Posted on 03/06/2008 5:17:41 AM PST by .cnI redruM
Accused Illinois fixer Antoin "Tony" Rezko is in debt by $50 million and relies on "family" handouts of $7,500 a month to pay monthly costs, according to a previously sealed court transcript reviewed by ABC News.
Rezko's bleak financial picture raises the question of how the Rezkos were able to buy a vacant lot adjoining the home of Sen. Barack Obama in 2005, at a time Rezko says he was already in deep debt.
Rezko also reveals in the testimony, before Judge Amy St. Eve on Jan. 16, 2007, that he already knew he was under federal investigation at the time of the land purchase and had hired a criminal defense attorney to deal with the "feds."
Obama says he sought Rezko's help because the house he wanted to buy in Chicago's Hyde Park came with an adjoining lot the seller wanted to sell at the same time.
Unable to afford it himself, Obama says Mrs. Rezko bought it for $625,000, and then later sold a strip of the lot back to Obama so he would have a larger yard. Obama says he paid Mrs. Rezko a fair market price.
According to the court transcript, Mrs. Rezko makes $37,500 a year.
Obama has defended Rezko's role as legal but says it was "a bone-headed mistake" to involve him in the deal.
According to the transcript, Mrs. Rezko sold the vacant lot a few weeks before the hearing, with all proceeds going to pay previous debts.
Asked how he was able to pay his lawyer, Joseph Duffy, Rezko said family and some unnamed "friends" were paying his legal bills.
Duffy told the judge, "Mr. Rezko has not provided us any money since his indictment."
Rezko told the judge he had no current source of income, saying his last business deal involving a proposed power plant in Iraq had been cancelled.
He said he had an ongoing relationship with Nadhmi Auchi, a London-based Iraqi billionaire convicted on French fraud charges, who Rezko described as a close friend and business associate.
Auchi came under investigation with the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, but no charges were brought, and he denied any wrongdoing.
Click Here for the Investigative Homepage.
Still, there are anomalies. Mr. Obama admits that he and Mr. Rezko took a tour of the house before it and the adjoining plot were sold. Financial records given to federal prosecutors a year later show Mrs. Rezko had a salary of only $37,000 and assets of $35,000. In court proceedings at that time, to explain how much his bail should be, Mr. Rezko declared that he had "no income, negative cash flow, no liquid assets."
So where did the money for Mrs. Rezko's $125,000 down payment -- and the collateral for her $500,000 loan from a local bank controlled by Amrish Mahajan, like Mr. Rezko a Chicago political fixer -- come from?
The London Times reports that, three weeks before the land transactions, Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi billionaire living in London, loaned $3.5 million to Mr. Rezko, who was his Chicago business partner. Mr. Auchi's office says he had "no involvement in or knowledge of" the property purchase. Mr. Auchi is a press-shy property developer (estimated worth: $4 billion) who was convicted of corruption in France in 2003 for his involvement in the Elf affair, the biggest political and corporate fraud inquiry in Europe since World War II. He was fined $3 million and given a 15-month prison term that was suspended provided he committed no further crimes.
Mr. Auchi was also a top official in the Iraqi oil ministry in the 1970s. He has for years vigorously denied charges he had dealings with Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War. However, an official report to the Pentagon inspector general in 2004 obtained by the Washington Times cited "significant and credible evidence" of involvement by Mr. Auchi's companies in the Oil for Food scandal and illicit smuggling of weapons to the Hussein regime.
Who’s got the picture of Hillary with Rezko???
Thanks for the posts/links. Hooray John Fund! Very interesting.
But, but, but I thought Mr. Rezko is just a “slum landlord” according to the fork-tongued Hillary.
From 2001....
I think Auchi could bite both Obama and Hillie on the butt...
Pentagon Document: U.S. Paid Pro-Saddam Figures, Chinese and French
From the article...
One of the largest shareholders in the bank as of 2000 was Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi Sunni who was involved in Saddam's 1959 assassination attempt on Iraq's then head of state, Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Qassem.
Following Saddam Hussein's Secret Money-Laundering Trail
Gee, why do I think the Toons might have even more to worry about than Obama....
BUMP-TO-THE-TRUTH! (thanks)
Pentagon Urges Repeal of Iraq Phone Contracts
The companies are suspected of rigging the bids for the cell phone contracts in favor of Nadhmi Auchi, who owns part of Orascom and a controlling interest in the bank BNP Paribas, which "is the French bank selected by Saddam Hussein to run the Oil for Food program."
Ye gads.
Yea, but it seems that already this scandal involving B. Hussein Obama has gotten more MSM scrutiny than all the combined Clinton scandals. What gives here?
The money came fromthe Food For Obama, I mean, the Food For Oil Program.
I suspect that the MSM figgered this was an easy story to tell involving Obama and didn't do their homework. My bet is if the press thought there'd be any blowback on the Toons, they'd've sat on the story. Then again, maybe the MSM is just as conflicted as the rest of the 'Rat electorate, and we'll see separate stories on Auchi and Obama, and stories on Auchi and the Toons.
Based on what I’ve been reading Duke Cunningham should be getting a new roomie in the Federal Penitentiary.
Pretty funny when you are dirtier then a Clinton ( dumber too) when it comes to sleazy land deals....
bttt
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