NEW YORK – The Dubai Ports World controversy of 2006 is making a comeback, only this time the Arab principal has actually gained control of the container contract for a major U.S. port.
The site is Port Canaveral, near the Kennedy Space Center on Florida’s east coast, which is frequented by U.S. and NATO-ally nuclear submarines.
A 35-year contract signed last year and set to go operational next month allows a United Arab Emirates-based company managed by Badr Jafar to operate a cargo terminal managing containers.
The UAE has been a major donor to the troubled Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. And Jafar has ties to supermodels linked with President Bill Clinton and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s famed Lolita Island.
The company, Gulftainer, is a global terminal port operator with headquarters in Sharjah, UAE, adjoining Dubai.
“Project Pelican,” featuring Gulftainer’s new unit, GU USA, aims to create 2,000 jobs when fully operational, including 500 at the port itself in a planned $100 million investment in infrastructure, equipment and staff.
A Space Coast Daily video June 23, 2014, shows Port Canaveral CEO John Walsh announcing the agreement with Gulftainer USA:
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The Gulftainer deal threatens to raise new charges of “pay-to-play” as it apparently was not opposed by Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state, reports Alan Jones’ 1776 Channel.
As a U.S. senator from New York, however, she led Democratic Party opposition to the Dubai Ports deal in 2006.
Secretary of Treasury Jack Lew, a former White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, approved the Gulftainer deal without seeking the formal approval of the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, CFIUS.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, who played a key role fundraising for Barack Obama’s 2008 successful presidential run, appears to have signed off on the Gulftainer deal with Port Canaveral.
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The Wall Street Journal reported Feb. 17 that despite a “self-imposed ban” on collecting funds from foreign donors, recent donors to the Clinton Foundation still include the UAE.
The article noted that the UAE as a first-time donor gave between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation in 2014.
Hillary led effort to derail Dubai deal
In 2006, during the administration of President George W. Bush, WND published a series of articles that exposed the connections between the government of Dubai’s role in providing the 9/11 terrorists with both a banking facility and a country of transit. Dubai also had an extensive connection with the radical religious clerics that rule Iran. Bipartisan opposition in the Senate forced Dubai Ports World in March 2006 to back off the proposed deal to manage six U.S. ports.
On March 1, 2006, the Financial Times in London reported Bill Clinton was advising top officials from Dubai how to address growing U.S. concerns over the acquisition of five U.S. container terminals by DP World, even as Sen. Hillary Clinton was leading efforts to derail the deal.
“Ms. Clinton, who this week called the United Arab Emirates a ‘good ally to America,’ advised Dubai’s leaders to propose a 45-day delay to allow for an intensive investigation of the acquisition, according to his spokesman,” the Financial Times reported.
“On Sunday DP World agreed with the White House to undertake the lengthy review, a move which has assuaged some of the opposition form the U.S. Congress,” the Financial Times article continued. “However, Mrs. Clinton remains a leading voice against the deal, and this week proposed legislation to block it, arguing that the U.S. could not afford to ‘surrender our port operations to foreign governments.”
A group photo taken during the Global Education and Skills Forum held in Dubai from March 15-17, 2014, shows Bill Clinton standing next to Majid Jafar, brother of Badr Jafar, and a co-director in the brothers’ top company, the Crescent Group, also headquartered in the UAE, a conglomerate holding company that includes the Crescent Group’s oil and gas company, Crescent Petroleum.
Lew approved the Gulftainer deal without a national security review on Sept. 26, 2014, some six months after Bill Clinton and Majid Jafar stood on stage together at the Global Education & Skills Forum in Dubai in March 2014.
In an article published in American Shipper Sept. 26, 2014, trade and transportation editor Eric Kulisch reported that in an email to American Shipper, Canaveral Port Director John Walsh said he had been notified by the Treasury Department that the concession agreement with Gulftainer did not require further review, allowing the deal to pass being brought before CFIUS, because the deal was considered a simple lease, not an asset sale.
See Bill Clinton interview Jack Lew at the Clinton Global Initiative American on June 20, 2013:
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According to the New York Daily News, Badr Jafar dated supermodel Naomi Campbell from 2005 until 2006.
The London Evening Standard linked Bill Clinton romantically to Naomi Campbell in 2002, although Campbell’s representatives deny the allegation.
Records from now-convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual trysts with supermodels show Campbell flew on Epstein’s aircraft with President Clinton in 2002, according to flight logs.
