Malaysia's Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and Cabinet feign ignorance of US Treasury meetings, Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil says Prime Minister and Cabinet only aware of press reports about the meetings, despite US Treasury publicly announcing the meetings

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

As reported by the government controlled NST: 

The government is prepared to meet the United States counterpart on concerns that it raised in the recent news reports on possible sanctions.

Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil said the matter was discussed briefly in the cabinet meeting earlier.

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Fahmi, who is the unity government spokesman, said the report had attracted the attention of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and cabinet members.

Meanwhile, the US Treasury Department has made it known since 3 May 2024 that its officials will be in Malaysia sometime between May 6-9 2024 to discuss sanctions realted matters. The information was posted on its website on 3 May 2024.

PRESS RELEASES

MEDIA ADVISORY: Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson to Travel to Singapore and Malaysia

May 3, 2024

WASHINGTON – From May 6th to May 9th, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson and Treasury General Counsel Neil MacBride will travel to Singapore and Malaysia to advance Treasury’s work countering terrorist financing and revenue generation by Iran and its proxies as well as to discuss the implementation of sanctions and export controls against Russia. Treasury has imposed significant sanctions on Iran and its terrorist proxies, such as Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis, to sever the financial flows that fuel instability in the Middle East. Since the beginning of this year, Treasury has taken several significant actions to combat and disrupt the illicit shipment of Iranian oil to buyers in East Asia, including shipments via ship-to-ship transfers in international waters near Singapore and Malaysia.  Treasury has continued working with the U.S. private sector to prevent diversion of dual-use goods to Russia. 

In Malaysia, Under Secretary Nelson and General Counsel MacBride will discuss the United States’ efforts to disrupt terrorist financing, including through fundraising for fraudulent charities and illicit oil sales, while ensuring that U.S. sanctions and other financial measures do not impede the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza.  They will also meet with the financial sector to discuss compliance and enforcement efforts. 

In Singapore, the Treasury officials will continue coordination with this close U.S. partner on sanctions and export controls against Russia for its brutal war of aggression in Ukraine, including through enforcement of the price cap on Russian oil and cutting off Russian transshipment of critical dual use goods. They will also meet with business representatives from both the financial and maritime sectors to discuss compliance and enforcement efforts to reduce Russian revenue earned from oil sales and to protect industry from the risks of Russian and Russia-linked providers who have sacrificed quality and safety in their services.

Finally, Under Secretary Nelson and General Counsel MacBride will continue coordination on efforts to disrupt revenue generation by the DPRK, particularly revenue generated through cybercrime and the use of virtual assets.  They will also discuss ways to improve global implementation of the Financial Action Task Force standards related to virtual asset service providers to prevent illicit actors from abusing the international financial system.

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Australian universities Gaza encampments have emerged out of more than two decades of anti-Western, anti-democracy teachings, which anticipate Western democracies collapsing very soon

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

Australian universities Gaza encampments have not emerged out of nothing.As the very recent case of Zulfikar Shariff, who was permitted to remain in Australia in 2001 despite his support for Osama Bin Laden, and later provided a PhD position at La Trobe University in Melbourne illustrates, Australian universities seem intent on promoting the jiahdi cause. Zulfikar did not even possess a bachelors degree when La Trobe hired him,and provided him a PhD position, and academic position.He did however have public standing as a jihadi, and was detained in Singapore in 2016 for supporting ISIS.

The problem of jihadis at Australian universities goes further in history.  The Courier Mail reported as far back as 2014, under the headline  Fears Australian universities are terrorism recruitment hotspots after Queensland student radicalised to support Jihad: 

Counter  terrorism agencies fear Australia universities could be a breeding ground for radicalising overseas students with claims that an Indian student was recruited to Jihad while studying in Queensland.

Indian security agencies believe Adil Fayaz, 26, joined the civil war in Syria last year after becoming radicalised by Islamic fundamentalists while studying an MBA at a Queensland university in 2012.

Senior intelligence officials in Australia claimed they were concerned about the possibility that foreign students could be drawn into radicalised cells in Australia.

Mr Fayaz, originally from Kashmir, came to Australia in 2009 and studied for three years.

After leaving Queensland, it is believed he joined an Australian NGO in Malaysia before travelling to Turkey and finally arriving in Syria last year.

“Senior home ministry officials say Adil was radicalised by Islamic fundamentalists in Australia,” an Indian media report said.

In NSW the UNSW Islamic Society was another source of concern. As this writer revealed more than a decade ago, UNSW post graduate student Walleed Kadous another active Islamist predicted sometime in 2000 the end of Western democracies. Titled  "Developing A Muslim Mindset" , the khutbah (Friday sermon) once available on the UNSW Islamic Society  website but since removed, counsels, in part:

Now, as far as I can see, these are three of the pillars of Western Society. The problem is that these three are Great Lies. 
The First Great Lie is that if a majority of people say something is right, then it is right...This Lie is called democracy.....
 
So what we have is a society that stuffs the Muslim around in two ways. First it makes him ashamed to be Muslim. Then it takes his Islamic mindset away and replaces it not with nothing (which is what the people in the West claim it to be), but with something that is the complete opposite of Islam in many, many ways. ....... 
 
You see, anyone who looks, who reads, who pays attention and applies the Islamic filter - those ``green-coloured glasses'' can see that Western Society is falling to pieces..... So we've got to be here to offer them the right alternative, that is Islam. How many more years do you think Western Society will survive before collapsing? 30 years? 40 years? If it's lucky. I'm telling you now, that there is very little doubt in my mind that within our lifetimes, something is going to happen. And we have to be ready to fulfill our Islamic responsibilities when that happens. 

Kadous subsequently left for the United States where he went to work for Google,and his wife Agnes Chong for the pro-Palestine Council For American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

END 

Reference -The Kutbah

Developing an Islamic Mindset

Written by M. Waleed Kadous

First Khutbah In the name of Allah, and praises and peace be upon the Prophet of Allah. I advise us all to fear Allah, and to be conscious of his omniscience, for whoever does so, Allah will provide for him a way out of trouble. There is no God but Allah the Kind and Merciful, and thanks be to Allah, the lord of the Great Throne. We ask that you bring upon us your mercy and the doors of your forgiveness, and protection from our own sins, and forgiveness of our minor transgressions. Assalamu Alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. May the peace, blessings and mercy of Allah be upon you all. Introduction As Soadad explained, Islam is something that is visionary; something that has and we are promised by Allah, will, make the world the best possible place it can be for all of humanity. As the Qur'an says: You are indeed the best from among the peoples, ordering what is right and forbidding what is evil. Surah 3 Verse 110But the first step in reestablishing Islam is that you have to want Islam to be in this position and you have to do your part to bring it around. As the verse says, Allah will not change a situation until the people change themselves. Surah 13 Verse 11 So, Soadad has made you see why changing yourself is so important. Now we come to the crux of the question. We now know whatyou want to change - we want to be better Muslims; we want to be part of that solution of the world's problems. So now we ask the question ... how? Now there's a lot of things that have to happen before we can establish the Muslims ummah. But if we look at the history of the Prophet (SAWS), what do we find? We find that he spent 13 years in Makkah, developing people's Iman, people's belief, with not many rules - most of the Islamic Law comes from the Madinan period; the last ten years of the Prophet's life. So why'd he spend so much time on establishing faith? I mean as far as many people, what's so tricky about Iman. We all know the Shahadah, but do we understand its ramifications? I really don't think so. We don't understand that the Shahadah has very serious implications for our life. Now I could give a whole seminar about the implications of the Shahadah, but I'll leave that for another time. I just want to talk about one aspect of Iman, and that is the idea of an Islamic mindset. It is this that I think the Prophet (SAWS) was trying to establish. A mindset is about the way you see the world, and what you see your role in the world as being. It's a modern word, but it's a very old concept. One hadith Qudsi (a hadith in which Allah speaks to the Prophet [saws]) says in part of it: When I love [my servant] I am his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes and his foot with which he walks. That's what we want Islam to be for us. We want it to be the way we see the world. You know how we describe someone who has a naive view of the world as wearing ``rose-coloured glasses''. Well, what I want us all to have is ``green-coloured glasses'' - we always want to see the world through Islamic eyes. But I can't do this for you. You've got to do this for yourself. But as another hadith says, if you walk towards Allah, he comes running towards you. The basis of the Islamic mindset is, of course, the Shahadah. But part of the shahadah is believing in Allah and his Messenger, and of course, the Qur'an. It also means that you believe the Qur'an is the ultimate guide to living on this planet. And this means that the belief has effects, it must be reflected through obedience. This shouldn't be too hard, should it? I mean we know that Islam is part of the fitra, our nature as human beings. Yet most of us don't have and Islamic mindset. Why is that? The answer is that you can still change someone's mindset, especially if you control them when they are young. And if you live in a Western country, like Australia, then their system will not be designed to give you an Islamic mindset; it will be designed to give you a Western mindset; to appreciate their system. I mean it's not surprising, is it? So how do they modify our Islamic mindset? The main ways are through the education system, through the media, especially television. And they do it in two main ways: One is through putting down Islam, which makes Muslims not proud to be Muslim. In fact it makes them ashamed to be Muslims, and they're always on the back foot, defending themselves. The other is by introducing their own mindset that is the opposite of that which Islam teaches. What's more they do it in a very subtle and tricky way. So let's look at the first way they stuff you around and twist your mind. They make you feel inferior by being Muslim. They don't want you to acknowledge Islam's beauty and history. I'll give you some examples: When I was in high school, which believe it or not, was only 10 years ago, we did ancient history (6000BC to about 100CE) and then we did modern history (1500CE to the current time). Who can see the problem here? Where'd they hide 1400 years? I spent 4 years studying history at school. How much time did we spend on those 1400 years that represent about one fifth of humanity's recorded history? Two lessons. And you know what those lessons were? My teacher actually said ``Well, the reason the Muslims ruled the world at that time was that everybody else was weak''. And then what do they do? They start the history of the modern world talking about the renaissance and give you some fiction about the renaissance being based on the Medici family sponsoring art; when the truth is that any historian will tell you that the European renaissance was largely a result of the Islamic writing and Muslims preserving European books which they themselves had destroyed. They don't teach you how brutal Europe was. They don't teach you about the Spanish Inquisition. They don't tell you about how nasty the crusades were and how the so-called ``civilised world'' used to act. They don't teach you that much of the mathematics we need today to design computers and build cars and even our number system, came from the Muslims. They don't teach you that the Muslims had a glorious history, when the world was at peace for centuries - a period of justice, even for non-Muslims; when some Christians preferred to be under the control of Muslims than to be at the mercy of other Christians. They don't teach you that we advanced knowledge in every field of knowledge of the time, from philosophy to astronomy to architecture and everything in between. They don't teach you that YOU as a Muslim are the heir to this wonderful civilisation. They don't teach you about the brutality of colonialism and the incredibly barbarous things the Europeans did to our home countries, to the Muslim world, using their old favourite: divide and conquer; and that the current decrepitude and poverty in our home countries is the result of them raping our countries for all the resources they could possibly extract. They teach you evolution as if it's some kind of law; not acknowledging that evolution has serious flaws and isn't even a well-formed scientific theory. They don't teach you what every scientist knows: that science is just a set of ``working hypotheses'', that there's no such thing as Newton's Laws. They don't teach you that Islam provided a stable economic system without having to use interest; and that in fact, the market instabilities we see around us today are caused mostly by interest and interest-related phenomena. But the information is all there. Even their historians know this. You read their histories and it's there. They just don't teach it to you. So what? The result is that you feel as if being Muslim is something to be ashamed of, instead of something to be proud of. You're too busy overcoming your sense of shame and explaining how Islam isn't what they say it is to see that Islam is better than what they have. And the media is no different. They just create these images of Islam as some sort of evil. Three years ago, I did a survey about the press media and Islam. And it was disgusting. 30 articles. 26 were about war. And the things they said about people associated with Islam; it was just incredible. There is far more to the Muslim world than this. And if you watch television, they play similar tricks. But they do it dirty; they do it by association. For example, they'll discuss daughters who get bashed by their fathers because they didn't accept an arranged marriage (something which in Islam we know is completely unacceptable). And they won't say anything explicitly about Islam - they won't mention it. What they do is they'll put someone making Athan in the background, put up some pictures of women wearing the veil, put a picture of a mosque. They don't actually tell you that it's got nothing to do with Islam; but they're intent on associating it with Islam anyway. As they say ``Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.'' See, the problem is that we don't understand what effect television has on us. Psychologists who have done research in this area will tell you that even though we all know consciously that television is just this electronic gizmo, but that at a deeper level, television is real to us. I mean have you ever sat back and though about how stupid it is that after seeing a scary movie you tell yourself ``It's only a movie''. I mean, well, duh, you obviously know it's only a movie! So why are you saying that? Do you understand now why some scholars are so adamant about TV? That they tell you to switch off the television? I mean you should at least be a little selective. Again, in addition to what they do tell you, there's a lot they don't tell you, too. Remember the furore over Pakistan having nuclear weapons? Well, do you know that there was a meeting a few weeks before, where India and Pakistan were both saying to the US and other countries that already have nuclear weapons that they were ready to cut a deal on nuclear weapons if the US would cut its own stock? And the US just vetoed it. As one commentator said, what the US is actually saying is: Nuclear weapons in our hands contributes to global security, nuclear weapons in your brown Indian hands, or Pakistani hands contributes to global insecurity. This is hypocritical at best, racist at worst. Let me emphasise I am not making a statement about whether what Pakistan is doing is wrong or right; I am just saying that look at how we only get the information they want us to have. And you know what? A few weeks ago the US Dept of Energy commissioned the world's largest supercomputer. You know what they're going to use it for, right? They're going to use it for nuclear simulations! The thing is the US has enough data from real tests to make good simulations while other countries can't. Same thing with Iraq. They don't tell you that over 600,000 children have died as a result of UN-imposed sanctions. Again, all the information is there, and if you look for it, you can find it. But it's not publicised. Nobody tells you about it. Instead, what do they teach you? Well, they do teach you a lot of useful stuff, no doubt about it. But they also teach you some things which are essentially against Islamic teaching. I will highlight three of these. Now, as far as I can see, these are three of the pillars of Western Society. The problem is that these three are Great Lies. The First Great Lie is that if a majority of people say something is right, then it is right. This Lie is called democracy. And we know that this isn't the case. But they don't really emphasise the effects. They don't tell you that the Nazi Party was the most popular party in the 1933 elections in Germany. They don't tell you that this means something that used to be wrong can become right. Now, in Islam, we know that people can be misled, and that truth is independant of numbers. Truth comes from Allah. One of his names is Truth. So when we build an Islamic state, the starting point is not something invented by man, be it capitalism, communism or whatever, but something from God. Instead, they promote this idea that democracy is the ultimate way to lead and anything that isn't democracy is just plain wrong. There, I said it. Some of you in the audience are going no! but Islam is democratic! You see? You already see democracy as the ultimate form of leadership. You can see it's worked on you! The other thing they don't tell you is that because it's a few rich people who own the media, and control the agenda, that democracy very soon becomes the rich ruling the poor. And they also teach you that religion should have no role in government, when Islam says the complete opposite! As if believing in God doesn't affect how you think a country should be run. In an Islamic state, people have input in the decision-making process, but they can't change the laws. The Second Great Lie is that satisfaction is only to be had by having material things. This Lie is called materialism. And this one is also a whopper. They don't tell you that scientific research of 30,000 people shows that material wealth is a very, very poor predictor of happiness. They don't tell you that the richest people frequently have the most serious psychological problems and end up dead by suicide, or overdosed on drugs that they took to forget how bad their life was. Instead, you watch the daytime TV shows and what do people on those TV shows do when they're depressed? They go shopping. As if shopping is the ultimate solution to depression! And they do it to kids too. Every cartoon now comes out with a set of merchandise. It's not the Saturday Morning Cartoons any more, it's the Saturday Morning Ads. It's ads within ads. Man, have you seen some of them? Like the new one for shampoo: they say, it's not a shampoo, it's a lifestyle or something like that. Yeah right! Like a shampoo's going to change your life! Or the ads for the new Jeep Cherokee, you seen them? Where the woman gets out of the car and shuts the other woman's mouth? What are they saying? They're saying ``if you own a Jeep, you can impress other women''. Or the TV shows: Better Homes and Gardens, you too can have houses like the rich and famous. We watch TV without thinking what are they really telling us? What does Islam tell us? Islam tells us that, sure, you need some basic material things to survive. But people will never be satisfied with material things, you always want more. And true satisfaction, true peace, true Islam, can only be obtained by making ourselves subservient to the will of Allah. One thing I haven't figured out yet is why you guys are wearing your fila and your adidas and your nike t-shirts. Why do you buy them? Do you really think Nike shirts are better quality? They're made in Indonesia, just like the rest of them. Yet you pay what, three times as much? For what? You're buying their advertising not the t-shirt! Why? I asked one of my friends who used to wear shirts like that and he had the honesty to tell me it's for showing off, so you can be accepted by your peers. Fine! Then explain this to me. You're showing off your clothes, but you don't want to show off Islam, when Islam is from Allah, someone who loves you and cares for you; and your T-shirt is from nike, a company who want nothing more than your money? I would really appreciate it if someone, during question time, could explain to me, give me a good reason, why they are wearing a nike t-shirt. I won't rip into you, I promise. I just want to understand why! The Third Great Lie, and the one that seems to be becoming very strong right now, is that if everybody acts as greedily as they possibly can, then this thing called the market makes sure that everyone gets the best deal possible. This is called Capitalism, or increasingly, Economic Rationalism. It's like the first thing they teach you in economics, about Adam Smith and the ``invisible hand''. What a complete load of nonsense. It's been proven wrong time and time again. They don't tell you about how because of the overemphasis on the market, the difference between the poor and the rich is becoming bigger and bigger. They don't tell you that big international banks tried to wipe out the Australian economy a few weeks ago with a multi-billion dollar attempt to deflate our currency so that they could make a quick buck. They don't tell you that interest is the mechanism used by the first world to keep the third world in debt and that Pakistan pays US$500 million a month in interest alone on its debts. That the IMF won't dismiss the debts of Honduras and Nicaragua, despite Hurricane Mitch; and this means they will be in a debt hole forever, they won't ever be able to get out of. They don't tell you that because rich companies donate to political parties, the environment will be stuffed for the foreseeable future. And what does Islam tell us? It tells us that unconstrained greed leads to destruction of the world. That interest is bad. That hoarding to create a monopoly is not permitted. That deception is not permitted. That we have a responsibility to this planet; that we are its caretakers. So what we have is a society that stuffs the Muslim around in two ways. First it makes him ashamed to be Muslim. Then it takes his Islamic mindset away and replaces it not with nothing (which is what the people in the West claim it to be), but with something that is the complete opposite of Islam in many, many ways. How on earth do we fix this problem? I mean we've all been affected by it. Well, the first thing is that you have to learn about the Islamic mindset. And there are lots of ways you can do this. There are now at leat three lessons in English that occur regularly around the place for men and women, young and old. If you don't like going to lessons, fine, there are books. There's also a lot of stuff on the Web. There's too much stuff on the Web. The question isn't where, but which? Then once you know about Islam, you have to re-evaluate everything you already know. You have to always be thinking: what does Islam say about this? Even when you're at school, or uni, or work and especially when you are watching television, you should always have this Islamic filter in place and be thinking: is this idea in line with Islam or not? We should never just accept some fact about society or truth because the course or the degree or the television says so. We should always be questioning; never accepting things blindly. Second thing is to spread this around - to both non-Muslims and Muslims. Make them see that things are not always what they seem and that you have to realise that Western Society today is a network of vested interests. You have governments local and international, media, education, the military and industry. When it serves their interests, they won't tell you the the truth. Finally, I think that we, as second generation Australians, have a special role to play. Now, I'm going to say something that may offend some older members of the audience, but that is not my intention, and I welcome discussion during Q & A. Most of our parents did not go through high school in Australia, right? So they don't understand the process about how we got indoctrinated. They don't understand how we get twisted and what the average Australian goes through. That means that we have a better understanding of what it means to have been brought up Australian than our parents do. So they didn't understand what they had to provide for us to stop us being indoctrinated and affected. But what about you? What about when you have kids? What about your smaller brothers and sisters? Are you going to let the same thing that happened to you happen to them? You have a responsibility to ensure that your kids don't end up like you did. If you want to improve the Muslim Ummah, then one place to start is with you, your friends, your brothers and sisters, and when you get to it, your children. You know what the Prophet said when he was ordered to make the revelation public? He gathered the people and asked them: If I was to warn you that over that very hill comes an army that's going to try to take over Makkah, would you believe me? And they said yes! And the prophet said in the same way: I warn you of Allah and the last day. And it should be the same for us. The same way if your friend or your brother if a car was coming towards him, you'd warn him, that's the way it should be with your Islam and your mindset. If you really care about him or her; you'll try to save them. That's the correct view of it. If you don't do it, then you're not being a true friend or brother or son to them. But it also means that we have another responsibility. You see, anyone who looks, who reads, who pays attention and applies the Islamic filter - those ``green-coloured glasses'' can see that Western Society is falling to pieces. The idea that I said earlier about the three great lies: I'm not the first person to see these problems - Western intellectuals have been discussing the problems for a long time. All three issues are being discussed right now, but it looks like all three are on a downhill slide, and the West doesn't seem to have anything to slow down these society-breaking developments. So we've got to be here to offer them the right alternative, that is Islam. How many more years do you think Western Society will survive before collapsing? 30 years? 40 years? If it's lucky. I'm telling you now, that there is very little doubt in my mind that within our lifetimes, something is going to happen. And we have to be ready to fulfill our Islamic responsibilities when that happens. So, in conclusion, the take-home message - the thing I want you to remember from this talk. What we have to do to ourselves is very difficult. We have to undo all the damage that was done to us as children. The damage is done through two main agencies: education and media. These two agencies affect us by firstly destroying our pride in Islam and secondly by replacing the Islamic mindset with the Western mindset, which is built on three lies: Democracy & Secularism, Materialism and Capitalism. And the only way to fix this is through firstly educating ourselves and secondly always analysing what we see. In addition, for the future, we have to make sure our children, friends and brothers and sisters don't fall in the same trap. And we should always be ready to be called upon by Islam; and I suspect that in the newar future we will be called upon to make a major sacrifice for the sake of Allah. Thank you, and if you have any questions, I'd appreciate hearing them from you. I also don't mind discussing this sort of stuff with any of you in private after the conference if you have any comments; if you feel I offended you, tell me so I don't do it again. Wassalamu Alaikum.

EZRA Holdings revisited: Do bondholders have a case against DBS and HSBC for selling them negligently if not carelessly over-hyped Ezra debt securities?

by Ganesh Sahathevan  

The following is an extract from Mak Yuen Teen's Corporate Governance Case Studies (Volume Nine) from the chapter on the collapse of Ezra Holdings Limited in 2015,ostensibly due to crash in crude oil prices. At page 90:

It seems that Ezra’s cash flow problems had started way before the crunch in the oil market. KGI Securities Singapore analyst Joel Ng noted that Ezra had been reporting negative free cash flows for 10 years, even when oil prices were above US$100 a barrel. This was said to be due to it taking up too many loans during the years when the oil industry boomed. Such problems only surfaced when the oil price fell. Persistent weak free cash flows within the Group led to a “highly unsustainable” balance sheet. Ezra could have been able to manage with the market conditions if it had a healthy balance sheet.

That is however not how DBS Bank Ltd. and The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited described  the company, Ezra Holdings Limited, when they promoted its debt securities: Joel Ng relied on figures from Ezra's published financial statements,and hence DBS and HSBC would have known or ought to have known that Ezra had been reporting " negative free cash flows for 10 years, even when oil prices were above US$100 a barrel."

In the words of DBS and HSBC, in 2012: 

Ezra Holdings Limited (Ezra, the Group or), a leading global offshore contractor and provider of integrated offshore solutions to the oil and gas (O&G) industry, has announced that it has launched and priced its first Singapore dollar denominated Subordinated Perpetual Securities (the "Securities") to raise S$150 million. This issuance is the second offering under Ezra's US$500 million Multicurrency Debt Issuance Programme ("Debt Issuance Programme") established on 28 August 2012.

DBS Bank Ltd. and The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited are the appointed dealers for the Securities. The issuance of the Securities was well received and the order book was multiple times oversubscribed with participation from more than 50 investors. In terms of geographical distribution, the allocation was primarily to Singapore based investors. In terms of investor classes, a substantial portion of the issue was allocated to private banks, with sizable interest from institutional investors and asset managers.

The Group's recent benchmark S$200 million, 5% 3-year fixed rate notes issued on 7 September 2012 also received strong interest from investors. The net proceeds of both issues will be used to refinance the Group's existing borrowings, as well as for general working capital and general corporate purposes.

Ezra's Managing Director, Mr Lionel Lee, said: "The strong appetite for our notes and securities in support of our efforts to strengthen our balance sheet reflects investor confidence in Ezra and our future.

"By diversifying our sources of funding and extending our debt maturity profile, it positions the Group well ahead of any global uncertainties and allows Ezra to take advantage of the many opportunities we see in subsea construction and offshore support services."

Mr Clifford Lee, Head of Fixed Income at DBS, said: "This is indeed an important milestone for Ezra's continuous efforts in setting its credit benchmark in the debt capital markets following its recent 3-year SGD note issue. The issuance of both the notes and perpetual securities has allowed Ezra to create a transparent SGD credit yield curve which will be useful for its future debt raising exercises. DBS is extremely proud to be part of this ground breaking transaction."

Mr Jason Khoo, Head of Debt Capital Markets, South East Asia at HSBC, said: "The strong investor response to Ezra's perpetual securities issuance represents a clear endorsement of investor appetite for Ezra's credit, and represents a strong testament to Ezra's credit standing, following their successful SGD senior bond issue. The perpetual securities issuance enhances the company's capital structure and is instrumental in providing the issuer with greater financial flexibility going forward.

(Source: Ezra Raises S$150 Million from Issuance of Perpe tual Securities
Distributed by Contify.com 18 September 2012 Singapore Government News)

Ezra's bondholders have been left with nothing, but do they have a cause of action against DBS and HSBC for pushing debt securities that were clearly not as secure as they held them out to be? 

END 

Palestinian Islamic Jihad financier Sami Al-Arian praises wife Nahla 's "solidarity with the brave and very determined Columbia University students", Al Arian was supported by Anwar Ibrahim's IIIT ,and is now based in Turkey under the patronage of Anwar friend Erdogan - Muslim Brotherhood links to US GAZA campus protests likely

 by Ganesh Sahathevan 

Former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian who  pleaded guilty  in 2006 to a charge of conspiring to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has tweeted his admiration for his wife Nahla's  "solidarity with the brave and very determined Columbia University students".

He is currently director of the  Istanbul-based Center for Islam and Global Affairs.

In 2005 the Tampa Tribune reported: 

Two weeks after President Clinton designated the Palestinian Islamic Jihad an illegal terrorist organization, Sami Al-Arian called the action "propaganda," "stupid" and part of "a war staged by Zionists."

"They are controlling the White House and the State Department, they are in control in the era of the Democrats," Al-Arian said in a telephone call on Feb. 6, 1995, speaking to Lou'ay Safi.

"You will laugh, by God, if you read the executive order," Al- Arian told Safi. "You will completely laugh at the situation. How would a president of the most powerful country in the world sign such a stupid thing like this?"

Al-Arian is standing trial, along with Sameeh Hammoudeh, Hatim Naji Fariz and Ghassan Zayed Ballut, on charges they helped finance and organize the Islamic Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide bombings in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Until the executive order, which was signed Jan. 23, 1995, and became effective the next day, providing material support to the organization was not illegal in the United States.

Louay Safi was formerly  the Director of Research at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)..He served as the the Executive Director of the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Malaysia from 1995 to 1997, and was also an Associate Professor of Political Science (1994-99), the Dean of Research (1998-99), and a Senate Member (1995-99) at the International Islamic University, Malaysia.

In June 2008 prosecutors in Alexandria, Va., charged Sami Al-Arian with criminal contempt for refusing to provide testimony to grand juries that were investigating financial transfers involving a think tank called the International Institute Islamic Thought.

Anwar Ibrahim is, together with other well known members of the Muslim Brotherhood,  a founder of the IIIT,and has made no effort to hide his support for HAMAS.

Nahla and Sami's overt support for the"the brave and very determined Columbia University students" suggests that the Muslim Brotherhood links to the  US GAZA campus protests are. likely.

END 

Reference 

 

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MONDAY, APRIL 17, 2006
WWW.USDOJ.GOV

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Sami Al-Arian Pleads Guilty To Conspiracy To Provide
Services To Palestinian Islamic Jihad

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian has pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a specially designated terrorist organization, in violation of U.S. law, the Department of Justice announced today.

In a closed proceeding before a federal magistrate at U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Florida last week, Al-Arian pleaded guilty to Count Four of the indictment against him – a charge of conspiracy to make or receive contributions of funds, goods or services to or for the benefit of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The plea hearing was closed over the objections of the government and unsealed today. The guilty plea was accepted by U.S. District Court Judge James S. Moody, Jr. this afternoon. Sentencing was scheduled for May 1, 2006.

Al-Arian’s agreement with the government calls for a recommended prison sentence of 46 to 57 months in prison, based on a five-year maximum statutory sentence. Al-Arian, 48, who has been in custody since his arrest on Feb. 20, 2003, has agreed to stipulate to deportation to another country by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement once his prison sentence has ended. Al-Arian has lived in this country for approximately 30 years.

“We have a responsibility not to allow our Nation to be a safe haven for those who provide assistance to the activity of terrorists,” said Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. “Sami Al-Arian has already spent significant time behind bars and will now lose the right to live in the country he calls home as a result of his confessed criminal conduct on behalf of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is the same conduct he steadfastly denied in public statements over the last decade.”

“The United States stands committed to bringing terrorists and their supporters to justice,” said Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division. “Al-Arian has now admitted providing assistance to help the Palestinian Islamic Jihad—a specially designated terrorist organization with deadly goals—as the government has alleged from the start.”

“This conviction is the result of years of exhaustive investigative and prosecutorial work, during which the government utilized the many tools we have available to us in the ongoing war against terrorism,” said U.S. Attorney Paul I. Perez of the Middle District of Florida. “Because of the painstaking work of the prosecutors and agents who pursued this case, Al-Arian has now confessed to helping terrorists do their work from his base here in the United States – a base he is no longer able to maintain.”

In the plea agreement, Al-Arian admits that he was associated with several organizations, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in the late 1980s and early to mid-1990s. He also admits that co-defendants Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, Bashir Musa Mohammed Nafi and Mazen Al-Najjar were associated with PIJ. President Clinton issued an executive order in January 1995 which banned certain transactions with organizations and individuals who were “specially designated terrorists,” including PIJ, Sheik Abd Al Aziz Awda and Fathi Shiqaqi and later, Ramadan Shallah.

Al-Arian admits that he performed services for the PIJ in 1995 and thereafter, when he was a professor at the University of South Florida and after he knew that the PIJ had been designated by President Clinton as a terrorist organization. Al-Arian also acknowledges in the plea agreement that he knew the PIJ used acts of violence as a means to achieve its objectives. Nevertheless, Al-Arian continued to assist the terrorist organization, for instance, by filing official paperwork to obtain immigration benefits for PIJ associate Bashir Nafi, and concealing the terrorist associations of various individuals associated with the PIJ. He further admits to assisting PIJ associate Mazen al-Najjar in a federal court proceeding, a proceeding in which al-Najjar and Nafi both falsely claimed under oath that they were not associated with the PIJ. Moreover, Al-Arian acknowledges that in late 1995, when Ramadan Shallah, co-conspirator and former director of Al-Arian’s “think tank,” the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE) was named as the new Secretary General of the PIJ, Al-Arian falsely denied to the media that he knew of Shallah’s association with PIJ.

Al-Arian was arrested by the FBI on Feb. 20, 2003 following the return of an indictment by a federal grand jury in Tampa, charging him and several co-defendants. Al-Arian was acquitted of eight of the 18 counts against him following a six-month trial on Dec. 6, 2005, but the jury deadlocked on three of the four most serious conspiracy charges against him, including the charge of conspiracy to provide services to the PIJ.

This case was prosecuted by Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Zitek and Assistant U.S. Attorney Walter Furr of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Florida, and Trial Attorneys Cherie Krigsman and Alexis Collins of the Counterterrorism Section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. The investigation was conducted by a Task Force led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with assistance from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Internal Revenue Service and state and local law enforcement officials, among others.

###

Al-Arian saga ends with deportation

By JOSH GERSTEIN

02/06/2015 02:21 PM EST

Former Florida college professor Sami Al-Arian’s epic, nearly-20-year struggle with U.S. authorities came to a low-key end this week as he was deported to Turkey.

Al-Arian’s long battle over his ties to terrorism roiled two political contests: the 2004 race for U.S. Senate in Florida and the early stages of the 2010 Senate race in California.

Al-Arian’s fight also produced a notable and rare act of judicial defiance: U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema’s refusal to rule for more than five years on the former computer science professor's motion to dismiss criminal contempt charges brought against him for refusing to testify in front of a grand jury investigating possible links between Northern Virginia non-profit groups and terrorist organizations.

Brinkema signaled on some occasions that she had doubts about the merits of the case, which Al-Arian’s supporters insisted was retribution for his embarrassing the government at a Florida trial where he was accused of acting as the top American representative for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. That trial ended with the former professor acquitted on eight charges and a hung jury on nine other counts.

The Kuwaiti-born Al-Arian ultimately pled guilty to a single count of supporting a terrorist organization and agreed to be deported. However, before he was deported he was summoned to the Virginia grand jury—a move he decried as a “perjury trap.”

The Justice Department only meekly protested Brinkema’s slow-walking of the contempt case, reminding her on a few occasions that rulings were being awaited. But prosecutors never escalated the standoff by asking a federal appeals court to step in. During the the six years the contempt case was pending, Al-Arian was under home confinement outside Washington, but the restrictions were eased over time.

Last June, prosecutors moved to dismiss the contempt case six years after it was filed.

Al-Arian had originally been expected to be deported to Egypt, but a source familiar with the case said the government’s crackdown on Muslim activists there raised questions about whether he would be safe. Eventually, Turkey was selected as a country willing to receive the former professor. He also explored other countries in the Middle East and Latin America, he said Friday on the "Democracy Now" TV program.

Al-Arian, 57, was deported Wednesday night on a Turkish Airlines flight from Dulles Airport in Virginia to Istanbul, officials said.

In an interview from Turkey Friday, Al-Arian said he was escorted to the gate by a U.S. official because he has no identity documents with which to pass through security.

Al-Arian also blamed much of his ordeal on the Tampa Tribune, saying that the newspapers’ series of articles about him prejudiced jurors at his Florida trial. The former professor said the two jurors who refused to acquit him on all charges were both Tribune readers.

The newspaper played “a very destructive role,” Al-Arian told WMNF-FM in Tampa. “I’m not sure if the Tampa tribune was the main reason [I wasn’t fully acquitted], but I think it was.”

Asked to respond to those comments, former Tampa Tribune reporter Michael Fechter said Al-Arian was trying to whitewash the facts that emerged at his 2005 trial.

"This is par for the course. Rather than answer difficult questions about his documented leadership on the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s governing board, Al-Arian chooses to blame the messenger," Fechter told POLITICO via e-mail. "It’s worth noting that the presiding judge, who saw all the testimony and evidence, called him a 'master manipulator' and a liar during sentencing. 'You looked your neighbors in the eyes and said you had nothing to do with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad,' Judge Moody said. 'This trial exposed that as a lie.'"

Fechter also noted that Al-Arian's ultimate guilty plea included an admission of lying to the press.

"No one should believe a word he says," Fechter said.

Al-Arian had been on federal investigators’ radar since the 1990s but rose to national attention via a contentious, post-9/11 interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. That set in motion Al-Arian’s suspension from the University of South Florida.

Allegations that former USF president Betty Castor did too little about Al-Arian’s alleged ties to terrorism helped Republican candidate Mel Martinez defeat her in the 2004 Senate race.

Al-Arian said Friday that the prosecution was aimed at resolving the university’s predicament over what to do with him. “It was an attempt to bail out…USF because they put themselves in a very difficult situation trying to fire a tenured professor,” he told WMNF. “The USF put itself in a corner because of pressure applied to them—mostly from groups associated with Zionism, or others.”

Al-Arian’s case took a political turn again in 2010 when Carly Fiorina attacked former Rep. Tom Campbell (R-Calif.) over his ties to Al-Arian. Fiorina beat out Campbell for the GOP nomination but was handily defeated by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in the general election.

Aspects of the Al-Arian imbroglio even tangled up two White Houses. George W. Bush was photographed with Al-Arian and his family at Strawberry festival in Florida as part of outreach efforts to the Arab & Muslim community. And Bush aides apologized after the Secret Service kicked Al-Arian’s son Abdullah out of a White House meeting in 2001, prior to his father’s 2003 indictment.

In 2010, Obama White House lawyer and envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference Rashad Hussain initially said he had no recollection of statements attributed to him at a 2004 conference decrying Al-Arian’s prosecution as one of several “politically-motivated persecutions” by the Bush administration. However, after POLITICO obtained a recording of the event, Hussain acknowledged the remarks and said they “were ill-conceived or not well-formulated.”

UPDATE (Friday, 3:15 P.M.): This post has been updated with comment from Fechter.