-Caveat Lector- http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_regional/ausattk09122001.htm Boston Herald, 9/12/01 WAR: Hub terror suspects ID'd: Bush vows retaliation after devestating attack by Ed Hayward, Tom Farmer and Cosmo Macero Jr. Wednesday, September 12, 2001 Authorities in Massachusetts identified at least five Arab men as suspects in yesterday's terror attacks launched from Logan International Airport, seizing in the central parking garage a car laden with Arabic-language flight training manuals, sources said last night. Two of the men, whose passports were traced to the United Arab Emirates, were brothers, one of whom was a trained pilot, a source told the Herald, speaking on condition of anonymity. At least two other suspects flew to Logan yesterday from Portland, Maine, where authorities believe they had traveled after crossing over from Canada recently. *** One former FBI terrorism specialist said yesterday that the hijackers who boarded the flights at Logan Airport may be part of a terrorist cell in Boston. Robert Fitzpatrick, a former second-in-command in the FBI's Boston office, said Boston appears to have been the staging area for the attack on New York and the hijackers most likely had help from others who may still be in Boston. ``There's a terrorist cell operating out of Boston,'' Fitzpatrick said. ``They had to have support, they had to have people on the ground, in Boston, supporting them.'' Jessica Heslam, Jonathan Wells, Susan O'Neill and Herald wire services contributed to his report. ======= Caveat Lector- Wednesday September 12 2:21 AM ET Report: Five Suspects Identified in NYC Attack http://us.news2.yimg.com/f/42/31/7m/dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010912/ts/att ack_suspects_dc_1.html NEW YORK (Reuters) - Authorities in Massachusetts have identified five Arab men as suspects in Tuesday's attack on New York City and have seized a rental car containing Arabic-language flight training manuals at Logan International Airport, a source told the Boston Herald newspaper. Two of the men were brothers whose passports were traced to the United Arab Emirates, the unidentified source told the Herald. One of the men was a trained pilot, the paper reported on its Web site on Wednesday. The paper said investigators suspect the two brothers were aboard hijacked United Airlines flight 175, which pilot union officials said was one of the aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center. Flight UA 175 left from Boston en route to Los Angeles with 56 passengers on board. American Airlines flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles crashed into the other World Trade Center tower. Another aircraft hit the Pentagon (news - web sites) and a fourth aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania. At least two other suspects flew to Logan on Tuesday from Portland, Maine, where authorities believe they had traveled after crossing over from Canada recently, the Herald reported. Authorities were informed about the rental car by a civilian who got into a fight with several Arab men as they were parking their car, the paper reported. ++++++++ http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:oZWYQ8UYKNQ:www.pgal.co.uk/pga.htm+abu+ dhabi%2Bbuttes&hl=en Petroleum Geological Analysis Limited & PGA Consultants Pty Ltd PGA is a geological consultancy with offices in Reading, England and Perth, Western Australia. The company was founded in 1979 by Dr. John Scott. The company currently employs three professional geologists. ... Dr. Scott began his career with the IPC in Abu Dhabi in 1971. He moved to Buttes Oil & Gas in 1977, becoming Exploration Manager of their Tunisian venture. In 1979 he founded PGA. From 1987 to 1991 he was Professor of Petroleum Geology at Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia. In 1991 he returned to full-time consulting and established PGA's second office in Australia, PGA Consultants Pty Ltd. In addition to the multi-client studies, PGA has undertaken consulting projects in the Middle East on SE Turkey, Bahrain, Iraq, the U.A.E. and Egypt. ===== http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:A17lAq9yEes:www.barrowscompany.com/CTOC WPA2000me.htm+abu+dhabi%2Bbuttes&hl=en cached from www.barrowscompany.com/CTOCWPA2000me.htm MIDDLE EAST LEGISLATIVE & CONTRACTUAL REQUIREMENTS FOR PETROLEUM EXPLORATION & EXPLOITATION *** BAHRAIN Overview of legal and fiscal terms for petroleum exploration and production. International petroleum investment favorability rating......................... 36 APPENDICES � Harken Energy Bahrain Production Sharing Agreement Of 30 January 1990 � Production Sharing Agreement Dated 8 December 1983 Between The Bahrain National Oil Company And Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company (KSC) � 1979 Bapco Agreement For 100% Nationalization OMAN Overview of legal and fiscal terms for petroleum exploration and production. International petroleum investment favorability rating......................... 164 APPENDICES � Contract Between Oman LNG And Korea Gas Corporation Signed 23 October 1996 � Triton Exploration & Production Sharing Agreement Dated 19 June 1996 Between The Government Of The Sultanate Of Oman & Triton Oman, Inc. (Block 22 � Offshore) � Model Exploration And Production Sharing Agreement Of 1992 � Petroleum & Minerals Law Of 1 January 1975 SHARJAH Overview of legal and fiscal terms for petroleum exploration and production. International petroleum investment favorability rating......................... 226 APPENDICES � Crescent/Atlantis Contract Signed 4 November 1997 � Petroleum Concession Agreement Between The Emirate Of Sharjah And Amoco Oil Company Dated 8 November 1978 � Summary Of 29 December 1969 Buttes Gas & Oil Company And Clayco Petroleum Corporation Concession UMM AL-QAIWAIN Overview of legal and fiscal terms for petroleum exploration and production. International petroleum investment favorability rating......................... 302 APPENDICES � Summary Of 15 July 1980 Forman Exploration Co. Petroleum Concession Agreement � Zapata Group Offshore Contract ======== There are numerous examples of the centrality of the Abu Dhabi relationship to BCCI, and its unusual nature. In 1972, when BCCI was created, Abu Dhabi shareholders purchased 20 percent of its stock with an investment of $500,000, and then generously agreed to have that interest drop to just over one percent of BCCI just three years later. In January, 1978, when BCCI decided to enter the United States and purchase shares in Financial General Bankshares, and needed two additional names, the ruling family of Abu Dhabi supplied them. In 1980 and 1981, when BCCI needed a purchaser for Bank of America's shares in BCCI, and had no one other than its bogus Grand Caymans bank-within-a-bank, ICIC, to buy them, Abu Dhabi stepped in once again to increase its interest in BCCI. Throughout the 1970's and 1980's, the Abu Dhabi ruling family and the Abu Dhabi government placed billions of dollars in deposits at BCCI and its affiliates, such as ICIC, giving BCCI and its head, Agha Hasan Abedi, the right to manage those assets, and a power of attorney to act in the name of Sheikh Zayed. In 1990, when accountants and regulators in the United Kingdom found fraud at BCCI, the Abu Dhabi ruling family and government stepped in again, agreeing to formally buy the bank, assert control, guarantee its losses, replace BCCI's head with the head of its own BCCI affiliate, the Bank of Credit and Commerce Emirates (BCCE), move BCCI's operations and records from London to Abu Dhabi, and work on a plan to find a way to save the bank despite its having acknowledged "mishandling" at least $2.2 billion of Abu Dhabi's money. By July 5, 1991, when BCCI was closed globally, the Government of Abu Dhabi, its ruling family, and an investment company holding the assets of the ruling family, were the controlling, and official "majority" shareholders of BCCI -- owning 77 percent of the bank. But since the remaining 23 percent was actually held by nominees and by BCCI's alter-ego ICIC, Abu Dhabi was in fact BCCI's sole owner. After July 5, 1991, it was in Abu Dhabi that most of BCCI's top officials remained, where they remain under the control of the Abu Dhabi government, under conditions said to be luxurious, which the Abu Dhabi government refuses to discuss. While there, they have remained incommunicado, and out of the reach of foreign investigators, unwilling, or unable, to tell the world what happened. In short, there is no question that the relationship between Abu Dhabi and BCCI was central to both, and that no adequate understanding of BCCI is possible without an understanding of the Abu Dhabi relationship. Yet according to the testimony presented to the Subcommittee by Abu Dhabi, that relationship was one that boiled down to little more than victim (Abu Dhabi) and criminal (Abedi and BCCI). In essence, according to Abu Dhabi, BCCI abused Abu Dhabi's trust by stealing deposits and mismanaging a bank it owned, making Abu Dhabi by its own account BCCI's largest victim, losing what it describes as some $6 billion in all. Thus, by Abu Dhabi's account, it never knew that most or all of BCCI's shareholders were front-men or nominees for BCCI, including the heads of state of several of the smaller sheikhdoms of the United Arab Emirates of which Sheikh Zayed is president, sheikhs who are generally understood to treat Sheikh Zayed with great deference. It never knew that such prominent shareholders as Kamal Adham and A.R. Khalil, two successive heads of Saudi intelligence, were also nominees for the bank, along with such well-known Middle Eastern financial figures as Faisal Fulaij of Kuwait and Ghaith Pharaon of Saudi Arabia. Unlike these other figures, who were part of BCCI's deceptions, and who by Abu Dhabi's account participated in BCCI's schemes to deceive Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi contends it was innocent of wrongdoing, and utterly duped.(2) To quote the testimony of Abu Dhabi's witness before the Subcommittee, Ahmed Al Sayegh: We didn't know anything about the bank [BCCI] because of our passive role in the past [prior to taking control in April 1990].(3) However, unlike any other shareholder, officer, attorney, agent or depositor of BCCI, Abu Dhabi has been in the position, since April, 1990, of having total control over BCCI's records. At least eighteen of its key officers, who have remained held incommunicado and under house arrest in Abu Dhabi since BCCI's collapse. During that period, Abu Dhabi has chosen not to make any of these witnesses available to U.S. law enforcement. While it did, temporarily, make some key documents available to the Federal Reserve concerning the involvement of non-Abu Dhabi figures in BCCI's wrongdoing prior to BCCI's closure, it has at all times prevented federal investigators from having free access to BCCI's records, and all access to those records has been ended since July 5, 1991. ... The chapter on BCCI's early history describes in detail the early history of Abu Dhabi and BCCI, which is recapitulated in summary form here. Abu Dhabi is the largest and wealthiest member of the United Arab Emirates, an oil-rich federation of sheikhdoms, formed in 1971, whose rulers own all the land and natural resources of their nations in fee simple absolute, with no distinctions being made among the wealth of the ruler, his family, and the nation itself. Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi, installed in 1966 as head of the newly wealthy oil state through a British-led coup against his brother in 1966, soon after developed a relationship with Agha Hasan Abedi, head of the United Bank of Pakistan. Six years later, when Abedi decided to form BCCI, he did so after receiving the blessing of Sheikh Zayed, and a commitment of support. That support involved a tiny capital contribution to the bank by Abu Dhabi -- $500,000 -- and a huge placement of petrodollars. As set forth in the chapter on BCCI's early history in some detail, the relationship between BCCI and Sheikh Zayed exceeded normal standards of bank/client relationships in a number of respects. BCCI was not merely a bank owned in part by Sheikh Zayed. Sheikh Zayed was not merely BCCI's largest depositor. BCCI for many years handled almost every financial matter of consequence for the Sheikh and his family, as well planning, managing, and carrying out trips abroad, and a wide range of services limited only by the desires of the Al Nayhan family itself.(5) In his testimony of May 18, 1992, Abu Dhabi's representative Ahmed Al Sayegh suggested that Abedi's role in Abu Dhabi has been much overstated: When Mr. Abedi was a respected banker and founder of BCCI, his role, therefore, was limited to his bank. . . . His role in the case, I guess, was limited to inducing potential investors in making commitments to his bank, whether buying shares or placing deposits. . . He was not a financial advisor [to Abu Dhabi or Sheikh Zayed].(6) Other information obtained by the Subcommittee from many sources demonstrates that Al Sayegh's testimony on this point was untrue. In fact, for over twenty years, Abedi created and managed a network of foundations, corporations, and investment entities for Abu Dhabi's ruling family, of a complexity similar to the network he had created at BCCI itself. BCCI handled the financing arrangements for many of these entities, and managed a variety of Abu Dhabi's portfolio accounts in U.S. dollars.(7) As far back as 1969 and 1970, when Abedi was still head of the United Bank in Pakistan, Abedi established a cargo shipping company, the Hilal Group, operated by Associated Shipping Services, Limited, London, as an operational company for Abu Dhabi's Department of Private Affairs. Though primarily used to own cargo ships, the entity was also used for trading in equities, holding property investments, and other direct investments. One of the entities owned by Hilal Group, Progressive Investment, had Abedi on its board. Later, when BCCI established the Cromwell Hospital in London to provide a medical facility for the Abu Dhabi ruling family and other prominent Middle Easterners, Abedi arranged for the financing of the purchase for Abu Dhabi through a complex series of transactions involving BCCI and a shell corporation holding Sheikh Zayed's interests by which BCCI lent the funds for the hospital in pounds against dollar accounts of the Department of Private Affairs, with the result that the hospital investment did not appear on the books of the Department.(8) Moreover, BCCI and Abu Dhabi also engaged in a series of joint ventures, managed by BCCI, throughout the 1980's. Typical of such ventures was the China-Arab bank, a joint venture of BCCI and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, established in China in 1985 coincident with BCCI's opening of offices in China, to use funds from Abu Dhabi to invest in China. BCCI accounting records show a number of other ventures involving BCCI and Abu Dhabi in China, as well as numerous financial relationships involving BCCI and Abu Dhabi interests throughout the 1980's.(9) Contrary to Al Sayegh's testimony, Abedi had broad authority over the investments and finances of the ruling family until his stroke in 1989. As the present chairman of the Department of Private Affairs of Sheikh Zayed, Ghanim Al Mazrui testified in civil litigation in 1982, Abedi could even be viewed as an official of the Abu Dhabi government, because of his position on the Abu Dhabi committee responsible for overseeing Abu Dhabi's wealth.(10) As Bert Lance observed, the relationship was exceedingly intimate: Mr. Abedi . . . had, in effect, for lack of a better term, been kind and attentive to Sheikh Zayed when he was still wandering around in the desert and he had all his assets in his tent somewhere . . . I think this is important to you as you search for the truth, to understand that that relationship went back a long way -- and it went back before Sheikh Zayed became "the richest man in the world" at that point in time, with an income of some $4 billion or $5 billion, as the press reported; that there had been a relationship that had developed that Mr. Abedi had helped Sheikh Zayed when he had no real power or influence . . . Sheikh Zayed had absolute and total trust and coincidence in Mr. Abedi, that whatever Mr. Abedi said or suggested was something that Sheikh Zayed would look on with favor; that Mr. Abedi had, in effect, built the house where we were [meeting with Sheikh Zayed in his palace] outside of Lahore without any guidance or direction from Sheikh Zayed, and it was that sort of relationship. It was very, very unique.(11) BCCI also provided members of the Abu Dhabi ruling family with personal services, ranging from Sheikh Zayed's own modest needs to the more elaborate requirements of his sons and members of his retinue. A history of BCCI's protocol department, and its relationship to Abu Dhabi, is set forth in the chapter on BCCI's early history. Throughout the first critical decade of BCCI's eighteen year existence, as much as 50% of BCCI's overall assets were from Abu Dhabi and the Al Nayhan family, who were earning about $750 million a year in oil revenues in the early 1970's, an amount that rose to nearly $10 billion a year by the end of the decade. Until the formation of a separate affiliate, the Bank of Credit and Commerce Emirates (BCCE), BCCI functioned as the official bank for the Gulf emirates, and handled a substantial portion of Abu Dhabi's oil revenues. And yet from the beginning, there was an oddity about this central relationship: at no time while Abedi was in charge of BCCI did Abu Dhabi hold more than a small share of BCCI's recorded shares. Abu Dhabi appears not to have invested substantial funds in BCCI, but instead to have insisted on guaranteed rates of return for the use of its money. Thus, rather than being a major investor in BCCI, in the early years, Abu Dhabi only agreed to place extremely large sums of money as deposits at the bank, which BCCI used in lieu of capital. As a result of the Abedi-Zayed agreement, Abedi now had essentially unlimited resources to create BCCI. He could now act simultaneously as manager of billions of Sheikh Zayed's personal wealth, as banker to the United Arab Emirates of which Sheikh Zayed was chief of state, and as chairman of a new bank that had guaranteed assets of hundreds of millions of dollars from its inception.(12) Abedi thus relied on the Sheikh's resources to finance his rapid expansion, not through capital investment, but as a huge depositor. The result was BCCI's finances quickly became so intermingled with the finances of Abu Dhabi that it was difficult even for BCCI insiders to determine where one left off and the other began. Whether Abu Dhabi insiders, including Abu Dhabi's representative on BCCI's board of directors, Ghanim Al Mazrui, knew of this intermingling, remains an open question. Abu Dhabi's Ownership Interest In BCCI Although Abu Dhabi had a key interest in BCCI from its creation, in accord with Abu Dhabi's failure to provide the initial funds for capitalization, BCCI's early stock recordations did not show Abu Dhabi as the actual owner of the bank. A snapshot of BCCI shares from Bank of America files as of September 30, 1977 described BCCI's majority owner as ICIC, at 50.1 percent; its most important minority owner as Bank of America, at 30 percent; and its largest Arab owner as Majid Al-Futaim of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates at just 4 percent, with the members of the family of Abu Dhabi owning just 3.4 percent all told.(13) According to Abu Dhabi itself, it actually had a 20 percent interest in BCCI in 1972, which then dropped to less than five percent some two years later, with Abu Dhabi remaining a "passive investor," without formal representation on BCCI's board until 1981.(14) In response to the Subcommittee's request for information on the history of Abu Dhabi's ownership interest in BCCI, Abu Dhabi provided on May 13, 1992, a list of Abu Dhabi shareholding in BCCI Holdings (Luxembourg) S.A., one of BCCI's two flag-ship holding companies, which it described as "based on preliminary review of documents." The shareholding list provided by Abu Dhabi does not begin until 1975, three years following BCCI's founding in 1972, and after, for reasons not fully explained, Abu Dhabi's declared ownership in BCCI shares had dramatically dropped. It shows an unusual pattern of ownership of BCCI shares by the Al Nayhan family and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA). Overall, after beginning at 20 percent in 1972, the Al-Nayhan family's ownership of BCCI dropped to less than three percent in 1975, and then to just over one percent of BCCI in 1976, where its interest remained, with small increases until 1980. In 1980, the Al Nayhan family's holdings of BCCI sharply increased to over 8 percent, in 1981 increased sharply again to over 18 percent, and by 1984 had reached 27 percent, and by 1986, 33 percent, where it remained until 1990, when Abu Dhabi became -- officially -- a 77 percent owner of BCCI.(15) What is unusual about this pattern is the drop from Abu Dhabi's holdings of 20 percent to less than 2 percent in three years, followed by an increase from 2 percent to 18 percent five years later. It is difficult to understand why any shareholder of a rapidly growing bank would be willing to sell off or dilute so much of its interest in the years in which the bank's value was rapidly increasing, and then buy back that interest at far greater cost following five years of growth. Sheikh Zayed's own holdings of BCCI displayed a still stranger pattern. After owning 20 percent of BCCI in 1972, his personal ownership had dropped to 2.26 percent in 1975, dropped still further to less than one percent -- just .59 percent -- in 1976, and lower yet in 1977 to .47 percent of BCCI, before suddenly climbing in 1980 to 4.11 percent, when Sheikh Zayed purchased 80,000 shares in the bank. Sheikh Zayed then resold these same 80,000 shares the following year, reducing his ownership interest from the 4.11 percent back to .47 percent. In 1984, he purchased BCCI shares anew and his interest again climbed to over four percent, the vicinity in which his personal interest in BCCI remained to BCCI's closing. ... On the other hand, Abu Dhabi did, from 1981 onwards, own ever increasing percentages of BCCI, principally through Sheikh Zayed's son, Sheikh Khalifa, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, becoming the largest shareholders of the bank at some point in the 1980's. This suggests the possibility that Abu Dhabi actually owned the stock, regardless of guaranteed returns or buy-back arrangements to "eliminate" risk to Abu Dhabi. ...Abu Dhabi's Washington, D.C. lawyers at Patton, Boggs & Blow. ...Section 41 report of Price Waterhouse of June, 1991, provided to the Bank of England and obtained by the Subcommittee in an uncensored form only in late August, 1992, further suggests that the shares in BCCI held by the ruling family of Abu Dhabi were purchased according to BCCI's typical practices for nominees -- paid for by loans from BCCI itself, with buy-back agreements and guarantees to insure the purchaser against loss. The Section 41 report states that the initial capitalization of BCCI was just $2.5 million, and that subsequent increases of capitalization, to $845 million as of December 31, 1990, had been carried out through the extensive use of nominee arrangements, financed directly by loans from BCCI and its bank-within-a-bank, ICIC Grand Caymans. In the report, Price Waterhouse specifically found that members of the Ruling Family of Abu Dhabi acquired their shares on the basis of guaranteed rates of return and buy-back arrangements, with the result that they were not at risk for their ostensible "shareholdings" of BCCI.(17) While the evidence is not conclusive, there is a significant possibility that BCCI simply loaned the ruling family the funds for its stock, or provided them gratis. A list of major loans to shareholders of BCCI prepared in connection with a BCCI audit for the year ending September 30, 1987, shows lending to the Ruler of Abu Dhabi as standing at $620,800,000 -- some $74 million more than the authorized "limit" for lending to Sheikh Zayed establish by BCCI's credit committee, and more than twice the amount lent to the next highest borrower, Ghaith Pharaon at $283,900,000. A second such list, dated July 31, 1991, shows loans to the Abu Dhabi group from BCCI totalling $371.8 million, with an additional $17.5 million in loans to Abu Dhabi from BCCI's affiliate, ICIC, for a total lending to Abu Dhabi of just under $390 million. After the Abu Dhabi group, BCCI's next highest level of lending to a shareholder was to its front-man, Kamal Adham, at $323.5 million. In either period, the size of the lending to Abu Dhabi was sufficiently substantial that it could have been applied to any number of purposes by either BCCI or Abu Dhabi, including the financing of a significant proportion of the holdings of members of the Abu Dhabi ruling family in BCCI itself and in CCAH/First American.(18)
