So, it's looking like some of the money from the UN's Oil for Food scam might have found its way into Al-Qaeda's pockets.
{...}Now, buried in some of the United Nation's own confidential documents, clues can be seen that underscore the possibility of just such a Saddam-Al Qaeda link — clues leading to a locked door in this Swiss lakeside resort. Next to that door, a festive sign spells out in gold letters under a green flag that this is the office of MIGA, the Malaysian Swiss Gulf and African Chamber. Registered here 20 years ago as a society to promote business between the Gulf States and Asia, Europe and Africa, MIGA is a company that the United Nations and the U.S. government says has served as a hub of Al Qaeda finance: A terrorist chamber of commerce. {...}As is typical of terrorist financial webs, the details surrounding MIGA quickly become bewildering — part of the point being to camouflage the illicit flow of funds with legitimate business. Part of the problem in finding the truth is that cross-border transactions out of such financial havens as Switzerland are smothered in banking secrecy. But even with that secrecy — and shortly after the Sept.11, 2001, attacks on the United States — both MIGA and its chief founder and longtime president, Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, landed on the U.N. watchlist of entities and individuals belonging to, or affiliated with Al Qaeda. Nasreddin is a member of the terror-linked Muslim Brotherhood Nasreddin's longtime business partner, Egyptian-born Youssef Nada, also of the Muslim Brotherhood, likewise appears on the U.N.'s Al Qaeda watchlist, as do a slew of both Nasreddin's and Nada's enterprises. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in August 2002 described Nada and Nasreddin as "supporters of terrorism" involved in "an extensive financial network providing support to Al Qaeda and other terrorist-related organizations." Far less attention has been paid to the small, select band of MIGA's other charter members. But one of them, Iraqi-born Ahmed Totonji, set up shop years ago just outside Washington, D.C., and is now among those named by U.S. federal authorities in an investigation into a cluster of companies and Islamic non-profits based in Herndon, Virginia, suspected of having funneled money to terrorist groups. MIGA had other founders as well. One of them, who does not appear on the U.N. terror list, is an Arab businessman now in his early 60s, Abdul Rahman Hayel Saeed. Described by an acquaintance as urbane, polite and fluent in English, Hayel Saeed was born into one of Yemen's most prominent business clans, owners of a family-held global conglomerate based in the Yemeni capital of Taiz and named for its founding patriarch: the Hayel Saeed Anam Group of Companies, or HSA. From Yemen, the HSA group boasts a far-flung business empire, including a Yemen-based Islamic bank, and a host of business subsidiaries, affiliates and regional trading offices in places ranging from the United Kingdom to Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia and China. Abdul Rahman Hayel Saeed sits on the HSA board of directors, and ranks high in the management — he is currently running HSA's regional office in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In MIGA, Hayel Saeed holds a prominent spot, as one of four co-founders who back in 1984 delegated power of attorney to the terrorist-linked Nasreddin, giving him authority to run the company. Swiss registry documents show that Hayel Saeed has never resigned from MIGA, nor revoked that power of attorney. Queried about this link to MIGA, neither Hayel Saeed nor the HSA Group's chairman of the board, Ali Mohamed Saeed, has made any response. {...}One of the big questions is whether any of the money skimmed from Oil-for-Food also slopped into terrorist-financing ventures such as MIGA. It's important to note that in tracking terrorist financing, the simplest starting points are the visible links, the potential connections through which money might most easily have flowed. Proving that funds actually coursed through those conduits is far more difficult. In the case of Hayel Saeed, MIGA and the HSA Group, there is no public information available about the precise flow of funds, and no proof that Saddam's money made its way to MIGA. But in looking for patterns that beg for further investigation — especially by authorities with access to detailed U.N. records and information on MIGA accounts — some items here stand out. Most simply, there is the question of why HSA was among those companies favored by Saddam for such a fat slice of business. It is increasingly clear that Saddam did not, on average, choose his contractors either at random, or because they were the most cost-efficient suppliers of relief for the people of Iraq. While some of the deals may have been entirely legitimate, many melded payments for humanitarian goods with illicit kickbacks and payoffs. In such cases, it was a lucrative privilege to be tapped as an Oil-for-Food contractor by Saddam's regime. The lingering question, for any individual case, becomes: Was there a quid pro quo?{...}
Go read the whole thing.
So, while not definitive in any way, shape or form, there are enough
red flags sticking out of this whole mess to set a bull on a rampage.
I'm not going to go a' speculating, but if this does indeed flesh
out...well, that would be remarkable. The whole "Bush lied about WMD"
excuse will go the way of the dodo rather quickly. Its irrelevancy will
be outed and the link between the War on Terror and Iraq will have been
firmly established. Fox will be showing this report in its extended
format on Breaking Point tomorrow night at 9pm EDT.