“Bluebonnet” was title given to fifteen Texas financial savings and mortgage establishments, bundled collectively and sold-off by federal regulators on the tail-end of the financial savings and loans disaster that rocked the US within the late Eighties. For causes that stay murky, Bluebonnet turned the topic of intense curiosity by various intriguing people. As famous in Half 1 of this two-part article, this will have had one thing to do with the truth that the a number of thrifts that have been consolidated into Bluebonnet had earlier been energetic in a sprawling “daisy chain” of unhealthy loans, actual property transactions and cash laundering. This sizzling cash community was overseen and administered a really uncommon coterie of conmen who had ties to highly effective political figures in Texas and past, in addition to to organized crime and the CIA.
When the fifteen S&Ls have been on the public sale block, amongst those that tried to amass them included figures linked to main nodes on this daisy chain—they usually introduced with them Robert Maxwell. Maxwell, on the time, was embarking on his effort to construct an American enterprise empire. Removed from the curious look of a ruthless businessman hoping to capitalize on the disaster, Maxwell’s ill-fated try to buy Bluebonnet was depending on his deep ties to the state of Texas, ties that have been intimately related to the felony and intelligence-linked underworld by which the controversial media mogul moved.
Maxwell’s departure from the Bluebonnet scene was on no account the tip of the intrigue surrounding the thrift. Arriving quickly after his exit was an insurance coverage man with a historical past of fraud, and a revolving forged of suspect backers, all of whom had performed supporting roles in various clandestine dealings that outlined the corruption of the Eighties.
Bluebonnet, Spherical 2: A Widening Gyre
The person who finally secured possession of Bluebonnet Financial savings, James M. Fail, obtained his begin on the planet of finance working in Alabama’s insurance coverage business. Among the many numerous entities that he managed included United Securities Holdings, the mother or father firm of the Public Nationwide Life Insurance coverage Firm of Birmingham. Public Nationwide, in flip, managed quite a few insurance coverage issues, working from life to industrial insurances. By 1971, it boasted over $72 million in belongings.
Fail, it appears, was additionally accustomed to fraud. In 1976, he transferred belongings from Public Nationwide to a shell firm, Trendy Dwelling Life Insurance coverage. Alongside the best way, he might have overstated the worth of those belongings to generate money movement. That very same 12 months, Fail pleaded responsible in a securities fraud go well with that focused one of many officers of his firms.
By the late Nineteen Seventies, Fail consolidated his numerous holdings collectively below the auspices of the Lifeshares Group, and started a march throughout the US, accumulating alongside the best way an increasing number of firms to bundle below this umbrella. Subsidiaries of Lifeshares sprouted up in Nebraska, Texas, Arizona, Illinois and Maryland. Someplace alongside the best way, Fail relocated his base of operations to Phoenix, Arizona, and have become acquainted with a person whose ties to highly effective political forces generated a firestorm of controversy over Bluebonnet: lobbyist and Republican get together insider Robert J. Thompson. “It isn’t clear,” notes the Congressional report on Bluebonnet, “how Fail and Thompson got here collectively.”
Born in Oklahoma, Robert Thompson was the son of Victor Thompson, the longtime president of Utica Nationwide Financial institution. In 1982, Victor was accused by Congressional investigators of “knowingly concealing mortgage losses and deceiving buyers” when it turned identified that Utica held various loans for Penn Sq. Financial institution. Penn Sq., primarily based in Oklahoma Metropolis, had declared chapter that 12 months, which had set off a domino-effect of financial institution losses throughout the nation. Thompson’s misleading practices mirrored these of Penn Sq.: numerous funding advisors charged that the financial institution had supplied them assurances concerning the monetary establishment’s monetary footing.
Different, darker issues might have been afoot at Thompson’s Utica Nationwide Financial institution. One of many financial institution’s main debtors was International Worldwide Airways, a Missouri-based aviation firm overseen by Farhad Azima. In 1984, journalists working for the Kansas Metropolis Star revealed that International Worldwide had been concerned within the transport of arms to battle hotspots throughout the globe, presumably with CIA approval. That they had additionally uncovered International Worldwide’s relationship to EATSCO, a shadowy freight forwarding firm that was a entrance utilized by former CIA officers Ted Shackley, Thomas Clines and Edwin Wilson. Within the mid-Eighties, one other Azima firm referred to as Race Aviation popped up within the Iran-Contra affair.
Reportedly, considered one of International Worldwide’s pilots was Heinrich “Harry” Rupp, a confirmed arms dealer who was convicted in 1988 for defrauding Colorado’s Aurora Financial institution (Rupp had been brought to Aurora by a relative of considered one of Adnan Khashoggi’s staff). Rupp may need additionally been tied into the Texas crowd mentioned in Half 1. Paperwork drafted by Rebecca Sims, discovered within the Danny Casolaro papers, reference an allegation made by an unnamed supply that Rupp and Robert Corson have been hidden house owners of an organization referred to as Roswell Imported Automobiles, Inc. Sims famous that considered one of Roswell’s administrators was additionally the director of a Houston aviation firm, Northwest Jet, that Corson was identified to make use of.
Such connections instantly elevate questions on potential ties between Robert Thompson and the world of intelligence, and, by extension, his relationship to James Fail’s profitable Bluebonnet acquisition. What is for certain is that Thompson was politically well-connected. In 1979, he served as chairman of the Tulsa County Republican Occasion, and for his efforts Thompson was made an aide to George H.W. Bush. Numerous press stories describe him because the Vice President’s Congressional liaison, and as a “particular assistant” to President Ronald Reagan.
Within the mid-Eighties, Thompson left the White Home to embark on a profession as a lobbyist. The New York Occasions reported that “a central promoting level of Thompson’s lobbying enterprise was his relationship, together with month-to-month get-togethers with the vice chairman.” Thompson was additionally an in depth buddy of Daniel Wall, the nation’s prime financial savings and mortgage regulator. The connection between the 2 was so cozy that Thompson lobbied Wall immediately over Fail’s makes an attempt to buy Bluebonnet, writing him letters starting with “Expensive Danny.”
Suspicions have been quickly raised that Thompson himself may need had an unseen monetary curiosity within the Bluebonnet deal. As compensation for his efforts, Fail assured a mortgage for Thompson from an Oklahoma financial institution, and in violation of Federal regulation, had the mortgage transferred from the financial institution to considered one of Fail’s insurance coverage firms. Thompson used a part of the cash to put money into two ventures, one with California congressman Doug Bosco and the opposite with a former FDIC official in Oklahoma.
The final word deal that Thompson was in a position to craft for Fail was, fairly frankly, ludicrous: he solely put up $1,000 of his personal cash to purchase the bundle of fifteen thrifts. Utilizing his insurance coverage firms as collateral, Fail secured $35 million in financing from Bankers Life, a subsidiary of I.C.H. Corp, an insurance coverage big headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. A secondary mortgage was made to Fail, for the needs of recapitalizing Bluebonnet, by the Capital Nationwide Company (CNC). CNC and I.C.H. have been interrelated establishments, each owned by businessman Robert Shaw. On the time, Shaw was chairman of I.C.H., and president of CNC.
Whereas I.C.H. was situated in Kentucky, its principal banker was situated elsewhere, in Dallas, Texas. The 1988/1989 version of Main Firms of the USA exhibits that this financial institution was none aside from M Financial institution, the financial institution that was so near Robert Corson.
A 1987 report by CNN Cash offered some particulars about what it described as “I.C.H. Corp’s ascent from nowhere.” The report notes that from 1982 by means of 1987, Shaw’s Kentucky insurance coverage mix had been catapulted alongside a dizzying progress trajectory, with its steadiness sheet ballooning from $800 million to $8 billion in simply 5 years. Half and parcel of I.C.H.’s speedy climb have been the alliances that Shaw had solid. One in every of these alliances was with First Govt, the insurance coverage big overseen by Fred Carr. Earlier than its spectacular fall in 1990, First Govt had been the highest purchaser of junk bonds peddled by Michael Milken; by some accounts, the worth of those purchases totaled someplace within the $40 billion vary.
In response to CNN Cash, I.C.H. had bought 9.9% of First Govt in October, 1986. On the time, First Govt was doing enterprise with Imperial Financial savings of San Diego, then owned by the Gouletas household. As mentioned in Half 1, the deep ties of the Gouletas household ranged from firms concerned with Robert Corson to Jeffrey Epstein to Allan Tessler, legal professional for Earl Brian.
One other I.C.H. ally was disgraced inventory dealer Ivan Boesky. Shaw had invested $10 million with Boesky within the mid-Eighties. Boesky—who claimed to have labored undercover for the CIA in Iran within the Nineteen Seventies—was, like Fred Carr and First Govt, carefully tied to Milken and his junk bond peddling equipment. The SEC expenses that through the Eighties, “Milken provided Ivan Boesky with capital and data, which Boesky used to reap the benefits of takeover bids and manipulate shares to the advantage of each males.”
I.C.H. offered James Fail with the lion’s share of the capital he wanted to finish the takeover of Bluebonnet. In mild of its deep historical past with figures concerned with Michael Milken, this paints an intriguing image. Whereas the junk bond story and the S&L story are sometimes handled as separate tales of the runaway greed of Eighties finance, they’re actually the identical story. There have been the aforementioned enterprise dealings between the Gouletas and First Govt, and the shut ties that existed between Milken and the arch-S&L fraudster Charles Keating. One other case was the true property funding agency Southmark, which was lodged inside a deal-making triangle involving Keating and Milken.
Extremely, on the time that I.C.H. started backing Fail, Shaw’s firm was joined (virtually fairly actually) on the hip with Southmark. It’s right here that figures intimately related to the PROMIS affair start to bubble again as much as the floor.
Meet Southmark
To start with, Southmark was referred to as Residents and Southern Realty Buyers. It was an actual property funding automobile organized within the early Nineteen Seventies by Residents & Southern Financial institution, considered one of Atlanta’s largest banking homes. Residents & Southern was definitely accustomed to the darker facet of politics: the establishment had helped bankroll Bert Lance, Carter’s controversial Workplace of Administration and Price range chief who was pressured to step down below a cloud of scandal in 1977. It was Lance, in league with Jackson Stephens, who had first helped the Financial institution of Credit score and Commerce Worldwide (BCCI) penetrate the American banking system, thereby organising key nodes for a really world cash laundering operation.
Across the time it was organising the longer term Southmark, Residents & Southern might have helped present start-up capital to its worker, the CIA-trained Cuban exile Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya, to kind the World Finance Company (WFC). On the time of its collapse within the late Nineteen Seventies, WFC was identified to American legislation enforcement as a serious participant in illicit narcotics visitors and cash laundering operations worldwide (Amongst those that availed themselves of the WFC’s providers included Edward DeBartolo, the outstanding shopping center builder, reputed inheritor to Meyer Lansky’s felony enterprise, and shut enterprise accomplice of Leslie Wexner). Throughout this time, no main arrests or prosecutions have been made towards WFC principals. The rationale? They have been protected by the CIA.
In 1981, Southmark fell below the route of Gene Phillips, who relocated its operations from Atlanta to Dallas, Texas. There, Phillips proceeded to construct Southmark into what was referred to as a “vulture agency,” with a specialty in choosing up the shattered items left within the wake of the S&L looting spree. Journalists Stephen Pizzo and Mary Fricker described these actions succinctly, stating: “Time and time once more the corporate had turned up on the finish of our investigation of a failed thrift… buying the troubled belongings of those that had contributed to the failure of the establishment.”
Feasting on the stays of financial failure isn’t all the time essentially the most profitable of gigs, and by the late Eighties, Southmark discovered itself in a dangerous place. In dire want of money flows, the corporate puzzled inventory analysts when it introduced a stock-swap plan with I.C.H. Corp. First proposed in 1987, the plan would successfully merge Southmark and I.C.H., which was – on the time – flush with capital due to its involvement with high-volume junk bond merchants. This might have taken place on the eve of I.C.H.’s personal forays into the world of lifeless S&Ls, by means of its bankrolling of the Bluebonnet buy.
Apart from I.C.H., different fascinating figures is also discovered within the gravitational pull of Southmark. One subsidiary of Southmark, Carlsberg Administration, was run by developer (and prolific defaulter on S&L loans) G. Wayne Reeder. Amongst Reeder’s investments was a stake in a bingo parlor and on line casino on the Cabazon Indian Reservation in Indio, California—the positioning of a weapons growth undertaking carried out along with the Wackenhut Company. It was on the Cabazon reservation the place not less than among the modifications of the PROMIS software program have been carried out.
A California legislation enforcement surveillance report on a gathering that came about in late 1981 at Cabazon between Wackenhut, representatives of varied weapon growth firms, and members of the Contra rebels reported that Reeder had arrived within the firm of Earl Brian. Michael Riconosciuto, the weapons specialist who helped modify PROMIS, later said that Reeder’s position within the operation was to supply “clear cash.”
The presence of Reeder at a subsidiary of Southmark is alarming sufficient, however an examination of the corporate’s house owners in addition to Gene Phillips raises much more questions.
A 1985 Southmark annual report exhibits that 61.9% of its Sequence E Most popular Inventory was held by AMI, Inc.—the Shreveport-based firm owned by Herman Beebe and which had performed such a central position in his S&L and insurance coverage companies. Certainly, Beebe and Southmark have been a close-knit pair. His holdings in Southmark have been leveraged to pay down money owed he needed to not less than one S&L, although this was simply the tip of the iceberg. Southmark was subsequently revealed to have accomplished a staggering $90 million value of enterprise with Beebe, which included the acquisition of varied nursing properties owned by the fraudster.
The identical annual report illustrates that one other holder of Southmark’s Sequence E inventory was the nursing dwelling operator Beverly Enterprises, with 13.8% of the grand whole. A serious stakeholder in Beverly Enterprises, in the meantime, was Jackson Stephens’ Stephens, Inc. In flip, Stephens’ software program firm, Systematics, ultimately contracted with Beverly Enterprises to service its information processing wants. This opens a possible linkage between Beverly Enterprises and the PROMIS affair—a chance that was of nice curiosity in the midst of Invoice Hamilton’s authorized battle over the destiny of Inslaw. As talked about in Half 1 of this text, the modification of PROMIS held by Systematics was put to make use of in banks, for the twin function of monitoring monetary flows and facilitating cash laundering.
A “memorandum for the file” drafted by Hamilton and his spouse in reference to the case outlined the significance of Beverly Enterprises. They famous that principals of the corporate helped finance the 1974 Senate marketing campaign of Earl Brian, and that by the early Nineteen Nineties, Beverly Enterprises had change into a person of a modified model of Inslaw’s PROMIS software program.
Intriguingly, each Beverly Enterprises and Beebe’s AMI seem on the legal professional shopper record of Vince Foster, President Invoice Clinton’s deputy White Home counsel who died below suspicious circumstances on July twentieth, 1993. Foster had beforehand been a accomplice at Arkansas’ prestigious Rose Legislation agency, which had boasted significantly shut ties to the Clinton household’s political fortunes (Hillary Clinton herself had labored for the agency), and to Jackson Stephens’ steady of firms. Whereas the interconnections between Foster, the Clintons, and Stephens have been closely scrutinized through the years, little is understood concerning what kinds of interactions Foster may need had with Beebe and his unruly gang of spooks, mobsters, and monetary fraudsters.
It’s fairly attainable that this tracks again, as soon as once more, to the PROMIS scandal. Ex-Forbes journalist Jim Norman, in his groundbreaking article “Fostergate“, describes how a number of sources had knowledgeable him that starting someday within the late Nineteen Seventies, Foster had “been a silent, behind-the-scenes overseer on behalf of the NSA for a small Little Rock, Ark. (sic) financial institution information processing firm”—that’s, Stephens’ Systematics, Inc. Norman added that “Systematics has had shut ties to the NSA and CIA ever since its founding, sources say, as a money-shuffler for covert operations.” If Foster was concerned with intelligence group “money-shuffling,” this may assist clarify the connection to AMI; in spite of everything, Beebe was concerned in efficient cash laundering on a colossal scale.
In the direction of the tip of 1987, Southmark and I.C.H. Corp. deserted their merger plans, citing “dissatisfaction… registered by the securities market” after issues about regulatory roadblocks prompted Southmark’s inventory worth to dip. Nonetheless, the 2 firms said that they have been dedicated to exploring “various strategies of doing enterprise collectively”. When Southmark lastly went bust in 1989, I.C.H. was discovered to have “been listed as a $35 million creditor.” Southmark’s chapter trustee said that the “declare was bogus and shouldn’t be honored as a result of Southmark and I.C.H. had engaged in a questionable inventory swap to puff up their mutual steadiness sheets.”
Given the linkage between the Arkansas empire of Jackson Stephens and Southmark by means of Beverly Enterprises, it’s attainable that Stephens himself may need performed some form of position on this whole sequence of occasions. In 1987—the identical 12 months that Southmark and I.C.H. have been exploring their merger—Stephens, Inc. raised $1.3 million for I.C.H., ostensibly for the aim of enabling the corporate to amass two life insurance coverage firms. A number of years later, in 1994, Stephens, Inc. introduced that it was shopping for the controlling stake in I.C.H. held by Consolidated Nationwide Company—the identical holding firm owned by I.C.H.’s Robert Shaw that offered funds to James Fail to recapitalize Bluebonnet.
In every single place one turns within the story of Bluebonnet, I.C.H., and Southmark, one bumps up towards Jackson Stephens—and with him, the specter of PROMIS. Given the looks of Robert Maxwell, the principal salesman of PROMIS overseas, within the Bluebonnet affair, it’s clear that one thing very peculiar was occurring with this bundle of beleaguered thrifts.
Dangling Threads: The Jersey Connection
There may be circumstantial proof that Robert Maxwell’s look within the Bluebonnet story wasn’t a one-off, momentary brush with the immense financial savings and loans swindle that came about throughout the US. Extremely, there are a variety of overlaps between people working in Maxwell’s prolonged community and figures concerned within the pilfering of funds for ends that, many many years later, nonetheless stay murky.
Take the Florida land fraud, talked about earlier, by which Robert Corson had performed a key position. Central to that rip-off was a British legal professional by the title of Keith Alan Cox, who had labored carefully with the rip-off’s architect, Mike Adkinson. Adkinson was a Houston developer and builder near the circles round Corson and Walter Mischer—and, reportedly, an “worldwide arms supplier” who labored with a “group of Kuwaitis” to dealer weapon gross sales to Iraq someday within the early Eighties.
These arms dealings may maintain the important thing to explaining how Adkinson turned linked up with British legal professional Keith Alan Cox. In response to court docket filings drafted in reference to Adkinson’s land rip-off, Cox “represented a bunch of Kuwaitis who invested internationally by means of a multi-billion greenback firm referred to as Compendium Belief.” The filings additionally observe that Compendium Belief had a “lending arm” referred to as Sandsend Monetary Consultants, Ltd. Sandsend, by means of Adkinson’s scheme, was in a position to spirit away massive sums of cash from Texas financial savings and loans, together with funds from Corson’s Imaginative and prescient Banc.
Linda Minor notes that one other participant that bubbled up in the midst of the rip-off was Southmark, although its involvement was finally blocked by regulators on the Federal Financial savings and Mortgage Insurance coverage Company. Press stories from the interval additionally present that Adkinson was fueling his actual property firm, Improvement Group, Inc., with loans from San Jacinto Financial savings, considered one of Southmark’s subsidiaries. The person described in court docket data as San Jacinto’s “business lending officer” was Joseph Grosz, previously employed by the Gouletas household.
Given the proximity of the Gouletas to Center Jap arms offers through their ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and to PROMIS gross sales (copies of which ended up in international locations like Iraq), through their legal professional Allan Tessler, it’s value asking to what diploma the Florida land affair was getting used to generate funds for clandestine actions.
Additional particulars of Adkinson and Cox’s connections to the Center East have been offered by Rebecca Sims in an article for Covert Motion Data Bulletin. In response to Sims, within the early Eighties, Adkinson had partnered up with the Ahmad Al-Babtain Group, described as a consortium of “rich Kuwaitis”. Confusingly, Ahmad Al-Babtain was in truth Saudi in origin, although the group had intensive holdings in Kuwait. It seems that this is identical group that Cox was representing by means of Compendium Belief and Sandsend Monetary Consultants. Pete Brewton notes that Cox said in court docket that, on the time of the Florida land rip-off, Al-Babtain was not concerned with the Isle of Jersey firms. This raises an necessary query: who, then, was Cox representing throughout his involvement with the looting of financial savings and loans?
Cox did have moderately high-profile shoppers. On Could 14th, 1992, whereas the fallout from the Florida fraud was nonetheless being battled out in court docket, Cox was appointed as a director of the board of the Oxford United Soccer Membership. Because the early Eighties, Oxford United had been owned by Robert Maxwell, with the publishing magnate taking a time period because the membership’s chairman in 1982. By 1984, Ghislaine Maxwell and her brother, Kevin Maxwell, had taken positions on Oxford United’s board. Ghislaine held her spot till June nineteenth, 1991, whereas Kevin maintained his till Could 14th, 1992—the day that the Maxwell property offered their holdings within the membership and Cox joined up as a brand new director. This means that Cox represented the pursuits of the consumers of Maxwell’s stake.
On Could fifteenth, 1992, journalist Dan Atkinson ran an article in The Guardian titled “Jardine Matheson is purchaser of Oxford soccer membership.” Within the article, Atkinson notes that the acquisition of the Maxwell stake concerned a convoluted nest of firms. The direct purchaser was a British entity referred to as Biomass Recycling Ltd., which in flip was managed by an funding firm referred to as Vitality Holdings Ltd. Vitality Holdings, in the meantime, was “owned by a belief of which Jardine [Matheson]—a world group registered within the tax haven of the Bahamas—is the trustee.” Cox, then, may very possible have been performing on behalf of Jardine Matheson.
Jardine Matheson, which was as soon as one of many nice opium homes of British-controlled Hong Kong, has been the longtime hang-out of the Keswick household, a prolific clan of retailers, bankers, and spies deeply embedded within the ruling lessons in London and in Hong Kong (e.g., outstanding members of the Keswick household populated the Particular Operations Govt, a clandestine service group operational through the Second World Struggle). Not too long ago, Limitless Hangout reported that Jardine, which has lengthy been accused of complicity in cash laundering, might have been concerned with Washington’s Farmington State Financial institution, an necessary node within the still-unfolding FTX imbroglio.
Robert Maxwell had his personal ties to the Isle of Jersey, the small island and tax haven the place financial savings and mortgage cash vanished into the Cox-linked Compendium Belief and Sandsend Monetary Consultants. The one-time chairman of his Pergamon Press was banker Sir Henry d’Avigdor-Goldsmid, previously the top of the Anglo Israel Financial institution (a London affiliate of Israel’s Financial institution Leumi). Sir Henry had additionally acted because the chairman of the Worldwide Funding Belief Firm of Jersey. This entity was slanted in the direction of the pursuits of the Rothschild household: fixtures on the board included Jacob Rothschild, representing N.M. Rothschild of London, and George Karlweiss, an funding strategist within the make use of of Edmond de Rothschild.
Then there’s John Dick. Born to a Mennonite household in Canada, Dick’s climb to the highest started in Colorado and he later set out for the Isle of Jersey someday within the Nineteen Seventies, the place he resided in St. John’s Manor— “the best home in Jersey,” as one journalist described it. His ascendancy was facilitated by deep inroads made into the British institution, culminating within the Eighties with dealings with the highly effective Peninsular & Steam Oriental Navigation Firm (P&O). Collectively together with his accomplice, William Pauls, Dick took management of European Ferries, a delivery firm with world pursuits, and merged it into P&O, gaining alongside the best way spots on the reformed firm’s board. Dick and Pauls then tapped this capital to speculate closely in American actual property, with a path of acquisitions that included the tried acquisition of two of Colorado’s largest ski resorts, Vail and Beaver Creek.
P&O, in the meantime, was carefully tied to Keith Alan Cox’s possible employer, Jardine Matheson. In the course of the Nineteen Seventies, P&O and Jardine belonged to a company syndicate that managed Southern Pacific Properties, a Hong Kong-based growth firm that specialised in accommodations all through Asia and the Pacific. Southern Pacific’s founder, Canadian businessman Peter Munk, had been backed early on by the highly effective Keswick clans, the controlling drive behind Jardine. Someday throughout his world travels on behalf of Southern Pacific, Munk made contact with Saudi arms supplier Adnan Khashoggi; later, the pair would launch the fantastically rich—and politically-connected—Barrick gold mining firm.
There have been rumors that Dick himself was no stranger to the world of Saudi arms sellers. In response to Richard Rossmiller (a serial S&L fraudster and participant in Mike Adkinson’s Florida land rip-off), Dick had “offered weapons to Saudi Arabia within the early Eighties”. Regardless of the reality of the matter, Dick had definitely cultivated contacts in a world of highly effective gamers, a lot of them in direct proximity to high-level arms dealing—and way more.
Press stories inform tales of Dick and William Pauls, strolling the streets of London “wearing mink overcoats and black fits as a substitute of the right pinstripe fits”; the nickname granted to the pair was the “darkish duo.” A few of Dick’s darkish dealings apparently included serving to himself to the open coffers of America’s financial savings and loans. Pete Brewton recounts that Dick had some method of contact with Herman Beebe, although particulars of their enterprise collectively stay murky.
What is obvious is that Dick was significantly near the circles round Silverado, the doomed Denver thrift the place Neil Bush, son of George H.W. Bush, served on the board. Throughout a divorce continuing, Dick’s ex-wife instructed the court docket that Dick had aided Invoice Walters—the person most accountable for Silverado’s free-fall collapse, and an in depth enterprise accomplice of Neil Bush—in stashing some $20 million in funds in a Jersey financial institution.
This financial institution was possible Compendium Belief, the identical financial institution tied to Keith Alan Cox and the Florida land fraud. A 2020 article in The Guardian notes that, over the course of Dick’s prolonged divorce battle, it was revealed that Compendium managed a personal belief for Dick.
Additional dealings of Dick’s have been revealed by the 2015 leak of a trove of paperwork detailing the internal workings of La Hougue, a sprawling, long-running shadow monetary equipment managed by Dick from his St. John Manor on the Isle of Jersey. By means of Dick’s secretive machine, “rich shoppers within the U.S., U.Ok., and Europe engaged in elaborate schemes to attenuate their taxes by means of authorized loopholes, avoidance measures, dummy accounts, ginned-up debt, bogus shopper names, and painstakingly crafted doc forgeries—an obvious specialty of La Hougue’s.”
The shoppers of Dick’s transnational laundromat included figures corresponding to Igor Vishnevskiy, previously the top of the Moscow workplaces for Marc Wealthy’s Glencore. Extra not too long ago, Vishnevskiy has been concerned in gold mining operations in Rwanda (Dick himself has acted as Rwanda’s ambassador-at-large, and travels with a Rwanda diplomatic passport). One other was Alexander Zhukov, the Russian-born and London-based investor and industrialist. Zhukov was accused of taking part in an arms smuggling ring working in Ukraine within the mid-Nineteen Nineties, resulting in his arrest in Italy in 2001. He was subsequently acquitted on a technicality.
Different shoppers of Dick’s Jersey operation have been members of the Maxwell household. To this point, identified involvement with La Hougue by the Maxwells dates to the mid-Nineteen Nineties, and lots of the interactions involved Telemonde, a media and telecommunications firm based by Kevin Maxwell. Earlier than its inglorious decline within the wake of the bursting of the dotcom bubble, Telemonde—headquartered within the British Virgin Islands—had appeared just like the makings of a large, with a string of subsidiaries maintained from Bermuda to Oman. At its peak, Telemonde had a market capitalization of $500 million—however for the reason that La Hougue revelations, this may now be understood as a clear-cut case of monetary manipulation.
By means of La Hougue, the Maxwells purchased and swapped inventory of Telemonde by means of various proxies, thus manipulating the corporate’s total inventory worth. These transactions have been negotiated with La Hougue by British legal professional Malcolm Grumbridge. Described as the person performing “on the coronary heart of the Maxwell’s opaque funds”, Grumbridge had been retained by Robert Maxwell in 1976, and had labored for him till his demise. His title additionally seems in Jeffrey Epstein’s black e book of contacts.
The inventory worth manipulation that Dick facilitated for Telemonde came about towards the backdrop of Kevin Maxwell’s bold plan to change into his “dad reincorporated”. Like his father, he clearly had a penchant for doubtful monetary schemes—and simply because the older Maxwell had one shortly earlier than his demise, Kevin went to work for shadow outfits working in Jap Europe and Russia. Among the many eighty-plus firms he was affiliated with throughout the identical timeframe of the Telemonde affair was Nordex, a former KGB cash laundering and capital-flight equipment that Robert Maxwell himself had allegedly performed a hand in organising.
When the machinations of Nordex started to trickle out into the media through the Nineteen Nineties, it was reported within the European press that the firm had labored carefully with Marc Wealthy and helped facilitate the commodity dealer’s acquisition of newly-privatized belongings within the former Soviet Union. As talked about above, key figures within the Wealthy group would emerge as shoppers of John Dick’s Jersey cash laundromat.
Additional analysis is required to find out if the connection between the Maxwell clan and Dick’s operations on the Isle of Jersey preceded the mid-Nineteen Nineties. If such a relationship did exist, then maybe extra mild might be shed on the mysterious look of Robert Maxwell within the American financial savings and loans disaster, when unusual actors with even stranger motives descended on small lenders throughout the nation, drained their belongings, and left the American taxpayer holding the bag.
