Excerpt:
Barrack earned a law degree, worked for Richard Nixon's law firm and early on had experience working with investors in the Middle East.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Saint-Germain_F.C.
Excerpt:
Ownership & Finances
Main article: Ownership and finances of Paris Saint-Germain F.C.
Paris Saint-Germain was managed by Daniel Hechter (1974–1978) and Francis Borelli (1978–1991), before being purchased by the French media company Canal+ in 1991. The takeover of the club by Canal+ happened gradually. The TV channel started buying shares in the club in 1991, but it wasn’t until 1997 that the TV channel owned the majority. After June 2001, Canal+ obtained another 34% of the shares, and in August 2005, they obtained the remaining 2% held by Alain Cayzac, making Canal+ PSG's sole shareholder. On 11 April 2006, Canal+ announced the sale of the club to its new owners, a consortium comprising American investment company Colony Capital, French investment company, Butler Capital Partners, and American investment bank, Morgan Stanley. The club was sold for a reported sum of 41 million euros, with Canal+ taking responsibility for the debt run up by the club under its direction. This sale became effective on 20 June 2006, after Alain Cayzac replaced Pierre Blayau.[17] On 30 June 2009, Colony Capital acquired all the shares of Morgan Stanley, becoming owners of the 95% of the club.[18]http://www.butlercapitalpartners.com/main/rub21.php?lg=en
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Butler_(French_businessman)
Walter Butler wikipedia
Excerpt:
Walter Butler is a French/American businessman.
After completing studies at the ENA, an elite school for high-level civil servants, Walter Butler served from 1983 to 1986 as an Inspector of Finances at the French Ministry of Finances. From 1986 to 1988, he was an advisor to the Minister of Culture and Communication. From 1988 to 1990 he was executive director for the business bank Goldman Sachs in New-York, then London. In 1990, he founded Butler Capital Partners, an investment fund.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paulson
Excerpt:
Early life
Paulson was born in Queens, New York, the son of Jacqueline and Alfredo Paulson, a Chief Financial Officer for Ruder Finn.[4][5] Paulson attended the Whitestone Hebrew Centre (a United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism school) in Whitestone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruder_Finn
Excerpt:
Controversy
1960's through late 1990's - While representing long-time client Philip Morris (now Altria), Ruder Finn was instrumental in crafting the public relations campaign that disputed the evidence tobacco smoking is hazardous to health.[2][3][4][5]
1998 - Caught in conflict of interest as discoveries of financial dealings of Swiss authorities post-World War II surfaced which involved some of their Jewish clients.[6]
2005 - Pro bono work done for the UN raised speculation when Kofi Annan's nephew, Kobina, worked as an intern at the firm.[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kofi_Annan
Excerpt:
Oil-for-Food scandal
In December 2004, reports surfaced that the Secretary-General's son Kojo Annan received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna Inspection SA, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations.
Annan appointed the Independent Inquiry Committee,[17] which was led by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker,[18]
Kickback Scandal
http://www.modernghana.com/news/124069/1/ndc-abodakpi-rawlings-in-500000-kickback-scandal.html
Excerpt:
The Statesman newspaper has seen evidence suggesting that a multinational company, Cotecna, paid substantial kick-back bribes to the government of the National Democratic Congress in return for the award of an inspection contract. In a confession letter written by the former $20,000 a month local agent of Cotecna, a company internationally infamous for paying kickbacks to Heads of State, George Mould, former President Jerry Rawlings' old pal makes a shocking disclosure of alleged bribery and money laundering involving the former President, former Minister Dan Abodapki and the former ruling party, National Democractic Congress.
Mr Mould alleges that Cotecna, the 70% owner of Gateway Services Ltd, which, under the NDC won a lucrative customs inspection contract of imports at our seaports, was as far back as 1996, chanelling kickback payments to the NDC. In one instance, the inadvertent snitch, who clearly felt wronged after being cut out, said he had agreed with Mr Abodapki on a $500,000 kickback to be illegally paid into the coffers of the NDC from the Swiss
http://www.thestatesmanonline.com/pages/news_detail.php?newsid=4494§ion=1
Excerpt:
Ms Bhutto, the former Pakistani leader was convicted on bribery charges on a Cotecna deal, in which the money was paid to companies registered in the British Virgin Island.
One such firm, Bomer Finance which received $8.2m had Ms Bhutto’s husband as the beneficial owner. The other, Nassam Overseas, which received $3.8m, had Nasir Hussein, Ms Bhutto’s brother-in-law, as the beneficial owner.
The apparent implications of the Pakistani scandal in Ghana cannot go amiss. Cotecna Inspection, the 70% owner of Gateway Services Limited, in 1999 won the bid to hold a virtual monopoly over the inspection of goods imported through our seaports.
'Bhutto' trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwAPubfJ0r8
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110318/ENTERTAINMENT10/103180301/Tragic-story-about-Bhutto-takes-one-too-many-turns
Excerpt:
Tragic story about 'Bhutto' takes one too many turns
Theatre N in Wilmington screens the documentary on Saturday and Sunday
Comments
Benazir Bhutto is the focus of the documentary "Bhutto." / Yellow Pad Productions
REVIEW "Bhutto" **
The life of Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto took a lot of twists and turns. Unfortunately, this documentary takes one too many. It's exhaustive, but also sometimes exhausting. Unrated. Contains some violent news footage and discussion of assassination. 111 minutes. Playing at Theatre N in Wilmington
on Saturday and Sunday.
The documentary "Bhutto" is ostensibly a biography of Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto.
In 1988, at the age of 35, she not only became the youngest prime minister of a majority-Muslim state, but she became the first woman to hold that position. Duane Baughman and Johnny O'Hara's meticulously researched and largely sympathetic film opens with Bhutto's 2007 return to her homeland after a career marred by corruption accusations, imprisonment and exile.
It was a return that quickly turned ugly when she was assassinated in a still-unsolved crime that many believe was enabled, if not engineered, by the government of then-President Pervez Musharraf.
The tragic story that "Bhutto" ultimately tells, however, is a lot bigger than even its namesake. At times, it's almost too big for its own good.
Though a captivating subject in her own right, Bhutto periodically disappears from the narrative entirely. After the film's explosive opening, it backtracks to the 1947 creation of Pakistan, in what is known as the Partition of India into separate Muslim and Hindu states. It then moves forward, inch by painstaking inch, through 60 years of Pakistani history. The first politically active Bhutto to be discussed is not, in fact, Benazir, but her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who served as president and then prime minister of Pakistan from 1971 to 1977.
Context, of course, is important. And the movie has plenty of it. At times, some of the little tidbits the filmmakers include suggest fodder for another whole movie or two. For instance:
In the context of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, one interviewee states, almost in passing, that the textbooks used in Pakistani madrassas, or religious schools -- where many of today's jihadists are cultivated -- were designed and printed by the University of Nebraska.
As Peter Galbraith, the former U.S. deputy special representative to Afghanistan, tells the camera, "We thought that defeating the Soviet Union was so important that we didn't care that we were actually supporting Osama bin Laden and people who were his allies."
It's heavy stuff, but I digress. So does the film.
As distracting as some of these subplots may seem, they are, in fact, integral to the understanding of Bhutto and the reforms that she hoped to accomplish.
Yeah, it's complicated. Bhutto was a polarizing figure, revered and reviled with almost equal passion. And while Baughman and O'Hara generally cast their subject in the most favorable light, they do include interviews with Bhutto's niece Fatima, who blames her aunt for the murders of two of Benazir's brothers, including Fatima's father. Like the Kennedy clan, with whom the Bhuttos are often compared, assassination follows this family like a curse.
For those who can follow the movie's twisted personal and political path, however, "Bhutto" is an exhaustive, if sometimes exhausting, look at a larger-than-life figure.
