State to probe claims Mossad chief received gifts from Packer

A top security official who later became the head of the Mossad intelligence agency received expensive tickets to a Mariah Carey concert from her then-fiance, billionaire Australian businessman James Packer, Channel 10 reported Tuesday.

Packer has emerged as a key figure in ongoing corruption investigations into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Arnon Milchan, a Hollywood producer who also figures prominently in the investigations of Netanyahu, and Packer are friends and have mutual business interests. The Haaretz daily reported that in 2015 Milchan and Packer tried wooing Cohen to join a global security firm called Blue Sky International, which was started by Milchan in 2008. The businessmen wanted Cohen to take up a partnership in a cybersecurity project. At the time, Cohen was head of the National Security Council and in December 2015 Netanyahu selected him to lead the Mossad, putting the kibosh on Milchan and Packer’s offer.

The development in Cohen’s case came after the Civil Service Commission in December began looking into reports that months before he took up the position as director of Israel’s spy agency, he had received from Packer tickets worth thousands of shekels to attend a Carey concert in central Israel in August 2015....

http://www.timesofisrael.com/state-to-look-into-claims-mossad-chief-received-gifts-from-packer/

Report: Netanyahu to be investigated for bribery, fraud

A months-long inquiry into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s affairs took a new twist on Monday, with police reportedly convinced that they will be able to open a full-blown criminal investigation against him in the next few days.

Police recently received new documents as part of a secret inquiry that began almost nine months ago, Channel 2 reported. Based on those files police have already turned to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit requesting that he allow them to open a full criminal investigation. The report stated that among the suspected offenses are bribe-taking and aggravated fraud.

A spokesperson for the prime minister said that “it’s all nonsense,” Haaretz reported. “Since Netanyahu’s victory in the last elections and even before, hostile elements have made heroic efforts to attempt to bring about [Netanyahu’s] downfall, with false accusations against him and his family. This [latest attempt] is absolutely false. There was nothing and there will be nothing.”

In June, it was reported that Israel Police Chief Roni Alsheich gave his go-ahead to the secret investigation by special police unit Lahav 433, but that he had demanded full cooperation on secrecy and that no details be leaked to the media.

Mandelblit also reportedly instructed employees in the state prosecutor’s office to look into allegations that Netanyahu accepted 1 million euros (about $1.1 million) from accused French fraudster Arnaud Mimran in 2009...

http://www.timesofisrael.com/report-netanyahu-to-be-investigated-for-bribery-fraud

The man who seduced the 7th Fleet

For months, a small team of U.S. Navy investigators and federal prosecutors secretly devised options for a high-stakes international manhunt. Could the target be snatched from his home base in Asia and rendered to the United States? Or held captive aboard an American warship?

Making the challenge even tougher was the fact that the man was a master of espionage. His moles had burrowed deep into the Navy hierarchy to leak him a stream of military secrets, thwarting previous efforts to bring him to justice.

The target was not a terrorist, nor a spy for a foreign power, nor the kingpin of a drug cartel. But rather a 350-pound defense contractor nicknamed Fat Leonard, who had befriended a generation of Navy leaders with cigars and liquor whenever they made port calls in Asia.

Leonard Glenn Francis was legendary on the high seas for his charm and his appetite for excess. For years, the Singapore-based businessman had showered Navy officers with gifts, epicurean dinners, prostitutes and, if necessary, cash bribes so they would look the other way while he swindled the Navy to refuel and resupply its ships.

In the end, federal agents settled on a risky sting operation to try to nab Fat Leonard. They would lure him to California, dangling a meeting with admirals who hinted they had lucrative contracts to offer.

He took the bait. On Sept. 16, 2013, Francis was arrested in his hotel suite overlooking San Diego’s harbor. It was the opening strike in a sweep covering three states and seven countries, as hundreds of law enforcement agents arrested other suspects and seized incriminating files from Francis’s business empire.

A 51-year-old Malaysian citizen, Francis has since pleaded guilty to fraud and bribery charges. His firm, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, is financially ruined...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/wp/2016/05/27/fat-leonard/

Wiki: Titan Corporation

Titan Corporation was a United States-based company founded in 1981, with its headquarters located in San Diego, California. It was acquired by L-3 Communications on June 3, 2005 and operated as the "Titan Group" of L-3 Communications. In early 2007, divisions using the Titan Group name were internally directed to discontinue use of the "Titan" moniker and were given new names.

Titan specialized in providing information and communications products, solutions, and services for intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security. Titan provided information systems solutions, support services and communications products to the Federal Government, especially to the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

In recent years, like many other defense companies, Titan diversified through a series of acquisitions, 10 since 2000 alone. The firm got into the linguistic business in the wake of 9/11 by acquiring Fairfax, Va.-based BTG Inc., which had a $10 million military contract dating back to 1999. When the demand for linguists grew after the United States launched the war on terror, so did the size of Titan's contracts. After the sale of Titan Corporation to L-3 Communications, several Titan executives went on to head Kratos Defense and Security Solutions (formerly WFI), which has also similarly been diversifying through a series of acquisitions...

...Titan has a $54.8 million contract with the Airborne Warning and Control System to support the development of spy planes. They also have an $18 million contract to design war games for the US Navy.

Titan received a competitive contract with a potential value of $163.9 million from the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command on behalf of the U.S. Northern Command for the US Joint Task Force Civil Support on January 12, 2005. The contract is "to provide a full range of planning, analysis, exercise, and information technology services for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and High-Yield Explosive (CBRNE) Consequence Management operations," a Titan press release announced.

Titan announced on February 14, 2006, they had received a "$350 million, five-year, multiple award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) task-based contract" from the Department of Homeland Security to support the National Exercise Program...

...As a public military contractor the company employed some of the personnel who were implicated in the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in 2004. Involving mostly Titan and CACI International employees, the U.S. Army "found that contractors were involved in 36 percent of the [Abu Ghraib] proven incidents and identified 6 employees as individually culpable".[2] None of these personnel were prosecuted.[2]...

On March 2, 2005, the company admitted to illegally providing $2 million to the 2001 re-election campaign of President Mathieu Kérékou of Benin, and agreed to pay $28.5 million in fines and civil penalties.[3] Titan pled guilty and paid the largest penalty under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in history for bribery and filing false tax returns.[2]

Titan Corp briefly partnered with SkyWay Communications[4][5] and owned stock in several other corporations related to SkyWay. SkyWay's former DC9 aircraft, N900SA, was captured in April 2006 with 5.5 tons of cocaine on board. Investigation of the cocaine bust by Mad Cow Morning News[5] led to the discovery that Titan had employed Makram Chams, a Lebanese national. Chams owned a Kwik-Check convenience store in Venice, Florida, where the biggest overseas money transfer to the 9/11 terrorists ($70,000 from the UAE) was sent, according to the testimony of FBI agents during the 9/11 Commission hearings...


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Corporation

Treasury officials wined & dined by arms giants & ‘rogue banks’

Treasury officials regularly accepted invitations to lavish dinners with lobbyists for banks that were being investigated for market rigging, a new report has found.

The explosive research, which was conducted by the National Audit Office (NAO), was published on Tuesday.

It reveals that banking lobby the British Bankers’ Association was a frequent provider of hospitality to senior Treasury officials, despite the fact some of its members were being investigated by UK authorities for market rigging.

Arms manufacturer BAE Systems and auditing giants Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) were also frequent providers of gifts and hospitality. Because each of these organizations supply services to government, the NAO said such patterns of gift giving could create conflicts of interest...

https://www.rt.com/uk/331850-state-officials-gifts-hospitality/

JPMorgan Tracked Business Linked to China Hiring

Federal authorities have obtained confidential documents that shed new light onJPMorgan Chase’s decision to hire the children of China’s ruling elite, securing emails that show how the bank linked one prominent hire to “existing and potential business opportunities” from a Chinese government-run company.

The documents, which also include spreadsheets that list the bank’s “track record” for converting hires into business deals, offer the most detailed account yet of JPMorgan’s “Sons and Daughters” hiring program, which has been at the center of a federal bribery investigation for months. The spreadsheets and emails — recently submitted by JPMorgan to authorities — illuminate how the bank created the program to prevent questionable hiring practices but ultimately viewed it as a gateway to doing business with state-owned companies in China, which commonly issue stock with the help of Wall Street banks.

The hiring practices seemed to have been an open secret at the bank’s headquarters in Hong Kong, according to the documents, copies of which were reviewed by The New York Times. In the email citing the “existing and potential business opportunities,” a senior JPMorgan executive in Hong Kong emphasized that the father of a job candidate was the chairman of the China Everbright Group, a state-controlled financial conglomerate. The executive also extolled the broader benefits of the hiring program, telling colleagues in another email: “You all know I have always been a big believer of the Sons and Daughters program — it almost has a linear relationship” with winning assignments to advise Chinese companies. Until now, the indications of a connection between the hires and business deals have not been so explicit...

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/12/07/bank-tabulated-business-linked-to-china-hiring/

Legalized Bribery | Interview with Ex-Lobbyist Jack Abramoff

CIA Has Been Giving Afghan President Bags Of U.S. Taxpayer Cash For Years

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/world/asia/karzai-acknowledges-cash-deliveries-by-cia.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamid_Karzai