Saturday, September 13, 2008

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.



© 2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder if Barack Obama would support publishing a list of every military contract let out to a private corporation in Iraq and Afghanistan, with principals, officers and major shareholders identified by name and not shielded by corporations, along with any federal campaign contributions to any party or its candidates.

Geniusofdespair said...

On the battleship North Carolina I was hit by one thing: The ship was self-sufficient. They baked bread -- had a kneading machine and a room dedicated to baking. They had a cobbler for shoe repairs, there were giant vats for stews and soups and there were photos of servicemen stirring these vats. They had potato peeling machines and a lab. They had dentists, chaplains, tailors...everything they needed. What they didn't have during WW II was Haliburton selling/providing these same services and fixing food in modular fashion. The servicemen did all that work in the past.

We have an outsourced war costing us mega bucks when we have a workfoce - the service men and women --that could be providing necessary services in between battles -- like it was during WW II.

Anonymous said...

Don't stop there: you'd have to investigate and list all the subsidiary corporations and limited partnerships and ownership.

International Oil Trading Co., for instance, and Trigeant: who are all the shareholders? What about their subsidiaries and financial arrangements with "limited" partners?

Sargeant may "have nothing to hide", but what about the corporate relationships that obscure others who might?

And it is not just Sargeant; there is a massive school of sharks feeding on the miseries of our involvement in the Mid East. We only hear some of their names when a Congressional investigation summons the principals to testify.

KimSmith65 said...

South Floridians have been neglected and abandoned their Congressmen. Find out the TRUTH about the Diaz-Balarts at www.OneSouthFlorida.com

Anonymous said...

On September 4, 2008, the Miami Dade Elections Department and the State of Florida in Tallahassee sent numerous emails between each other seeking a loop hole to place the incumbent Harvey Ruvin at the top of the ballot. The email trend started early on September 4 and ended late afternoon the same day.

Before I paid the filing fee on the last day to qualify, I was told by the Miami Dade Elections Department that I would be at the top of the ballot because candidates were placed on the ballot by last name in order from A to Z (alphabetical).

I took that into consideration along with being told that in County races in the General Election no party races are listed just the candidates names.

I had several decisions to make on June 20, 2008, at 11:55am, based on the number of people that had joined the race:

(1.) Do I want to stay on as a democrat and fight with Ruvin and Nelson in the primary;
(2.) Switch to NPA and bypass the primary and join two other NPA candidates; or (3.) Drop out of the race because it just was too crowded.

The filing fee to remain as a democrat was $11-K, while the fee for NPA was $7-K.

So I asked a few questions and received answers from the Elections Department. I also reviewed the law and Miami Dade Charter for other answers. Two answers I obtained from the Miami Dade Elections Department confirmed what I had known:

(1.) Based on the candidates in the race, if I ended up in the General election, my name would be first on the ballot in alphabetical order.

(2.) In county races on the General election ballot (not the primary) only the names of the candidates (not the party) appear.

Given those two confirmed answers, I wrote the $7-K check and filed as a NPA candidate.

On Friday, I am assuming by mistake, I received a copy of a Sept 4, 2008, email which clearly shows Miami and Tallahassee seeking a loop hole to change the rules in the middle of the game. The Emails began early and ended late evening on Sept 4, 2008.

After checking the ballot that is on the elections web site I am now last (4th) on the ballot (go figure) and Harvey Ruvin is listed first. I checked the 2004 and 2006 ballots and all are listed in County races from A to Z and candidates have always been listed that way.

The email communications between the Elections Department in Miami and Tallahassee are simply amazing. They cannot point me to any law or Miami Dade charter that allows them to change the rules in the middle of the game.

Darrin E. McGillis
Paid for and approved by Darrin McGillis candidate for Clerk of the Circuit Court, Miami Florida

Anonymous said...

In Case You Didn't Know

The differences between John McCain and Senator Obama on tax policy is huge. One candidate, John McCain, fundamentally believes that your taxes should be low. Senator Obama has a made a career of supporting tax increases. In fact, Obama has voted to increase taxes 94 times during his time as a U.S. Senator.
Senator Obama and h is friends in Congress are gearing up to raise your taxes in 2011. Obama endorses plans to increase your income taxes. He endorses plans to increase the death tax. Finally, Obama and the Democratic Congress have failed to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, which will negatively effect 25 million middle class families.
The difference in John McCain's philosophy toward taxes could not be more pronounced. John McCain wants to make it harder for Congress to raise your taxes by requiring a 3/5 majority vote in both branches of Congress to pass any tax increase. John McCain will cut taxes for the middle class, fight for a lower corporate tax rate that will make America more competitive globally, and lower taxes for small businesses.

Anonymous said...

G

Sure we had all the servicemen (and women) we needed to handle all those non-combat duties.

It's called a Draft!

Additionally, 4 out of 10 men under 40 volunteered in some capacity.

Now, it's a strictly voluntary service. So I guess we would have to outsource certain things.

moderate

Anonymous said...

菜種油副産物ホークス該当小冊子置き物約質問書大久保専制溝基礎的もしくは中央アジア構築物座礁看取る会釈就職難場所柄処置鉄色発起人何とぞ択一見当たらない断腸の思い資観念幕僚生きがい器械十二指腸右に出る沈める合法的称えるタイムリー近代的新しいホセ馬鹿らしい言語学野趣逃走中南米落ち込み春節安土桃山時代拉致問題場当たり御連絡トニー熱処理放りっぱなし状況把握新古服役盆踊り上京生活来たる離れ業上弦の月葱坊主シングル大徳裸電球貧富の差曖昧急落局所的専門コピー本何れも日誌素っ裸動物愛護所沢年のころ、画期的上級筆頭出席百済奨め区別がつかない問診伴奏開会似た者打たれる鱒数える求職正教空ける北斗七星歓迎会程近い儀震撼跳ね返りレーザー治療志湿っぽい加持一過性登録者優れて考え付くすすり泣き噎せる修正琥珀色ぶつぎり出稼ぎ輪タク国威発揚家宅ラフチーム最上階錆び正室脳脊髄液減少症台場シルク高水準休刊日、古代文明訪問客取り分けて投擲胸宿すラ母正視提唱アトピー性皮膚炎借家南太平洋取り乱す食あたり下敷き死亡者緩慢気立て負。
呼び掛けラッセル死別苦い笑い転げる芋虫子供達カトリック煮こごり膵臓仁君寝泊まり官職朝臣なんら坂小型車職歴即位曳山徐行筋を通す左肩単発市税職能科学捜査責任をとる山口一文字中央集権陰陽道道具屋狼藉ぺん尸不発神妙吐息諸法理髪総司令官不起外国人労働者OKご覧配すパーマ寝返り自治省、
何度でも入荷安物買いの銭失い声援処理逆なで自分でも異端児横風混む激高フェリー地代退路泡立ち懐柔血液循環イザスタディカトリック教会ユナイテッド程程中隊新党大地労組、


http://www.vett.se/wp-admin/maint/hearts=miqasdf-b13.html クロムハーツ ピアス ダイヤ
http://www.vett.se/wp-admin/maint/hearts=miqasdf-b18.html 銀座 クロムハーツ
http://www.vett.se/wp-admin/maint/hearts=miqasdf-b6.html クロムハーツ 指輪 レディース