Cunningham and Wade connected to Dick Cheney by contract.

[bleever]

Just put up by our good friends at Think Progress:

http://thinkprogress.org/

– Wade’s company MZM Inc. received its first federal contract from the White House. The contract, which ran from July 15 to August 15, 2002, stipulated that Wade be paid $140,000 to “provide office furniture and computers for Vice President Dick Cheney.”

– Two weeks later, on August 30, 2002, Wade purchased a yacht for $140,000 for Duke Cunningham. The boat’s name was later changed to the “Duke-Stir.” Said one party to the sale: “I knew then that somebody was going to go to jail for that…Duke looked at the boat, and Wade bought it — all in one day. Then they got on the boat and floated away.”

...

To recap, the White House awarded a one-month, $140,000 contract to an individual who never held a federal contract. Two weeks after he got paid, that same contractor used a cashier’s check for exactly that amount to buy a boat for a now-imprisoned congressman at a price that the congressman had pre-negotiated.

That should raise questions about the White House’s involvement.

UPDATE: Perhaps this was the “real problem” Sampson was referring to...

:popcorn:

[MindPilot]

1. And I'll bet my next paycheck...

this can be linked DIRECTLY to Carol Lam's firing

[bleever]

8. Kyle Sampson wrote of "the problem we have with Carol Lam..."

Mr. Sampson can expect a subpoena.

[caligirl]

17. reposting, is this what Bush and gonzo are afraid of?

Edited on Mon Mar-19-07 01:54 PM by caligirl
" ... Viewed as a corruption case, the Cunningham matter has an arc that suggests the possibility of more high-profile indictments to come. But looked at from a counterintelligence angle, it is even more disturbing. The case is still more worrying if it is turned around, and focused not only on the congressman for sale, but on the defense contractors and foreign-linked financiers who cultivated Cunningham -- and potentially other lawmakers -- precisely because of their position on the Intelligence and Appropriations Committees.

Cunningham has admitted taking $2.4 million in bribes from two men who sought and received not only U.S. government contracts, but particular types of contracts. They were awarded defense and intelligence contracts, including counterintelligence and counterterrorism programs so sensitive their precise details are confined to those with security clearances. <...>

It is clear that companies belonging to Wilkes and Wade received a few hundred million dollars in sensitive defense and intelligence contracts. Who is investigating whether such companies should be performing such controversial tasks as conducting domestic surveillance on peace groups for the Defense Department? Who is investigating whether MZM and its successor Athena Innovative Solutions should be evaluating which foreign companies supply weapons to the Pentagon -- when MZM may have gotten the initial contract through dubious means? <...> In short, who is investigating the counterintelligence implications of this case to protect against potential breaches of U.S. national security?'

"One place someone might want to look: Cunningham's trips to Saudi Arabia, and what they were all about. I know for a fact that the half of this has not yet been reported."

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/003779.html

Kontogiannis went with Cunningham to Saudi Arabia, his offices were located in the same building as a big oil interest. He was corrupt and sought a presidential pardon with bribes of Cunningham and who knows who else.

[Justice]

2. wow.

You know, just the payment of $140,000 alone for furniture ought to raise eyebrows. Isn't the head of the Smithsonian under fire for spending 1/3 of that on office furniture?

[caligirl]

3. sent this to difi's office.

[bleever]

6. Thank you.

:thumbsup:

[caligirl]

4. why was the White House engaged in awarding a fraudulent contract

to give a bribe to Cunningham? what actions are they trying to silence by a 140,000 yacht?

[Botany]

5. Either that or they were just buying his vote and support.

Besides it wasn't like it was their money anyway. These son of bitches are
are using contractors to launder tax money which they use to do what ever they
want.

Duncan Hunter & Jerry Lewis were also involved ..... total corruption of the
government.

Impeach, Indict, and Imprison.

No wonder "they" wanted to shut down Carol Liam.

[caligirl]

9. WHITE HOUSE AWARDED $600,000 IN CONTRACTS INCLUDING THIS ONE

""Government procurement records show that MZM, which Wade started in 1993, did not report any revenue from prime contract awards until 2003. Most of its revenue has come from the agreement the Pentagon just cut off. But over the past three years it was also awarded several contracts, worth more than $600,000, by the Executive Office of the President. They include a $140,000 deal for office furniture in 2002 and several for unspecified "intelligence services."

"A White House spokeswoman declined to comment."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/27/AR2005062701856.html

Pentagon Ends New Work On D.C. Firm's Contract
MZM to Name New CEO as Relationship With Congressman Is Under Investigation

By Renae Merle and R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, June 28, 2005; Page D01

[caligirl]

10. A guy named Kontogiannis claims he bought the yacht, listed as a coconspirator in Cunningham case

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/29/AR2005112901641.html

Nov 2005

"Third and fourth co-conspirators, one identified as controlling a financial company in Rosedale, N.Y., and the other as president of a mortgage company in Greenvale, N.Y., are introduced in the plea agreement. Based on mortgage documents and other public records, the references appear to correspond to Thomas T. Kontogiannis (No. 3) and John T. Michael (No. 4). According to the charging document, the third co-conspirator paid $200,000 to a company controlled by the fourth co-conspirator in December 2001 to help purchase an Arlington condominium Cunningham was buying.

Neither returned calls to his office yesterday.


The guy was looking for a pardon for crimes he was convicted of.

Kontogiannis said in interviews in July that he bought Cunningham's 65-foot yacht in 2002 and helped finance the second mortgage on his new home in Rancho Santa Fe in late 2003 through Michael's company, Coastal Capital Corp."

For a possible answer we can thank Marcus Stern of The San Diego Union-Tribune, who first broke the Cunningham story almost a month ago. It seems Kontogiannis is yet another one of those businessmen just looking for some good advice.

Not long ago, you see, Kontogiannis got nailed in a multimillion-dollar price-fixing and bribery scandal involving one of his companies and New York state public schools. And he wanted to know from Cunningham how an upstanding man like himself could look into getting a pardon.

Kontogiannis described his discussion with Cunningham like this: “I said I have this problem and I was wondering if I can get a pardon out of it. He (Cunningham) said to me, ‘I know nothing about these things, but I’ll find the proper law firm and I’ll let you know if they can help you.’”

So let’s close with this question: What ‘proper law firm’ did Cunningham refer him to for pardon hunting? If the marshals get to him first, Cunningham might want to remember their number.
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:yAfWmNEaXlAJ:thehill.com:8888/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/JoshMarshall/070605.html+Kontogiannis&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=firefox-a

detailed history of Kontogiannis and trip to saudi arabia with cunningham.http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/01/08/news/top_stories/12_00_201_7_06.txt

[Botany]

11. Attn. Congressional Committees

Demand to see a receipt for the furniture and computers.

Game .... set ... match

They are just crooks .... end of story.

[NashVegas]

12. Demand to See the Furniture, Too!

..

[Botany]

14. Even high buying "high end stuff"

$140,000 should buy lots of furniture.

Oh that old blood clot in his leg most be getting worse.

[caligirl]

13. Is bush involved in selling Presidential pardons?

LATimes accused of sitting on the Kontogiannis story here>

"Before I go into the Kontogiannis story, the one the L.A. Times is sitting on (I guess a racket to sell convicted felons presidential pardons isn't that big a deal), let me reiterate Cunningham's modus operandi. Although no one ever accused him of being an intellectual or even one of the smarter members of a pretty brain dead caucus, Cunningham was smart enough-- unlike Rove's attorney-- not to take gold bars for his favours. Oh, no, "Duke" was too smart for that! If you wanted in on some Cunningham action, aside from giving free-flowing campaign contributions, you had to buy something from him at an exorbitant price. That's how he had the bribe money funneled his way. So smart, isn't he? The mechanics were so simple. Duke has a house for sale. It's worth x dollars so he lets someone who wants to bribe him know to buy it for x + $700,000 or he has a boat worth y dollars and the briber pays him y + $400,000. Isn't that slick? (Those are the real figures, by the way.) Meanwhile, the shrewdy has gotten an appraisal for these properties for the high prices so when he's caught he can say "But that was the price the independent appraiser said it was worth." It only took 5 minutes for investigators (not the L.A. Times) to discover that the "independent appraiser" was a loyal contributor to the far right congressman's campaigns. On top of all that, the defense contractor who Cunningham helped rake in hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for defense equipment, allowed ole Duke to live on his fancy yacht-- coincidentally named "The.."


"The question the L.A. Times and other news outlets should be asking is who at the White House was Duke's liaison with the pardon-granting apparatus? Or was this just a cozy little deal between Duke and Bush? And if so, how much of the $400,000 was Bush's cut? (Kontogiannis was paying off Duke in many other ways besides the outright $400,000 bribe-- which means that could have ALL been for Bush-- by giving him a series of discount loans (to the tune of at least another half million dollars) for real estate deals, one for a quick turn-around condo venture in Arlington, VA (which netted "Duke" a comfy $150,000 profit and involved another criminal associate of Cunningham's, a Joseph M. Della Ratta, a crooked real estate developer recently nailed for stealing from an asset management plan of which he was a trustee)."

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2005/07/why-is-media-giving-cunningham-and.html


Brent Wilkes used a jet owned by this company, Kontogiannis had a stake in:
Update: Readers have found some very interesting things. Among them, that a Kontogiannis family-owned company, Duocash Public Ltd., would seem to be involved in online payments for gambling. A hint of the circles Gus Boulis ran in? Another Kontogiannis company, Olympic Corp., with offices in Rosedale NY and Athens, built theme parks (apparently). And there seems to be a connection (e.g. a $300,000 plus settlement against TK) between Kontogiannis and the Montreal-based company Bombardier Equity, parent company of the Bombardier Business Jet Solutions Inc., which also owns a stake in? -- that private jet that Brent Wilkes' company Group W partially owns and has flown lawmakers like DeLay and Cunningham around in. Was that the plane that flew Cunningham to Saudi Arabia? And what about the Olympic Petroleum Engineering company located in the same building in Rosedale New York that several other Kontogiannis family corporate properties are located in? Is that a reason Kontogiannis would have wanted to tag along with Cunningham to Saudi Arabia? Red herring?

From Nexis:

DUOCASH PUBLIC LIMITED COMPANY
Registration No.: 05062943
EXECUTIVE LIST:
John Thomas MICHAEL
Christopher Michael BERTMAN
Evangelitsa Christine KONTOGIANNIS
BROUGHTON SECRETARIES LIMITED (Resigned Secretary)
PLATINUM NOMINEES LIMITED (Resigned Director)
STEELCOURT NOMINEES LIMITED (Resigned Director)

[formercia]

18. Check the invoices and track the purchases

The FBI has some very good forensic accountants.

[fooj]

7. K/R

:bounce:

[yellerpup]

15. Kick!

There is no end to the criminal activity coming from the office of the VP. Will somebody please impeach him? Now! :kick:

[caligirl]

16. Lam was looking at corruption in CIA, Foggo? Look at this:

" ... Viewed as a corruption case, the Cunningham matter has an arc that suggests the possibility of more high-profile indictments to come. But looked at from a counterintelligence angle, it is even more disturbing. The case is still more worrying if it is turned around, and focused not only on the congressman for sale, but on the defense contractors and foreign-linked financiers who cultivated Cunningham -- and potentially other lawmakers -- precisely because of their position on the Intelligence and Appropriations Committees.

Cunningham has admitted taking $2.4 million in bribes from two men who sought and received not only U.S. government contracts, but particular types of contracts. They were awarded defense and intelligence contracts, including counterintelligence and counterterrorism programs so sensitive their precise details are confined to those with security clearances. <...>

It is clear that companies belonging to Wilkes and Wade received a few hundred million dollars in sensitive defense and intelligence contracts. Who is investigating whether such companies should be performing such controversial tasks as conducting domestic surveillance on peace groups for the Defense Department? Who is investigating whether MZM and its successor Athena Innovative Solutions should be evaluating which foreign companies supply weapons to the Pentagon -- when MZM may have gotten the initial contract through dubious means? <...> In short, who is investigating the counterintelligence implications of this case to protect against potential breaches of U.S. national security?'

"One place someone might want to look: Cunningham's trips to Saudi Arabia, and what they were all about. I know for a fact that the half of this has not yet been reported."

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/003779.html

Kontogiannis went with Cunningham to Saudi Arabia, his offices were located in the same building as a big oil interest. He was corrupt and sought a presidential pardon with bribes of Cunningham and who knows who else.

[caligirl]

19. Organized crime

My point is about Kontogiannis, Charlie Gargano, Eagle Buildings and Andros is that we have only touched the tip of the corruption that has been spreading like cancer in the last twenty years and it's bipartisan fraud. Think about how bad it is in New York State - the head of two state agencies can simultaneously serve as a director of two companies linked to organized crime. He still has both jobs and he still spends billions of taxpayer dollars virtually unchecked.



New York State is a sewer and there is no reason to think that a crook like Kontogiannis wasn't hooked up with Charlie Gargano or Gary Ackerman, for that matter.

"Mrs. Kontogiannis has some like kind companions in NY racing circles. Carl Lizza of Lizza Industries is very well-known and he may very well keep a lot of his money clean these days but his history dates back to the notorious $2 billion Suffolk County Southwest Sewer district scandal circa 1980. Charles A. Gargano, Bush pioneer, owes his business success to the sewer district scandal and is a very good friend of Lizza as well as being Mario Posillico's business partner. Gargano, of course, is the vice-chairman of the NY-NJ Port Authority and president of the NYS economic development agency. Alphonse D'Amato's first senate campaign in 1980 was financed with sewer money. (Ask Senator Al if he remembers his campaign stop at Orlando's in Huntington where he and his wife had dinner in 1980. I do - I was there.)



Coincidentally, I spent the weekend with some lovely retirees who happen to be related to a member of the mafia. One of them actually met John Gotti along with some other lesser known but powerful members of the mob. His memory for names is not all that good but he remembers that Carl Lizza had a senator as a silent partner at one time and that Lizza always got the inside track on federal construction budgets. "http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/27519

[Patsy Stone]

20. And on a related MZM bribe: let's not forget Katherine Harris (AKA "Representative B")

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006603010423

But for months, there was a mystery: What the heck had Wade, MZM's CEO, wanted from Harris in return for that money?

Harris has claimed, to me and other journalists, that she didn't have any idea. She insisted that she had assumed all those MZM-connected people -- who didn't live in Florida and whose $2,000 checks arrived in bundles -- just liked her stands on the issues and wanted to see her re-elected.

<snip>

MZM CEO Wade's plea agreement tells us that he eventually told Harris -- referred to only as "Representative B" in the court document -- exactly what MZM wanted from her.

Wade, the man who handed her a bundle of $2,000 checks, within the year took our Representative B to dinner at a Washington, D.C., restaurant, Citronelle, and asked her to help the company get a defense contract. It involved work in Navy counterintelligence.

<snip>

Nice post! Finally it all come back to Dick, doesn't it? Yay! (Everything crossed that this one sticks)

[glitch]

21. Wow, well we knew they were corrupt through and through, but the details

are incredible. They're like termites and they don't appear to ever sleep.

[bleever]

22. Also see Cheney's involvement in San Diego wastewater scam:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=132

Uncle Dick involved in shady deal to outsource wastewater treatment to private firm in Mexico, involving the usual cast of San Diego area republicrooks.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

23. kix

:popcorn:

[SaveAmerica]

24. I still believe...a frog march is a comin'