McCain's Florida finance co-chair: war profiteer ... by gimleteye

Don't like the Iraq War? Think it costs too much? Read the Miami Herald story today about one Florida Republican donor who may beg to disagree.

Harry Sargeant III has $1 billion in contracts to ship fuel to the military in Iraq. In March, John McCain tapped Sargeant to be his Florida campaign co-finance chairman.

Not bad for a company Sargeant founded in 2004 with a Jordanian business partner. If not for bundled contributions from Arab Americans in California-- apparently foreign nationals-- Sargeant's business activities and influence peddling in Washington might not have come to light.

"The company has established a massive operation, with some 300 tankers shipping oil from Saudia Arabia to Jordan, where the fuel is trucked in convoys into Ramadi, Iraq, using drivers from Jordan, India, the Sudan and the Dominican Republic, according to a Defense Department newsletter."

The Herald report is sprinkled with refusals, denials, and unavailability for comment by Republican officials with close ties to Sargeant.

Hey, someone has to get fuel to our troops in Iraq: it might as well be a Republican. In the past two years, Sargeant has given $2 million to political causes and candidates-- mostly Republican.



Posted on Fri, Sep. 12, 2008
Behind-the-scenes GOP fundraiser finds himself in spotlight

BY DAN CHRISTENSEN AND SCOTT HIAASEN
Harry Sargeant III had a $10 million problem.
With his company mired in a costly three-year contract dispute with the Pentagon, the Boca Raton businessman and Republican fundraiser dispatched a well-known lobbyist to a senator's office to plead his case. Then Sargeant dispatched his lawyers to sue the federal government -- and eventually clinched a $3.2 million settlement.

The episode offers a telling glimpse into the power wielded by a political and business heavyweight who does his heaviest lifting behind the scenes.

Harry Sargeant may be the most influential South Florida figure no one has ever heard of -- no one, that is, outside the corridors of power.

He owns a waterfront mansion in Delray Beach, shares his corporate jet with Florida Gov. Charlie Crist -- his college buddy -- and maintains business interests ranging from an international asphalt company to $1 billion in Pentagon contracts to ship fuel to the military in Iraq.

And he donates money, lots of it -- between himself, family and companies, almost $2 million to committees and candidates from Florida to California, The Miami Herald found, with most given in the past two years and most, but not all, to Republican causes.

GOP presidential nominee John McCain tapped Sargeant as co-finance chairman in Florida, and in March, Sargeant hosted a fundraiser for McCain at his $8 million Intracoastal Waterway home.

''They announced the figure at the end, and it was so big I couldn't believe it. I think it was a million dollars,'' recalled Miami developer Stanley Tate, who attended.

Sargeant, 50, declined interview requests, and his attorney agreed to answer only limited questions regarding his defense contracts.

Yet from interviews and records, a profile emerges of a corporate alpha male, a former Marine pilot who pulls blue marlin from the Gulf Stream, who takes Scotch over beer and who doesn't shrink from a fight, whether it's with the Pentagon, foreign governments -- or Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.

''I'd call Harry Sargeant a man's man,'' said Jim Greer, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party, who named Sargeant the party's finance chairman. ``He's not somebody who has to be in the limelight.''

But recently, the limelight found Sargeant.

Last month, McCain's campaign returned some $50,000 in donations after The Washington Post and New York Times questioned the validity of several checks sent from Arab Americans in California -- donations solicited by Sargeant's longtime business partner, Mustafa Abu Naba'a, a Jordanian citizen. The campaign warned Sargeant donors that they can't be repaid for contributions, and that only U.S. citizens can donate.

In Washington, U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., head of a congressional oversight committee, has launched an inquiry of possible overcharging involving a Sargeant company in Jordan.

''We have nothing to hide,'' Sargeant wrote in a letter to The Washington Post on Aug. 12, saying he is cooperating with the committee and that his fundraising is unrelated to the Pentagon contracts.

As a fundraiser, Sargeant has thrived by any measure. He has collected more than $500,000 in donations for McCain by tapping a network of relatives, friends, employees and business associates. Donors can give no more than $2,300 to a candidate for each primary or general-election race, forcing candidates to rely on ''bundlers'' like Sargeant to gather as many donations as possible.

Sargeant's fundraising extends beyond the presidential race. He and his family have given at least $38,000 since 2003 to Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler, whose district includes parts of Delray Beach and Boca Raton. In March, Sargeant and three relatives gave $18,400 to both Miami Republican Congressmen Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

Sargeant's employees have also made donations. In 2002, seven employees donated to U.S. Senate candidate John Cornyn of Texas on the same days Sargeant and his family gave $7,000. Such fundraising is legal -- so long as employees are not reimbursed.

Crist, a fraternity brother of Sargeant's at Florida State University, has received $29,800 from Sargeant and his family over the past 12 years. Sargeant's Trigeant Air also donated $100,000 to Crist's inauguration -- money the governor returned when he canceled the gala. The governor did not respond to interview requests to discuss his close friend.

The Florida GOP also raised $15 million last year under Sargeant's watch -- a record for a nonelection year. Sargeant delivered much of that himself: More than $1 million in donations to the state GOP have come from Sargeant, his family or his companies in the past two years, records show.

Apart from fundraising, Sargeant has spent more than $518,000 on Washington lobbyists to represent his companies, whose reach spans from the Middle East to Europe and the Caribbean.

And at times, Sargeant's business and his fundraising have overlapped.

In 2006, Sargeant hired lobbyist Otto Reich, a former ambassador and State Department official, to help gain congressional support for one company, Trigeant Ltd., then in a dispute with the Defense Department over a $48 million fuel contract.

Trigeant said it was owed $10.1 million in damages after the Pentagon reduced its fuel orders in Iraq under a 2004 contract -- a contract the Pentagon let lapse.

Trigeant lawyer Ronald Uscher said Reich lobbied Sen. Mel Martinez, a member of the Armed Services Committee and, like Reich, once a Bush administration official.

Reich approached Florida's Republican senator in September 2006 ''to explain why a prompt resolution of the claim was in the best interest of both the company and the United States government,'' Uscher said.

The lobbyist, who received $60,000 in lobbying fees from Sargeant's company over several months of work on Capitol Hill, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

After the meeting, a Martinez staffer called the Defense Department at least once on the company's behalf. Martinez said he was only helping the company gather information from a stonewalling bureaucracy. He said this was the ''routine'' assistance he often gives Florida businesses, and he didn't try to sway the Pentagon's stance.

''I do this for hundreds of people throughout the state of Florida,'' Martinez said.

Trigeant filed a lawsuit in April 2007 saying the Defense Department violated the contract and drove up the company's costs. Three months later, Sargeant and his wife gave $50,000 to the Republican National Committee -- then led by Martinez.

In September 2007, the federal government agreed to pay Trigeant a $3.2 million settlement. Uscher said the company did not profit on that contract.

Martinez said he was unaware of the settlement, and that the RNC donations were ''completely independent'' from his office's actions on Trigeant's behalf. Martinez, who first met Sargeant during his 2004 campaign, said the RNC donations were to be expected in Sargeant's role as state Republican Party finance chairman.

The dispute with the Pentagon didn't hurt Sargeant's business with the military. In 2004, he and Abu Naba'a founded International Oil Trading Co., which now has defense contracts worth about $1 billion.

The company has established a massive operation, with some 300 tankers shipping oil from Saudia Arabia to Jordan, where the fuel is trucked in convoys into Ramadi, Iraq, using drivers from Jordan, India, the Sudan and the Dominican Republic, according to a Defense Department newsletter.

Sargeant's defense contracts remain controversial. A former partner, Mohammad Anwar Farid Al-Saleh -- the brother-in-law of Jordan's king -- filed a $13 million lawsuit in April claiming he was fraudulently cut out of the IOTC contract by Sargeant and Abu Naba'a after helping them win the Jordanian government's approval.

Abu Naba'a, who owns a Coconut Grove condo, was traveling in Egypt and unavailable to comment, said his wife, Jazmin.

In June, Waxman's staff demanded records from Sargeant and the Pentagon as part of an investigation of possible overcharging by IOTC, which Sargeant denies.

With his brother, Daniel, Sargeant controls one of the biggest asphalt operations in the world, with separate companies to handle the marketing, trading and refinement of asphalt from petroleum. Sargeant's companies have owned refineries in Texas and Alabama, and his tankers travel the globe.

The business has been good to him. In addition to his waterfront home, Sargeant also trolls the waters off the Bahamas for blue marlin in a 65-foot sportfishing boat called Black Gold.

Sometimes the business gets rough: Sargeant's companies have been pulled into disputes with the government of the Dominican Republic, Venezuela's state-owned oil company and Cowboys owner Jones.

Jones accused Sargeant's Trigeant Holdings Ltd. of conspiracy and fraud in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit stemming from the 2001 sale of a Corpus Christi asphalt refinery. Jones alleged that a former partner, Sanford Brass, sold the refinery to Sargeant for $17.7 million without paying Jones more than $10 million he was due.

Sargeant, in a six-hour deposition, denied any wrongdoing. He said he remembered little about the negotiations with the prospective partners.

''I think I was drinking Scotch, and they were drinking Coors Light. But I can't remember any more details other than that,'' he recalled.

Jones' lawyer, Kenneth T. ''Tommy'' Fibich, remembers Sargeant with distaste. ''He was a name dropper, a place dropper, talking about all the country clubs he belonged to and his plan and all his shipping business,'' said Fibich.

The lawsuit between Jones and Trigeant ultimately settled for an undisclosed sum.

Trigeant has also been involved in a long-running dispute with Venezuela's state-run oil company, a chief supplier of the special kind of crude oil Trigeant uses to refine asphalt.

In a lawsuit filed in March, Trigeant accused Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. of unfair trade practices for convincing Trigeant to buy its Alabama refinery before cutting off oil sales -- essentially starving Trigeant's operation.

Two years ago, the Venezuelan company won a $12.2 million arbitration award against Trigeant over unpaid invoices. In court papers, Trigeant said it was being unfairly targeted because of rumors that ``the Sargeant family were opposed to President [Hugo] Chávez.''

Before the dispute, Sargeant's company was ''effectively the sole transporter of Venezuelan asphalt,'' selling to several Caribbean and Central American countries.

One of those countries was the Dominican Republic, the current home of Abu Naba'a, Sargeant's partner. Dominican press reports say that country canceled a contract with Sargeant Petroleum earlier this year -- prompting U.S. Ambassador P. Robert Fannin to intervene on the company's behalf in a letter to Dominican President Leonel Fernández.

The U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo would not release the letter to The Miami Herald.

Herald staff writer Frances Robles, researcher Monika Leal and translator Renato Pérez contributed to this story.



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