Somehow we knew the cover-up for Republican fundraising bundler and Bush administration war profiteer Harry Sargeant was bound to end soon.
From the Miami Herald's Scott Hiaasen
$5,000 in donations to Charlie Crist called illegal by feds
Federal prosecutors traced $5,000 in bogus donations to Gov. Charlie Crist to a man in the Dominican Republic who works for one of Crist's longtime friends.
Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles charged Ala'a al-Ali of the Dominican Republic with using straw donors to give about $50,000 to presidential candidates John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton and $5,000 to Crist's 2006 campaign. Al-Ali later repaid the donors, avoiding contribution limits, the indictment says.
Al-Ali, 37, works for an international shipping company owned by Boca Raton's Harry Sargeant III, a longtime Crist confidant who until last month served as finance chairman for the state GOP.
Oh, a world of hurt continues to come down on Harry Sargeant III.
Sources report the federal investigation is proceeding, with the possibility of additional indictments.
The Miami Herald continues:
Sargeant, also one of McCain's top fundraisers, was not named in the indictment. The indictment does say that al-Ali had campaign checks delivered to a person identified as ''H.S.,'' but prosecutors would not say if this is a reference to Sargeant.
Sargeant did not return phone calls to his offices on Thursday.
The federal investigation, which is still ongoing, has focused on a series of conspicuous donations from Arab-Americans living near Riverside, Calif., including more than three dozen contributions to Crist on June 19, 2006.
When interviewed by The Miami Herald last year, one of the donors said she didn't know who Crist was and insisted she and her husband gave no money to the governor's campaign -- though records showed they donated $1,000.
''We never made any donations. I have no idea what you are talking about,'' homemaker Jihan Nassar of Corona, Calif., told The Miami Herald in August.
The indictment says al-Ali repaid the Nassars, who are not accused of wrongdoing, for the contributions.
In addition to concealing the donations, al-Ali is also accused of violating a federal law banning foreign nationals from contributing to political campaigns. Al-Ali is a citizen of both the Dominican Republic and Jordan.
Many of Crist's questionable California donors also gave money to the campaigns of Giuliani, Clinton and McCain in 2007 and 2008. The McCain campaign attributed these donations to Sargeant's fundraising before returning them in August.
At the time, Sargeant said these donations were solicited by a business partner, Mustafa Abu Naba'a. Like al-Ali, Abu Naba'a is a Jordanian living in the Dominican Republic.
Sargeant and Crist have been friends since college, when they were fraternity brothers at Florida State University. When campaigning for the governor's office in 2006, Crist often flew on a private plane owned by one of Sargeant's companies.
At the governor's urging, Sargeant became the head fundraiser for the state Republican Party; his family and companies have donated more than $1 million to the Florida GOP in the past two years, records show. Sargeant stepped down as finance chairman last month.
With Abu Naba'a, Sargeant also heads a company that has earned more than $1.4 billion from the Defense Department for shipping oil through Jordan to Iraq to supply the U.S. military. Last year, a congressional committee accused the company of ''apparent profiteering,'' and urged the Pentagon to investigate its contracts.
The New York Times added
The indictment of the businessman, Ala’a al-Ali, 37, shines a spotlight on the role of a business associate who the complaint asserts helped collect the donations. The associate, Harry Sargeant III, is a major Republican fund-raiser who owns an oil company with government contracts in Iraq and who recently resigned as finance chairman of the Florida Republican Party. Mr. Sargeant raised more than $500,000 for the 2008 Republican presidential campaign of Senator John McCain.
News organizations raised questions last summer about suspect donations to Mr. McCain from Arab-Americans that the campaign initially linked to Mr. Sargeant’s fund-raising before attributing them instead to another one of his Arab associates.
The indictment charges that those suspect donations were in fact illegally orchestrated and reimbursed by Mr. Ali to circumvent caps on individual contributions as well as a ban on donations from foreign citizens. (Mr. Ali is a citizen of both Jordan and the Dominican Republic, where he lives, according to a statement from the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.)
A Web site for Mr. Sargeant’s company, Sargeant Marine, lists Mr. Ali as sales coordinator.
The Palm Beach Post via Fort Myers News-Press reports that Sargeant's International Oil Trading Co. (IOTC) is spending a lot of time in court.
A former partner in IOTC, Anwar Farid Al-Saleh, the brother-in-law of Jordan's King Abdullah, sued in April, saying Sargeant and Naba'a cut him out of a contract after he got Jordan's permission to move the oil.
A federal lawsuit filed in West Palm Beach in November alleges Sargeant "bribed" Jordanian government officials in exchange for an exclusive letter authorizing IOTC to transport fuel across Jordan into Iraq. A competitor, Supreme Fuels Trading FZE, claims it could not bid on the defense contract.
Last year the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee launched an investigation of Sargeant's IOTC [links to committee documents]for overcharging and "profiteering" on its $1.4 billion in Defense contracts for fuel deliveries to troops in Iraq.
The Florida GOP last month forced Harry Sargeant to resign his post as the state party's finance chairman. Some saw this as a move by Gov. Crist to clear the way for his own possible run at the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) in 2010, or even a run at the Republican nomination for President in 2012.
In an email this week to House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Edolphus "Ed" Towns (D-NY-10) this writer urged swift action by the committee to urge Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to cancel and not renew IOTC contracts with the DoD worth an estimated total of $1.4 billion.