More on McCain Fund-Raiser
Michael Luo, NYT, Aug 7, 2008
A cluster of unusual donations from California to Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign has cast an unwanted spotlight on a prominent McCain fund-raiser in Florida and his Jordanian business partner who apparently solicited the contributions. Harry Sargeant III, who is the part-owner of a major oil trading firm and the finance chairman of the Florida Republican party, is the fund-raiser who has been credited by the McCain campaign with raising the more than $50,000 from a single extended family, the Abdullahs, and a few of their friends, in California. It was a long-time business partner, however, Mustafa Abu Naba’a, who actually solicited the more than $100,000 in contributions overall from the Abdullahs and a circle of other Arab Americans in California to not only Mr. McCain but also Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who is a close friend of Mr. Sargeant’s.
A lawsuit filed earlier this year in Florida against both men by a former associate, Mohammad Anwar Farid Al-Saleh, who happens to be the brother-in-law of the King of Jordan, offers a glimpse into the business relationship between Mr. Abu Naba’a and Mr. Sargeant and the nature of their lucrative work. The suit, which was reported on by MSNBC earlier this year, alleges that Mr. Sargeant and Mr. Abu Naba’a cut Mr. Al-Saleh out of his rightful one-third share of their company, International Oil Trading Company (IOTC). It also highlights the apparent close ties that IOTC was able to forge with the Jordanian government as part of a lucrative contract it eventually landed with the Pentagon to transport aviation fuel to the military in Iraq. Mr. Al-Saleh said in the lawsuit that he secured letter of authorization from the Jordanian Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources for IOTC to transport the oil across Jordan. He also said he “negotiated a deal with the National Resource Development Company, a company connected to the Jordanian Army, to ensure that the cargo arriving by ship from Saudi Arabia at the Jordanian port of Aqaba would be offloaded from the ships and placed into storage without interference, bureaucratic or otherwise.” Mr. Sargent declined in an interview Wednesday to respond specifically to the allegations in the lawsuit, describing it merely as a “commercial dispute” that was irrelevant to his political fund-raising. For anyone looking to peruse further, the full complaint filed by Mr. Al-Saleh is here.
Niqnaq 