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Subject: More CIA Drug Planes Seized; John McCain's Texas Campaign Manager
Implicated
our More American Drug Planes
Seized
Laundered drug money was wired from Mexico to
Commerce Bank in Miami, whose CEO is the Texas co-chair of John
McCain’s presidential election
campaign.
http://www.madcowprod.com/02072008.html
February 7, 2008
by
Daniel Hopsicker
Four more
American-registered drug planes have been seized from the
50-plane fleet of drug running aircraft amassed by Mexico’s Sinaloa
Cartel, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court for the
Southern District of Florida.
Figures of interest in the
transactions, the MadCowMorningNews has learned, include financial
backers of two of this year's
Republican candidates for President, as well as, unsurprisingly, an
aviation company in St. Petersburg, FL. which can justifiably be called
"one of the usual suspects."
Coincidentally or not, the
American owners of the four planes (like the two busted earlier) were
largely people and companies with 'special
relationships' with U.S. political movers and shakers, including
the CIA and the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security.
Yet, despite this inconvenient
fact, the FBI persists in referring to the aircraft's American
owners as "legitimate aircraft brokers" and "unwitting
sellers"
"This is Your GOP.
This is your GOP... on drugs."
The Republican connection begins with the statement
in court
filings that the money to purchase the planes was laundered
through a bank which is almost invariably described as “fast-growing” in
admiring business news articles.
The drug money was wired,
usually from Mexico, to an account at Commerce Bank in Miami,
whose Chairman, Dennis Nixon, is the South
Texas Co-chair of John McCain’s campaign.
Nixon was also a Bush Pioneer
and Ranger in George W. Bush’s two Presidential campaigns, raising
$300,000 in one night for Bush’s re-election bid in Texas border town
Laredo.
High-profile Texas businessman Dennis Nixon's
bank is even — in one of the sales—involved on both ends. Money was
wired from Mexico, first to an account at Commerce Bank in Miami, then on
to International Bank of Commerce (IBC) in Oklahoma to complete the
sale.
Dennis Nixon's International
Bancshares of San Antonio owns both banks.
"Abuse of power comes as
no surprise."
The second transaction with apparent Republican 'ramifications"
involves a Grumman Albatross (N7027Z) seaplane
apparently sold to the Sinaloa Cartel.
N7274Z, reported El Nuevo
Herald, had been "purchased, with
several twists between August to September 2006, from the HSBC bank
in Mexico by Jorge Barraza, a resident of Tamil Nadu, Jorge Medina
and Daniel Medina on behalf of Insured Aircraft Title Service in
Oklahoma."
El Nuevo Herald identifies
the plane with the “N” number N7027Z as a Beech King
Air. However, the grand jury indictment identifies the plane only by
its N number, N7027Z.
A check of FAA records revealed
that that “N” number was assigned to a Grumman Albatross seaplane.
An FAA spokesman told us, when we inquired, that that N number has
been used exclusively by the Grumman Albatross for the past 15 years.
Moreover a reliable source in
Fort Lauderdale stated to us recently that seaplanes have recently become
all the rage in drug trafficking circles.
A seaplane would seem an
excellent idea
The seaplane, or
"warbird," as aircraft broker sites call planes decommissioned
from the military, was owned by Jay Koven, whose
construction company built Rudy Giuliani’s Emergency Command Center in
Building 7 of the World Trade Center.
The decision to locate New York
City's Command Center high above the one site in NYC
which had already been attacked by foreign terrorists was
controversial... even before it had to be abandoned on September
11.
According to “The Real
Rudy,” a Giuliani expose in American Prospect magazine in
September 2006, Koven and his partner gave $4,000 to Giuliani at a party
given in 1998 at the behest of WTC lessor Larry Silverstein, at the Fifth
Avenue home of his public relations guru.
Silverstein had signed the lease
for the command center just two weeks earlier, not nearly enough time to
avoid charges of a quid pro quo. And sure enough...
"Attendance was obligatory,"
recalled Jay Koven’s partner in Ambassador Construction. “The
invitation meant we were expected to give a
contribution.”
Queasy Rider
Concluded the magazine, “The
timing couldn't have been queasier.”
We were somewhat surprised when
Koven returned a phone call made to his home in
Larchmont.
"The plane was not seized," he
told us. "I still own the airplane. I can't really tell you anything, and
I'm not at liberty to say more about what little I do know. But I can
tell
you... I'm just a normal guy with an airplane I'm trying to
sell."
He gave the phone number
for an aircraft broker who's currently advertising the Albatross for
sale,
and the broker confirmed that the plane has not been seized,
and is for sale.
There are many who feel, and Mr.
Koven may be one, and with some justification, that we are adrift on a
vast sea, in a tiny boat, in a world we never
made.
But what of the owner's of the
other planes on the list?
"Round up the usual
suspects... again."
At least one company involved in
the sale of the four seized American planes can by now be justifiably
called one of the “usual suspects.”
Amazingly, SkyWay
Aircraft is once again among the drug running airplane’s
sellers.
Skyway Aircraft, located at the
small Alfred Whitted Municipal Airport in downtown St. Petersburg, is not
to be confused with the notorious and now-defunct
other SkyWay Aircraft, which owned the
DC9 whose bust with 5.5 tons of
cocaine aboard kicked off the scandal.
SkyWay’s owner, Larry W. Peters,
has vociferously denied any involvement between his company and the other
Skyway, Brent and Glen Kovar’s, which was located 15 minutes
away at St-Pete Clearwater Int’l.
And no wonder. The
Kovar’s
SkyWay increasingly looks like nothing more than an elaborate
front for drug smuggling.
But being (undeservingly?)
tarred with the same name, if not the same brush, may not be Peter’s
biggest problem.
His SkyWay sold a Cessna Conquest II
(N5113S), suspected of being used to fly drugs from South America to
Africa, according to a report in the Tampa Tribune,
making this the third plane “sold” by Larry Peters' hapless SkyWay
Aircraft to “buyers” later determined to be drug
traffickers.
No three strikes law,
apparently, applies.
Bible Institute: Good
book provides good 'cover'
The very first plane seized was
an older Beech King Air (N1100M) exported to Venezuela on October
23, 2006. The plane was supposedly owned by a company in Doral,
located northwest of Miami, close to Miami International Airport,
called Plans and Parts Enterprises LLC, but the State of Florida’s
Division of Corporations has no company doing business in the state
listed
by that name.
Another of the three Beech
King Airs (N50AJ), may have been flown by controversial Moody Bible
Institute’s Summer Institute of Linguistics, widely accused in the Latin
American press of being funded by American intelligence, and suspected of
involvement in the 2003 CIA-backed coup in Haiti.
The plane also made numerous
flights to Albert Whitted (KSPG) Airport, the small St. Petersburg
airport where SkyWay Aircraft is located.
It is apparently owned by Communications
International Inc, a telecom company in Vero Beach, FL. But as recently
as
2004 it may have been flown in South America by the Moody Bible
Institute.
It is pictured on the
website of Robert Peterson, one of Moody’s pilots, but it
is unclear whether he was flying it for Moody.
Nasty Venezuelans keep
pulling Uncle Sam's chain.
News of four new planes
seized—three Beech King Air twin-engine turbojets and a Grumman Albatross
seaplane decommissioned by the U.S. military—was first revealed in a
story
last Friday in Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald.
Under a headline loosely
translated as “US dismantles flotilla of drug trafficking planes,” the
paper unearthed documents filed in Federal Court in Miami last October
revealing new details of what apparently is an ongoing U.S. multi-agency
operation to dismantle the huge fleet of American-registered aircraft
amassed by the Sinaloa Cartel during the past several years.
The main actor, at least in the
court filings and criminal complaint, appears to be Venezuelan
businessman Pedro Jose Benavides Natera, who ran a system
used to purchase American planes for use by Mexican drug cartels which
the
FBI characterizes as "a complex international money laundering scheme."
The 51-year old Benavides, who
goes on trial in Miami next month, is charged with laundering drug
profits
to buy U.S. aircraft to smuggle cocaine, using accounts at Commerce Bank
in Miami to acquire aircraft for the drug trafficking organization (DOT.)
Mexican newspapers reported over
the weekend that Judicial Police in Mexico City may have become aware of
the scheme as early as 1998, when they arrested “Cambio de Change
Puebla” owner Pedro Alatorre after one of the "customers" at his
money exchange overnight went from financial transactions totaling
$100,000 per month to over $800,000 per week.
Alatorre, who began
rubbing elbows with Mexico City’s elite as a tennis pro at a racquet club
there, spent five months in jail at the time before being
released.
Maybe its the red
beret. Raspberry might be better.
The ringleader of the operation
was... you guessed it. A Venezuelan...
Drug kingpin Carlos Ayala
Lara, according to the FBI, was responsible for funneling money
from drug traffickers in Venezuela installed to indicted Sinaloa cartel
money man Pedro Alatorre Damy’s chain of money exchanges at major
airports
in Mexico, Cambio de Change de Puebla.
Reported El Nuevo Herald, “The
traffickers are operating in Venezuela and Mexico. Several planes have
already been confiscated, others are under observation, and there have
been numerous arrests of suspects in Mexico and the United States.”
In the court documents, FBI agent Michael Hoenigman cites “a
confederation of individuals" whose job was to scout out U.S. aircraft
desired by Venezuela-based drug traffickers, and then buy them for use in
ferrying cocaine shipments around the globe.
The operation—or at least the
publicity surrounding it—seems aimed directly at Venezuela.
Authorities from both the United States and Colombia allege Venezuela has
become a sanctuary for Colombian drug traffickers, which Venezuela
denies.
Its a war on some
drugs. Not theirs.
But evidence in the case of one of the two planes already
caught, the Gulfstream business jet which went down in Mexico in
September carrying four tons of cocaine, indicated that the plane never
touched down in Venezuela.
Instead, it took off from the
Medellin International Airport in Rio Negro, Colombia, currently the
strong-hold of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
The four seized planes join two
CIA-and Dept. of Homeland Security-linked planes already linked to the
Sinaloa drug fleet. A DC-9 (N900SA) registered to former
SkyWay partner Frederic Geffon’s Royal Sons Inc from St. Petersburg FL
was
busted in Mexico carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine, and a Gulfstream II
business jet (N987SA) crash-landed carrying 4 tons in September in
the Yucatan after failing to land at airports in Cancun and
Merida.
Finally, another bank cited in
the court filings for moving Sinaloa cartel drug money is HBSC Bank in
Mexico City. Curiously, this is also the bank used by Chinese drug
trafficker Zhenli Ye Gon, whose Mexico City home was
discovered to be stuffed with over $200 million in cash.
Ye Gon claimed he was merely
“holding” the money, which literally filled his home in Mexico City, for
Mexican politicians, who threatened him with death if he demurred. What
U.S. and Mexican officials are hoping to avoid is the
question...
Who can say 'no' to a deal like
that?
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