006, and he's since deployed 45,000 troops to fight
the cartels. They've had little success.
The United States has pledged Mexico $1.1 billion in the past two years to aid in the fight against narcotics cartels.
"It's the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy," said Martin Woods, director of Wachovia's anti-money-laundering unit in
London from 2006 to 2009.
Woods says he quit the bank in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were funneling money through Wachovia's branch
network.
"If you don't see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 22,000 people killed in Mexico, you're missing the point," he said.
Wells Fargo's effort
Wells Fargo regrets that some of Wachovia's anti-money-laundering efforts fell short, spokeswoman Mary Eshet says. Wells Fargo has invested $42
million in the last three years to improve its anti-money-laundering program and has been working with regulators, she says.
Wachovia is just one of the U.S. and European banks that have been used for laundering. For two decades, Latin American drug traffickers have gone to
U.S. banks to cleanse their dirty cash, says Paul Campo, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's financial crimes unit.
American Express Bank International paid fines in 1994 and 2007 after admitting it had failed to spot and report drug dealers laundering money through
its accounts. Drug traffickers used accounts at Bank of America in Oklahoma City to buy three planes that carried 10 tons of cocaine, according to
Mexican court filings.
Federal agents caught people who work for Mexican cartels depositing illicit funds in Bank of America accounts in Atlanta, Chicago and Brownsville,
Texas, from 2002 to 2009. Mexican drug dealers used shell companies to open accounts at HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe's biggest bank by assets, an
investigation by the Mexican Finance Ministry found.
Those two banks weren't accused of wrongdoing. Bank of America spokeswoman Shirley Norton and HSBC spokesman Roy Caple say laws bar them from
discussing specific clients. They say their banks strictly follow the government rules.
Money changers
A Mexican judge on Jan. 22 accused the owners of six centros cambiarios, or money changers, in Culiacan and Tijuana of laundering drug funds through
their accounts at the Mexican units of Banco Santander SA, Citigroup Inc. and HSBC, according to court documents filed in the case.
The money changers are in jail while being tried. Citigroup, HSBC and Santander, the largest Spanish bank by assets, weren't accused of any
wrongdoing.
The three banks say Mexican law bars them from commenting on the case, adding that they each carefully enforce anti-laundering programs.
FOLLOW THE MONEY . . .
bajajazz - 6-30-2010 at 08:08 AM
Law enforcement typically follows the drugs, because it leads to drug thugs no one cares about. Following the money, which is much more effective, is
officially discouraged because it leads to the suits -- politicians, bankers, law enforcement types -- who have social and political clout.
Bajajorge - 6-30-2010 at 08:24 AM
Where's Rep Barney Frank and Sen Chris Dodd when you need them. Probably to busy ripping off Freddi and Fanni.
Stupid?
lookingandbuying - 6-30-2010 at 08:51 AM
These banker's are either stupid crooks or plain criminals. In either case, they should ALL be in jail, for a very long time. Conducting business
with a cambio is and has been a known source of money laundering, for years and years!! Decades?
Blaming thier problems on "weak internal controls" just does not sit right with me. The guys that do this type of stuff are just as bad as the
smugglers and narco killers in my opinion.
gnukid - 6-30-2010 at 09:09 AM
Institutional Money Laundering is Systemic
PBS Getting Dirty Money Clean with excellent short video
BOA Settles Money Laundering Case
Union Bank fined over controls on money-laundering
BCCI A Capital Scandal
MitchMan - 6-30-2010 at 10:47 AM
Isn't it weird that money laundering at the top gets by, but if you or I try to deposit more than $10,000 cash in a US bank, you get written up and
docs sent to the IRS. Try to move a little cash around and see how tough it is both here and in Mexico.
Sometimes I get the feeling that the powers that be simply exploit us underlings at will.
[Edited on 6-30-2010 by MitchMan]
motoged - 6-30-2010 at 11:07 AM
Connect the banks with government institutions. Wasn't Oliver North and the CIA well established in trafficking narcotics?
No big surprise here....it's way easier to bust the guy smoking a joint or the guy on the corner than nailing the banks' presidents.
Next old story???
gnukid - 6-30-2010 at 11:11 AM
The many articles reporting on bankster money laundering postulate that 10% of Mexico's economy is fueled by money laundering. Reading further suggests the global numbers are far higher, keeping in mind that the
massive money laundering is supporting an illegal drug market and a illegal weapons market, which also supports a grossly inflated huge police/prison
industry which also profits greatly on non-violent criminals-all of which in turn support a false Real Estate market funded by laundered money. All of
these economic machines, banking, drugs, weapons, prisons and policing fund our false economy, fund investment and Real Estate which affects nearly
everyone negatively, everyone except the few who profit.
Economic adviser Catherine Austin Fitts, writes about the exponentially negative effects of these global financial movements on the economies of local communities,
yet when she conducted polls and asked community groups that, if we could turn off the economic drug and money machine would they turn it off and
accept the loss of the economic activity, most people say no because they fear a personal loss of income or savings, yet we all suffer greatly from
the negative consequences with the false notion that we are buoyed up by a higher stock market.
So, having read these short articles on vast banking fraud which is highly profitable and without serious consequence, knowing that money laundering
supports a false economy we all support by our action or inaction, what reasonable responses do we have?
The evidence is well reported that this is a systemically supported economy of fraud and illegal contraband that hurts everyone at the bottom and
funnels profits to a small group at the top. Don't think it doesn't affect you in whichever pueblo you live, it does as it affects which projects get
support, and creates unfair advantages for some on the backs of others-even if you think you do not participate in black economic cycle - you do.
Of course, most of us read in elementary schools about the international Opium trade routes and ships that fueled feudal kingdoms and are aware that
we are still fighting over these crops and routes today, now in the longest running US war in Afghanistan which few would argue is making anyone safer
yet we persist because as Leon Panetta said this week, "50-100 al qaeda remain in Afghanistan."
What simple actions can we come up with, to support our own local community to address the debilitating systemic economic cycle of drugs sales,
weapons sales, prison-police industry, military industry and money laundering which support global corporations yet hurt our local communities and our
ability to compete in businesses?
[Edited on 6-30-2010 by gnukid]
castaway$ - 6-30-2010 at 12:05 PM
And the usual government response- Nobody is going to jail, just pay us a fine we want our cut, until next time your caught then you can pay us again.
chippy - 6-30-2010 at 02:20 PM
Business as usual.
gnukid - 6-30-2010 at 05:04 PM
If you follow this story it gets much worse, the who, what, where and how is well researched and reported, its all there in the global papers for
those who read, yet not well reported in American Media.
http://www.madcowprod.com/08082006.html
COCAINE ONE BUST LIFTS VEIL ON GLOBAL NARCOTICS CARTEL
AUGUST 8, 2006--Venice,FL.
by Daniel Hopsicker
A DC9 registered to a company which once used as its address the hanger of Huffman Aviation, the flight school at the Venice, FL Airport which trained
both terrorist pilots who crashed planes into the World Trade Center, was caught in Campeche by the Mexican military April 10th carrying 5.5 tons of
cocaine destined for the U.S.
Beyond a few half-hearted stabs at pinning blame for the crime on ‘scapegoats du jour’ like the FARC in Colombia or Hugo Chavez in Venezuela,
authorities in Mexico and the U.S. have had virtually nothing to say about the case.
In the more than three months since, the massive seizure has slipped into a black hole.
One of the chief shareholders in SkyWay Aircraft, the company which owned the DC9 airliner (N900SA) seized in Mexico with 5.5 tons of cocaine aboard,
is a private investment bank in Dallas which also raised funds for a Mexican industrialist with reported ties to a Cali and Juarez Cartel narcotics
trafficker, the MadCowMorningNews has learned.
An investigation into the circumstances surrounding the seizure of the DC9 airliner (dubbed “Cocaine One” for its paint job and Seal designed to
impersonate planes from the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security) has unearthed evidence which is beginning to pierce the heavy curtain behind which the
biggest taboo in the U.S. mainstream media has remained hidden: the identities of the until-now anonymous American Drug Lords.
Meet the Masters of the Universe
What local officials blundered into at a remote airport in the farthest corner of Mexico’s Yucatan may have earth-shaking reverberations felt around
the world… if the true story of what happened there becomes widely known...
The seizure in Ciudad del Carmen has exposed the links of a global narcotics cartel that may be the most powerful political force on the planet.
Based on court documents, SEC filings, records of incorporation, and interviews with eyewitnesses, the elements which comprise this global narcotics
cartel—all of which will be named and covered in this series—include the following:
Rogue U.S. defense contractor Titan Corp in San Diego; CIA proprietary airlines; “fugitive” Saudi billionaires, Gulf States Sheiks and financiers; the
Israeli Mossad and right wing Israeli political parties identified with Jewish settler interests; “retired” officers of the CIA and U.S. military
intelligence; Texas Republican kingmakers and private investment banks; member of U.S. organized crime...
Also... stock swindlers in Vancouver, Canada responsible for multi-billion dollar financial fraud; officials from the party of Mexican President
Vicente Fox; Colombian and Mexican drug cartels; Florida air charter companies which enjoy—as did the Florida aviation companies associated with the
terrorist hijackers—apparent official immunity from prosecution; and Lebanese “industrialists” in Mexico known to the Mexican press as the
“Narco-Pederastas,” for their penchant for molesting children, with apparent immunity from prosecution, both boys and girls, as young as four.
Five ton shipments must be the the industry standard
Today’s story begins in Dallas, Texas...
As stated in the lead to this story, one of the chief shareholders in the company which owned the DC9 airliner (N900SA) seized in Mexico with 5.5
tons of cocaine aboard is a private investment bank in Dallas which also raised funds for a Mexican industrialist who reportedly financed a narcotics
trafficker linked to both the Cali and Juarez Cartel.
In a major irony, the trafficker involved, Manuel Vicente Losada, was arrested in Chile after being linked to another five ton cocaine shipment, this
one over the high seas.
Private investment bank Argyll Equities LLC in Boerne, Texas, is part of The Argyll Group, headquartered in La Jolla, CA., incorporated in Texas,
Nevada,, and Delaware, whose undisclosed principals are involved, according to their website, in “providing creative financial solutions globally.”
One example of the firm’s creative financial solutions: According to documents filed with the SEC in 2005, Argyll Equities LLC was paid to raise a
$17.0 million loan for Mexican industrialist Jose Serrano Segovia’s shipping line, GRUPO TMM.
The Santiago Times, an English language newspaper in Chile, reported on May 5, 1998 that Segovia “provided significant capital” to a “Chilean
narcotics trafficker" named Manuel Vicente Losada, arrested in the Chilean capital of Santiago after being “linked to a shipment of five tons of
cocaine which U.S. drug enforcement officials in Miami intercepted over six years ago on the vessel Harbour, as it headed toward Guantanamo Bay.”
“As it headed for… Guantanamo Bay?”
“In September 1997, Mexican newspaper El Universal de Mexico connected Losada to the Juarez Cartel of Mexico, referring to him as "the Chilean
narcotics trafficker," the paper reported.
“Both Losada and Jose Serrano denied any connection to the Juarez Cartel.”
Drug trafficker Losada, said the paper, is a partner in some 30 shipping companies.
Jose Serrano Segovia owns shipping lines too, and until recently controlled what used to be Mexico’s flagship airline, Mexicana. This would appear to
be an excellent example of what has been called the corporatization of narcotics trafficking which began taking place during the late 1980’s, while
then-Vice President George H. W. Bush led the DEA’s task force in Miami.
Juan Serrano Segovia is one of a handful of Mexican “big corporate guns” lucky enough to have been feted at a private dinner several years ago hosted
by Gov. Jeb Bush, leading a Florida trade mission to Mexico.
"The evening turned into a kind of let's-get-to-know-each-other-socially affair." Joseph Lacher, BellSouth's Florida president, confided to The Miami
Herald.
Ask Baby Doc: Toxic waste is good business.
Was Argyll Equities LLC the victim of “dashed bad luck” in providing funding for an operation which may be providing cover for something else? Other
recent examples of Argyll’s “creative financing globally” provide at least a tentative answer...
Remember the infamous toxic garbage barge which circled the world for more than two years in search of a country willing to accept its cargo of toxic
ash from a Philadelphia dump site? The barge, the Khian Sea, left the territorial waters of the United States, went to the Bahamas, then to the
Dominican Republic, Honduras, Bermuda, Guinea Bissau, and the Netherlands Antilles. No one would take it...
That is, until it got to Haiti. There, U.S.-backed dictator Baby Doc Duvalier issued a permit for the "fertilizer," and 4,000 tons was dumped onto the
beach in the town of Gonalves.
Argyll Equities LLC provided funding to the man who owned the barge, one Louis D. Paolino, who later, and perhaps understandably, tired of the garbage
business, and sold his company to Wayne Huizenga’s Waste Management in Miami, which runs, news accounts demurely report, “much of New York's extremely
lucrative garbage industry.”
How unlucky can one private investment bank get?
Maybe somebody left it on the plane?
Mr. Huizenga, readers of “Welcome to TERRORLAND” may recall, flew to the Naples, FL airport in his private helicopter adorned with the symbol of the
Miami Dolphins (he owned them at the time) to have a private tête-à-tête on the runway with mysterious financier Wallace J. Hilliard, the owner of
Huffman Aviation in Venice.
Alert readers will recall that during the same month, July of 2000, that Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi arrived to attend his flight school,
Hilliard’s Lear jet was surrounded by DEA agents on the runway of Orlando Executive Airport.
They found 43 pounds of heroin onboard.
Argyll Equities is currently involved in a still-unexplained imbroglio which may shed some light on this milieu which seems to attract such large
quantities of narcotics…
According to a federal indictment, the lucky company was the recipient of $9.7 million dollars it didn't earn, in a “purported stock loan program
operated by Argyll Equities, L.L.C,” which resulted in criminal charges earlier this year against three men.
“The complaint alleges the men made false statements to a hedge fund operator so they could keep $25 million from the fund that was invested this year
with Nevada-based American Trade Industries, Inc., according to US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and the US Secret Service in Chicago,” the AP reported.
That's right. THAT Fitzgerald.
General Stroessner isn't dead. He's on vacation with Franco.
The men were accused of conspiring to perpetrate a $26 million dollar fraud on the administrator of a private hedge fund in Lake Forest, IL, who
turns out to be mother of “Wedding Crashers” actor Vince Vaughn.
According to the indictment, one of the accused men, Richard E. Warren, apprehended as he attempted to board a plane for London, told Sharon Vaughn
that he “had a special government clearance,” was “licensed by USG to participate in secret trading programs.”
Also indicted was Frank L. Cowles Jr., who owns an Arabian horse farm near Washington D.C., where he is referred to in news accounts as a “Virginia
businessman,” and who is married to the Ambassador to the U.S. of the tiny country of Paraguay, Leila Teresa Rachid de Cowles.
Paraguay, in Latin America’s infamous triangle region, is suspected by the State Dept. of “helping to finance Islamic terrorist groups” through
Lebanese traders in Ciudad del Este, a lawless border town, called South America’s "contraband capital.”
Of anecdotal interest only—since a U.S. District Court judge in Chicago recently dropped criminal charges against Cowles— is the fact that Ambassador
Rachid is among the five percent of Paraguay's inhabitants of Arab descent. Her father was born in Homs, Syria; her mother is from Ba'albek, Lebanon.
"We used the shares for toilet paper... and still made out like bandits."
Argyll Equities LLC is the second-largest shareholder in SkyWay, according to bankruptcy filings, owning nearly 21 million shares of totally worthless
stock, which might be considered something of an investment black eye, unless other undisclosed considerations were involved.
Last week we reported the discovery that SkyWay Aircraft had been leasing a “repair” facility for more than $20,000 a month at DFW Airport in
Dallas—even though the company had nothing to repair— from Richard Rainwater, called “George W. Bush’s biggest supporter” and “the power behind the
throne” in news accounts during Bush’s first Presidential campaign.
New evidence unearthed since then has begun to fill in the picture of an operation which boasted a bewildering international cast of characters, in
San Diego, Israel, Miami, Dallas, and in the case of two prominent principals, on the lam…
SkyWay Aircraft was not a real entity, in the sense of a corporation engaging in commerce for profit. The now bankrupted-firm’s only utility was to
serve as a dummy front company which provided cover for the larger operation, and as a vehicle to part innocent people from their investments.
Individuals involved in the operation have extensive and wide-ranging connections to each other which clearly pre-date the brief life span of the
front company which ostensibly controlled the twin DC9 airliners.
"Cocaine, TOW Missiles, renditions... We're a flexible airline."
Since the MadCowMorningNews was successful last month in obtaining the FAA registration records for “Cocaine One,” the accumulating evidence has all
pointed to a clear conclusion: the DC9 carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine was a CIA plane which belongs to the Agency’s no-longer-totally-secret airline.
Based at the Clearwater-St. Petersburg International Airport, both “Cocaine One,” and its twin, a second DC9 (N120NE) were being used by an
operation which includes the former head of the CIA proprietary airline used to ferry TOW missiles to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime in Iran, as part
of the Iran Contra Scandal.
Adnan Khashoggi lieutenant Ramy El-Batrawi, who supplied one of the two DC9’s, is the former President of an admitted CIA subsidiary airline.
Jetborne International, a company supposedly owned by El-Batrawi’s long-time boss, Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, folded after being indicted for
illegally ferrying TOW missiles to Iran, an “enterprise” which netted someone—though not the U.S. Government or the Contras it was supposedly
funding—a tidy bit of change a U.S. Senate investigation estimated to be $16 million dollars.
The Tower Commission Report into the Iran-Contra Scandal first exposedJetborne as a CIA proprietary. When it came time to begin shipping the missiles,
said the report, Oliver North had asked a CIA official for the name of a “reliable” charter airline.
“CIA’s Air Branch suggested the use of a proprietary, the proprietary was told to await a call, and “the airline was assured that the caller (North)
had sufficient funds for the charter,” stated the report.
The public commercial charter airline North called was Jetborne International. By the time the firm was “outed” as a CIA airline, it had already gone
bankrupt.
Six degrees of deviated septums
But none of this does anything to explain Ramy El-Batrawi and Adnan Khashoggi’s other major connection with the founder of SkyWay Aircraft, Miami
attorney Michael Farkas. Their hidden connections may reveal a larger, previously secret organization.
Last month the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Khashoggi and Ramy Al Batrawi, his lieutenant for the past 20 years, with stock fraud in
U.S. District Court for Central California. Both men are both currently on the lam after being accused of orchestrating a $130 million fraud, called
the “Stockwalk case,” involving the stock price of another firm headed by el-Batrawi called GenesisIntermedia.
GenesisIntermedia was incorporated by the long-time attorney of the man once reckoned by the U.S. Government to be the biggest drug smuggler in
American history...CIA pilot Barry Seal.
Seal was assassinated in 1986 at the reported behest of then-Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush, the father of our current President.
Hey. Is it a small world, or what?
How to make a billion dollars without hardly trying
Along with GenesisIntermedia, the stock of two other companies was used to generate fraudulent loans in the Stockwalk scam. One was a company called
Holiday RV. Stores. The other was Imperial Credit Industries.
Michael Farkas is involved with both firms.
Holiday R.V. Stores was owned and controlled by Michael Farkas, through a holding company he founded called Atlas Recreational Holdings.
Michael Farkas and Adnan Khashoggi were partners in a $300 million scam. It was called “the largest brokerage industry failure in more than 30
years.”
Michael Farkas, is also on the board of Genesis Realty, founded by Ramy El-Batrawi, a man who is clearly no piker when it comes to pilfering money
from a public company…
His GenesisIntermedia exploits put Glenn and Brent Kovar’s $40 million theft at SkyWay in the shade.
“Just three months after GenesisIntermedia’s Initial Public Offering (IPO), the nearly $17 million raised in the offering was gone,” read one wire
service story.
“The creative dealings of defendant El-Batrawi partly explains how this money disappeared so quickly,” reported the AP
Board meeting on Tuesday at the Spearmint Rhino
While we can detain ourselves only a moment longer with the colorful Stockwalk Scandal, a brief mention of a few of the other stalwarts involved would
include:
Kenneth D'Angelo, a New Jersey stock finder with a criminal and civil record Richard Evangelista, an employee at a New Jersey brokerage and President
of Local 18 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters; and Bradford Keiller, a Las Vegas
Strip club entrepreneur with a tastefully named string of strip clubs in London, Moscow, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, all called The Spearmint Rhino.
A recent headline about Keiller’s business in Las Vegas may have said it all: "FULL FRONTAL BATTLE OF THE BOOBS AS THE WORLD'S GAMBLING CAPITAL GOES
BACK TO SLEAZE.”
Before leaving the ties between Michael Farkas and Ramy El-Batrawi and Adnan Khashoggi, we discovered a story from the St Paul Pioneer Press (where
the fraud bankrupted one of that city’s biggest firms) that may help explain our contention that what we are witnessing is the daily workaday
transactions of a very large but still-invisible organization:
“SEC filings show ties among Imperial, Holiday and Genesis,” reported the Saint Paul Pioneer Press on April 22 2002.
The Israeli Connection, Pt. 1
“For example, El-Batrawi owns a private company called Genesis Diversified Investments, which is an investor in a company called Aviation Group that
in 2001 merged with a British Columbia company called Travelbyus.”
“Lee Sanders, the chairman of Travelbyus is a director of Holiday. Riley is a former chief executive of Holiday and its largest shareholder. Riley
also is among the largest shareholders of Imperial.”
Michael Farkas’ connections to right wing Israeli political parties, and to Israeli Mossad, have already been ably covered by others. Farkas was
listed in 2005 as president of Manhigut USA. This is the US branch of the Israeli Manhigut Yehudit, involved in fundraising for the radical settlers
who were trying to resist the Gaza withdrawal.
Suffice it to say that he serves as the American representative of an ultra-nationalist Zionist party in Israel; he is also the American sales agent
for anti-missile technology developed by Israel Aircraft Industries, and is a Director of spy technology company CCS, along with individuals with
histories so colorful that—were we to start—we could go on about them all day.
Oh, maybe just one example: CCS International’s Latin American sales manager, Menachem Cohen, who was convicted in 2002 for illegally exporting
passive phone interception equipment to individuals in Colombia conversant with the drug trade.
Titan Corp was thinking ahead, Pt 1
CCS commercializes and brings to market trinkets said to have been invented by innovative minds at the CIA and Israeli Mossad.
If you’re looking for sunglasses fitted with a fiber-optic video camera, or have need of an umbrella that is bullet proof, a baseball cap that is
strong enough to repel a hatchet blow, or a surveillance microphone that looks for all the world like a shirt button, Mr. Farkas and his partners can
oblige.
Of particular interest for our purposes at least, is the early interest shown in Mr. Farkas by The Titan Corporation, who made an early investment in
his obvious potential, in 2000.
SkyWay Aircraft was presumably still a gleam in Mr. Farkas’ eye when Titan put up $72,386 for 1,113,627 restricted shares of the Company which became
SkyWay.
Are they forward thinking, or what?
Bankruptcy is a state of mind
One unexpected discovery was that the narcotics trafficking is just one of the lucrative criminal enterprises the enterprise is engaged in.
The registration records of the twin DC9’s involved in the operation reveal that there is apparently something special about owning of these
particular planes...
You get a free pass to steal from unwary investors.
At least six of the companies associated with “Cocaine One” and its twin airliner have been involved in massive fraud resulting in hundreds of
millions of dollars being swindled from innocent investors and shareholders.
SkyWay, Jetborne… even Mexican industrialist Juan Serrano Segovia’s GRUPO TMM defaulted on $377 million in loans several months ago.
We will be keeping a running tally of companies associated with the operation finding it necessary to declare bankruptcy…but only after being stripped
of anything not securely tied down.
"The only good Indians... are on our payroll"
Jack Abramoff played the Lone Ranger to a whole host of Indian casino Tonto's. But this is just one of the many ways this secret organization has
recently used the special status of Native Americans.
In the StockWalk scam, which easily netted as much as Abramoff's casino fraud, the firm used to perpetrate the fraud was native American-owned.
Called Native Nations Securities, it was the brainchild of a Hollywood actress named Valerie Red-Horse. Ms. Red-Horse, the first Native American to
control a securities firm, may have been a little light in the bond-trading business, but she learned financial fraud at the feet of the master...
"Red-Horse got her first exposure to Wall Street while a theater student at UCLA," read one news account. "She went looking for part-time work and
was referred through the school's placement office to the Beverly Hills office of Drexel Burnham Lambert, where she landed a job as an assistant to
junk-bond king Michael Milken."
Her bio says she's been in a movie called "Naturally Native." She has guest-starred on "Babylon 5." She recently starred in the acclaimed ABC
made-for-television movie "The Secret of Lizard Woman."
As an actress she is perhaps best known for serving as the model for Mattel's Pocahontas doll. Probably not on her bio: She helped, or was used, by
some well-connected fraudsters steal over $300 million dollars.
Chief Bearskin & "the boys"
One more example will suffice, at least for now:
Express One International is one of the bankrupt firms which was also an owner of the DC9's, a company whose colorful corporate history would make, we
think, an excellent episode of Babylon 5.
Express One International's look-alike DC9 was sold to Skyways/Royal Sons just before they went bankrupt. Now they're back.
Today the president of Express One International is David Byers, at whose flight school Mohamed Atta trained at the Charlotte County Airport,
according to Charlotte County Sheriff William Clements. t
The airline was founded by the notorious Kenneth Good, who got, with Neil Bush's help, a cool hundred million in loans from Silverado Savings which he
never felt the need to repay. Taxpayers ended up footing the bill.
We don't imagine anyone's heard Neil Bush saying "thanks?"
The company issued a press release recently to announce their plans to assist the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma in developing an aviation business
called Bearskin Aviation Service, hiring Bearskin to provide fleet and baggage handling services at two Air Force bases in England.
"Chief Leaford Bearskin, leader of the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma, founded Bearskin Aviation Service out of his love for aviation and his vision
that a well-run aviation company would provide revenue for Tribal health and education programs," said the press release.
Only a cynic would quibble. Right?
gnukid - 6-30-2010 at 05:11 PM
Third Cocaine Plane Surfaces and is Tied to Web of Government Connections
http://www.narconews.com/Issue49/article2989.html
By Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
January 29, 2008
On a fall evening in a cotton field in Nicaragua, a group of armed men placed a series of torches in a line of planters along a makeshift runway.
About half an hour later, around 9 p.m. that evening, Friday, Nov. 26, 2004, a twin-prop Beechcraft King Air 200 touched down on that rural runway and
came to a stop. The assembled men began to unload the plane, which was packed with cocaine, while holding the sole witness to the event, a local field
hand, captive.
The Beechcraft King Air 200 on a runway in Nicaragua.
Photo: Humboldt Rescue Organization
Before departing, the men attempted to set fire to the plane, but miraculously it did not burn. They departed the area in trucks with the plane’s
valuable payload, leaving behind the lone witness, alive, and more than a half dozen AK-47 automatic rifles.
Several days later, Nicaraguan law enforcers apprehended a truck headed for Honduras carrying 1,100 kilos of cocaine. The driver was arrested and the
cocaine payload seized. The Nicaraguan law enforcers said the source of the seized dope appeared to be the Beech 200 found abandoned in the cotton
field. Police had found traces of cocaine onboard the aircraft as well.
The Beech 200, undamaged by the attempt to set it ablaze, was eventually turned over to the Nicaraguan military for use in future drug war efforts in
that nation.
That’s the storyline provided to the Nicaraguan newspapers (links here and here) that reported on the Beech 200 incident more than three years ago.
Those same newspaper reports included photos of the abandoned aircraft and list the tail number variously as MN-167-NT or MN-168-NT. However, the
photos are taken from angles that fail to show the Beech 200’s tail number.
Narco News ran the press stories about this Beech 200 by a former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agent, who has experience
working in Latin America. The source’s first reaction was to laugh out loud.
ICE, by the way, is apparently connected to ongoing operation in Latin America called the Mayan Express, which Narco News has previously reported
played a role in another cocaine plane shipment — the Gulfstream II jet that crashed in Mexico last September with some 4 tons of coke onboard.
The press reports about the Beech 200 incident just didn’t smell right, given that members of a nonprofit Venezuelan search and rescue group also
obtained their own own photo of the abandoned aircraft. That photo (link here) does show the Beech 200’s tail number: N168D, which Federal Aviation
Administration records indicate is registered to a North Carolina company called Devon Holding and Leasing Inc.
According to press reports and an investigation conducted by the European Parliament into the CIA’s terrorist rendition program, Devon Holding is a
CIA shell company and N168D is a tail number to a CIA aircraft.
The former ICE agent went on to explain the cause of his humor over the Nicaraguan press reports. He said if the armed men involved in the cocaine
shipment were indeed real narco-traffickers, they would not have left a witness alive to talk, nor would they have bungled the attempt to burn the
plane — which is not a hard thing to accomplish considering the flammable nature of the fuel that feeds it. Most telling, he says, they would never
leave behind their guns.
“Those guns are their only protection,” the ICE agent says. “And an AK-47 is a prized possession in their world.”
The former agent says the press was fed a big fat lie, and they bit on it hook, line and sinker, because it made for good ink. The ICE agent adds
that, to him, the Beech 200 incident has all the markings of a government-run operation. He says the reason the plane was not burned up is that the
plan all along was to reuse the aircraft for use in a future government operation — and it was, according to the press reports, turned back over to
the Nicaraguan government after all.
The CIA-linked tail number on the Beech 200, then, raises some serious questions as to the ultimate destination of the cocaine onboard as well.
Similar questions have been raised about the planned destination of the nearly 4 tons of cocaine onboard the Gulfstream II jet that crashed in the
Mexican Yucatan last fall. A CIA asset named Baruch Vega claims the Gulfstream II was part of a U.S. government operation (the Mayan Express) that
utilized a well-known Colombian narco-trafficker turned informant named Jose Nelson Urrego.
Urrego was arrested on money laundering charges by Panamanian police about a week prior to the Gulfstream II’s crash landing. Urrego claims he worked
for the CIA, according to Panamanian press reports — a fact Vega also confirms. Greg Smith, one of the owners of the Gulfstream II, according to its
bill of sale, also has been linked to past ICE, DEA and CIA operations in Latin America, Narco News reported previously. And the Gulstream II itself
has been linked to past use in the CIA’s terrorist rendition program, according to European investigators.
Given these realities, attorney Mark Conrad, a former supervisory special agent with U.S. Customs, ICE’s predecessor agency, speculates that the Mayan
Express operation is not controlled by ICE at all, but is, in fact, a CIA-run operation using ICE as a cover. He adds that the CIA has agents
operating inside many federal law enforcement agencies utilizing what is known as an “official cover.”
The former ICE agent who spoke with Narco News about the Beech 200 also suspects CIA is running the show in these drug plane operations. He says ICE
is a perfect vehicle for the CIA because it can provide the Agency with a free pass through U.S. ports of entry.
“All an ICE agent has to do is make a call and the cargo will be cleared through the checkpoint,” he says.
Journalist and author Doug Valentine recently revealed the inner workings of these CIA cover methods within DEA in a story he penned for Counterpunch.
From Valentine’s story:
By 1977, some 125 “former” CIA officers had been infiltrated into the DEA at every level of the organization, especially in intelligence units, making
everything possible— from black market arms exchanges, to negotiations with terrorists, to political assassination. It also put the CIA in total
control of targeting.
Leutrell Osborne, a former CIA case officer, told Narco News essentially the same thing when he conveyed his concern about the merging of spook and
law enforcement agendas.
“Law enforcement and intelligence operations have become one and the same,” Osborne says. “We as citizens are all affected by this because it has a
major impact on civil and human rights.”
The Beech 200 and Gulfstream II cocaine planes, both now linked to CIA planes and/or assets, raise the specter of this merged law
enforcement/intelligence approach to the war on drugs — an approach that tolerates or even enables drug running for the sake of some perceived higher
value in the dirty world of covert action. This curious connection is magnified further by the fact that a third cocaine aircraft also appears to be
in the mix: A DC-9 jet apprehended in Mexico in April 2006 with some 5.5 tons of cocaine onboard.
Given the evidence bubbling to the surface due to public faces of these cocaine jets, the pattern seems to be self-evident, even if officially our
government continues to deny the evidence.
Rotating Tail Numbers
The European Parliament, which undertook an exhaustive study of the CIA’s terrorist rendition program, provided the following overview of that program
in a report it issued in 2006:
Ultimately, in this inextricable net, there is also the possibility that single aircrafts change their registration numbers (as for the Gulfstrean V,
from Richmor Aviation, registered as N379P, then, N8068V and then N44982).
There are indeed 51 airplanes alleged to be used in the extraordinary renditions, but, according the Federal Aviation Administration records, there
would be 57 registration numbers. It comes out that some of them are registered more than once.
Among the 51 airplanes alleged to be used by CIA:
26 planes are registered to shell companies and sometimes supported by operating companies.
10 are designed as “CIA frequent flyers”, they belong to Blackwater USA, an important CIA and US Army “classified contractor”. It provides staff,
training and aviation logistic. In this case there is no intermediation of shell companies.
The other 15 planes are from occasional rental from private companies working with CIA as well as with other customers.
2. COMPANIES INVOLVED
Shell Companies 6,
• CROWELL AVIATION TECHNOLOGIES, INC
• PATH CORPORATION
• RAPID AIR TRANS, INC.
• STEVENS EXPRESS LEASING, INC
• AVIATION SPECIALTIES, INC
• DEVON HOLDING AND LEASING, INC
• BAYARD FOREIGN MARKETING, LLC.
• KEELER & TATE MANAGEMENT, LLC
The rotating tail number scenario seems to have played a role in the Beech 200 incident. The number on the plane, N168D, as shown in the photo from
the Venezuelan nonprofit group, actually is registered to a different aircraft, according to FAA records. That tail number, N168D, FAA records show,
belongs to a large cargo plane known as a CN-235-300, and its registered owner is the same CIA shell company, Devon Holding, referenced in the
European Parliament’s report.
A photo and further background on this CIA plane can be found at this site.
The Beech 200’s real tail number, the Venezuelan search and rescue group reports, is N391SA — which is registered to a company in St. Petersburg,
Fla., called Skyway Aircraft Inc., FAA records show.
Coincidentally, the DC-9 jetliner apprehended in Mexico in April 2006 also is linked to a Skyway Aircraft Inc. in the Tampa/St. Pete metro area. That
Skyway Aircraft, based in Clearwater, is an affiliate of Skyway Communications Holding Corp., which has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings
since June 2005. (Journalist Daniel Hopsicker has reported extensively on Skyway Communications’ role in the mystery of the cocaine jets.)
Skyway Communications, the parent company of Skyway Aircraft in Clearwater, arranged to purchase the DC-9 (tail number N900SA) via a stock swap with a
Costa Rica-based firm called Dupont Investment Fund #57289, in November 2004, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC). However, the jet was ultimately registered with the FAA in August 2005 by a company called Royal Sons Inc. prior to being sold to an unknown
Venezuelan buyer only days before it was apprehended in Mexico on April 10, 2006, with 5.5 tons of cocaine onboard.
Royal Sons President Frederick J. Geffon is a shareholder in Skyway Communications and his company is a major creditor in the Skyway Communications
bankruptcy (links here and here). In addition, Royal Sons and Skyway Communications previously teamed up to purchase a separate DC-9 via a joint loan
agreement, a January 2004 SEC filings shows. That DC-9, tail number N120NE, is now registered to a company in Houston called AIRCRAFT GUARANTY TRUST
LLC TRUSTEE, FAA records show.
The paper trail is complex, but it all boils down to several individuals who conducted business with each other via several South Florida companies
that all intersect with Skyway Communications, the parent company of Skyway Aircraft in Clearwater, Fla. Those individuals are the following:
Brent Kovar, president of Skyway Communications;
Joy Kovar, (Brent’s mother) also an officer of Skyway Communications;
James Kent, CEO of Skyway Communications;
Glenn Kovar, (Joy’s husband and Brent’s father) listed as the original sole board member of Skyway Aircraft in its Nevada articles of incorporation,
SEC records show. Skyway Aircraft in Clearwater, Florida, is set up as a foreign corporation (based in Nevada) that does business in the Sunshine
State.
The Kovars all intersect through a company called Skyway Global LLC, which licensed the wireless technology to Skyway Aircraft that was the basis of a
proprietary air-to-ground communications system that Skyway Communications marketed as its exclusive product. The Kovars, according to a 2002 SEC
filing, are all officers of Skyway Global.
Skyway Communications CEO Kent also has an interesting background, SEC records show:
Mr. Kent served in various government contract management positions providing financial and program management services supporting national
communications and intelligence projects for the Department of Defense, National Security Agency, and Department of the Navy.
And Skyway Communications itself is linked to the nation’s national security apparatus, according to a press release the company issued through
Business Wire in May 2004:
As previously announced, SkyWay Communications Holding Corp. (OTCBB:SWYC), and its wholly owned subsidiary, Sky Way Aircraft Inc., have entered into a
sales and marketing partnership agreement with The Titan Corporation, a multi-billion dollar US defense industries contractor who presently manages
more than 2,500 contracts with a backlog of more than $4 billion dollars in the areas of Homeland Security and Anti-Terrorism, Command, Control and
Communications Systems, Aircraft Defense Systems, Network Communications, as well as other information and communications systems and solutions
associated with national defense.
Finally, Brent Kovar appears to have a special relationship with the movers and shakers of the U.S. political system, according to this August 2003
press release:
Congressman Tom Delay, Majority Leader, has appointed Brent C, Kovar, to serve as the Honorary Chairman, Business Advisory Council. Officials from the
National Republican Congressional Committee announced that Mr. Brent C. Kovar has been appointed to service on the Business Advisory Council in
recognition of his valuable contributions and dedication to the Republican Party.
Skyway Communications lost some $40 million between 2002 and its eventual bankruptcy filing in 2005. But it did manage to directly or indirectly
acquire two DC-9 aircraft, one of which eventually found its way to Mexico, via Royal Sons and then an unknown Venezuelan owner, with 5.5 tons of
cocaine onboard.
Royal Sons’ Geffon claims he is a victim of Skyway Communications debacle and stresses that he knows very little about the DC-9 coke jet and has no
responsibility for the cocaine found onboard since his company did not own the jet when it was apprehended in Mexico.
“I just chalked it all up to a bad experience,” he says.
Brent Kovar, in a promotional video for Skyway Aircraft.
Photo: St. Petersburg Times
And Glenn Kovar has another interesting business associate, according to a check of Florida’s corporation records. Glenn Kovar is listed as an officer
in an inactive Florida company called Homeland Security Tracking Enforcement Inc., along with his wife Joy and another businessman named Donald A.
Mitchell.
It turns out that Mitchell in 1996 served as the president of a Panamanian investment company called The Firm of Marc Harris, according to SEC
filings. Mitchell left Harris’ firm about a year later due to a business dispute, court records show.
That was probably a stroke of luck for him given the eventual fate of the founder of The Firm of Marc Harris. Marc Harris, was arrested in Nicaragua
in June 2003 on money laundering charges and is currently serving a 17-year stint in U.S. federal prison.
The Kovars could not be reached for comment. The phone number for Skyway Communications is now disconnected. Geffon says he knows only that Brent
Kovar resides in the tiny St. Petersburg community of Tierra Verde.
Skyway St. Pete
Brent Kovar’s address in Tierra Verde is 121 6th St., according to corporation records filed with the state of Florida.
Brent Kovar, who served as president of Skyway Aircraft in Clearwater, lives a short distance away from the home of Larry Peters, who owns a company
with an identical name (Skyway Aircraft Inc.) in St. Petersburg.
Peters’ address in Tierra Verde is 615 Monte Cristo Blvd., Florida, corporation records show.
Like the DC-9 linked to Skyway Communications that was eventually sold to a buyer in Venezuela, Peters’ company sold the Beech 200 to a Venezuelan
purchaser as well, in October 2004, about a month before it was apprehended in a Nicaraguan cotton field linked to a payload of some 1,100 kilos of
cocaine. In addition, since 2004, Peters’ Skyway Aircraft has sold four additional planes to Latin American buyers, according to FAA records — the
most recent a Gulfstream jet exported to Panama in June 2007.
(However, this is not the same Gulfstream II that crashed in Mexico last September.)
Like Geffon, Peters says he has no control over what happens to an aircraft his company sells after it leaves the country.
DC-9 with tail number N900SA, shown here two years before its aprehension in Mexico with 5.5 tones of cocaine. Note the Skyway logo toward the front
door.
Photo: D.R. 2004 Michael Cater, Airliners.net
“When we sell a plane, it is deregistered and it leaves my place,” Peters told Narco News. “I sell about five planes a month all over. I also have a
business in Brazil that does refurbishing work on planes.”
Interestingly, the Gulfstream II jet that was ditched in Mexico’s Yucatan last September was sold to a company controlled by two Brazilian businessmen
prior to being flipped to Greg Smith (a U.S. government-connected pilot) and his partner, Clyde O’Connor. However, that is likely just another
coincidence in a series of coincidences involving the three cocaine aircraft.
Peters adds that he has no personal relationship with Brent Kovar, though he does know they are neighbors in the waterfront neighborhood of Tierra
Verde. In fact, Peters claims he was troubled by the fact that Kovar operated a company with the same name as his company, which is something Peters
says the state of Florida should not have allowed.
“I followed him [Brent Kovar] home one day,” Peters says. “He drives a Hummer with the Skyway name on it, and I followed him home, and then contacted
my lawyer.”
Peters adds, however, that he chose not to take the matter to court because he could not afford an extended, costly litigation battle.
He also declined to disclose any information about the Venezuelan buyer of the Beech 200.
“I have no idea who we exported that plane to in Venezuela and I wouldn’t release that information anyway,” he says. “…There’s nothing I can do to
control what happens after I sell an airplane to someone.”
Following the Vanishing Guns
So, it seems, this entire paper trail of coincidence leads back to some half dozen supposedly abandoned AK-47s in a cotton field in Nicaragua. And the
odds are, if a former ICE agent is to be believed, those weapons, if they existed at all, were likely a red herring used to bait a gullible media.
Journalist Valentine, in his recent Counterpunch story, offers some insight into the possible nature of this complex trail of coincidence:
With Bush’s war on terror, the situation has only gotten worse. In Afghanistan and South West Asia, the DEA is entirely infiltrated and controlled by
the CIA and military. DEA headquarters is basically an adjunct of the Oval Office. And the Establishment continues to keep the lid on the story. After
sending my manuscript to two reviewers—one with CIA connections, the other with DEA connections—my publisher has stopped communicating with me. I
think my editor just wants me to go away.
One can only wonder how deeply America will descend into this vortex of fear and subservience to state security before it vanishes altogether.
So, what does this intersection of government agencies and assets, money launderers, narco-traffickers, cocaine jets, and public and private companies
really reveal, and how does it relate to Valentine’s own revelations? What was the CIA’s true interest in these drug flights, and how many drug
shipments has the agency protected toward that end?
For now, we will have to keep digging, since nobody in our government, including the Congress, seems inclined to investigate the matter. As a result,
the drug war will continue as one immense cover story that makes for good ink — and fiction.
fishabductor - 6-30-2010 at 09:29 PM
Nice book!!
motoged - 7-1-2010 at 02:30 PM
Aahhhh.....the facts to back up my belief.
Good research....