MAJOR FUNDRAISER FOR BUSH, CLINTON, OBAMA ADMITS CONNING BANKS OUT OF $292 MILLION

REUTERS - A wealthy businessman who raised money for leading Democratic Party politicians, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, pleaded guilty on Thursday to defrauding three major banks out of $292 million in loan transactions.

Hassan Nemazee, 60, who once ran a private equity firm, admitted in Manhattan federal court to defrauding Bank of America Corp of more than $142 million, Citigroup Inc of $75 million and HSBC Holdings Plc of $75 million to pay his debt to Citigroup. . .

Nemazee admitted to three charges of bank fraud and one charge of wire fraud. Prosecutors said he had obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from the banks and used fake documents to show supposed ownership of collateral.

Nemazee was listed as one of the top bundlers of contributions to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org, a website run by the Center for Responsive Politics.

He typically donated more than $100,000 annually to Democratic Party political candidates, including Obama and now-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The judge allowed Nemazee to remain free on $25 million bail but under house arrest with electronic monitoring in his Manhattan apartment.

The office of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and the FBI said Nemazee had used proceeds from his scheme to make donations to election campaigns of federal, state and local candidates, political action committees and charities.

The Democratic National Committee declined to comment, but an official said it had been previously announced that the affected donations would go to charity.

REAL NEWS PROJECT, OCTOBER 2007 - The engineer of George W. Bush's rescue from financial disaster-a man who would propel Bush on the path to elective office-has quietly moved into Hillary Clinton's inner circle of key financial backers. The engineer is longtime GOP backer Alan Quasha. His mysterious Harken Energy drew intense scrutiny from investigators and the media in the early 90's and again during Bush's first term because of its dubious financial practices and board members connected to the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Along with a business partner, Quasha has been forging new links with Clinton and her associates for several years. Among other things, they have raised substantial sums for her, and in 2005 they discreetly hired Clinton confidant and longtime Democratic Party money man Terry McAuliffe, providing him with a lucrative temporary perch until the Clinton campaign formally launched with McAuliffe as its chairman.

RUSS BAKER & ADAM FEDERMAN, REAL NEWS PROJECT - Another strong link between Quasha and Clinton is Quasha's business partner, Hassan Nemazee, a top Hillary fundraiser who was trotted out to defend her during the Hsu episode--in which the clothing manufacturer was unmasked as a swindler who seemingly funneled illegal contributions through "donors" of modest means. . .

"That Hillary Clinton's campaign is involved with this particular cast of characters should give people pause," says John Moscow, a former Manhattan prosecutor. In the late 1980s and early '90s he led the investigation of the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) global financial empire--a bank whose prominent shareholders included members of the Harken board. "Too many of the same names from earlier troubling circumstances suggests a lack of control over who she is dealing with," says Moscow, "or a policy of dealing with anyone who can pay.". . .

Russ Baker, Who What Why, August 2009 - On August 25th, Hassan Nemazee, a top fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, was arrested and charged with forging loan documents in order to borrow $74 million from Citibank. . . Behind the Nemazee arrest lies a sprawling cautionary tale of presidents, would-be presidents, and the shadow world of wealthy operators who cozy up to them for their own gain. It reaches into the Bush operation as well as that of the Clintons, and is a microcosm of an influence bazaar that has gone global along with the economy.

Hassan Nemazee, who served as a finance director for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, began raising sizable sums for the Democratic National Committee in the mid-nineties. In 1998, in the midst of the Lewinsky affair, Nemazee collected $60,000 for Bill Clinton's legal defense fund in $10,000 increments from relatives and friends. . .

In 2005, Nemazee and his business partner, Alan Quasha, went deep into the Clinton circle to hire Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton confidante and former chairman of the Democratic Party, for Carret Asset Management, their newly acquired investment firm. During the interregnum between McAuliffe's party chairmanship and the time he officially joined Hillary Clinton's campaign as chairman, Nemazee and Quasha set McAuliffe up with a salary and opened a Washington office for him. . .

In March 2007, Nemazee, at the behest of McAuliffe, threw a dinner for Ms. Clinton at Manhattan's swank Cipriani restaurant, which featured Bill Clinton and raised more than $500,000. In 2008, after Barack Obama gained the nomination, Nemazee raised a comparable sum for him.

Before moving into the Democratic camp, Nemazee had backed such Republican senators as Jesse Helms, Sam Brownback and Alfonse D'Amato. . . Nemazee's business partner, Alan Quasha, who specializes in buying up troubled companies, has also played both sides of the partisan divide. Quasha gave to both Bush and Al Gore in 2000, and in the 2008 race gave to Republicans Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani as well as Democrats Barack Obama and Chris Dodd.

The strikingly trans-partisan and trans-national nature of this high-stakes influence game is best exemplified by the relationship between Quasha's oil company, Harken Energy, and George W. Bush. Harken provided a home for Bush in the 1980's when his own oil businesses failed, offering him handsome compensation and a solid financial base from which to enter politics. Bush was named to the Harken board and received a range of benefits from the company while devoting most of his time to his father's presidential campaign and then his own outside career efforts.

Harken is a curious outfit. Its early funding sources were opaque, and its investors and board members had a dizzying array of connections into global power centers - and ties to the Saudi leadership and the former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the Shah of Iran, as well as to the Swiss Bank, UBS, which has been charged by the US government with providing cover for Americans who were evading taxes.

Around the time George W. Bush joined its board, Harken received an unusual and sizable cash infusion from the Harvard Management Company, which handles Harvard University's endowment, the largest in the nation. . . Former employees of Harvard Management have recently made highly-publicized charges that the company engaged in Enron-style investment practices. . .

Nemazee's role as a foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton can be better understood through his own Iranian connections. His father was a shipping magnate who was close with the Shah of Iran and served as the Shah's commercial attache in Washington; Nemazee was a founding member of the Iranian-American Political Action Committee, a lobbying group.

For more on Harken, see Baker's 2009 book, Family of Secrets