Prosecutors
at the
Suitcase-Gate Trial revealed a shadowy Venezuelan elite of Ferrari-driving
"socialists" who exploited connections to Hugo Chavez to rake in billions
of dollars. But they also exposed some dark
corners of America's own shadowy elite...
The MadCowMorningNews has learned
exclusively that the owner of the luxury Citation X jet used to fly Guido
Antonini Wilson and his cash-stuffed suitcase around South America is an
American online gambling tycoon, and formerly one of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s biggest
clients.
Living in exile in Gibraltar,
secretive gambling mogul
Ruth Parasol was the true
owner of the plane which flew
'Guido the Bagman' and several suitcases stuffed with cash to Buenos
Aires last August 4. The flight kicked off what became known as
Suitcase-Gate.
Parasol was in the news
during the recent
Presidential campaign, when reporters learned that Hunter Biden,
youngest son of Vice President-elect Joe Biden, had hired on to lobby Congress
for her $8 billion empire of online gambling sites.
Lobbying documents on file
with the Senate Public Records Office show that Biden intended to lobby on the
"legality of internet gaming" and the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement
Act.
Biden, the subject of an
unflattering profile online with the headline
Hunt Biden is an Evil
Lobbyist
resigned from the law
firm with the account when his lobbying activities for Parasol came to light,
announcing he would no longer be a lobbyist.
Guido's Luggage flies first class.
From
the plane’s literature: “The Citation X is the fastest business jet ever and
quite efficient. Traveling at 510 knots, the Citation X can climb to 43,000 feet
in under 30 minutes at its maximum takeoff weight, lifting you quickly to
transcontinental and transatlantic altitudes.
The Citation X is certified
to fly where fuel efficiency is optimized and airline traffic is non-existent.”
The unanswered question is
what ownership of the plane by a gambling and pornography tycoon (both of which,
it must be said, are traditional Mob pursuits) means to our understanding of the mysterious Suitcase-Gate
Scandal, especially given that,
as we reported previously, the
Citation jet was carrying the same registration, or “N" number, N5113S, as that
of a plane flying for CIA contractor Air-Scan in Iraq.
Newspaper photos taken after
the ill-fated suitcase flight show that the 'N' number on the tail was being
used, and at the same time, by a Cessna 182 flying in Iraq, by
Florida-based CIA air contractor Air-Scan Inc.
There was no explanation
during the trial for the murky provenance of the jet, nor any mention that,
according to FAA regulations, the charter flight was illegal.
A shadowy elite
An American living in exile
in Gibraltar from prosecution in the U.S., where online gambling is illegal,
Ruth Parasol makes secrecy an obsession. One example: the only known photograph
of her (left) is from her high school yearbook, where she precociously posed in
a mink coat under a caption reading "Diamonds are a girl's best friend."
But that is sometimes
difficult for Parasol today, since she regularly makes Forbes top billionaire's
list, with a fortune approaching $2 billion dollars from her mega site
www.Partypoker.com.
According to London’s Financial Times, she is the 79th
richest woman in Great Britain.
It
was money
from Parasol's online gambling operation which paid for Jack Abramoff's infamous
golfing excursions at Scotland's St. Andrews golf course, one of which forced House
Republican Leader Tom DeLay's resignation in 2006.
Ruth Parasol first struck it
rich as a 800-number sex-lines porn mogul, in business with her father, an
ex-Israeli commando who became a massage parlor, 800-number sex lines and strip
joint mogul in San Francisco.
With her father's help and
encouragement (a perhaps apocryphal story states he gave her two 800 sex
lines for her 16th birthday), Parasol grew to become an Internet
“porn princess.”
After raking in millions in
the explosive growth of online porn, she branched out, and was soon the majority
owner of what was to become one of the world’s most lucrative online gambling
sites, which at the time of its much-ballyhooed IPO on the London
Stock Exchange was valued at over $9 billion, twice as much as British
Airways.
A deliberately obscured FAA aircraft registration
Argentine journalists,
however, questioned why the Argentine state oil company, which has planes of its
own, spent $90,000 chartering the flight from air charter company Royal Class.
Today we are publishing,
exclusively and for the first time, the
official FAA registration
records for the plane.
According to the FAA
registration records, the plane was registered to what on closer examination
turns out to be a shell corporation, a dummy front company called Inter Air
Leasing LLC in Delaware.
The FAA registration records
state that Inter Air Leasing LLC is "ex of Great Britain.
Inter Air Leasing, we
learned, is owned by Riverback Properties in the U.K.
Behind the front company?
Another front company
Riverback,
in its turn, is owned
by a Gibraltar trust called Cheam Directors
Limited, the entity Parasol uses to control Partypoker.com
Cheams Directors purchased
the plane at the end of December in 2005, then “sold” it to Wells Fargo Bank
Northwest, which “bought” the plane on Dec 29 2005, but “not in its individual
capacity but solely as owner-trustee” under a trust agreement dated Dec 29 2005.
Meaning they were merely
“fronting” for the true owners of the plane.
The closest we get to the
true owners of the Citation jet
in the FAA registration documents is a “Nadine Collado” who signs the purchase
and transfer papers on Dec 29, 2005, (page 58 of the FAA registration) for
Cheams Directors Limited
Should you then ask yourself ‘who
is Cheams Directors Limited,'’ the
purpose of this arrangement begins to become clear. If you have to ask...
you’re not supposed to know.
After being busted running
money into Buenos Aires, there seems little need to wonder why the plane’s true
ownership has been artfully concealed behind a series of front companies and
offshore trusts.
How Wall Street steals trillions from taxpayers
The FAA
ownership records provide a textbook illustration of how America's elite game
the system and then stick taxpayers with the bill.
While the U.S. spends untold billions each
year on something called the "War on Drugs," most of which arrive in this
country via private plane, learning who owns the drug-hauling planes is often treated as
something like a
state secret.
For example, when
we requested an explanation of the Citation X jet's ownership from the FAA, they
replied, “The rule states the trust must furnish FAA with a copy of each
document legally affecting a relationship under the trust.”
In other words, trust
documents furnished to the FAA do contain the names of
the 'true' owners of the airplane involved. But here’s the beauty part: Before the FAA will furnish those
records...Before they will even tell you if they exist...
You’ve got to
request them first.
Known as “ancillary
records,” or supplementals, they are public record... But they are available only
by request.
English hooligans provided the clue
The mystery of who
owned the plane used in Suitcase-Gate was answered in an unlikely way:
through the passions aroused by British football (soccer to Americans), which created a
controversy two years ago over the hidden ownership of a football
club called Carlisle United.
"The identity of Carlisle
United's new owners is becoming more intriguing by the week,” began a story
headlined “Carlisle's Gibraltar link” in the January 21, 2001, LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH.
“It appears that the new
owners are a Gibraltar-registered company, Mancarr Investments Ltd, who refuse
to show their individual faces.”
“When Inside Sport contacted
Mancarr to try to establish their identities, their legal adviser, Desmond
Reoch, would only confirm that Mancarr is “a private investment company with
corporate directors, Cheam Directors Ltd, rather than an individual," said
Reoch.
"That is all I am allowed to
say. My clients have not given me permission to disclose anything further.”
Imagine the
reaction of die-hard football fans in New York to news that the Giants or Jets
had been sold to a dummy front company located in an offshore tax haven, whose
owners wished to, and were able to, remain anonymous. New York football fans
might not be appeased at the explanation that they should chalk it up
to globalization, which seems to mean total deregulation... but only for a
privileged elite.
English soccer fans
apparently feel the same way, we at least know something about the forces at
play in Suitcase-Gate.
Suitcase-Gate
Legacy: The Russians Are Coming!"
Parasol's
company only
deregistered the Citation with the FAA in June of this year, so presumably they
have been in control of the jet since the time of the incident.
The ramifications of the
Suitcase-Gate Scandal reverberated around the Caribbean Basin on Tuesday as the
flagship of Russia's Northern Fleet, the nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the
Great, virtually bristling with heavy nuclear missiles, arrived in Venezuela for
upcoming joint maneuvers.
The Russian fleet’s presence
is a direct result of the deterioration in U.S.. Venezuelan relations caused by
the revelation in Suitcase-Gate that Hugo Chavez was spending million of dollars
in bribes to friendly leaders in the region.
“If the Venezuelans and the
Russians want to have, you know, a military exercise, that's fine,
but we'll obviously be
watching it very closely," said a State Department spokesman.
His statement sounds like someone
whistling in the dark.
Sunday:
Suitcase-Gate Chickens Come Home to Roost