Paul! Say it isn’t so!
One of those who made out like a bandit is a rich Canadian whose bank made millions and whose Paris-based holding companies include the originally French-Belgian oil company TotalFina Elf, which cut lucrative deals with Saddam’s Iraq and is currently operating in war-torn Sudan.
(I hope that someone notices that the UN’s own oil-for-blood investigator Paul Volcker has ties to Power Corporation…)
Top among these is the European-based BNP Paribas bank, which the U.N. chose to administer the program and which reportedly received nearly $1 billion for its efforts.
Congressional investigators reviewing the bank’s actions have discovered broken rules, missing documents and improper transfers by BNP Paribas, which up until now has been assumed to be a French bank.
In fact, BNP Paribas is actually controlled by Power Corporation, an appropriately named Canadian company that has a shocking track record of ‘business’ relationships with the worst gangsters and tyrannical regimes in the world.
BNP Paribas also has one other distinguishing feature: a direct corporate and familial relationship with the persons running the government of Canada for the last 20 years.
The truth about BNP Paribas and Power Corp. sheds a new light on Canada’s seemingly bizarre anti-American foreign policy in the Middle East, in China and elsewhere.
BNP Paribas bank is part of a holding company, Pargesa Holding, which is jointly owned and controlled by the Fr�re and Desmarais families. Paul Desmarais Sr. is the chairman of the group, while Albert Fr�re is the vice-chairman. Gerald Fr�re, Albert’s son, is one of three general managers who oversee day-to-day operations, and Paul Desmarais Jr. is also an officer.
Pargesa, and thus Power Corporation and the Canadian Desmarais family, holds a controlling significant stake in TotalFina Elf, the Belgian-French petroleum multinational corporation formed from the merger of Total and Petrofina.
Read on
My head is still spinning. Desmarais … Power Corp … Paribas … Chretien… Martin …. Canada’s No-War-for-Oil-for-food foreign policy? Who would have thunk it….
I’m not 100% convinced, when you start having intertwined corporated holdings you can start drawing dotted lines all over the place.
It’s like genealogy, everybody is related to the Queen of England if you look deep enough.
( Ok, so this IS closer, but corporate stuff happens without necessarily there being any conspiracy.)
Oh, Fred – this is far, far closer than a little corporate geneology. Power Corp’s dealings in Iraq make Halliburton look like a lemonade stand.
Why am I not surprised the only one being charged is a US citizen? (whole article):
U.S. Man Charged in Oil-For-Food Probe
Jan 18, 12:43 PM (ET)
NEW YORK (AP) – An Iraqi-born U.S. citizen was charged with conspiring to act as an Iraqi agent as he accepted millions of dollars in compensation and negotiated with United Nations officials to let Iraq sell oil.
Samir A. Vincent was charged in a criminal investigation in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where a grand jury has been looking into the United Nations oil-for-food program.
The charges were the first to be publicly revealed in the probe of allegations that administrators in the program for Iraq took bribes and let Saddam Hussein skim money from the program.
http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20050118/D87MKLIG0.html?PG=home&SEC=news
Where the heck are all of the Canadian crack-reporters on this? This should be huge news, unless Canadians are really so cynical and disillusioned that they don’t care at all how corrupt our government is. So much for Canadian morality.
Mark Steyn has been writing about TotalFinaElf for some time now, and I also remember Stockwell Day getting up Crouton’s backside by connecting the dots in The House.
The on-side Canadian MSM woke up for a few secs because Poutine challenged Day to repeat same outside The House, an invite to litigation hell that Day declined.
The MSM then went back to reminding us how Canadians are more decent than Americans. Zzzzzz …
If you scroll down further to the posts about Liberal donators, you’ll discover that the MSM ownership in this country are heavy Liberal supporters – or, as in the case of the CBC, happy recipients.
“unless Canadians are really so cynical and disillusioned that they don’t care at all how corrupt our government is”
I think you’ve just described Ontario.
“So much for Canadian morality”
Just don’t call Canada half-assed (or at least make sure Norm doesn’t hear you).
Don’t worry Kate. I’m sure CBC crack reporter Neil MacDonald is on this story “as we post”.
Kate,
Is it possible that we have a story here? If we do, can we call it “Oil For Food-tien”
Call it what ever you want but I haven’t heard or seen anything in the Canadian MSM about this story. People are either working too hard to be bothered with this rip off or to tired to care. They’ve seen it all before and know how useless it is to protest.
This is old news. Right after the oil for food scandal broke, I read about this on a blog. And btw, isn’t Desmarais is married to Jean Chretiens daughter?