Bush Oil Scandals Spread
Throughout Central Asia
Wayne Madsen

WMR
August 30, 2005

More details concerning illegal Bush enterprises are coming out in the trial of former lobbyist for the oil industry and the Kazakhstan government, Jim Giffen, a New York investment banker. Giffen was indicted for bribing Kazakhstan government leaders with some $84 million in return for lucrative oil drilling rights for Amoco, Mobil, Phillips Petroleum, and Texaco in the years immediately following the fall of the USSR and the independence of Kazakhstan under the rule of Nursultan Nazarbayev, a former Soviet Communist Party leader. Giffen also represented the interests of Chevron in the former USSR. Kazakhstan's Tengiz oil fields rank among the world's largest reserves.

Giffen is accused of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits American businessmen from bribing foreign officials. However, Giffen's attorneys are contending that their client's actions and those of his bank, Mercator, were carried out with the knowledge and encouragement of the CIA under then-director Robert Gates. Gates' nomination as director by President George H. W. Bush in 1991 survived a bitter battle that saw 31 Senators voting against Gates' confirmation (an additional five did not vote). It was then-Senate Intelligence Committee staff director George Tenet who shepherded Gates' nomination through the Senate, ensuring him the support of former President Bush after George W. Bush's 2000 selection as President. Tenet was the highest-ranking holdover from Clinton to Bush. The elder Bush was said to have pressed his son to keep Tenet on board at the CIA for Tenet's help in ensuring Gates' confirmation at a time when independent counsel Lawrence Walsh was bearing down on George H. W. Bush for his role in the Iran-contra scandal and the BCCI and Savings & Loan collapses. Gates was Deputy Director of the CIA under Bill Casey during the height of the Iran-contra scandal and was fully involved with the principal players, including Oliver North and Richard Secord.

Following the pattern of Bush family oil and other enterprises around the world, U.S. oil companies, through accounts allegedly set up by Giffen and his associates, paid bribes into accounts of Nazarbayev, his Oil Minister Nurlan Balgambayev, and other Kazakh officials. Balgambayev's accounts were under the names Orchard Holdings of Newton, Massachusetts; Giffen's under Condor Capital Management and Denlay Associates of the British Virgin Islands; Samal Balgambayeva's (Bagambayev's daughter) under the name Brisa, Inc.; a joint Giffen-Balgambayev account under the name NTC International; Mobil's under the name Alqi Holdings Ltd. of the British Virgin Islands; Nazarbayev's under the name Orel Capital, owned by Semreck Foundation of Liechtenstein, a Nazarbayev trust. Other secret accounts were established in Bank Indosuez (now Credit Agricole Indosuez) and Credit Suisse accounts in Switzerland and Bahamas. Hovelon Trading SA of the British Virgin Islands was a controlling operation for Denlay Associates. Other companies involved in the bribery scandal include Vaeko Europe Ltd. and Nichem Energy Ltd., both owned by an American citizen named Friedhelm Eronat, Berkut Holdings Ltd. and Balicar. Giffen reportedly coordinated his Kazakh oil activities with Gates, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, and Secretary of State James Baker.

Kazakhgate: Another scandal in the Bush family's resume of criminal chicanery

The following is what Giffen's attorney William Schwartz told U.S. Judge William Pauley of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York about his client's role with the CIA under Robert Gates:

"Mr. Giffen was not just a businessman coming back and reporting to the CIA, he was in some respects their emissary . . . it is no secret, that Mr. Giffen not only had a very close relationship with senior officials of the Kazak government, he had a very close relationship with senior officials in various American intelligence agencies, most particularly the CIA and National Security Council. And as we show in our papers, your Honor, it was well known to those agencies, and it has been publicly acknowledged in an article by Seymour Hersh and a book by former CIA agent [Robert Baer], that Mr. Giffen provided very important information to the government of the United States, and that essentially the government of the United States was very interested in exploiting, with his approval, Mr. Giffen's closeness to the leaders of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

"Indeed, one of the incidents we have shown in our papers, your Honor, and has been publicly reported, was that Mr. Giffen was asked to intervene at one point by the United States when it was learned that the government was perhaps selling MIGs and other armaments to Korea and Iran, and he did and the problem was taken care of. It was very important to the intelligence apparatus of this country that Mr. Giffen be in a very close position with the leadership of Kazakhstan.

"Your Honor, I think there may well be evidence at trial to show that Mr. Giffen routinely reported to the CIA upon his return from his numerous trips, his very frequent trips to Kazakhstan, that he had very close relationships with the government of the United States, that some of the best intelligence that we received throughout the government of Kazakhstan came from Mr. Giffen.

"When the government of the United States needed something to be done in Kazakhstan, Mr. Giffen was asked to do it. Mr. Giffen was in a position that was of great importance to the American government, and the American government we believe, your Honor, wanted him to be there and indicated to him that it wanted him to be there."

U.S. intelligence insiders report that the Kazakh operations of the George H. W. Bush administration were coordinated from Enron in Houston, which hired some 300 ex-KGB agents after the fall of the Soviet Union to help coordinate U.S. moves to control the energy supplies of newly-independent republics like Kazakhstan. In addition, Enron employed a number of associates of Robert Gates who retired from or left the CIA to work on the oil and gas deals in the former Soviet Union and other countries. Giffen was a top liaison to Kazakhstan, having become a Kazakh passport-carrying government adviser to Nazarbayev.

Because the Kazakh oil and gas fields were in poor condition and needed refurbishment, Halliburton was later brought in by  Enron and the U.S. oil company consortium developing the Tengiz fields to help in the effort. Halliburton's President and CEO at the time was Dick Cheney. The billions of dollars needed to refurbish the Kazakh production facilities were requested by George H. W. Bush from the Saudis, whose former Oil Minister Sheik Zaki Yamani was an ardent backer of the plan, which, from the Giffen trial, now appears to have included bribes paid to Kazakh government leaders with the support and acquiescence of Bush, Sr., Baker, and Gates.

As with other growing scandals involving Bush-controlled secret accounts, oil and pipeline deals, and connections with foreign governments and groups like "Al Qaeda," the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan,   and various Islamo-fascist groups in Europe, George W. Bush is trying to cover his own tracks as well as those of his father and his Vice President, Dick Cheney. U.S. and foreign intelligence sources report that the Bush family's secret deals around the world are beginning to become a huge sinking ship with a number of "rats" jumping off and spilling the beans to law enforcement officials and intelligence agents.