Jun 3rd, 2008
Curtain Time for Barack Obama
Three days after the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Aiham Alsammarae, the former electricity minister convicted of corruption in Iraq, put up $2.7 million in property to help raise $8.5 million to free Tony Rezko from jail in Chicago, the Times reported that Alsammarae had contributed six times to Obama’s presidential campaign.
The April 29, 2008 report also noted that before he escaped from jail in Bagdad in December 2006, and returned to Chicago, Obama’s US Senate office had sought information about Alsammarae from the State Department on October 16, 2006 on behalf of Alsammarae’s family while he was being held in jail in Iraq.
As usual, when busted on the contributions given in January, February and March, the Obama camp said it would donate Alsammarae’s money to charity and his spokesman, Ben LaBolt, put out the standard line that Obama does not ever “recall” meeting Alsammarae.
The money missing due to Alsammarae’s corruption in Iraq during the two years he served as electricity minister between August 2003 and May 2005 is estimated to be $2 billion.
The Operation Board Games investigation revealed that Alsammarae signed contracts worth $200 million that benefited both Rezko and the Iraqi-born billionaire, Nadhmi Auchi, who ended up with Riverside Park, a 62-acre lot in the Chicago Loop estimated to now be worth $2.5 billion.
As noted previously in this series, understanding the connections between Auchi and Riverside Park and all the players is the key to understanding Operation Board Games. Financing deals in the Chicago real estate industry were the focus of the investigation from the start and the financing deals involving Riverside Park specifically.
On September 29, 2005, Crain’s Chicago Business news reported that General Mediterranean Holding, “a Luxembourg-based conglomerate headed by Nadhmi Auchi, is buying Riverside Park, a yet-to-be-built development on a prime 62-acre parcel on Roosevelt Road,” quoting Michael Rumman, the director of the Illinois Department of Central Management Services, as a consultant on the project.
Tags: bombshell, michelle, obama