Rezko, Auchi, Obama and Hussein... as in Saddam

I'm trying to find out more on the story of Antoin (Tony) Rezko and his arrest and pending court trial. I'll probably be following that one pretty closely.

From what I have read so far, Obama actually interviewed with Rezko's business right out of law school. Rezko's firm was involved in several real estate ventures and fast food businesses. In some cases they would buy up slum housing and then lobby the government for funds to renovate the buildings or in some cases actually develop new housing for the elderly on property he owned. Of course instead of actually using the money to fix up the buildings or build new ones they would pocket the money or exact exorbitant “finders fees” from the money. One of the government investors that they were lobbying heavily was the Teachers Retirement System, which is a pension fund for Illinois teachers. Of course Rezko had a “business partner” on the TRS board who was secretly splitting kickbacks with Rezko in exchange for his influence on the board.

Well, it turns out that Obama turned down the job and accepted one with a law firm that Rezko’s company hired.

During news interviews Obama claims that he barely knew the man, that he had lunch with him a few times over several years, but very limited contact. Of course Rezko’s wife actually owned the lot next to the Obama’s and purchased it on the same day. He claims that the timing was up to the seller. Rezko’s wife paid market price. The Obama’s paid $300K less than asking.

Obama claims that while his law firm was working for Mr. Rezko’s company that he did no more than 5 hours of work on the case. So far Obama’s law firm has failed to disclose actual time reporting.

Meanwhile Obama becomes more politically active and runs for office. Mr. Rezko quickly becomes one of Obama’s biggest contribution “bundlers”. Meaning that he not only contributed to Obama’s campaign but that he strongly encouraged others to as well. As part of this activity Mr. Rezko hosted at least one Obama fundraising event at his house, which included other investors currently being investigated, and was part of the host committee for several others. In all he brought at least $150K into Obama’s campaigns.

Nice.

All the time these things are going on, Rezko is receiving “loans” from a corrupt business man named Nadhmi Auchi who was convicted of fraud in France and is listed as an undesirable alien by the US State department. Rezko received these loans in exchange for ownership or opportunity in land deals that Rezko was putting together.

Auchi seems to be as dirty as they come. He had extensive dealings with Saddam Hussein going back before and up to the first gulf war, even after Saddam killed Auchi’s brother.

Nice.

This whole thing keeps getting thicker. Obama seems to be downplaying it and his involvement with Rezko, but there seems to be quite a bit tying them together. Considering Rezko was one of the most influential people in Illinois for some time and had such a large impact in fundraising for Obama’s Illinois congressional and US Senate campaigns it seems hard to believe.

So far no one is directly implicating Obama in wrong doing, only that he has involved himself with some very shady characters and even continued interactions with them after it was known that Rezko was being investigated by the FBI.

From what I can see Obama did not have too much interaction with Auchi, other than a possible meeting at a fundraiser.

Considering he paints himself as someone above the normal political and fundraising fiascos, this all looks a little murky.

Sources:
http://i.abcnews.com/Blotter/story?id=4111483&page=1
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/124171,CST-NWS-obama05.article
www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/017121.php
http://rezkowatch.blogspot.com/
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/rick_moran/2008/feb/26/will_dirty_chicago_politics_be_the_undoing_of_obama