Carlyle, Ghislaine Maxwell, Alaska , CargoMetrics and the Arctic Circle and control of the Oceans.
How is Ghislaine Maxwell and her boyfriend Scott Borgerson -CargoMetrics connected to Carlyle Groups David Rubenstein and his wife Alice Rogoff , Alaska Sentator Lisa Murkoeski, and an ex VECO CEO allegedly linked to child sex traffickers connected?
The Ghislaine trial is being thrown into a mess because one of the jurors failed to disclose he was a sex abuse victim. This juror works for Carlyle Group. This had me raising my eyebrows
David Rubenstein is the co-founder of Carlyle Group. Big Cheese. Then I learned that Ghislaine is pals with David’s wife (Alice Rogoff). So now I was interested.
David Rubenstein and Jeffrey Epstein were both members of the David Rockefeller founded Trilateral Commission
Maxwell went to Alaska in 2014 to spend time with Rogoff during the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. How the two met and partied across Alaska was only referred to vaguely in the New York Post’s Page Six gossip column.
Ghislaine Maxwell began the British-based charity TerraMar Project, and was a featured speaker at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland and in Seattle, Washington. Terra Mar’s mission was to create a "global ocean community" based around the idea of shared ownership of the global commons, also known as the high seas or international waters
Having just learned of Natural Asset Classes and the Global Commons I was now more than interested.
Whitney Webb explains Natural Asset Companies here:
Ian Davis does a great job explaining the Theft of the Global Commons
https://in-this-together.com/global-commons-part-2/
After the death of Robert Maxwell, her father, in 1991 she moved to a Manhattan Property owned by Lynn Foreseter de Rothschild, who’s husband is the British mega banker Evelyn Robert de Rothschild. The property was also listed as the base for TerraMar.
Maxwell’s Terramar Project wasn’t just about “protecting the oceans,” but controlling and owning them.
Those who associated with and who financed the Terramar Project included the Clinton Foundation, Comet Ping Pong’s James Alefantis, John Podesta and Tamera Luzzatto, along with many other denizens of High Society.
Rubenstein—Rogoff and Alaska
In 1987, David Rubenstein co-founded the Carlyle Group, which would become one of the largest private equity management firms in the world.
One of his earliest successes involved taking advantage of a loophole in the 1986 Tax Reform Act that allowed firms owned by Alaska Natives to sell off their tax losses to corporations in search of write-offs. Carlyle raked in millions in fees, in what critics referred to as “the Great Eskimo Tax Scam.”
The loophole was established in 1970 “when Alaska Natives arrived at a unique settlement with the federal government over ownership claims of Alaska land,” he wrote. “Under a unique settlement, Alaskan Natives were allowed to set up Native-run corporations to invest and manage the money they had been awarded. The companies soon found themselves facing huge losses and limited options for turning things around.
Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens helped Alaskan-owned companies “leverage their losses by selling them to profitable companies looking for tax breaks,” Briody wrote. “If an Alaskan company lost $10 million in a fiscal year, they would sell the losses for $7 million in much needed cash. The buyer would then write the losses off against its profits, getting a $10 million tax credit for $7 million.”
The founders of Carlyle cashed in, flying Eskimos into Washington, DC, buttering them up, and brokering deals between them and profitable American companies. Finding the loss- making Eskimos was easier than they had imagined, and the profitable counterparts couldn’t get enough free money. (Carlyle founders) took a one percent cut of the transactions and sent an estimated $1 billion through the loophole.
A cottage industry had been born. They recognized the ongoing potential of the businesses and decided to incorporate. With a crew in place, liabilities limited, and money coming in the door, the boys were ready to make something of themselves.
The foundations for the ANCs were laid by the Nixon Administration’s Office of Economic Opportunity which was run by Donald Rumsfeld, Frank Carlucci, and Dick Cheney
Once established, ANCs were connected to defense contractors. Senator Stevens sponsored legislation that allowed the tribal corporations to receive preferential treatment, as minority-owned businesses, through Section 8(a) of the SBA’s Small Business Act. With a minority designation held in perpetuity, the ANCs could receive non-compete federal contracts with no monetary caps, generating unlimited amounts of money for the major defense contractors who used ANCs as fronts to circumvent the competitive bidding process.
Within Carlyle, a nexus of liberal and noeconservative interests intersected, helping them tighten their financial control of Capitol Hill. For example, billionaire investor George Soros, who has plowed money into Native Groups like the National Congress of American Indians and the Native American Rights Fund, has invested $100 million in Carlyle Partners II, one of the largest and most successful Carlyle funds
As the firm grew, it recruited senior statesmen as partners or advisers — including former defense secretary Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state James Baker and former president George H.W. Bush — and set about investing in defense contractors.
The firm eventually broadened its portfolio beyond military contractors and now manages almost $200 billion in global assets across a dizzying array of sectors, including agriculture, transportation, natural resources, mining, aerospace, automotive, energy, health care, information technology, real estate and retail.
Rubensteins wife (1983-2017) was Alice Rogoff . She was introduced to Alaska in 2001, when she decided to celebrate her 50th birthday by taking a trip there with Overstreet and their children. It was the first of what would become many visits.
In 2002 Rogoff and Overstreet asked a pilot to fly them along the course of the Iditarod, which their sons were studying in school. They touched down in Athabascan Indian villages in Alaska’s interior and the Yukon River delta, and Inupiat villages along the shores of Norton Sound and the Bering Sea.
When the families returned that summer to visit remote St. Lawrence Island, about a 160-mile flight from Nome, Rogoff met Alaska Natives trying to sell their art. “She fell in love with it,” recalled Pat Hahn, a Nome resident who befriended Rogoff.
Rogoff established the Alaska Native Arts Foundation in Anchorage and purchased a house there in 2006. She seemed to see herself as Alaska’s unofficial ambassador to the East Coast.
In 2005, the foundation set up a three-day festival at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington; a few years later, it established a 3,000-square-foot gallery named Alaska House in Manhattan’s Soho district. “We specifically chose higher prices in New York,” said Overstreet, who serves on the board. “We had $25,000 pieces,” plus baskets woven from seal intestines, moose bladder pouches and walrus intestine raincoats. The goal was to get fair-market value for the art and serve as what Rogoff called a “virtual embassy of Alaska.”
Alaska House opened on Sept. 15, 2008, with a standing-room-only crowd that included Todd Palin, husband of then-Gov. Sarah Palin; financier Steve Rattner; philanthropist Daisy Soros; hedge fund manager Orin Kramer; Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass; and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Unfortunately, Lehman Brothers went under the same day. Rogoff’s plans to raise $1 million a year to operate Alaska House evaporated, and her efforts to secure an $875,000 grant from the state legislature were unsuccessful.
In 2009 she began reading the work of Scott Borgerson, a former U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant commander and Council on Foreign Relations fellow who is now chief executive of CargoMetrics, an investment management firm that specializes in collecting data on global shipping.
In several articles for Foreign Affairs magazine, Borgerson noted that the Russians, Canadians, Danish and Norwegians are establishing deepwater ports along their Arctic shorelines, funding new Arctic naval patrol vessels and staking territorial claims on the Arctic Ocean floor.
Because the north is a fabulous trove of mineral deposits and the repository of a quarter of the world’s estimated oil and natural gas deposits, he argued, the Arctic region will become a center of trade and commerce akin to the Mediterranean Sea.
Anchorage and Reykjavik could someday become “the high-latitude equivalents of Singapore and Dubai,” he wrote.
Anchorage? Rogoff decided to organize a Dispatch-sponsored conference in 2011 to focus on “infrastructure development, policy needs and economic opportunities in the Alaskan Arctic.” She called it the Arctic Imperative Summit, holding it at a tony ski resort just south of Anchorage, and drawing an impressive constellation of speakers and guests including retired Coast Guard Adm. Thomas Barrett, president of Alyeska Pipeline Service; Iceland President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, whom she had met at a reception in New York; Dan Sullivan, then commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources; David Rubenstein, representing Carlyle; and Edward Itta, then mayor of the North Slope Borough.
Rogoff had another conference in 2012, also including Grimsson. He was eager for Iceland to take a central role in the international Arctic discussion. He and Rogoff decided to combine forces.
In April 2013, the two flew to Washington to announce that they were founding the Arctic Circle, a new organization whose first assembly would be held in the glass-paneled Harpa Concert and Conference Center in Reykjavik.
Instantly, the new circumpolar forum was viewed as a rival of the more tradition-bound Arctic Council, founded in 1996 as an intergovernmental group of eight nations with Arctic real estate: Sweden, Iceland, Canada, Russia, the United States, Norway, Finland and Denmark. Chairmanship rotates among the member nations, and all other participants have only nonspeaking observer status.
By contrast, Rogoff’s organization would widen the circle.
“It’s clear that the Arctic Circle is intended as a high-profile, dynamic conference where India and Google and Greenpeace — and countless others with a stake in the Arctic — need not wait for years hoping they may be allowed to speak,” the Toronto Globe and Mail wrote.
The 2015 assembly in Reykjavik attracted more media and 1,400 people from 34 countries, including heads of state from Finland and Germany . The highest-ranking U.S. representative was Alaska’s Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Not present was Secretary of State — and Rogoff’s Nantucket neighbor — John F. Kerry.
Though Kerry is chairing the Arctic Council for the next two years, Rogoff fears he’s not invested in Alaska’s future.
“I don’t think John Kerry has a clue about Alaska and doesn’t care about Alaska,” Rogoff told the journalism students last fall. “And I happen to know him personally, and he’s never been to Alaska except maybe on a refueling stop and has no interest in the place, and for him, the Arctic equals hunting.” (According to the Dispatch, Rogoff herself is a big-game hunter, a fact some East Coast friends find surprising.)
In 2009 Rogoff purchased 90 percent of the Dispatch, a year-old online news organization named the Alaska Dispatch. While Rogoff was establishing herself as a player in Arctic issues, the Dispatch had earned plaudits for its coverage of the 2010 plane crash that killed Sen. Ted Stevens, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (which had ramifications for future oil drilling off Alaska) and Sarah Palin.
But five years into Rogoff’s ownership, the Web site’s 1.5 million monthly page views weren’t approaching the Anchorage Daily News’ 14.7 million, and online advertising wasn’t generating the hoped-for profits.
Rogoff was at the time of the 2014 Iditarod also in negotiations to buy the Anchorage Daily News from The McClatchy Company, a California-based newspaper chain with big financial troubles that continue to this day.
Rogoff bought the newspaper not long after the Iditarod ended
Still others, pointing to the longtime Alaska presence of the Carlyle Group, wondered how aggressively a newspaper owned by Rogoff would cover Carlyle’s extensive dealings in the state.
Carlyle helps manage the assets of the Alaska Permanent Fund, established in 1976 to conserve a portion of oil revenue for future generations. Carlyle also has investments and interests in natural gas storage and energy, ocean transport and port operations— all key Alaskan industries, the Web site said. Rogoff herself is on the advisory board of PT Capital, an equity firm founded in 2013 that looks for Arctic investment opportunities.
Michael Carey, who was editorial page editor of the Daily News from 1990 to 2000 and still writes a column for the paper (now the Alaska Dispatch News), was one of the few journalists in Alaska who would talk about Rogoff on the record. (“It’s a small state,” an anonymous scribe said. “People are pretty cautious.”)
Rogoff and her husband David Rubenstein had divorced in 2017 and Rogoff drove the Alaska Dispatch (Anchorage Daily News) into bankruptcy. The paper was rescued by the Binkley family of Fairbanks, which has kept it alive since buying it for $1 million in 2017.
For David Rubenstein, the “investment” in media in Alaska was in the buying power of “shutting down” the Alaskan Dispatch…not building a company to spread truth and understanding.
Carlyle group managed to gain control of $400 Million of Alaska Permanent Fund to “manage”. They also gained a huge foothold in the Oil and Gas market through their partnership with Hilcorp.
The true value Rubenstein obtained through buying out and liquidating ADN in Alaska is preventing news that would expose the Carlyle Group
http://mustreadalaska.com/richards-push-permanent-fund-invest-oil-gas/
Alaska Permanent Fund Corp., Juneau, committed a total of up to $1.75 billion to Carlyle Group and Blackstone Group, with half of the money committed to co-investments, confirmed Mike Burns, executive director.”
“Alaska Permanent also committed up to $375 million to two or three Carlyle private equity funds.”
“It has targeted investments in Carlyle International Energy Partners and NGP Natural Resources XI. A yet-to-be-formed agribusiness or metals and mining fund might also receive an allocation.”
The money David spent on ADN was a really good “write off” in the end. No more Alaskan Dispatch to monitor Carlyle’s sucking of Alaska’s PF and Hilcorp gets to “frack” the state away for more oil and gas…
Hopfinger wa the AlaskaDispatch.com co-founder and Rogoff’s business partner. Hopfinger said he encountered Maxwell in the isolated, Bering Sea coastal village of Unalakleet, population 700, when she climbed aboard one of Rogoff’s two,$1 million Cessna 206 aircraft. Rogoff was at the time aboard plane #2 with the pilot and a Dispatch News reporting crew covering the race.
“Maxwell, Kylea (Hopfinger’s fiance), and I flew with (pilot) Paul Anderson to White Mountain,” Hopfinger said. “During the flight, Maxwell bragged about her life, everything from her nonprofit to the places she’d visited to the fact that she knew how to fly a helicopter. Kylea and I sat in the back while she talked to Paul, at times flirting with him. We listened to her and Paul on the plane’s headphones. At one point, she told Paul she learned how to fly helicopters from an ex-boyfriend who had served in the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) andMossad,” the Israeli intelligence agency.
His description of Maxwell, who has been accused of and denied procuring teenage girls for Epstein, jives in some ways with the accounts of others who describe her as a flirt and more.
“When I got back to Anchorage after the race, I Googled Ghislaine Maxwell and saw her connection to Epstein and his underage sex scandal. I told Alice, and she acted like she didn’t know about this history. Even back then, Epstein was featured prominently in the news, enough so that I had read stories about him and his ‘Lolita Express’ prior to 2014.
“At the time, Alice was about to buy the Daily News. To me, this encounter with Maxwell was yet another example of Alice’s poor judgment….She seemingly met random people and let them into her life, not questioning who they were or where they came from.
Because Alice had a lot of money, thanks to her then-husband (David Rubenstein), she was a target for hustlers. Maxwell fit that profile. I told Alice at the time.”
The two never discussed Maxwell again, Hopfinger added, but Rogoff appeared to be undeterred by Maxwell’s Epstein connection.
By 2018 with the Dispatch News dead and gone and Hopfinger and Rogoff in court fighting over the $1 million she’d agreed to pay him for his shares in the company, Rogoff was pimping out a questionable Maxwell charity called the TerraMar Project.
Since 2012 they have grown into an incredibly active non-profit, creating what can only be called a global ocean community.
The New York Post described TerraMar as “a mysterious do-nothing charity” and said public filings revealed it was “exclusively funded by hundreds of thousands in loans by heiress Ghislaine Maxwell.”
An Anchorage jury awarded Hopfinger almost $1 million, plus legal fees, in November after his suit against Rogoff went to trial.
Hopfinger said Rogoff described Maxwell as “a friend” who “she’d met at some Arctic conferences, including Arctic Circle.”
Maxwell was a presenter at the organizations’ annual gatherings in Rekjavik in 2013 and 2014. She pitched the good works TerraMar was supposedly doing to protect the oceans.
Whether Rogoff and Maxwell knew each other in New York is unclear. Rogoff was resident in the city in the early 2000s while running “Alaska House,” an Alaska Native art gallery she liked to describe as the state’s “embassy” Outside.
It died after the state refused to spend $600,000 to keep it open.
“I did this because I thought it was really important, not just for the state in the big picture but for the sake of village life and subsistence and Native people whose livelihoods are dependent on so much of this state’s economy continuing to flourish,” Rogoff told McClatchy reporter Sean Cockerham at the time. “Well, I can’t afford to keep New York open anymore so we’re either going to close it or we’re going to find funding for it.”
It closed, and Rogoff eventually moved to Alaska where she rose to great heights, entertained many –President Barack Obama had dinner at her Campbell Lake home in 2015 – and then came crashing down.
https://craigmedred.news/2019/08/13/the-alaska-connection/
Maxwell and Borgerson
How did Borgerson become involved with Ghislaine Maxwell? By their “love of the ocean.”
Borgersons CargoMetrics was launched within months of Goldman Sachs’s initial involvement in moving uranium around, and the explosive shipping incidents of Arctic Sea and Francop, all in 2009.
While at the CFR, Borgerson became an expert on the melting of the North Pole ice cap, writing numerous published articles on its implications; this led him to co-found, with the president of Iceland, the Arctic Circle, a nonprofit designed to encourage discussion of the future of that region.
Borgerson recently spoke to 50 international generals and admirals about the Arctic and is co-drafting a proposal for a treaty between the U.S. and Canada that would help resolve the differences the two countries have in allowing international ship and aircraft travel through the Northwest Passage.
His Arctic research led to an aha moment early in 2008, while he was still with the CFR, on a visit to Singapore and the Strait of Malacca with his Fletcher School classmate Rockford Weitz and their former Ph.D. adviser, Perry. Seeing the mass of ships sailing through the strait, Borgerson and Weitz decided to build a data analytics firm using satellite tracking of ships.
Like many successful entrepreneurs, the two struggled to find financing before reaching out to a network of friends and their contacts. One was Randy Beardsworth, who had sat with Borgerson at a 2007 Coast Guard Academy dinner, where Beardsworth, then the Coast Guard’s chief of law enforcement in Miami, was the guest speaker. Borgerson “made references to history and literature, and I thought, ‘Here is a sharp guy,’” recalls Beardsworth. “We have been friends ever since.”
But Borgerson didn’t turn to his new friend in his initial fund-raising. “He came to me in 2009, after he had been turned down by 17 VCs, was maxed out on his credit card, was married and had a newborn son,” says Beardsworth, who was reviewing the Department of Homeland Security as part of the Obama administration’s transition team.
Beardsworth came to the rescue, not only committing to invest a small amount but introducing his friend to Doug Doan. A West Point graduate and Washington-based angel investor, Doan took to Borgerson right away. “To be honest, it wasn’t his idea, it was Scott I invested in,” says Doan, who provided $100,000 in capital and introduced Borgerson to a few friends, who added $75,000.
With Doan, Doan’s friends and Manzi as investors, CargoMetrics was finally able to garner its first venture capital commitment in early 2010, from Boston-based Ascent Venture Partners. That gave the start-up the capital it needed to hire a bevy of data scientists to build an analytics platform that it could sell to commodity-trading houses and other commercial users.
In 2011, CargoMetrics added Summerhill Venture Partners, a Toronto-based firm with a Boston office, to its investor roster, raising roughly $18 million from venture capital and angels for its data business.
By then Borgerson had already begun to contemplate converting CargoMetrics from an information provider into a money manager; he saw the potential to extract powerful trade signals from its technology rather than share it with other market participants for a fee.
Among those he consulted was serial entrepreneur Peter Platzer, a friend of one of CargoMetrics’ original investors. Platzer, a physicist by training, had spent eight years as a quantitative hedge fund manager at Rohatyn Group and Deutsche Bank before co-founding Spire Global, a San Francisco–based company that uses its own fleet of low-orbit satellites to track shipping, in 2012.
“We had lengthy conversations on how to set up quant trading systems and how [commodities giant] Cargill had made a similar decision to set up its own in-house hedge fund to trade on the information it was gathering,” recalls Platzer.
So Borgerson reset his course. Doan describes the decision as a “transformative moment” for the CargoMetrics co-founder. “
Borgerson’s plan was not met with enthusiasm from the company’s then co-CEO, Weitz. CargoMetrics had been gaining clients and meeting its goals, and was on its way to becoming a successful data service provider. Weitz, who now is president of the Gloucester, Massachusetts–based Institute for Global Maritime Studies and an entrepreneur coach at Tufts’ Fletcher School, did not return e-mails or phone calls asking for comment.
For his part, Borgerson says: “A ship cannot have two captains. The company simply matured and evolved into a streamlined management structure with one CEO instead of two.”
Eventually, Doan went along with Borgerson’s plan. “We believe in Scott and that shipping holds the no-shit, honest truth of what the economy is doing,” he says. But buying out the venture capital firms several years ahead of the usual exit time would require a hefty premium over what they had invested.
Once again Borgerson’s early supporters played a key role. Manzi, a fellow Fletcher School grad who had mentored Borgerson since the company’s early days, put up more money (making CargoMetrics one of his single largest investments) and introduced him to a powerful group of wealthy investors.Manzi was a former Lotus Development Corp. CEO who also had a long career at IBM Corp
Separately, the CFR’s Morse suggested that Borgerson meet with Daniel Freifeld, founder of Washington-based Callaway Capital Management and a former senior adviser on Eurasian energy at the U.S. Department of State. Impressed by Borgerson’s “intellectual honesty, vigor and more than four years of historical data,” Freifeld brought the idea to a billionaire third-party investor, who took his advice and became one of CargoMetrics’ largest backers. “I would not have suggested the investment if CargoMetrics had not done the hard part first,” adds Freifeld, declining to name the investor.
His backers would include Blackstone Alternative Asset Management (BAAM), the world’s largest hedge fund allocator, and seven wealthy tech and business leaders.
In 2012, Scott Borgerson appeared at an event he later described as pivotal for him: a conference held in Alaska under the banner of an initiative called Arctic Imperative (a precursor to the Arctic Circle initiative). It was the second in a two-year series of the gatherings, and Rogoff was the driving force behind it.
Borgerson credited a meeting with an unnamed CIO of “a large investment firm,” which he declined to identify, at the 2012 Arctic Imperative conference in Alaska,with kickstarting an experiment in using CargoMetrics’ data trove to drive quantitative trading decisions. (There’s no direct proof of this, but looking over the record of attendance at the 2011 and 2012 conferences, it appears that the CIO Borgerson was most likely to have met would have been Carlyle’s. David Rubenstein himself took an interest in and participated in the Arctic Imperative conferences.)
Manzi brought in longtime banker Gerald Rosenfeld in 2013 to craft and negotiate the move to make CargoMetrics a limited liability investment firm. Rosenfeld acted in a personal role rather than in his position as vice chairman of Lazard and full-time professor and trustee of the New York University School of Law. The whole process took a year and a half. During that time Blackstone checked in as an investor.
Borgerson has been in stealth mode since CargoMetrics’ early days, when he moved the firm from an innovation lab near MIT because the shared space was too open. He is much more forthcoming when boasting of the firm’s “world-class talent.” The team includes astrophysicists, mathematicians, former hedge fund quants, electrical engineers, a trade lawyer and software developers.
Unlike the Rothschilds 200 years ago, only a small percentage of the trades that CargoMetrics makes relate to beating official government data. Most simply are aimed at identifying mispricings in the market, using the firm’s real-time shipping data and proprietary algorithms.
That data-to-trading experiment was a real-world proof of concept for the quant fund Borgerson had begun to envision in the first couple of years after taking CargoMetrics live as the “NSA of global trade.” As the Institutional Investor story observes, that was a major shift in emphasis for the company. (For one thing, it meant buying out the original venture capital investors, who had bought in on the starting premise of focusing on the data product.)
After the “large investment firm” came on board, says Institutional Investor, “Live trading using CargoMetrics’ models began in December 2012.” Over the next year and a half, CargoMetrics geared up to begin operating a fund, something that required support from outside investors. Blackstone became one of them; meanwhile, another investor which had already taken interest in Borgerson’s quant-fund plan for CargoMetrics was Callaway Capital Management, a Washington, D.C.-based investment firm started by Daniel Freifeld.
Freifeld had been a senior adviser on Eurasian energy issues to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, after being an adviser to the Hillary campaign in 2007-08. The picture of Borgerson as a semi-anonymous maverick data-monger starts to fade a bit as these various facts emerge.
Borgerson may not have known the Clintons or Obama’s top administration officials, but the people who ran in their orbit knew Borgerson.
Borgerson was developing his quant-fund plan with the help of such connected people between 2011 and 2013. And that’s when he and Ghislaine Maxwell ran into each other through their shared interest in the Arctic.
Interesting that the collision occurred when Borgerson’s company entered the field of serious fund management.
Maxwell accompanied Stuart Beck, a 2013 TerraMar board member, to two United Nations meetings to discuss the project. Maxwell presented at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik Iceland in 2013.
Scott Borgerson, listed on TerraMar's board of directors for 2013, appeared with Maxwell at the Arctic Circle conference.
In June 2014, Maxwell and Borgerson spoke at an event in Washington, DC sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, titled “Governing the Ocean Commons: Growing Challenges, New Approaches”.
What exactly makes Maxwell an expert on the high seas, other then her association with sex trafficking and Little St. James Island, and traveling on her Fathers Yacht
As for Borgerson per his bio, he was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; has advised the White House on maritime policy; wrote a number of op-eds and articles in impressive publications; and is a co-founder of The Arctic Circle, a global NGO headquartered in Iceland
Borgerson is a former Coast Guard officer, he also commanded an 82’ coastal patrol boat conducting search and rescue and law enforcement missions in the Gulf of Mexico, served as the ship navigator and boarding officer aboard a 376’ high endurance cutter conducting counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean.
He taught as an assistant professor at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, and was the founding managing director of the Academy's Institute for Leadership
He also has a Ph.D. in international relations from Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and served on the board of the Kostas Homeland Security Institute,
Scott Borgerson’s “tech company,” CargoMetrics Technologies, applies big data to the shipping lines. CargoMetrics is billed as a “maritime innovation company,” and it is. The company’s proprietary software monitors not just where the ships all are—via their AIS, or automatic identification system—but where they’ve been, and, ultimately, what they’re carrying.
As mentioned Borgerson met Maxwell in Reykjavik at a conference for the Arctic Circle Assembly, an organization founded by Alice Rogoff, ex-wife of Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubinstein.
In a book written by Rachel Slade titled “Into the Raging Sea” she refers to the shipping trade industry as the “the Wild West.” The laws that govern international waters are antiquated and arcane. Ships are routinely registered in small, corruptible countries like Liberia and Panama, the better to avoid oversight and regulation from more fastidious governments. When ships are lost at sea—which happens much more than you think—it can be difficult even to determine who ultimately owns the vessel, as ships are purchased by shell companies owned by shell companies, and so on to oblivion. It’s anarchy. What better way for the Cabal to conduct it’s illegal Black ops by sea.
It’s anarchy—or, more poetically, “the outlaw sea,”as the author William Langewiesche puts it.
Even something as simple as locating the 50,000 ships crisscrossing the ocean at any given time can be dicey.
While ships are equipped with rudimentary GPS systems, called AIS, disabling them is a piece of cake, and when they fall off the radar, there is no alert mechanism, and no entity monitoring the vanishing.
Per CargoMetrics, seaborne cargo on 50,000 ships transports 90% of some $18.5 trillion of goods per year—things that go from Point A to Point B. Of all of that, Customs inspects a vanishingly small percentage. Most stuff gets where it’s going, no matter what it might contain.
The software Borgerson’s developed could help crack down on smugglers and criminals—or it might do the opposite. If you are a big fish in a global crime syndicate, you would love to have a clearer understanding of global shipping. That would make it easier to move banknotes, arms, drugs, gems, sex slaves, to avoid detection by authorities.
CargoMetrics has also geo-tagged hundreds of thousands of [terminal] berths as well as a dynamic registry of ships. They claim to also integrate data on pipeline flows, refinery runs, and the weather."
If used legitimately, this would be a great technology, as it would capture much of the crime being committed on the high seas. In the wrong hands, this technology can be used to cover for illegal shipping of drugs, human trafficking and weapons.
Scott Borgerson has referred to CargoMetrics as the NSA of Global Trade. It seems very likely it is an intelligence front, and likely associated with MOSSAD given Ghislaine Maxwell’s relationship with Borgerson, as well as the financial backing received by Israeli shipping magnate Idan Ofer
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/israels-idan-ofer-backs-hedge-fund-1.5392395
Borgerson stated “What I’m trying to build is the ‘NSA of global trade’. “We have a real-time digital map of the global economy. But more importantly, we have a data archive.. We save all the data we receive. We have hundreds of billions of historical records in a searchable database. Think of it as a Google search for trade – except it’s secret.”
Borgerson's company raised nearly $23 million from investors, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Schmidt led a $10 million funding round for CargoMetrics in August 2017. Cargo Metrics has business ties with Maersk Tankers, FedNav, Western Bulk and True Freight.
In addition to Eric Schmidt from Google, other prominent investors include Howard Morgan, co-founder of quant investing giant Renaissance Technologies; famed hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones; Israeli shipping magnate Idan Ofer; and shipping services leader Clarksons PLC.
As mentioned CargoMetrics is also backed by Blackstone, the hedge fund. Blackstone also owns a significant stake in Engineer's Gate, the hedge fund which has significant connections to... Jeffrey Epstein . Engineers Gate founder Glenn Russell Dubin retired from the hedge fund in January 2020. Glenn Dubin’s name was revealed in a sealed deposition that relates to the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandals.
https://www.swfinstitute.org/news/77509/cppib-exits-engineers-gate-hedge-fund-investment
The Arctic Circle, the NGO that Borgerson co-founded, concerns the future of the actual Arctic Circle related to 1) the melting of that body of water opens up shipping lanes, and 2) there’s a ton of oil up there.
The sanctions on Russia kibboshed an Arctic deal between Rosneft and Exxon that would have made Putin a gajillion dollars. Rosneft, of course, is the entity mentioned in the Steele dossier, the sale of which was alleged to have benefited Donald John Trump financially.
The Arctic Circles stated mission: “To facilitate dialogue and build relationships to address rapid changes in the Arctic” and “strengthen the decision-making process by bringing together as many international partners as possible to interact under one large open tent.”
In fact, the gas/oil/mineral ore oligarchs of the world probably can’t wait for Greenland and the Arctic Ocean to melt. Greenland’s 836,000 square miles offer an Aladdin’s cave of vast riches if you can score the mineral rights and get under that ice.
Batteries, circuits, computers, and robots don’t work without the metals found in mined ore. Nearly everything in the 21st century demands cobalt, zinc, uranium, tin, and copper—elements just waiting under those majestic glaciers for someone with a big enough shovel.
There isn’t enough cobalt on the planet to build the batteries Elon Musk needs to supply his electric cars, trucks, and solar-powered systems. His Mars conquest isn’t about colonizing; it’s about mining. If he can pull it off, he’ll unlock unfathomable wealth. Next to him, Bill Gates will look like a pauper.
The Russians know this—they’re already neck-deep in the mining biz.
Demand for metals is so great that deepsea mining is finally becoming logistically viable—and if you think killing whales is bad, wait till these companies churn up the seabed in the anarchic international waters. Several startups (and presumably, big drilling companies like Shell, which offered $1 million to anyone who could figure out how to cheaply map the ocean floor) have tried for years to figure out how to efficiently extract minerals thousands of feet underwater, but the costs were too great and the rewards too low to justify investment. The global explosion of tech is shifting that calculus. It’s just a matter of time before the seabed, aka Earth’s final frontier, becomes a wasteland.
CargoMetrics, is designed to track the movement of bulk carriers around the world. Bulk carriers transport ore. His data may be more valuable than the cargo in those ship’s holds.
What oligarch wouldn’t want to know who’s shipping what ore where? Borgerson’s data could be used to corner markets, thwart competition, disrupt supply chains, and sell or buy from not-very-good-people for profit
The Chinese are already in the Arctic building roads and ports in exchange for money that Greenlanders hope to use to buy their independence from Denmark. Greenland is swapping its mineral rights for Chinese cash and prizes.
No wonder Trump wanted to buy Greenland!
Unlike the Antarctic Treaty, which came into force in 1961 and set aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve, banned territorial claims and prohibited military activities, ownership of the Arctic and ice caps remains contentious because it was never decided.
In 1925, based upon the Sector Principle, Canada became the first country to unilaterally extend its boundaries, 478 miles northward, to the North Pole. In 1926, Russia set out a similar claim as since has Norway and the US.
As a result of global warming and the retreat of the once impenetrable ice sheets, the Arctic is the subject of new political, legal, social and economic claims. Despite it being predominantly ice and water, the Arctic is nonetheless up for grabs. ‘The status of certain portions of the Arctic Sea region is in dispute for various reasons. One is that under international law no country currently owns the North Pole or the region of the ocean surrounding it” explains Peter Appel, partner with Copenhagen’s Gorrissen Federspiel and Chair of the IBA’s Maritime and Transport Law Committee.
Due to the fact no country currently owns the Arctic Region, and no treaty exists, this is another reason Trump would want to purchase Greenland and why the Oligarchs are so interested in thevregion
Another enormously influential individual with personal interests in the regulation of the high seas is Elaine Chao—the wife of Senator Mitch McConnell and was Trump’s Secretary of Transportation. Her family owns, and her sister runs, the Foremost Group, one of China’s foremost shipping companies. As Rachel Slade wrote for the Boston Globe:
The US Department of Transportation, over which Chao presided, oversees every aspect of anything in this country that rolls, flies, or sails, including the Federal Aviation Administration; the Federal Highway Administration; pipeline safety; and, most significantly, the Maritime Administration.
The media has dutifully repeated Chao’s assertion that her family's company, Foremost Group, is small and American. That’s intended to reassure us that Chao, as transportation secretary, is keenly attuned and sympathetic to the interests of American small businesses and the maritime industry. “My family are patriotic Americans who have led purpose-driven lives and contributed much to this country," Chao said in a response to the Times.
Given their mutual interests and their ties to the Trump Administration, Borgerson and Chao likely have some sort of relationship.
https://www.canucknews.ca/post/ghislaine-maxwell-s-secret-husband-scott-borgerson
Borgerson and the Globalist Oligarchs hate the Jones Act.
First some history
At the outbreak of World War I, the US was at the mercy of foreign shippers who doubled and tripled their fees during the war. At the war’s end, US mass unemployment, crushing racism and riots, oh and a pandemic, too, made 1919 look a lot like 2020.
Price-gouged to embarrassment, the US enacted the Jones Act in 1920 to rebuild its fleet and boost trade. The act reinforced America’s cabotage laws, adding a supercharged stimulus: a nationalized shipbuilding effort. Hard to believe now, but the US government once built and owned merchant ships that private companies could lease for cheap to reinvigorate international trade.
America’s merchant fleet expanded. Goods flowed from American factories out into the world, and taxation on exports became a major source of federal revenue. A couple of decades later, those same merchant ships were used to run supplies across the Atlantic and Pacific. The shipyards created via stimulus in the twenties began cranking out Liberty ships. In other words, thanks to the Jones Act, shipping infrastructure was already in place for the States muscle onto the world stage during World War II.
By the 1970s, nearly all the tax incentives designed to protect America’s maritime industry from foreign incursion had melted away. Without those tax incentives, American ship owners “fled the flag,” registering their vessels in other countries to evade US labor, taxes, and shipbuilding laws.
America’s entire cruise industry is now registered elsewhere. And US-registered ships make up just three percent of the global merchant fleet.
The decline of US shipping coincides with offshoring. We’ve been told cheap labor drove manufacturing abroad, but the role of shipping in that calculation can’t be overstated. America’s trade balance flipped around 1972. We’ve imported more than we export every year since.
Borgerson loathes the legislation, and he’d been informally advising the Trump administration about its repeal. Indeed, the Jones Act made a brief appearance in mainstream news when Trump temporarily rolled it back for 10 days after Hurricane Maria, under the guise of expediting goods to Puerto Rico.
China’s heavily subsides its logistics industry to keep its goods flowing into the world. You can bet that Trumps Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao knew how this works. Her family’s shipping company is a beneficiary of substantial Chinese government support.
Borgersons and Trump Administration’s push to abolish the Jones Act is a way to open American waters to dark money and foreign interests. Certainly repealing the Jones Act would please former Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, who refuses to extricate himself from Chinese and Russian shipping interests, as well as Chao and her husband Mitch McConnell
One more note about American security and the Jones Act: The law doesn’t just cover ships pulling into New York harbor and Long Beach in California. Bulk carriers, cargo ships, and oil and gas ships also travel on the Great Lakes and up and down the Mississippi.
Carlyle Group gets into shipping with China.
In 2011 Carlyle Group entered into joint venture of global shipping and finance experts that formed a company to acquire container, dry bulk, tanker vessels and other shipping assets to capitalize on increasing demand in the shipping sector.
The new company Greater China Intermodal Investments LLC (GCI)was formed by The Carlyle Group and Tiger Group Investments in partnership with Seaspan Corporation, the Washington Family, Gerry Wang and Graham Porter. The company focused on bringing together Chinese shipbuilders, lenders and state-owned companies to support China’s desire to increase the amount of cargo it controls
The company was led by Gerry Wang and Graham Porter, who together have more than 50 years experience in the shipping industry and finance, primarily in Asia.
Greg Ledford, Managing Director and head of Carlyle’s Industrial and Transportation team, said, “This is a creative solution that combines Carlyle’s extensive transportation experience and established Asia business with the shipping expertise and leadership of Gerry and Graham.”
In 2018 Containership owner and operator Seaspan Corporation announced it has acquired Greater China Intermodal Investments LLC (GCI) from affiliates of The Carlyle Group and other minority owners.
Seaspan said the implied enterprise value of GCI is approximately $1.6 billion, including assumed third party net debt of approximately $1 billion and $140 million of future vessel payments.
https://www.maritimeprofessional.com/news/seaspan-buys-from-carlyle-315068
Borgerson and Senator Murkowski
While working to solve the issue of climate change, Borgerson rubbed shoulders with Alaskan Senators Murkowski as well as former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, according to another document provided to National File.
https://nationalfile.com/revealed-epsteins-madame-holed-up-with-cfr-member-lisa-murkowski-associate/
At the 2012 Alaska Day at the Center for American Progress, Murkowski led a discussion on “Challenges & Opportunities for Renewable Energy in Alaska”, moderated by Podesta, while Borgerson led a panel.
Alice Rogoff, is perhaps Senator Murkowski’s biggest political supporter second only to VECO’s convicted felon, CEO Bill Allen,
VECO was at one point Lisa Murkowski’s biggest donor source.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, received $45,250 from VECO company employees, and her father, Frank, received at least $27,947 while he was in the U.S. Senate. Frank Murkowskiappointed his daughter to take his Senate seat in 2002 after he was elected governor.
Bill Allen was also allegedly involved in child sex trafficking in Alaska. (More on that below) Many suspect that federal-informant Allenwas using the underage girls to compromise Alaska legislators. Multiple state legislators, many colleagues and friends of Lisa Murkowski, were ultimately convicted of bribery connected with the Bill Allen corruption scandal.
At the time of her meeting with Borgerson, the reporter Rachel Slade had no clue about his relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell—and, through Maxwell, with Jeffrey Epstein. She also didn’t know that Phil Levine, the entrepreneur and politician who’d introduced her to Borgerson, was listed in Epstein’s notorious black book 13 times. Borgerson told her about his investors—admitting, matter-of-factly, that he courted “oligarchs.”
Following the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein on July 6, 2019, the TerraMar Project announced its closure six days later on July 12, 2019 via Twitter and a statement on the TerraMar Project's website.
In 2019 Lisa Murkowski gave a very interesting speech, at the same time Secretary of State Mark Pompeo as he gave remarks on the US-Arctic Policy in Finland, at an Arctic Council Ministerial meeting-in China.
Her she is speaking in China on the Arctic
Borgerson and Maxwells Property
Scott Borgerson (Ghislaine’s boygriend), Christine Maxwell (Ghislaine’s sister), and Jeffrey W. Roberts were the sole trustees of company named ‘Angara’ that owns a property located at 27 Chestnut Street, Unit 3A, Boston, Mass. As it turns out the condo is Scott’s “second home” to be close to his office in Boston.
It should be noted that Christine Maxwell is the co-founder (with her twin sister Isabel) of Chiliad. Chiliad is a software used by the FBI to store data. It’s also used for surveillance by the NSA via their Hewlett Packard servers post 9/11.
Whitney Webb has written extensively on the Maxwell Sisters-at Unlimited Hangout
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2020/07/investigative-series/the-maxwell-family-business-espionage/
As of August 2019, she served as the board director of Chiliad, Inc. Very useful when blackmail can be used on the FBI to ensure investigations into their alleged illegal activities could be snuffed.
On September 10, 2018 Christine Maxwell and Jeffrey Roberts delegated their powers to Borgerson (see image of deed below) – who became the sole owner.
Jeffrey W. Roberts is the also the attorney who manages Granite Reality LLC (the company used to purchase the ultra-secluded home, Tuckedaway, in New Hampshire where Ghislaine was hiding when she was arrested by the FBI).
The same Boston attorney, Jeffrey W. Robert, is also the registered agent of another company associated with Borgerson named ‘Hopely Yealton’.
Maxwell allegedly had been living with Borgerson at his $3m oceanfront mansion in Manchester-by-the-Sea” Manchester-by-the-Sea is in Massachusetts, north of Boston is less than two hours away from Tuckedaway, the New Hampshire redoubt where Maxwell was busted by the FBI.
In 2016, Maxwell sold her Upper East Side mansion for a little more than $15 million. That year, Tidewood LLC, a limited-liability corporation, bought a parcel of land in Manchester-by-the-Sea, a scenic town about 35 miles outside of Boston, for $2,450,000.
Minutes from a Manchester-by-the-Sea zoning-board meeting two years later would identify the homeowner behind Tidewood as Scott Borgerson.
Property records obtained by The Sun show that a company named Granite Reality LLC bought Maxwell’s 156-acre wooded hideaway in the small town of Bradford, New Hampshire on December 13, 2019 from a family trust.
According to official documents, the manager of Granite is Boston lawyer, Jeffrey W. Roberts, and the company was set up on November 18, 2019, just weeks before its purchase of Tuckedaway, Maxwell’s mountaintop home.
Who helped Ghislaine Maxwell purchase the property “Tucked Away?” where she eluded authorities for at least a year?
In the Suffolk County Registry of Deeds in Massachusetts regarding an LLC named "Angara, LCC."
Bill Allen and Fed protection
Pete Kotts lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the charges against the former GOP legislator, who was convicted in 2007of using his influence to benefit oil-services contractor Bill Allen, in exchange for money and other favors. The filing alleged, based on new documents that the government was recently ordered by a court to hand over, that federal prosecutors had previously withheld from the defense several pieces of information that undermined Allen’s credibility as the government’s key witness.
According to the motion, the government was aware of a probe by the Anchorage Police Department of credible allegations that Allen had sex with several underage girls. It also knew that an Anchorage police officer had testified in 2004 that he was told by a federal prosecutor to stop investigating the child-sex case because it might undermine a federal investigation which Allen was involved in. But, according to the motion, prosecutors never told the defense about the officer’s testimony. Indeed, the Feds had previously explicitly argued that the child-sex allegations against Allen were irrelevant to the case against Kott — an argument contradicted by the police officer’s testimony about what he was told.
The defense argues that knowing the full extent of Allen’s legal exposure undermines his credibility as a witness, because it may have made him more willing to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for going easy on him. And, the motion argues, that would have been especially true because had Allen been charged with child-sex crimes, “a physical characteristic of Bill Allen that would be considered extremely embarrassing, and that most men would seek to shield from public knowledge,” might have been made public by one of his alleged victims.
Allen was also the key witness in the government’s case against the late Senator Ted Stevens (killed in a plane crash in 2010) , which was dismissedafter similar examples came to light of prosecutors withholding evidencefrom the defense.
Allen was sentenced to three year in prison in 2016 for his central role in the corruption scheme.
Kott’s key witness was a woman named Lisa Moore, who stated she and Allen had an affair when Moore was 19 in exchange for money, jewelry and an apartment. While above the age of consent herself, Moore maintained she introduced Allen to a 15-year-old girl named Bambi Tyree, and that Allen and Tyree had sex as well.
Despite making quite a splash in the press, no charges stemming from these allegations would ever be filed against Bill Allen–and indeed, local law enforcement were told to stop pursuing the investigation by federal officers.
In 2008, a new–yet eerily similar–set of allegations against Bill Allen were raised by Paula Roberds who claimed Allen picked her up when she was a 15-year-old prostituted child in the Spenard area. The pattern of money and gifts allegedly continued with Roberds, and when she was 16, she claims Allen flew her to Seattle several times for sex, which if true, would be a violation of the Mann Act of 1910. Allen admits having sex with Roberds, but claims she told him she was 19.
In the case of Paula Roberds, Alaska law enforcement felt they had a strong case against Allen, with lead investigator Kevin Vandegriff calling the evidence “very solid.” Paula’s bravery here cannot be overstated: She was a young woman who subjected herself to fierce scrutiny with her accusations against one of the most powerful men in the state.
Such courage is to be commended, making what happened next all the worse: Federal prosecutors declined to bring the case before a federal grand jury.
Allen was, at the time, a key witness in several bribery trials, including Senator Ted Stevens, and speculation persists to the present day that the oil man was given immunity from prosecution due to his involvement with the Stevens case.
The twisted web of sex, bribery and corruption surrounding Bill Allen is not one that can be unraveled easily. Many of Alaska’s most powerful people are involved, and allegations of cover-ups, dereliction of duty and shady deals run rampant all through the story. At the core of things, though, is a group of young teens, many of whom were enticed and coerced into lives of prostitution and addiction by brutal pimps looking to sate the depraved hunger of powerful businessmen.
We must not let the smoke and mirrors of rich and influential men behaving badly distract us from the true issue: the dehumanization of girls in Alaska, too many of whom have lost their lives, vanished from their families or been left with damage and trauma that may never heal.
One such man was, like Bill Allen, a prominent member of the Alaska business community named Josef Boehm. While Allen and Boehm weren’t exactly friends, they did allegedly share a common interest in the exploitation of young teens–including Bambi Tyree. To understand this sordid world of pimps, drugs and exploited underage girls, it’s necessary to look at Boehm
In 2004, Bambi Tyree, then 23 and a suspect in one of the most notorious sex and drug rings in recent Anchorage history, had been on the run from police for weeks. She came to Allen looking for help.
At the time, Allen was head of VECO Corp., the largest oilfield services contractor in Alaska, and a major Republican campaign contributor. Allen would later plead guilty to federal bribery and conspiracy charges in a corruption probe into his dealings with former state lawmakers and two of Alaska's three congressional delegates, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and U.S. Rep. Don Young.
Allen emerged as a key government witness in the feds' sweeping investigation, one that stretches from Juneau to Washington, D.C., Seattle to Anchorage.
When Tyree showed up on Allen's doorstep, she was fleeing an underworld of crack addiction and sexual abuse. Allen was friends with Tyree and knew her father, said Bob Bundy, Allen's lawyer.
In December 2003, Anchorage police raided Josef Boehm's Oceanview Drive home, discovering a world of sex, drugs and underage girls. Tyree, who dated Boehm off and on for years, was deeply involved in the ring
Bundy confirmed that Tyree came to Allen looking for help when she was on the run from police in early 2004. It was a difficult time for the young woman. Most of her short life had been marred by drugs and sexual abuse, according to court filings.
After Boehm was busted, the case drew statewide media attention because of his reputation and the lurid testimony of his victims.
Tyree, prominent businessman Josef Boehm, and two other men were federally charged, and ultimately pleaded guilty, for their roles in a conspiracy to provide crack cocaine to girls as young as 13 in return for sex.
Boehm was a well-known businessman and president of Alaska Industrial Hardware. Among AIH's customers were oil industry contractors, including VECO. He pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to give crack cocaine to underage teenagers in return for sex.
During his 2005 sentencing hearing, female victims described his former house as a sex and drug den where troubled teenagers converged to smoke crack and have sex, sometimes with adults.
Tyree told federal investigators she brought runaway girls to his house and gave them crack.
Tyree cooperated with prosecutors and, for testifying against Boehm at his sentencing hearing, was given a lighter sentence of three years, down from the 10 years or more she was facing. Tyree was released from prison in mid-2006. Boehm is serving an 11-year sentence--the maximum--in a Texas federal prison.
The government has not disclosed the roots of its investigation and it is unclear if Allen was an FBI target in early 2004. But by fall 2005, the FBI was secretly listening to his phone calls
Anchorage police say Allen's name came up in a separate sex-crime investigation in 2004. That probe was spawned by a tip authorities received as they were still building their case against Tyree and others.
Little is known about this other investigation--including how Allen was involved. Anchorage detectives claim they suspended the case shortly after launching it. The federal government told detectives that it could have interfered with a case it was working, according to an Anchorage police spokesman.
2016: Sources at the U.S. Attorney's office in Anchorage confirmed that federal prosecutors had asked police in 2004 to suspend the case because 1) they wanted to focus on the larger sex-ring investigation and 2) that the allegations against Allen were difficult to prove.
The substance of that investigation is raising questions about Allen's cooperation with the feds' ongoing corruption probe. Last fall, Allen's testimony on behalf of the government helped win convictions against former Alaska Reps. Vic Kohring and Pete Kott for accepting his bribes.
Kott and Kohring's lawyers said they are unaware of the police investigation. Had they known the case existed and might have been suspended at the request of the federal government, the lawyers said they would have pressed prosecutors to disclose details to see if it played a role in Allen's plea agreement.
"If the government has done things for Bill Allen in the past, I have the right to know about that," said lawyer John Henry Browne, who represents Kohring.
The investigation in which Allen's name surfaced in 2004 came in the wake of a sensational bust in a South Anchorage neighborhood. s.
2016-, Allen pleaded guilty to bribery, conspiracy and other charges. Allen is cooperating with the feds, in part, for a possibly reduced prison sentence, according to his plea agreement filed in federal court. The government also allowed him to complete the $365 million sale of VECO to Denver-based CH2M Hill after he was indicted.
Allen told jurors that he bribed the then-lawmakers in 2006 for their influence during a controversial vote before the Legislature to raise taxes on oil producers such as ExxonMobil, BP and ConocoPhillips, which contracted with VECO.
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/article/full-disclosure/2008/01/31/