Monday, May 16, 2005
Yes, Let's DO Talk About The Oil-for-Food Scandal!
... as in the Texas Puppeteer Oil-for-Food Scandal! Thanks to Hunter at DailyKos for posting this:
Panel says BayOil key in Saddam schemeAnd just as David Bayless is a very good friend of the GOP, so is his employee, Ludmil Dionissiev -- and unlike Bayless, he hasn't tried to hedge his bets even once with any Democratic donations. Oh, and did I mention that BayOil's buddy Zhirinovsky is a freaking nutcase?
By David IvanovichWASHINGTON - Houston's BayOil (USA) was the "puppeteer" in a scheme to help Russian politicians profit illegally from the United Nations' oil-for-food program and pay kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime, Senate investigators say.
The Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations contends the trading firm, led by Houston's David Chalmers Jr., played a key role in helping Saddam curry favor with Russian leaders. At the time, Saddam was trying to win friends on the U.N. Security Council. "They are involved in Iraqi oil from soup to nuts," a Senate investigator said. [...] BayOil, hoping to get some Iraqi oil, contacted several Russian companies, Senate investigators say. Bulgarian-born Dionissiev, the investigators said, was "well-known to the Russian oil industry." In December 1998, BayOil signed an agreement to purchase Zhirinovsky's crude, the subcommittee said. Zhirinovsky informed Aziz of the deal, and he objected. The Iraqis were not doing business with American firms. So BayOil found a Russian agent, called Nafta Moscow or Nafta Moskva. To facilitate a transaction, Chalmers coached Zhirinovsky on the language he should use in a letter to BayOil, according to one of the panel's reports. Dionissiev, meanwhile, advised Nafta Moskva how to negotiate with the Iraqis. "BayOil is orchestrating this whole thing," one investigator said. Another dubbed the company "the puppeteer."
Mr Zhirinovsky is famous for acknowledging that he dreams of a day "when Russian soldiers can wash their boots in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean". He has also threatened to seize Alaska from the United States, to launch a nuclear strike on Japan, to flood Germany with radioactive waste, and to occupy the Baltic states. "You are standing in our way to the sea ports," he told an Estonian interviewer. Mr Zhirinovsky has been expelled from Bulgaria for insulting its president, and barred from entry to Germany. Iraq's Saddam Hussein figures high among his friends in the international community. Members of "Zhirinovsky's Falcons" - a uniformed group of LDPR supporters - went to Baghdad to show solidarity during the US-led assault on Iraq, Desert Storm.Also indicted, as Kossack Davej reminds us, is Tongsun Park, aka Sun Myung Moon's best buddy. (You know Mr. Moon, right? Runs the right-wing's favorite newspaper? Been accused of running a cult?) HAHAHAHAHAHA.
More blogs about politics.
