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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony@Pacific & TRUTHSEEKER Expose Crims & Scammers!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nova222 who wrote (5325)	2/29/2008 3:57:55 PM
From: StockDung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5673

Op-Eds for Sale DECEMBER 16, 2005 NEWS ANALYSIS By Eamon Javers A columnist from a libertarian think tank admits accepting payments to promote an indicted lobbyist's clients. Will more examples follow? A senior fellow at the Cato Institute resigned from the libertarian think tank on Dec. 15 after admitting that he had accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing op-ed articles favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff's clients. Doug Bandow, who writes a syndicated column for Copley News Service, told BusinessWeek Online that he had accepted money from Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 articles over a period of years, beginning in the mid '90s. "It was a lapse of judgment on my part, and I take full responsibility for it," Bandow said from a California hospital, where he's recovering from recent knee surgery. After receiving BusinessWeek Online's inquiries about the possibility of payments, Cato Communications Director Jamie Dettmer said the think-tank determined that Bandow "engaged in what we consider to be inappropriate behavior and he considers to be a lapse in judgment" and accepted his resignation. "Cato has an excellent reputation for integrity, and we're zealous in guarding that," Dettmer said. Bandow has written more than 150 editorials and columns over the past five years, each identifying his Cato affiliation. His syndicated column for Copley News Service is featured in several hundred newspapers across the country. Bandow's biography on the Cato Institute Web site says he has also appeared as a commentator on all the major television broadcast networks and the cable news channels. MULTIPLE TRAVAILS. A former Abramoff associate says Bandow and at least one other think-tank expert were typically paid $2,000 per column to address specific topics of interest to Abramoff's clients. Bandow's standing as a columnist and think-tank analyst provided a seemingly independent validation of the arguments the Abramoff team were using to try to sway Congressional action. Bandow confirms that he received $2,000 for some pieces, but says it was "usually less than that amount." He says he wrote all the pieces himself, though with topics and information provided by Abramoff. He adds that he wouldn't write about subjects that didn't interest him. Abramoff was indicted in Florida in August on wire-fraud charges in relation to his purchase of a Florida casino-boat company. He faces trial in January in that case. Separately, a Senate committee and a Justice Dept. task force are investigating allegations that Abramoff defrauded some of his clients -- a handful of American Indian tribes that had gotten wealth from running casino-gaming operations on their reservations. Abramoff's business partner, Michael Scanlon, pleaded guilty in November to conspiring to corrupt public officials with gifts, including political contributions, and defrauding clients, and is cooperating with the ongoing probe. ATTITUDE SWING. A review of Bandow's columns and other written work shows that he wrote favorably about Abramoff's Indian tribal clients -- as well as another Abramoff client, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands -- as far back as 1997. One column, syndicated by the Copley News Service, saluted one Abramoff client tribe, the Mississippi Choctaws, for their entrepreneurial spirit, hard work, and commitment to free enterprise. "The Choctaws offer a model for other tribes," Bandow wrote. Bandow wrote a column earlier this year -- well after the disclosure that Abramoff was under federal investigation -- saying that wealthy Indian tribes had become yet another "well-funded special interest seeking political favors." In response to BusinessWeek Online's inquiry, Bandow said his views of Indian gambling have shifted over the years. "It's gone well beyond what it once was," he said. In none of Bandow's op-eds were any Abramoff payments disclosed, however -- nor were they disclosed to the Cato Institute. On Dec. 16, Copley News Service announced it is suspending Bandow pending its own review. In a statement, Glenda Winders, Copley News Service editor and vice-president, said: "We want to make sure we have all the facts before we take final action. But it had never been our policy to distribute work paid for by third parties whose role is not disclosed by the columnist." For years, rumors have swirled of an underground opinion "pay-for-play" industry in Washington in which think-tank employees and pundits trade their ability to shape public perception for cash. "NAIVE PURITY STANDARD." Bandow isn't the only think-tanker to have received payments from Abramoff for writing articles. Peter Ferrara, a senior policy adviser at the conservative Institute for Policy Innovation, says he, too, took money from Abramoff to write op-ed pieces boosting the lobbyist's clients. "I do that all the time," Ferrara says. "I've done that in the past, and I'll do it in the future." Ferrara, who has been an influential conservative voice on Social Security reform, among other issues, says he doesn't see a conflict of interest in taking undisclosed money to write op-ed pieces because his columns never violated his ideological principles. "It's a matter of general support," Ferrara says. "These are my views, and if you want to support them, then that's good." But he adds that at some point over the years, Abramoff stopped working with him: "Jack lost interest in me and felt he had other writers who were writing in more prominent publications," Ferrara says. "SIMILAR ARRANGEMENTS." Ferrara's boss has a very different take on the Abramoff op-ed writing than did his peers at Cato. "If somebody pinned me down and said, 'Do you think this is wrong or unethical?' I'd say no," says Tom Giovanetti, president of the Institute for Policy Innovation. Giovanetti says critics are applying a "naive purity standard" to the op-ed business. "I have a sense that there are a lot of people at think tanks who have similar arrangements." Ferrara began working at the Institute for Policy Innovation after the period during which he wrote the op-ed pieces for Abramoff. Earlier, he worked at the activist anti-tax organization Americans for Tax Reform. Ferrara wouldn't say which publications have published pieces for which Abramoff paid him. But a review of his work shows that he wrote articles for The Washington Times that were favorable to the Choctaw Indians and the Mariana Islands. He also wrote a 1998 book called The Choctaw Revolution: Lessons for Federal Indian Policy. Ferrara says the tribe paid him directly for his work on the book, which was published by the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation and is still available for sale on Amazon.com (AMZN ).

To: nova222 who wrote (5325)

4/15/2015 9:47:59 AM

From: StockDung

Respond to of 5673

Allegations of global terrorism, arms dealing and organized crime in online articles ‘horrified’ Vancouver businessman

By Dan Fumano, The Province April 14, 2015

Monday in Vancouver, a judge heard the opening day of a trial stemming from a defamation suit filed by Vancouver-based entrepreneur and philanthropist Altaf Nazerali.

A Vancouver businessman was “horrified” to discover he had been named in online articles linking him to global terrorism, arms dealing and organized crime, court heard Tuesday in a defamation trial.

Plaintiff Altaf Nazerali, a Vancouver entrepreneur, took the stand in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver as the first witness called.

He testified on the impact of discovering, in 2011, that he had been allegedly defamed in articles posted to DeepCapture.com, a website purporting to expose financial crime and conspiracies.

“It was devastating. It was full of lies. It accused me of being a criminal, being an arms dealer, being a drug dealer, being associated with various criminal organizations ranging from the Russian mafia to the Italian mafia,” Nazerali testified.

Defendants named in the suit include the primary writer of the articles, Mark Mitchell, and Deep Capture’s publisher, Patrick Byrne.

Mitchell was in court Tuesday, observing Nazerali’s testimony and writing in a notebook. Approached outside court, Mitchell said he could not speak with The Province before the end of the trial, which is scheduled to run three weeks.

For most of the day, Nazerali’s lawyer Daniel Burnett read out excerpts from Deep Capture articles that mentioned Nazerali by name, and then asked him to respond to each statement.

In various Deep Capture postings, court heard, Nazerali was purported to have contacted Mafia associates after a failed car-bombing (“pure fiction,” Nazerali said), to have spent time “running scams” with the head of Saudi intelligence (“not true,” Nazerali said), and to have “dabbled in arms dealing, delivering weapons to war zones in Africa.”

Asked about the last claim, Nazerali replied: “I have never been involved in arms dealing. Neither in Africa nor on the moon.”

After Nazerali first read the “outlandish” stories in August 2011, he said, he contacted Mitchell to have them removed or corrected.

Then on Sept. 9, 2011, court heard, Mitchell emailed Nazerali offering to remove his name from the website in exchange for him becoming a “source.”

Mitchell’s email, contained in earlier court filings, reads: “I do not reveal the names of my sources so if you were to become a source, I would be obliged to remove all previous mentions of your name on Deep Capture. Like I said, some facts are more interesting than others, and I’d gladly take your name out of the story altogether in exchange for having you as a source. Let me know what you think.”

In court Tuesday, Nazerali said: “In reading the email, I construed it to be an attempt at extortion, at which point, no further discussion was going to be possible on a rational basis. And then I made the tough decision to begin litigation, which is how I ended up here today after four years.”

dfumano@theprovince.com

To: nova222 who wrote (5325)	4/15/2015 10:11:26 AM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 5673

Multivision's Nazerali testifies on Imagis, Web "lies" 2015-04-14 20:48 ET - Street Wire by Stockwatch Business Reporter Vancouver stock promoter Aly Nazerali returned to the witness stand this morning at his defamation trial. His testimony comes as part of a case that he as the plaintiff is pursuing against (among others) Mark Mitchell, who wrote allegedly defamatory statements about Mr. Nazerali on the Deep Capture website, and Patrick Byrne, who publishes the website and is also the chief executive officer of on-line retailer Overstock.com Inc. (another defendant). The statements appeared in 21 "chapters" on the website in 2011. During the morning proceedings, Mr. Nazerali, in response to questions from his lawyer, Dan Burnett, provided information about himself -- specifically, his involvement with a company called Imagis Technologies -- and then began addressing the contents of the on-line chapters, which he called "full of lies." Imagis Technologies By way of background, Vancouver-based Imagis, founded by Mr. Nazerali, promoted biometric facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies. It began trading on the Vancouver Stock Exchange in early 1999 and became a particularly lively promotion in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Burnett invited Mr. Nazerali to comment on Imagis's post-Sept. 11 activity and relationship with the Pembridge Group. In response, Mr. Nazerali testified that around the end of September, 2011, he received a phone call from Brad Harrington of Pembridge, who invited him to come to Boston to meet Treyton Thomas (the group's chairman). Mr. Nazerali was impressed by Mr. Thomas, and told the court that in January, 2002, Imagis announced that it had hired Pembridge Venture Partners as a non-exclusive adviser. Mr. Burnett asked Mr. Nazerali to describe the next "major step" in Imagis's relationship with Pembridge. Mr. Nazerali recalled that early in the morning of March 6, 2002, he and the board of Imagis received an e-mail from Pembridge about a non-binding go-private proposal at about $4 (U.S.) a share. Almost simultaneously, Pembridge put out the same information in a press release, sending Imagis's shares soaring, said Mr. Nazerali. (The stock touched a 52-week high of $5.66, up $1.76 over the previous day, in record trading.) Mr. Nazerali said Imagis quickly put out its own press release to clarify that the proposal was not firm. It also started an insider blackout period. Mr. Nazerali emphasized, "I did not trade Imagis stock between March and July of 2002." July, 2002, was when the go-private talks ended. Mr. Nazerali attributed their end to a "lack of clarity" from Pembridge. After the talks ended, the board of Imagis met and decided to appoint Mr. Thomas as a director, said Mr. Nazerali. This was done to force Mr. Thomas to file insider reports and to prevent any "monkey business," as Mr. Nazerali called it. He did not elaborate. Mr. Thomas left the board in November, 2002, which Mr. Nazerali said was around the time that the British Columbia Securities Commission and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission began demanding information about Imagis and about Mr. Thomas in particular. The regulatory meetings marked "the last [time] I personally had anything to do with Mr. Thomas or Pembridge," said Mr. Nazerali. Mr. Burnett asked Mr. Nazerali to skip ahead to 2003 and 2004. Mr. Nazerali obliged and discussed Imagis's merger with the private Briyante Software, with the resulting company being renamed Visiphor. Mr. Nazerali was gone by then, having left Imagis in about April, 2003, because, as he testified, he had lent money to the company and thus had a conflict of interest. So ended the story of Imagis. Mr. Nazerali's cross-examination will be interesting. The Imagis promotion drew plenty of media attention, not least from Stockwatch, which published over 50 stories about it between March 7, 2002, and March 19, 2003. More stories followed in subsequent years as the SEC conducted its Imagis-related case against Pembridge and Mr. Thomas. The court is surely not done hearing about Imagis yet. Deep Capture Over the rest of the morning, Mr. Nazerali testified about the Deep Capture website, which he claims published 21 chapters that falsely accuse him of being an arms dealer, a terrorist and more. Mr. Nazerali said he first became aware of the chapters in August, 2011, after a phone call from a friend. What Mr. Nazerali read "horrified" him. "It was devastating. They were full of lies," he testified. Mr. Nazerali spent the rest of the proceedings listening to quoted material from the chapters and giving his reaction, which several times was just one word: "Fiction." For example, one chapter stated that in 1979, Irving Kott (a notorious 1970s stock promoter) saw his car explode and immediately called "his friend" Mr. Nazerali, who offered to "patch things up" with the Mafia. In court, Mr. Nazerali dismissed this as "pure fiction." He testified that he did not know Mr. Kott at the time, and denied ever having Mafia connections. In addition to Mafiosi, Mr. Nazerali denied knowing Russian spies, Pakistani intelligence officers, Saudi intelligence officers, Al Qaeda financiers, jihadists, the Iranian regime and many others that were linked to him in the Deep Capture chapters. On occasion, Mr. Nazerali said he had heard of or met someone mentioned in the chapters, but did not have the relationship described therein. He also denied travelling to various places mentioned in the chapters. He said he has never been to Costa Rica, contrary to Deep Chapter's claim that he "attended secret meetings in Costa Rica ... where a network of market manipulators planned the destruction of some big companies." Another country he claimed never to have visited was Afghanistan. Deep Capture had stated that Mr. Nazerali "dabbled in arms dealing, delivering weapons to war zones in Africa and to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan." In court, Mr. Nazerali said with emphasis, "I have never been involved in arms dealing, neither in Africa nor on the moon." Mr. Nazerali also denied ever having manipulated the market, engaged in short selling, or taken part in a pump-and-dump or other scam. Toward the end of the morning, Mr. Nazerali was asked to summarize his opinion on the chapters. He answered with a quote from one of them (in reference, of course, to something else): "They were just too nutty to contemplate." He said some particularly "outlandish" statements "offend me and my [Muslim] faith" and are "among the most egregious lies I've ever read."

To: nova222 who wrote (5325)

4/15/2015 10:13:50 AM

From: StockDung

Respond to of 5673

Multivision's Nazerali denies links to Mafia, Madoff

2015-04-14 20:53 ET - Street Wire
by Mike Caswell

Aly Nazerali, testifying Tuesday afternoon in his defamation lawsuit against the Deep Capture website and others, denied having anything to do with several Mafia figures, market manipulators and others. The names that came up ranged from an Al-Qaeda financier to notorious swindler Bernie Madoff. Also mentioned was Mark Valentine, the former chairman of brokerage Thomson Kernaghan & Co Ltd. who pleaded guilty to market manipulation charges in the United States.
Mr. Nazerali is testifying as part of a lawsuit he filed against the website Deep Capture. He complains that the site wrongly associated him with several individuals in 21 chapters that it published in 2011. The defendants include short-selling conspiracy theorist Patrick Byrne and journalist Mark Mitchell. Mr. Nazerali claims that the statements on the site wrongfully accused him of being a drug dealer, terrorist, fraud artist and gangster, among other things.

ALYNAZERALI.COM

Aly Nazerali

His testimony on Tuesday afternoon mostly consisted of his lawyer, Dan Burnett, reading passages from the Deep Capture chapters, with the passages typically associating Mr. Nazerali with Mafia figures, market manipulators or other nefarious individuals. Mr. Nazerali then denied having anything to do with the activity or people. In some instances he did acknowledge having met the people involved (he said he met Mr. Valentine twice) but with others he said he did not even know they existed prior to reading the chapters.
Some passages that Mr. Burnett read elicited stronger responses from Mr. Nazerali than others. These included one that stated, "Nazerali's key business relationships ... nearly all of which pertained to the business of market manipulation." Mr. Nazerali emphatically told the court that he had never been involved in market manipulation. "This is a particularly disturbing paragraph," he said. Another passage that received a strong reaction from Mr. Nazerali stated, "In 2001 Nazerali perpetrated a stock fraud, Even Resources." Mr. Nazerali called the passage "utterly false," adding, "Even Resources was not a stock fraud."
Mr. Nazerali's denials continued as Mr. Burnett read a passage that linked him with JB Oxford & Co., a controversial brokerage affiliated with notorious Canadian Irving Kott. The passage stated that Mr. Nazerali was a key financier of the firm, which he denied. "No, I would have had to file an ownership interest [and] there is no such file," he said.
Yet another passage had Mr. Nazerali meeting with a financier for Osama bin Laden at the offices of a Bermudian brokerage, Lines Overseas Management Inc. "It's a disgusting twisting of lies," Mr. Nazerali responded. "I don't know the firm."
The many names that Mr. Nazerali apparently had connections to even included the infamous Mr. Madoff. Mr. Burnett read a passage that somehow had Mr. Nazerali as a feeder to Mr. Madoff's operation. As with the others, Mr. Nazerali denied having any affiliation.
Other passages had an espionage tone. One had Mr. Nazerali associating with the Iranian government, while another had him plotting to damage the U.S. economy. "Never have I undertaken any activities" on behalf of the Iranian government, Mr. Nazerali said. He also denied having done anything to harm the U.S. economy, or having the means to do so.
Another theme, repeated many times, was links to Mafia figures from the chapters. Among the names that Mr. Burnett asked about was Felix Sater, identified as a Russian Mafia boss, and Antonio Comiso, another Mafia leader. Mr. Burnett also asked about Phil Abramo (better known as "The King of Wall Street") who has been charged with fraud and murder (and is in jail awaiting the outcome of an appeal on the murder charges). Mr. Nazerali repeatedly many times phrases such as "I have no connection" and "I have no knowledge" of the particular person.
The formula of Mr. Burnett reading a passage and Mr. Nazerali denying the truth of its contents continued repeatedly throughout the afternoon. The other names that arose included short-seller Anthony Elgindy, Canadian businessman Yank Barry (who was convicted of extortion), junk bond king Michael Milken, Saudi businessman Adnan Khashoggi, and alleged al-Qaeda associate Yasin al-Qadi.
A portion of Mr. Nazerali's testimony also included him accusing Deep Capture of extortion. He said he contacted the author of the material, Mr. Mitchell, about the chapters in late 2011. Mr. Mitchell said that he could have Mr. Nazerali's name removed if he acted as a source, providing information on others. "I construed it as an attempted extortion," Mr. Nazerali said. He then "made the tough decision" to begin his lawsuit.
The remainder of the afternoon had Mr. Burnett introducing documentary evidence by asking Mr. Nazerali to confirm its contents. This included letters pertaining to legal events in the Netherlands and news releases of Imagis Technologies Ltd.