Obama's Iraqi Oil for Food connection
By Andrew Walden
.....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.....
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." ..........
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.