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Monday, July 04, 2005

Bush & Bin Laden - George W. Bush Had Ties to Billionaire bin Laden Brood

The unexplained death of Salem, Osama bin Laden's oldest brother, in 1988, brought to an abrupt end a long and intriguing relationship between President Bush and the head of the bin Laden family fortune.
By Roger Miller
The world now associates the bin Laden name with Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect be hind the terror atrocities of Sept. 11. As President George W. Bush leads an intense international manhunt for Osama, few Americans realize that Osama's eldest brother, Salem, was one of Bush's first business partners.
A photograph from 1971 has surfaced and been printed in English papers showing Osama, age 14, and his brother Salem, age 19, enjoying a summer holiday at the Astoria Hotel in Falun, Sweden. Christina Akerblad, the hotel owner, told the Daily Mail, "They were beautiful boys, so elegantly dressed.
Everybody loved them."Osama embraced Islamic fundamentalism and is now the world's most wanted man. "Salem went on to become a business partner of the man who is leading the hunt for his brother," the Daily Mail's Peter Allen said. "In the 1970s, he and George W. Bush were founders of the Arbusto Energy oil company in Mr. Bush's home state of Texas."President Bush and the bin Laden family have been connected through dubious business deals since 1977, when Salem, the head of the bin Laden family business, one of the biggest construction companies in the world, invested in Bush's start-up oil company, Arbusto Energy, Inc.James R. Bath, a friend and neighbor, was used to funnel money from Osama bin Laden's brother, Salem bin Laden, to set up George W. Bush in the oil business, according to The Wall Street Journal and other reputable sources.
Through a tangled web of Saudi multi-millionaires, Texas oilmen, and the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Bush was financially linked with the bin Laden family until Salem met an untimely end in a freak flying accident near San Antonio in 1988.
The infamous BCCI was shut down in 1991 with some $10 billion in losses.In June 1977, George W. Bush formed his own oil drilling company, Arbusto Energy, in Midland, Tex. "Arbusto" actually means "shrub" in Spanish, but the Bush family interpreted it as "bush".Salem bin Laden, a close friend of the Saudi King Fahd had "invested heavily in Bush's first business venture," according to The Daily Mail (U.K.).Arbusto later became Bush Exploration, when Bush's father became vice president. As the company neared financial collapse in September 1984, it was merged with Spectrum 7 Energy Corp. in an effort to stay afloat.
The 50 investors who propped up the Bush company with $4.7 million were "mainly friends of my uncle" who "did pretty good" in Bush's words, although they lost most of the money they invested in the company. Jon Bush, George's uncle, raised money for Arbusto from political supporters of the Reagan-Bush administration. "These were all the Bushs' pals," family friend Russell Reynolds told the Dallas Morning News in 1998. "This is the A-Team." The "A-Team" limited partners contributed $4.67 million to various Bush funds through 1984 but got only $1.55 million back in profit distributions, and $3.9 million in tax write-offs.
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2 Comments:

Blogger Kangaroo Brisbane Australia said...

Yeah Pete Welcome aboard

4/7/05 1:48 PM  
Blogger Kangaroo Brisbane Australia said...

Now I wont have to steal your stories

4/7/05 1:49 PM  

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