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 Gambling Mogul Owned Jet in Suitcase-Gate Scandal
 
Wednesday Nov 26, 2008
by Daniel Hopsicker

 

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