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Today's Must Read
Why can't people just trust Rudy Giuliani?
As today's piece in The Chicago Tribune points out, Giuliani is a deviation from the mold of the successful businessman turned politician. Instead, Giuliani went from politics into business, and the success of that business relied in large part on Giuliani's continued prestige and the promise that he would eventually return to politics.
Giuliani Partners (not to be confused with Bracewell & Giuliani, the law firm he joined in 2005), which has been steadily growing since it's formation in 2002, is a consultancy. Which is a fancy way of saying that it does whatever its clients need it to do. Mostly, that seems to have been some form of security consulting -- but it's been nearly impossible to find out, because Giuliani won't say who the firm's clients are or were.
Today's Tribune takes a look at one of those clients:
Nine days after registering his presidential exploratory committee last November, Rudolph Giuliani appeared in Singapore to help a Las Vegas developer make a pitch for a $3.5 billion casino resort....Giuliani's public involvement in the gaming bid began at a September 2006 news conference in Singapore hosted by Mark Advent, CEO of Eighth Wonder LLC, a Las Vegas development company heading one of three consortia competing to build the Sentosa Integrated Resort.
Giuliani Security & Safety LLC, a division of Giuliani Partners, was to provide security on a celebrity-studded, multibillion-dollar project featuring participation by soccer legend Pele, chef Alain Ducasse, New Age guru Deepak Chopra and designer Vera Wang, according to Advent.
Advent estimated that he spent more than $30 million to assemble and present his plans to Singaporean authorities.
He declined to disclose the fees paid to Giuliani, but described them as "fair and priceless."
Besides the obvious potential conflicts of interest this creates for a future president, there's the more pressing concern of not knowing who Giuliani has chosen to do business with. You might say his track record of business associates doesn't quell suspicion.
The piece goes on to tug on one thread. Giuliani Partners was working for Eighth Wonder, one of the companies making the resort bid -- and Eighth Wonder partnered with another company (called Melco) to make that bid. It turns out that the former CEO of that company, Stanley Ho, is "a controversial Hong Kong billionaire who has ties to the regime of North Korea's Kim Jong Il and has been linked to international organized crime by the U.S. government." A mobbed-up casino mogul is the shorter version of that description. The company is currently run by his son.
Now, Giuliani didn't work directly for Ho, and the spokeswoman for his firm called the link between Stanley Ho and the Eighth Wonder partnership "a stretch." And surely, if his business ties become an issue in the campaign, there will be other relationships that will prove more troublesome. But it just goes to show what little people know about how he's made his money for the past five years.
Comments (16)
Mister Go wrote on November 21, 2007 10:28 AM:Rudy's business interests should be prime fodder for big investigative pieces by ambitious reporters.
But, the press is in the tank for him already, so they are going to ignore his doings just like they have ignored Bush's.
Great way to go after that nothing-burger Whitewater story though.
Alan wrote on November 21, 2007 10:28 AM:I think that the main point about his consultancy business, which has not been picked up at all by the media, mainstream or otherewise, is that it indeed mostly dealt with "security" consulting. In other words, he has exploited the fears generated by 9/11 not only for political reasons, but for his own personal financial gain as well.
johnnydoughey wrote on November 21, 2007 10:47 AM:It appears that nowdays the mobs and the politicians are so intertwined that it is pretty much impossible to find anyone in Washington... or wanting to go to Washington... who DOESN'T have some ties to unscrupulous and illegal folks. It's the nature of the game.
"We the People" keep voting in crooks and scoundrels, so crooks and scoundrels keep showing up. If we ever decided to actually vote for dedicated patriots, we would probably see a decline in the number of these people. It ain't gonna happen, though... IMHO
Alguien wrote on November 21, 2007 10:48 AM:"Stanley Ho, is "a controversial Hong Kong billionaire who has ties to the regime of North Korea's Kim Jong Il and has been linked to international organized crime by the U.S. government." A mobbed-up casino mogul is the shorter version of that description. The company is currently run by his son."
I wonder if Don Imus will comment on Giuliani's association with these "nappy handed Hos", now that he's back in the airwaves...
jeffgee wrote on November 21, 2007 11:16 AM:Rudy's Macau Mafia connections, especially Stanley Ho and his connections with the one of the leaders of Bush's Axis of Evil, Kim Jong Il, should be investigated more.
The first competition Stanley Ho ever had in the Macao casino business is Sheldon Adelson, developer of the Sands Macau and the Macau Venetian, is a big GOP contributor, so this could get interesting.
There are a lot of Rudy rocks to look under. A lot of creepy-crawlies under there.
Don't expect to see a thing about this on Faux Nooze.
NJ Phil wrote on November 21, 2007 11:31 AM:Anybody who thinks Guiliani Partners is anything other than a laudromat/ATM for illegal corporate 'donations' (i.e. shakedown money) to Guiliani is naive in the extreme.
heh wrote on November 21, 2007 11:48 AM:Geez,
We had a corrupt supervisor in SF who was trying to shakedown immigrant businesses who didn't know English, using his office.
One of the requirements to run for SF supervisor was to live in the City. He lived in the next town and now is in the middle of the worst legal nightmare with everyone coming after him from the feds to the State atty general. Ed Jew is his name.
Ghouliani has been waving red flags with friends like indicted Homeland Security nominee,Bernie Kerik(how big of Rudy to say he made a mistake in nominating this corrupt cop after the fact). Someone should turn the heat on this self aggrandizing jerk.
OxyCon wrote on November 21, 2007 12:18 PM:When you peel the layers of Rudy Giuliani back, you always seems to arrive at some Mafia connection to everything.
Mike wrote on November 21, 2007 2:11 PM:Why is that?
Rudy Guliani was too busy before 9-11 protecting the interests of Kerik who is now under federal indictment.He knew about his mafia connections and kickbacks.
Pat wrote on November 21, 2007 5:05 PM:He was protecting his friend - a pedophile preist.
He got kickbacks from the company that made defective radios that firemen had to use.
He was seeing another women while married.
No wonder he did not protect Americans before 9-11.
Louis Nardozi wrote on November 21, 2007 8:57 PM:I wonder about Rudy Guliani, Kerik, and Jeb Bush's involvement with security firms and 9/11.
So Mr. Law And Order is a pimp for foreign casinos huh? What do casinos do? Hm? Oh - they take money from middle class people and give it to rich people. How very interesting! Well I guess we know now what old Rudy will do if he's elected. It sure would be nice if there was a candidate who didn't do that sort of thing... Oh wait - there IS!!! Dr. Ron Paul, who has been in Congress 20 years but does not participate in Congress' pension plan because it is so much more generous that the plan of any of his constituents. It might be worth people's while to go to RonPaul2008.com and look at Dr. Paul's voting record yourself! Who knows, maybe YOU'LL be posting the next comment!
Louis Nardozi wrote on November 21, 2007 8:58 PM:So Mr. Law And Order is a pimp for foreign casinos huh? What do casinos do? Hm? Oh - they take money from middle class people and give it to rich people. How very interesting! Well I guess we know now what old Rudy will do if he's elected. It sure would be nice if there was a candidate who didn't do that sort of thing... Oh wait - there IS!!! Dr. Ron Paul, who has been in Congress 20 years but does not participate in Congress' pension plan because it is so much more generous that the plan of any of his constituents. It might be worth people's while to go to RonPaul2008.com and look at Dr. Paul's voting record yourself! Who knows, maybe YOU'LL be posting the next comment!
nrglaw wrote on November 21, 2007 9:26 PM:I understand, as Josh Marshall noted today, that part of Guiliani's success in private business has been the expectation that he would return to politics. And not as Mayor of NYC. Still, when is this apparently clueless man going to realize that he is just too muddied up from his days in business AND politics that its time for him to settle for the best career he can in the latter? I learned from my former life as a corporate lawyer that, in the final analysis, as long as you can avoid being indicted you can get pretty dirty in business and still get along just fine.
Rick Jones wrote on November 21, 2007 10:19 PM:Rudy's ties to some of the more suspect characters around the world would have an ordinary guy deemed to be an "enemy combatant" by Bush and swept off to a black site for a little non-torture waterboarding to find out where the "terrarists" are going to strike next(run-on sentence intended).
John Stark wrote on November 22, 2007 5:13 PM:To Mister Go:
You're right, it's a shame the way the media are ignoring this story--except for ABC News, the WaPo, Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun, Associated Press and the New York Times.
Those were the ones on the first page of results when I did a Google News search on "Giuliani Partners."
bibimimi wrote on November 23, 2007 10:17 AM:Per johnnydoughey: ""We the People" keep voting in crooks and scoundrels, so crooks and scoundrels keep showing up."
That hurt, fella. The bar has been lowered, and until there's some SERIOUS chlorine dumped in the pool, we're done here.