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- 2026-09-23T1755 · [[_NOTES_W3a_ea_ai]]
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- 2026-09-23T1733 · [[Will Henshall]]
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- 2026-09-23T1733 · [[Center for AI Policy]]
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- 2026-09-23T1733 · [[Tarbell Center for AI Journalism]]
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- 2026-09-23T1733 · [[Center for AI Safety]]
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- 2026-09-23T1709 · [[Adam D'Angelo]]
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- 2026-09-23T1709 · [[ICONIQ Capital]]
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- 2026-09-23T1709 · [[Divesh Makan]]
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- 2026-09-23T1709 · [[Lippo Group]]
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- 2026-09-23T1708 · [[United Arab Emirates]]
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- 2026-09-23T1708 · [[Bahrain]]
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- 2026-09-23T1708 · [[Dubai]]
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- 2026-09-23T1708 · [[Frankfurt]]
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- 2026-09-23T1708 · [[Geneva]]
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- 2026-09-23T1708 · [[Tampa, Florida]]
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- 2026-09-23T1708 · [[The Wall Street Journal]]
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- 2026-09-23T1708 · [[S. C. Gwynne]]
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- 2026-09-23T1708 · [[Jonathan Beaty]]
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- 2026-09-23T1708 · [[Norman Lamont]]
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- 2026-09-23T1707 · [[Mark Grobmyer]]
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- 2026-09-23T1707 · [[Lincoln Savings and Loan]]
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- 2026-09-23T1707 · [[Charles Keating]]
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- 2026-09-23T1707 · [[Kemal Shoaib]]
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- 2026-09-23T1707 · [[Paula Hawkins]]
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- 2026-09-23T1707 · [[John Heimann]]
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- 2026-09-23T1707 · [[E. Lawrence Barcella, Jr.]]
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- 2026-09-23T1707 · [[Lawrence Wechsler]]
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- 2026-09-23T1707 · [[Robert Genzman]]
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- 2026-09-23T1705 · [[Russian Imperial Movement]]
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- 2026-09-23T1705 · [[Nordic Resistance Movement]]
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- 2026-09-23T1705 · [[Southern Poverty Law Center]]
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- 2026-09-23T1704 · [[Attock Oil]]
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- 2026-09-23T1704 · [[United Bank Limited]]
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- 2026-09-23T1704 · [[Karachi]]
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- 2026-09-23T1704 · [[Benazir Bhutto]]
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- 2026-09-23T1704 · [[Zia ul-Haq]]
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- 2026-09-23T1703 · [[Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan]]
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- 2026-09-23T1702 · [[Mochtar Riady]]
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- 2026-09-23T1702 · [[Kuwait International Finance Company]]
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- 2026-09-23T1702 · [[Abu Nidal Organization]]
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- 2026-09-23T1700 · [[Agha Hasan Abedi]]
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- 2026-09-23T1700 · [[A.Q. Khan]]
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- 2026-09-23T1700 · [[Zulfikar Ali Bhutto]]
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- 2026-09-23T1700 · [[James Riady]]
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- 2026-09-23T1700 · [[Khalid bin Mahfouz]]
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- 2026-09-23T1700 · [[Harken Energy]]
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- 2026-09-23T1700 · [[Abdullah Taha Bakhsh]]
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- 2026-09-23T1700 · [[LippoBank]]
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- 2026-09-23T1700 · [[Banque Arabe et Internationale d'Investissement]]
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- 2026-09-23T1700 · [[National Commercial Bank]]
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- 2026-09-23T1659 · [[Open Philanthropy Action Fund]]
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- 2026-09-23T1659 · [[Holden Karnofsky]]
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- 2026-09-23T1659 · [[Alexander Berger]]
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- 2026-09-23T1656 · [[Alec Stapp]]
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- 2026-09-23T1656 · [[Caleb Watney]]
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- 2026-09-23T1656 · [[Jeff Alstott]]
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- 2026-09-23T1655 · [[Dustin Moskovitz]]
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- 2026-09-23T1655 · [[Redwood Research]]
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- 2026-09-23T1654 · [[Leading the Future]]
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- 2026-09-23T1654 · [[Public First Action]]
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- 2026-09-23T1654 · [[Americans for Responsible Innovation]]
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- 2026-09-23T1652 · [[Brian Chau]]
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- 2026-09-23T1652 · [[Ben Buchanan]]
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- 2026-09-23T1612 · [[Abu Dhabi Investment Authority]]
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- 2026-09-23T1612 · [[Abu Dhabi Investment Authority]]
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- 2026-09-23T1612 · [[Zayed bin Sultan AL-Nahayan]]
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- 2026-09-23T1612 · [[Zayed bin Sultan AL-Nahayan]]
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- 2026-09-23T1540 · [[Mohammed Hammoud]]
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- 2026-09-23T1540 · [[Mohammed Hammoud]]
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- 2026-09-23T1540 · [[Syed Ziauddin Ali Akbar]]
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- 2026-09-23T1540 · [[Abbas Gokal]]
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- 2026-09-23T1540 · [[First American Bank]]
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- 2026-09-23T1540 · [[Ghaith R. Pharaon]]
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- 2026-09-23T1540 · [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report]]
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- 2026-09-23T1540 · [[Gokal brothers]]
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- 2026-09-23T1537 · [[_manifest]]
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- 2026-09-23T1537 · [[National Bank of Georgia]]
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- 2026-09-23T1537 · [[Henry B. Gonzalez]]
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- 2026-09-23T1537 · [[Independence Bank of Encino]]
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- 2026-09-23T1537 · [[Credit and Commerce American Holdings]]
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- 2026-09-23T1537 · [[Financial General Bankshares]]
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- 2026-09-23T1535 · [[Operation C-Chase]]
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- 2026-09-23T1535 · [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]
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- 2026-09-23T1535 · [[Serious Fraud Office]]
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- 2026-09-23T1535 · [[Gulf Group]]
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- 2026-09-23T1535 · [[Abdur Sakhia]]
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- 2026-09-23T1535 · [[Price Waterhouse]]
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- 2026-09-23T1535 · [[Nazir Chinoy]]
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- 2026-09-23T1535 · [[Three Rivers District Council v Bank of England]]
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- 2026-09-23T1535 · [[Bingham Report]]
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- 2026-09-23T1535 · [[Sandstorm Report]]
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- 2026-09-23T1535 · [[ICIC]]
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- 2026-09-23T1535 · [[Capcom]]
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- 2026-09-23T1535 · [[Robert Mazur]]
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- 2026-09-23T1530 · [[Khalid bin Mahfouz]]
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- 2026-09-23T1530 · [[Stephens Finance Ltd.]]
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- 2026-09-23T1530 · [[C. Joseph Giroir]]
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- 2026-09-23T1530 · [[Eugene Metzger]]
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- 2026-09-23T1530 · [[Faisal Saud al-Fulaij]]
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- 2026-09-23T1530 · [[A. R. (Abdul Raouf) Khalil]]
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- 2026-09-23T1530 · [[Roy P. M. Carlson]]
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- 2026-09-23T1530 · [[Bert Lance]]
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- 2026-09-23T1530 · [[David L. Paul]]
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- 2026-09-23T1530 · [[Kamal Adham]]
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- 2026-09-23T1530 · [[Robert Altman]]
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- 2026-09-23T1530 · [[Clark Clifford]]
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- 2026-09-23T1529 · [[Robert Mueller]]
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- 2026-09-23T1528 · [[Kerry Committee]]
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- 2026-09-23T1528 · [[Robert Morgenthau]]
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- 2026-09-23T1528 · [[Hank Brown]]
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- 2026-09-23T1528 · [[Central Intelligence Agency]]
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- 2026-09-23T1528 · [[William von Raab]]
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- 2026-09-23T1528 · [[Richard J. Kerr]]
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- 2026-09-23T1528 · [[Gerald Lewis]]
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- 2026-09-23T1528 · [[Jack Blum]]
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- 2026-09-23T1528 · [[Federal Reserve Board]]
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- 2026-09-23T1528 · [[Eddie George]]
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- 2026-09-23T1528 · [[Robin Leigh-Pemberton]]
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- 2026-09-23T1526 · [[Philip Nordo]]
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- 2026-09-23T1526 · [[Arcadia Theatre (Philadelphia)]]
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- 2026-09-23T1526 · [[Bandbox Theater]]
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- 2026-09-23T1526 · [[Sam Lake]]
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- 2026-09-23T1526 · [[Salvatore La Russa]]
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- 2026-09-23T1526 · [[Joseph L. McGlynn Jr.]]
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- 2026-09-23T1525 · [[Garzone Funeral Home]]
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- 2026-09-23T1525 · [[Screw (magazine)]]
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- 2026-09-23T1525 · [[Candida Royalle]]
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- 2026-09-23T1525 · [[Alistair Cooke]]
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- 2026-09-23T1525 · [[Tutogen Medical]]
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- 2026-09-23T1525 · [[Regeneration Technologies]]
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- 2026-09-23T1525 · [[LifeCell]]
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42
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Abdullah Taha Bakhsh.md
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---
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category: "Business & Finance"
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tags:
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- Person
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- SaudiArabia
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- HarkenEnergy
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- GeorgeWBush
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- Oil
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- Investor
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alias:
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- Abdullah Bakhsh
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- Sheikh Abdullah Taha Bakhsh
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summary: "Jeddah investor who from 1987 held about 11 percent of Harken Energy, the Texas oil company of which George W. Bush was a director, through Netherlands Antilles companies."
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location: "Jeddah, Saudi Arabia"
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relations:
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- type: owned
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with: "[[Harken Energy]]"
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role: "11.66 percent through Traco International N.V. and Atherstone Corporation N.V. (April 1994)"
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fn: 1
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created: 2026-09-23
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updated: 2026-09-23
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---
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Abdullah Taha Bakhsh is a [[Saudi Arabia|Saudi]] investor based in [[Jeddah]] who became one of the largest shareholders of [[Harken Energy]], the Texas oil company of which [[George W. Bush]] was a director and consultant. In its proxy statement of April 1994 Harken listed his address as the Bakhashab Building, Jeddah, and his holding as 6,935,364 shares, or 11.66 percent of its common stock, second only to the [[Harvard University|Harvard]] endowment's [[Aeneas Venture Corporation]] at 15.27 percent.[^1]
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### Harken
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*[[Time (magazine)|Time]]* reported in 1991: "The year after Bush came aboard, a reclusive Saudi named Abdullah Taha Bakhsh bought an 11% stake in Harken through a Netherlands Antilles shell company. The Saudi, a tycoon with global interests in oil, real estate and jewelry, hoped Harken could someday serve as a vehicle for moving Saudi crude into the U.S. But the strategy would never come to pass." Bush's association with the company had begun in 1986.[^2]
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Harken's 1994 proxy recorded that the shares were "owned of record by Traco International, NV. ('Traco') and Atherstone Corporation N.V. ('Atherstone'). According to a Schedule 13D filed with Harken, Traco is wholly-owned by Mr. Bakhsh, and Atherstone is indirectly owned by Mr. Bakhsh. The basis for certain of this information is Amendment 8 to the report on Schedule 13D filed by Abdullah Taha Bakhsh dated August 7, 1992." The same filing listed as a director since 1987 [[Talat Othman|Talat M. Othman]], chairman and chief executive of the investment company Dearborn Financial, Inc. since 1983, and stated that "Dearborn Financial, Inc., of which Mr. Othman is the President, is an affiliate of Traco and Atherstone, significant record stockholders of Harken." In 1993 Othman and Bush made up Harken's audit committee until Bush resigned from the board on October 26, 1993.[^1]
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In January 1990 Harken obtained an exclusive production sharing agreement for most of [[Bahrain]]'s offshore territory. The *[[Houston Chronicle]]*, reporting in June 1992 on a federal review of the Houston businessman [[James R. Bath]], an investor in Bush's earlier oil partnerships, noted that Harken "has been granted lucrative offshore drilling rights off the coast of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf" and that "One of the top shareholders of Harken, a public company, is Saudi businessman Abdullah Taha Bakhsh."[^3][^4]
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The journalist [[Lucy Komisar]] wrote in 2007 that when Harken got into financial difficulty in 1987, [[Jackson Stephens]] helped it obtain 25 million dollars in financing from the [[Union Bank of Switzerland]], and that "as part of that deal, a place on the board was given to Harken shareholder Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, whose chief banker was BCCI shareholder Bin Mahfouz," referring to [[Khalid bin Mahfouz]].[^5]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Harken Energy Corporation. Proxy statement (Schedule 14A), filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission April 25, 1994, pp. 2-7. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313478/0000950134-94-000454.txt
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[^2]: Behar, Richard. "Global Intrigue: The Wackiest Rig in Texas." *Time,* October 28, 1991. https://time.com/archive/6718865/global-intrigue-the-wackiest-rig-in-texas/
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[^3]: Urban, Jerry. "Bush Said Friend's Arbusto Investment Was His Own, Not Saudi Money." *Houston Chronicle,* June 4, 1992. Reproduced at https://911timeline.s3.amazonaws.com/1990s/houstonchronicle060492.html
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[^4]: Harken Energy Corporation. Annual report on Form 10-K for 1993, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission March 29, 1994. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313478/0000950134-94-000289.txt
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[^5]: Komisar, Lucy. "Questions Linger About Bushes and BCCI." Inter Press Service, April 4, 2007. https://www.ipsnews.net/2007/04/finance-questions-linger-about-bushes-and-bcci/
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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Adam D'Angelo.md
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---
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category: "Technologists"
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tags:
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- Person
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- OpenAI
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- Quora
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- Facebook
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- Asana
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summary: "Founder and chief executive of Quora and Facebook's chief technology officer from 2006 to 2008, an OpenAI director since 2018 who voted to remove Sam Altman in 2023 and kept his seat."
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relations:
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- type: founded
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with: "[[Quora]]"
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start: 2009-06
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fn: 1
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- type: head_of
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with: "[[Quora]]"
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role: "chief executive officer"
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start: 2009-06
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fn: 1
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- type: employed_by
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with: "[[Facebook]]"
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role: "senior roles, including chief technology officer from November 2006"
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start: 2005-06
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end: 2008-06
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fn: 1
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- type: member_of
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with: "[[OpenAI]]"
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role: "director"
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start: 2018-04
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fn: 3
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created: 2026-09-23
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updated: 2026-09-23
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---
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Adam D'Angelo founded [[Quora]], the question-and-answer platform, and has been its chief executive since June 2009. From June 2005 to June 2008 he held "a variety of senior roles" at [[Facebook]], now [[Meta Platforms]], including chief technology officer from November 2006 to June 2008.[^1]
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### Asana
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D'Angelo was a director of [[Asana]], the software company founded by the Facebook co-founder [[Dustin Moskovitz]] and [[Justin Rosenstein]], from December 2008. The company's proxy statement of April 2026 reported that he had "informed the Company that he will not stand for re-election." The same statement listed among related-person transactions for the year to January 31, 2026, 300,000 dollars of AI services Asana bought from [[OpenAI]], noting that "Adam D'Angelo, a member of our Board, is a member of OpenAI's Board of Directors," and subscriptions it sold to Quora.[^1] In October 2023 *[[Politico]]*, describing the network of AI-policy grantees of Moskovitz's [[Open Philanthropy]], noted that in 2016 [[Sam Altman]] had led a 50-million-dollar investment in Asana, that Open Philanthropy had given OpenAI 30 million dollars in 2017, and that "Asana and OpenAI also share a board member in Adam D'Angelo."[^2]
|
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|
|
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|
### OpenAI
|
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|
|
||||||
|
D'Angelo joined OpenAI's board in April 2018, writing at the time: "I continue to think that work toward general AI (with safety in mind) is both important and underappreciated." In January 2023 he told *[[Forbes]]* that one of OpenAI's strengths was its capped-profit structure under nonprofit control: "There's no outcome where this organization is one of the big five technology companies. This is something that's fundamentally different, and my hope is that we can do a lot more good for the world than just become another corporation that gets that big." According to OpenAI's own description of its structure, its directors held no equity in the company and received no other compensation.[^3]
|
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|
|
||||||
|
On November 17, 2023, OpenAI announced that Altman would leave as chief executive and leave the board after "a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities." The announcement gave the board as "OpenAI chief scientist [[Ilya Sutskever]], independent directors Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, technology entrepreneur [[Tasha McCauley]], and [[Center for Security and Emerging Technology|Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology]]'s [[Helen Toner]]," and stated that [[Greg Brockman]] would step down as chairman while remaining at the company; [[Mira Murati]] was named interim chief executive.[^4]
|
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|
|
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|
On November 29, 2023, Altman announced his return and wrote that "the new initial board will consist of [[Bret Taylor]] (Chair), [[Larry Summers]], and Adam D'Angelo." He thanked "Adam, Tasha, and Helen for working with us to come to this solution that best serves the mission," and added: "I'm excited to continue to work with Adam and am sincerely thankful to Helen and Tasha for investing a huge amount of effort in this process." He also thanked [[Emmett Shear]], who had "a key and constructive role in helping us reach this outcome." Of the four directors who had removed Altman, D'Angelo was the only one on the new board; Sutskever, McCauley and Toner left it.[^5]
|
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|
|
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|
### Footnotes
|
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|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Asana, Inc. Schedule 14A definitive proxy statement, filed April 20, 2026, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1477720/000162828026025998/asan-20260420.htm
|
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|
[^2]: Bordelon, Brendan. "How a billionaire-backed network of AI advisers took over Washington." *Politico,* October 13, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20250902172514/https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/13/open-philanthropy-funding-ai-policy-00121362
|
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|
[^3]: Konrad, Alex, and Sarah Emerson. "These Are The People That Fired OpenAI CEO Sam Altman." *Forbes,* November 17, 2023, archived November 18, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20231118075941/https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/17/these-are-the-people-that-fired-openai-ceo-sam-altman/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: OpenAI. "OpenAI announces leadership transition." November 17, 2023, archived November 17, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20231117210540/https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transition
|
||||||
|
[^5]: OpenAI. "Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board." November 29, 2023, archived November 30, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20231130020514/https://openai.com/blog/sam-altman-returns-as-ceo-openai-has-a-new-initial-board
|
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|
|
@ -22,40 +22,54 @@ relations:
|
||||||
with: "[[Robert Morgenthau]]"
|
with: "[[Robert Morgenthau]]"
|
||||||
reverse: true
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
start: 1991-07-29
|
start: 1991-07-29
|
||||||
fn: 20
|
fn: 26
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
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|
|
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Agha Hasan Abedi was a Pakistani financier who founded the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International|BCCI]] in 1972, with the intention of creating the Third World's first multinational bank. He is described as a diminutive man, the son of petty bureaucrats, who handcrafted BCCI into one of the most powerful private organizations globally by the early 1980s.[^1] Abedi was a visionary and a romantic, a Muslim who drifted into the secretive Sufi sect, which influenced his unique business style. He incorporated Islamic mysticism into the bank's driving force, emphasizing spiritual progress and a democratic theory of management, which eventually devolved into corruption. He was known for his ability to build relationships with ruling elites and for his philanthropic efforts in the Third World.[^2]
|
Agha Hasan Abedi was a Pakistani financier who founded the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International|BCCI]] in 1972, with the intention of creating the Third World's first multinational bank. He is described as a diminutive man, the son of petty bureaucrats, who handcrafted BCCI into one of the most powerful private organizations globally by the early 1980s.[^1] Abedi was a visionary and a romantic, a Muslim who drifted into the secretive Sufi sect, which influenced his unique business style. He incorporated Islamic mysticism into the bank's driving force, emphasizing spiritual progress and a democratic theory of management, which eventually devolved into corruption. He was known for his ability to build relationships with ruling elites and for his philanthropic efforts in the Third World.[^2]
|
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|
|
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BCCI's growth was fueled by petrodollars, particularly from [[OPEC]] nations, and Abedi was among the first to recognize the opportunity in these vast deposits.[^3] He cultivated relationships with powerful figures, including [[Zayed bin Sultan AL-Nahayan|Sheikh Zayed]] of [[Abu Dhabi]], who became a key supporter and later owner of BCCI.[^4] Abedi's strategy involved using nominees and a complex offshore network, primarily in the [[Cayman Islands]], to conceal the bank's true ownership and illicit activities.[^5]
|
BCCI's growth was fueled by petrodollars, particularly from [[OPEC]] nations, and Abedi was among the first to recognize the opportunity in these vast deposits.[^3] He cultivated relationships with powerful figures, including [[Zayed bin Sultan AL-Nahayan|Sheikh Zayed]] of [[Abu Dhabi]], who became a key supporter and later owner of BCCI.[^4] Abedi's strategy involved using nominees and a complex offshore network, primarily in the [[Cayman Islands]], to conceal the bank's true ownership and illicit activities.[^5]
|
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|
|
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He suffered a heart attack in February 1988, which ended his direct control of BCCI.[^6] The journalists Jonathan Beaty and S. C. Gwynne wrote that he spent his later years in [[Pakistan]], living quietly in the affluent Defense Officers' Society section of [[Karachi]], entertaining occasional visitors and maintaining his innocence regarding the bank's unraveling. Despite the allegations of fraud and the bank's collapse, Abedi remained a towering figure to many Pakistanis, revered as a courageous Third World entrepreneur.[^7]
|
He suffered a heart attack in February 1988, which ended his direct control of BCCI.[^6] The journalists [[Jonathan Beaty]] and [[S. C. Gwynne]] wrote that he spent his later years in [[Pakistan]], living quietly in the affluent Defense Officers' Society section of [[Karachi]], entertaining occasional visitors and maintaining his innocence regarding the bank's unraveling. Despite the allegations of fraud and the bank's collapse, Abedi remained a towering figure to many Pakistanis, revered as a courageous Third World entrepreneur.[^7]
|
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|
|
||||||
### Early Life and Career
|
### Early Life and Career
|
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|
|
||||||
Born in 1922 in Mahmudabad, [[India]], Abedi grew up in a culture steeped in the Moghul raj and the struggle against British conquest.[^8] His family served the rajahs of Mahmudabad as administrators and private secretaries. He began his banking career in [[Bombay]] at Habib Bank, an Islamic institution.[^9] In 1947, he migrated to Pakistan and in 1959, founded [[United Bank Limited]], which became the third-largest bank in Pakistan under his leadership.[^10] United Bank was known for its innovation, customer service, and lending to small farmers and businesses.[^11]
|
Born in 1922 in Mahmudabad, [[India]], Abedi grew up in a culture steeped in the Moghul raj and the struggle against British conquest.[^8] His family served the rajahs of Mahmudabad as administrators and private secretaries. He began his banking career in [[Bombay]] at Habib Bank, an Islamic institution.[^9] In 1947, he migrated to Pakistan and in 1959, founded [[United Bank Limited]], which became the third-largest bank in Pakistan under his leadership.[^10] United Bank was known for its innovation, customer service, and lending to small farmers and businesses.[^11] An internal BCCI history written in 1982 by Khusro Karamat Elley stated that Abedi left Habib Bank in 1958 to gather investors for the new bank; the [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate Report]] dated its formation to 1959 and described it as the second largest bank in Pakistan within ten years.[^12]
|
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|
|
||||||
### Relationship with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
|
### Relationship with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Abedi's bank was nationalized by [[Zulfikar Ali Bhutto]] in 1972, leading to Abedi's temporary house arrest.[^12] This event spurred him to establish BCCI with international reach. Despite the political feud, Abedi later found ways to profit from Bhutto's socialist policies, with BCCI becoming a conduit for capital flight from Pakistan.[^13]
|
Abedi's bank was nationalized by the government of [[Zulfikar Ali Bhutto]], leading to Abedi's temporary house arrest.[^13] The Banks (Nationalization) Act, 1974, which listed United Bank Limited as item ten in its schedule of fourteen banks, was deemed to have taken effect on January 1, 1974.[^14] According to the Senate report, Bhutto had been threatening to nationalize the banks from the time he took power, and on learning that Abedi had begun forming BCCI outside Pakistan he "not only went ahead with plans for nationalizing the United Bank, but promptly placed Abedi under house arrest." The report found that the nationalization gave BCCI its founding staff, "a group of like-minded Pakistanis to operate the bank," and gave clients such as the [[Saigol family]] and the [[Gokal brothers]] reason to bank outside Pakistan's control.[^12] This event spurred him to establish BCCI with international reach. Despite the political feud, Abedi later found ways to profit from Bhutto's socialist policies, with BCCI becoming a conduit for capital flight from Pakistan.[^15]
|
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|
|
||||||
### Strategic Alliances and Controversies
|
### Strategic Alliances and Controversies
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Abedi's influence grew through strategic alliances, including with [[Zia ul-Haq|General Zia ul-Haq]], who became a trusted confidant.[^14] BCCI played a significant role in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, brokering technology and financing.[^15] Abedi's network extended to high-level officials in various countries, often involving bribes, loans, and charitable contributions to gain influence. He cultivated relationships with figures like [[Jimmy Carter]] and [[James Callaghan]], using their prestige to further BCCI's image as a philanthropic institution.[^16]
|
Abedi's influence grew through strategic alliances, including with [[Zia ul-Haq|General Zia ul-Haq]], who became a trusted confidant.[^16] BCCI played a significant role in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, brokering technology and financing.[^17] Abedi's network extended to high-level officials in various countries, often involving bribes, loans, and charitable contributions to gain influence. He cultivated relationships with figures like [[Jimmy Carter]] and [[James Callaghan]], using their prestige to further BCCI's image as a philanthropic institution.[^18]
|
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|
|
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BCCI's operations were deeply intertwined with intelligence agencies, including the [[Central Intelligence Agency]], and were involved in arms dealing, drug trafficking, and money laundering on a global scale.[^17] Abedi's ability to operate with apparent immunity from law enforcement in the [[United States]] was attributed to these high-level connections and a probable cover-up by government officials.[^18]
|
BCCI's operations were deeply intertwined with intelligence agencies, including the [[Central Intelligence Agency]], and were involved in arms dealing, drug trafficking, and money laundering on a global scale.[^19] Abedi's ability to operate with apparent immunity from law enforcement in the [[United States]] was attributed to these high-level connections and a probable cover-up by government officials.[^20]
|
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|
|
||||||
|
### United Bank and Political Patronage
|
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|
|
||||||
|
When United Bank was formed, Abedi appointed as chairman of its board [[I. I. Chundrigar]], a former prime minister and a close confidant of [[Ayub Khan]], and he later hired Ayub Khan's minister of information as "publisher" of the BCCI magazine *South*. He took the account of the Saigol family, one of Pakistan's leading industrial groups, from Habib Bank to United Bank, where the Saigols became the principal shareholders; [[Price Waterhouse]] later found that Abedi had rescheduled millions in their loans "whenever they found it inconvenient to repay them." United Bank had a protocol department "responsible for taking care of the personal needs of VIPs," the forerunner of BCCI's protocol department in Karachi.[^12] By one account Abedi flew to Abu Dhabi in 1966 with one assistant and an oriental rug and obtained Sheikh Zayed's permission for United Bank to open a branch there; by another he won Zayed over by arranging his first bustard hunting and falconry trip in Pakistan. By 1967, according to the Senate report, Abedi was running the Sheikh's financial life.[^12]
|
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|
|
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|
In July 1978 the government of Zia ul-Haq issued a White Paper on the March 1977 elections which stated that "the other large source of funds" for Bhutto's [[Pakistan People's Party]] "was the money brought in by Agha Hasan Abdi [sic]," amounting to "two or three crores of rupees," and described Abedi's "travels . . . loaded as he used to be with bagfuls of money."[^12]
|
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|
|
||||||
|
### Zia and the BCCI Foundation
|
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|
|
||||||
|
The Senate report found that after Bhutto's overthrow Abedi "swiftly changed allegiances" to Zia, who "did the most for BCCI." [[Nazir Chinoy]], BCCI's branch chief in Pakistan from 1978 to 1982, told Senate staff that Abedi called on Zia at night on every visit, meeting him for two to three hours after official dinners, and that "Abedi used Zia and Zia used Abedi also for the gulf countries." BCCI's branch in the [[United Arab Emirates]] paid Zia 40 million Pakistani rupees in May 1985; the report's text gives the date as May 26 and its footnote cites a check dated May 25. In 1979, according to Chinoy, Abedi and [[Swaleh Naqvi]] had 50 million dollars placed with BCCI Karachi through the Kuwaiti affiliate [[Kuwait International Finance Company|KIFCO]] so that Pakistan could report higher dollar reserves to the [[World Bank]].[^21]
|
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|
|
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|
The Pakistani BCCI Foundation, created to shelter BCCI's Pakistani profits from tax, received tax-free status in 1981 while [[Ghulam Ishaq Khan]] was minister of finance; Ishaq Khan chaired it through the 1980s, had close ties to Abedi, and became president of Pakistan after Zia's death in August 1988. The report stated that BCCI provided 10 million dollars in grants in the late 1980s to a science and technology institute named for Ishaq Khan and directed by [[A.Q. Khan]], and that the foundation made a 3 million dollar "investment" in [[Attock Cement]], a company "ostensibly owned by BCCI front-man Ghaith Pharaon, but in fact a front for BCCI itself." BCCI also held interests through nominees in [[Attock Oil]], which the report called "BCCI's oil company."[^21][^22]
|
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|
|
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|
The Senate report also stated that BCCI Canada financed Pakistan's attempt to procure nuclear materials in the United States, "as documented in the Parvez case." That claim rests solely on the testimony of [[Alan Kreczko]], a [[State Department]] deputy legal adviser (S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 3, p. 599); the Third Circuit's opinion in the prosecution of [[Arshad Pervez]], who sought maraging steel and beryllium for Pakistan and whose convictions for conspiracy and attempting to export beryllium it vacated in 1989, makes no mention of BCCI or of any bank.[^23][^24]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Rahman's Account
|
### Rahman's Account
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[[Masihur Rahman]], BCCI's chief financial officer, who worked with Abedi for nearly two decades, told Senator [[John Kerry]]'s subcommittee that Abedi had explained the bank's purpose to him at its founding: "Up to that stage in the early 1970's there were mostly national banks and savings banks. The few banks which are international are indeed the colonial banks from Britain, France, Germany, and lately from America." Rahman described the early quarters in Abu Dhabi as "mess-type flats," the command structure as "Mr. Abedi at the very top, there was Mr. Naqvi who was like a chief operating officer, who converted... Mr. Abedi's ideas and things into practical shapes. And then there was a big gap," and the bank's compartmentalization as "Chinese walls" that were "getting very, very watertight." Of Abedi himself he said: "I remember looking into his eyes and seeing God and the Devil balanced equally in them."[^19]
|
[[Masihur Rahman]], BCCI's chief financial officer, who worked with Abedi for nearly two decades, told Senator [[John Kerry]]'s subcommittee that Abedi had explained the bank's purpose to him at its founding: "Up to that stage in the early 1970's there were mostly national banks and savings banks. The few banks which are international are indeed the colonial banks from Britain, France, Germany, and lately from America." Rahman described the early quarters in Abu Dhabi as "mess-type flats," the command structure as "Mr. Abedi at the very top, there was Mr. Naqvi who was like a chief operating officer, who converted... Mr. Abedi's ideas and things into practical shapes. And then there was a big gap," and the bank's compartmentalization as "Chinese walls" that were "getting very, very watertight." Of Abedi himself he said: "I remember looking into his eyes and seeing God and the Devil balanced equally in them."[^25]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Illness
|
### Illness
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The accounts of Abedi's collapse differ in form and date. Beaty and Gwynne dated it to a heart attack in February 1988; the [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate Report]] described "Abedi's stroke in early 1989, which led to Carter arranging an emergency heart transplant for him," and said it "had a substantial impact on BCCI's ability to survive the drug money laundering indictments in Tampa." Associated Press obituaries in 1995 reported two heart attacks that led him to step back from the bank in 1988, a heart transplant the same year, and a stroke that caused brain damage.[^6][^19][^20][^21]
|
The accounts of Abedi's collapse differ in form and date. Beaty and Gwynne dated it to a heart attack in February 1988; the Kerry-Brown Senate Report described "Abedi's stroke in early 1989, which led to Carter arranging an emergency heart transplant for him," and said it "had a substantial impact on BCCI's ability to survive the drug money laundering indictments in Tampa." Associated Press obituaries in 1995 reported two heart attacks that led him to step back from the bank in 1988, a heart transplant the same year, and a stroke that caused brain damage.[^6][^25][^26][^27]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Prosecutions and Death
|
### Prosecutions and Death
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Abedi was indicted in New York County by [[Robert Morgenthau]] on July 29, 1991. Pakistan refused extradition requests from the [[United Arab Emirates]] and the United States. An Abu Dhabi court that tried BCCI's former executives from October 1993 to April 1994 convicted him in absentia in June 1994, while he was reported to be "bedridden in his home" in Pakistan; United Press International reported his sentence as six years and the *American Banker* as eight. The court ordered the convicted executives to pay more than 9.13 billion dollars to the Abu Dhabi government and the bank's former majority shareholders.[^20][^22][^23] Abedi died of heart failure at the [[Aga Khan University Hospital|Aga Khan Hospital]] in Karachi on August 5, 1995, aged 74, five days after he was admitted with chest pains; his wife was with him.[^20][^21]
|
Abedi was indicted in New York County by [[Robert Morgenthau]] on July 29, 1991. Pakistan refused extradition requests from the United Arab Emirates and the United States. An Abu Dhabi court that tried BCCI's former executives from October 1993 to April 1994 convicted him in absentia in June 1994, while he was reported to be "bedridden in his home" in Pakistan; United Press International reported his sentence as six years and the *American Banker* as eight. The court ordered the convicted executives to pay more than 9.13 billion dollars to the Abu Dhabi government and the bank's former majority shareholders.[^26][^28][^29] Abedi died of heart failure at the [[Aga Khan University Hospital|Aga Khan Hospital]] in Karachi on August 5, 1995, aged 74, five days after he was admitted with chest pains; his wife was with him.[^26][^27]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
@ -70,15 +84,21 @@ Abedi was indicted in New York County by [[Robert Morgenthau]] on July 29, 1991.
|
||||||
[^9]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 160.
|
[^9]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 160.
|
||||||
[^10]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, pp. 161-162.
|
[^10]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, pp. 161-162.
|
||||||
[^11]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 162.
|
[^11]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 162.
|
||||||
[^12]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 164.
|
[^12]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 3, "The Origin and Early Years of BCCI" (citing Khusro Karamat Elley, "Growth of International Banking: Case Study of Bank of Credit and Commerce Intl," October 27, 1982; testimony of Masihur Rahman, S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 1, pp. 489-491, 540; and White Paper on the General Elections, Government of Pakistan, July 1978, S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 3, pp. 314-317). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
|
||||||
[^13]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 320.
|
[^13]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 164.
|
||||||
[^14]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 324.
|
[^14]: The Banks' (Nationalization) Act, 1974 (Act XIX of 1974), sections 1 and 2 and Schedule. http://nasirlawsite.com/laws/bna.htm
|
||||||
[^15]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 329.
|
[^15]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 320.
|
||||||
[^16]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, pp. 227-228.
|
[^16]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 324.
|
||||||
[^17]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, pp. 16-17.
|
[^17]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 329.
|
||||||
[^18]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 17.
|
[^18]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, pp. 227-228.
|
||||||
[^19]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 3, "The Origin and Early Years of BCCI" (citing the testimony of Masihur Rahman, S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 1, pp. 489-491). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
|
[^19]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, pp. 16-17.
|
||||||
[^20]: "Key Figure In International Bank Scandal Dies At 74," Associated Press, *The Spokesman-Review,* August 6, 1995. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1995/aug/06/key-figure-in-international-bank-scandal-dies-at/
|
[^20]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 17.
|
||||||
[^21]: "BCCI founder dies after seeing his empire collapse in fraud," Associated Press, *Deseret News,* August 6, 1995. https://www.deseret.com/1995/8/6/19185992/bcci-founder-dies-after-seeing-his-empire-collapse-in-fraud/
|
[^21]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 5, "BCCI's Relationship with Foreign Governments, Central Banks, and International Organizations," section "Pakistan" (citing staff interviews with Nazir Chinoy, March 9 to 16, 1992, and S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 2, pp. 510-511, and pt. 3, p. 599). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/05foreign.htm
|
||||||
[^22]: Hussain, Thomas. "UAE jails and fines BCCI executives," United Press International, June 14, 1994. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/06/14/UAE-jails-and-fines-BCCI-executives/7650771566400/
|
[^22]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 6, "BCCI in the United States: Initial Entry and FGB and NBG Takeovers." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/06early.htm
|
||||||
[^23]: "Abu Dhabi gives former BCCI execs prison sentences of up to 14 years," *American Banker,* June 1994. https://www.americanbanker.com/news/abu-dhabi-gives-former-bcci-execs-prison-sentences-of-up-to-14-years
|
[^23]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 4, "BCCI's Criminality" (citing testimony of Alan Kreczko, Deputy Legal Adviser, Department of State, S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 3, p. 599). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
|
||||||
|
[^24]: *United States v. Pervez*, 871 F.2d 310 (3d Cir. 1989), No. 88-1109, decided March 6, 1989. https://static.case.law/f2d/871/cases/0310-01.json
|
||||||
|
[^25]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 3, "The Origin and Early Years of BCCI" (citing the testimony of Masihur Rahman, S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 1, pp. 489-491). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
|
||||||
|
[^26]: "Key Figure In International Bank Scandal Dies At 74," Associated Press, *The Spokesman-Review,* August 6, 1995. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1995/aug/06/key-figure-in-international-bank-scandal-dies-at/
|
||||||
|
[^27]: "BCCI founder dies after seeing his empire collapse in fraud," Associated Press, *Deseret News,* August 6, 1995. https://www.deseret.com/1995/8/6/19185992/bcci-founder-dies-after-seeing-his-empire-collapse-in-fraud/
|
||||||
|
[^28]: Hussain, Thomas. "UAE jails and fines BCCI executives," United Press International, June 14, 1994. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/06/14/UAE-jails-and-fines-BCCI-executives/7650771566400/
|
||||||
|
[^29]: "Abu Dhabi gives former BCCI execs prison sentences of up to 14 years," *American Banker,* June 1994. https://www.americanbanker.com/news/abu-dhabi-gives-former-bcci-execs-prison-sentences-of-up-to-14-years
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
63
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Alexander Berger.md
Normal file
63
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Alexander Berger.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- OpenPhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
- CoefficientGiving
|
||||||
|
- GiveWell
|
||||||
|
- StanfordUniversity
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Alexander Berger
|
||||||
|
summary: "Stanford-trained GiveWell researcher who cofounded Open Philanthropy, became its co-CEO in 2021 and sole CEO in 2023, and holds the same titles at its 501(c)(4) Action Fund."
|
||||||
|
location: "San Francisco, California"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[GiveWell]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "researcher"
|
||||||
|
start: 2011
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Open Philanthropy]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "cofounder, first leading its policy philanthropy work"
|
||||||
|
start: 2011
|
||||||
|
fn: 4
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Alexander Berger is the chief executive of [[Open Philanthropy]], renamed Coefficient Giving in November 2025, the grantmaker funded chiefly by [[Dustin Moskovitz]] and [[Cari Tuna]] through their foundation [[Good Ventures]]. He joined [[GiveWell]] from [[Stanford University]], cofounded Open Philanthropy when it was still GiveWell Labs, became co-chief executive with [[Holden Karnofsky]] in June 2021 and sole chief executive in July 2023. He has been a director of the couple's 501(c)(4), the [[Open Philanthropy Action Fund]], since 2018, and its returns have carried his Open Philanthropy officer titles since 2021.[^1][^2][^3][^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Stanford
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Berger graduated from Stanford in 2011 with a B.A. in philosophy and also holds a Stanford M.A. in education policy.[^2] As a freshman he heard the political scientist [[Rob Reich]] as a guest lecturer, took Reich's courses over the next two years, and completed the Honors Program in Ethics in Society with Reich, the faculty director of the [[McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society]], as his thesis advisor. In an honors seminar in his junior year he read a paper noting how safe kidney donation had become; the same year he came across GiveWell, the charity evaluator Karnofsky and [[Elie Hassenfeld]] had founded in 2007, and began volunteering for it. After graduating he worked there as a researcher "conducting evidence reviews and cost-effectiveness analyses for potential top charities." A second alumna of the same honors program, [[Claire Zabel]] of the 2013-14 cohort, went on to lead Open Philanthropy's grantmaking on effective altruism.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Kidney Op-Ed
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On December 5, 2011, about six months after graduating, Berger published "Why Selling Kidneys Should Be Legal" in *[[New York Times|The New York Times]]*, datelined [[San Francisco]]: "On Thursday, I will donate one of my kidneys to someone I've never met." He gave his age as 21. "When I first told some friends and family that I wanted to donate a kidney, they assumed I'd gone off my rocker," he wrote. "They saw it as a crazy act of self-sacrifice, rather than what it is," which he called "one of the many ways a reasonably altruistic person can help others." He argued that the 1984 federal ban on compensating kidney donors left more than 34,000 people joining the waiting list in 2010 against fewer than 17,000 transplants, that "the victims of the current ban are disproportionately African-American and poor," and that a regulated market in which "only the government or a chosen nonprofit would be allowed to purchase the kidneys," at a price "somewhere in the ballpark of $50,000," paid by insurers or [[Medicare]], "could actually save the government money" against the cost of dialysis. He cited a ruling of the previous week by the [[Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals]] allowing compensation for bone marrow donors.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Open Philanthropy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Berger was, in Open Philanthropy's own biography of him, "a cofounder of Open Philanthropy" who "led our initial process for selecting focus areas and hiring and training program officers within them."[^2] In 2018 he told the *[[Stanford Social Innovation Review]]* writer [[Marc Gunther]], who counted seven entities around Tuna (among them the Open Philanthropy Project LLC, the Action Fund, two donor-advised funds at the [[Silicon Valley Community Foundation]], the Good Ventures Foundation and Good Ventures LLC), that "each has a reason for being" and that "tax considerations are key."[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On June 16, 2021, Karnofsky announced that Berger "has been promoted to co-CEO," writing that he had "for some time" been "the primary leader for most of our work on causes focused on maximizing verifiable impact within our lifetimes." The same post renamed that portfolio "Global Health and Wellbeing" in place of "near-termism" and stated: "We now have a dual-CEO structure, with both of us reporting directly to the board." Karnofsky kept biosecurity and pandemic preparedness and "potential risks from advanced AI"; Berger took global health and development "(including to GiveWell-recommended charities)," scientific research, farm animal welfare and criminal justice reform.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On July 27, 2023, Karnofsky wrote "on behalf of Open Philanthropy's board" that Berger "is now sole CEO," that Berger had run the organization during Karnofsky's leave of absence, and that the two had worked together since 2011; Berger "co-founded Open Philanthropy (back when it was GiveWell Labs), initially leading our policy philanthropy work." Karnofsky's own title changed "from co-CEO to Director of AI Strategy," and [[Emily Oehlsen]] was promoted to managing director over Global Health and Wellbeing. Tuna, styled in the post as president, said: "Dustin and I have worked closely with Alexander for many years, and he's helped us think through many of the toughest questions we've faced as philanthropists." Berger said the mission "resonates just as much with me today as it did when Holden, Cari, Dustin and I were starting to think about it together."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2026 Coefficient Giving listed Berger as chief executive, Tuna as chair and Oehlsen as president.[^8] Berger said that year that the organization had spent about a tenth of the [[Gates Foundation]]'s budget in 2025 and more than twice that so far in 2026, and, of its standing with [[Anthropic]], whose president [[Daniela Amodei]] is married to Karnofsky: "We're definitely not the Anthropic Foundation."[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Action Fund
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Open Philanthropy Action Fund, EIN 81-2644663, files in care of [[Apercen Partners]] LLC at 314 Lytton Avenue, [[Palo Alto]], the address of the Good Ventures Foundation. Berger first appears on its return for 2018 as a director, alongside Tuna as president, Karnofsky as chief executive, Moskovitz, [[Divesh Makan]] and Hassenfeld. He was listed as co-CEO and director for 2021 and 2022, as chief executive and director "(co-CEO thru 7/23/23)" for 2023, and as chief executive and director for 2024, when Karnofsky was listed only as a director. None of the fund's officers or directors was paid by it.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Aguilera, Diana. "Accomplishing as Much Good as Possible: Honors Alum Alexander Berger Paves the Way for More Effective Giving." McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, Stanford University, November 12, 2021. https://ethicsinsociety.stanford.edu/news/accomplishing-much-good-possible-honors-alum-alexander-berger-paves-way-more-effective-giving
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Open Philanthropy, "Alexander Berger," team biography, archived November 12, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20251112031533/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/team/alexander-berger/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Karnofsky, Holden. "Open Philanthropy's New Co-CEO." Open Philanthropy blog, June 16, 2021, archived May 31, 2022. http://web.archive.org/web/20220531031049/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/open-philanthropys-new-co-ceo
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Karnofsky, Holden. "Alexander Berger is Now Sole CEO of Open Philanthropy." Open Philanthropy, July 27, 2023, republished by Coefficient Giving, archived March 17, 2026. http://web.archive.org/web/20260317060608/https://coefficientgiving.org/research/alexander-berger-is-now-sole-ceo-of-open-philanthropy/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Coefficient Giving Action Fund" (formerly Open Philanthropy Action Fund), EIN 81-2644663, Form 990 Part VII officer listings for fiscal years 2016 to 2024, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/812644663
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Berger, Alexander. "Why Selling Kidneys Should Be Legal." *The New York Times,* December 5, 2011, archived October 24, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20251024084715/https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/opinion/why-selling-kidneys-should-be-legal.html
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Gunther, Marc. "Giving in the Light of Reason." *Stanford Social Innovation Review,* Summer 2018. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/giving_in_the_light_of_reason
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Coefficient Giving, "Team," accessed September 2026. https://coefficientgiving.org/about-us/team/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Smith, Ben. "Coefficient Giving's CEO on Silicon Valley's $40 billion philanthropy boom." *Semafor,* September 3, 2026. https://www.semafor.com/article/09/03/2026/coefficient-givings-ceo-on-silicon-valley-40-billion-philanthropy-boom
|
||||||
71
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Ben Buchanan.md
Normal file
71
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Ben Buchanan.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
aliases:
|
||||||
|
- "Benjamin Buchanan"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- CSET
|
||||||
|
- NationalSecurityCouncil
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
- ExportControls
|
||||||
|
- Anthropic
|
||||||
|
- OpenPhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
- Cybersecurity
|
||||||
|
summary: "Georgetown CSET cyber and AI scholar hired into the Biden White House under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, who became its first Special Advisor for AI and later an outside advisor to Anthropic."
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Center for Security and Emerging Technology]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "director of the CyberAI Project and senior faculty fellow"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Georgetown University]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "assistant teaching professor, School of Foreign Service"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: appointed
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Jason Matheny]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "hired under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act"
|
||||||
|
start: 2021
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[National Security Council]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "staff; first White House Special Advisor for Artificial Intelligence"
|
||||||
|
start: 2021
|
||||||
|
end: 2025
|
||||||
|
fn: 4
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Johns Hopkins University]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Dmitri Alperovitch Assistant Professor, School of Advanced International Studies"
|
||||||
|
start: 2025
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: contractor_to
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Anthropic]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "outside advisor"
|
||||||
|
fn: 4
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ben Buchanan received a Ph.D. in war studies from [[King's College London]], where he was a [[Marshall Scholarship|Marshall Scholar]], and master's and undergraduate degrees from [[Georgetown University]]. At Georgetown he was director of the CyberAI Project and a senior faculty fellow at the [[Center for Security and Emerging Technology]] (CSET), and an assistant teaching professor at the [[Walsh School of Foreign Service|School of Foreign Service]], researching "the intersection of cybersecurity and statecraft." He wrote *The Cybersecurity Dilemma* ([[Oxford University Press]], 2017) and *The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics* ([[Harvard University Press]], 2020), contributed regularly to *[[War on the Rocks]]* and *[[Lawfare]]*, and published op-eds in *[[The Washington Post]]*.[^1] As a CSET senior faculty fellow he testified in October 2019 before the [[House Homeland Security Committee|House Homeland Security]] Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Innovation, at its hearing "Preparing for the Future: An Assessment of Emerging Cyber Threats." His CSET work of 2020 and 2021 included "The AI Triad and What It Means for National Security Strategy" (August 2020), "Automating Cyber Attacks" (November 2020) and "Truth, Lies, and Automation" (May 2021), a study of whether natural language models such as [[OpenAI]]'s GPT-3 could be used to generate automated disinformation at scale.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### White House
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
According to documents the *[[Washington Examiner]]* obtained under the [[Freedom of Information Act]], CSET's founding director, [[Jason Matheny]], while serving in senior [[White House]] roles between March 2021 and June 2022, hired Buchanan, "then a top staffer at CSET," under the [[Intergovernmental Personnel Act]] and tasked him with helping the administration craft its AI policies. Georgetown continued to pay Buchanan's salary and benefits as director of the CyberAI Project, and the federal government reimbursed them at the end of each month. The paper wrote that CSET "was funded almost entirely by [[Open Philanthropy]], receiving $97 million from the charitable foundation between 2019 and 2021," that Open Philanthropy was funded primarily by [[Dustin Moskovitz]] and [[Cari Tuna]], and that Moskovitz "was a major investor in Anthropic's initial $124 million fundraising round, which occurred in early 2021," around the time Matheny and Buchanan entered the administration.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Buchanan worked in the White House from 2021 to 2025, on the [[National Security Council]] and as the first White House Special Advisor for Artificial Intelligence, "responsible for coordinating the Biden Administration actions on AI."[^3][^4] He worked on [[National Security Memorandum 25]], which in his words "aimed to catalyze the use of AI for national security purposes and to prevent strategic surprise to the United States."[^4] The *Washington Examiner*, citing *[[Semafor]]*, described him as "one of the key architects" of the [[Joe Biden|Biden]] administration's restrictions on exports of advanced chips to China. Shortly after [[Donald Trump]] took office in 2025, [[Anthropic]] wrote to his administration urging it to keep the export controls in place; the Trump administration rescinded the rule.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Asked by the *Washington Examiner* about the arrangement, Buchanan said: "For my entire career, I have worked to ensure that the United States," not China, "leads the world in AI and that the technology is safe, secure, and trustworthy. It was an honor to take a leave from my professorship at Georgetown University to advance this mission in the White House. I scrupulously complied with all legal and ethics rules and answered only to President Biden and the senior White House staff. Congress passed the Intergovernmental Personnel Act to bring technical academics into government to work on pressing issues." He added: "Both President Biden and President Trump have used this authority to hire AI experts, and I was proud to be one of them."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Johns Hopkins and Anthropic
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Buchanan became the [[Dmitri Alperovitch]] Assistant Professor at the [[Johns Hopkins University]] [[School of Advanced International Studies]] in Washington.[^3] On April 7, 2025, at the university's Emerging Technologies symposium, he defended the [[AI diffusion rule]], issued in the last days of the Biden administration, which sorted countries into tiers for access to advanced chips and placed the [[United Arab Emirates]], [[Saudi Arabia]] and [[India]] in the second tier. [[Microsoft]] and [[Nvidia]] were lobbying the Trump administration to reverse it. "If computing power is so fundamental to AI, and the US and our allies are at such an extraordinary advantage in the design, production and use of that computing power, then we should be careful where we send this," he said. Of the companies' objection, he said: "The argument was that we were limiting who these US companies can sell these chips to and therefore limiting the revenue of these companies. Nvidia's stock, prior to the tariffs at least, did very well and they've done just fine, because there's extraordinary demand for AI chips."[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On July 21, 2026, testifying before the [[House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]] at the hearing "25 Years After 9/11: Confronting the Next Generation of Threats," Buchanan described himself as "a professor at Johns Hopkins University, the author of four books on cybersecurity and AI, and an outside advisor to AI and cybersecurity companies, such as Anthropic." He told the committee that the United States "must continue to take actions, such as denying advanced chips and chipmaking equipment to China, that ensure this lead endures." As evidence of AI's role in cyber operations he cited Anthropic's report of November 2025 that "a Chinese state-sponsored group had used its Claude model to run a largely automated cyber-espionage campaign against roughly thirty companies and government agencies across several countries, with the AI carrying out an estimated 80-90 percent of the tactical operation on its own," a [[Google]] report that Russian military intelligence had deployed malware in [[Ukraine]] that "uses AI mid-operation to write its own attack commands," and Anthropic's August 2025 exposure of a criminal extortion operation. He cited Anthropic's statement that "the vast majority of its production code is written by AI but overseen by humans," and told the committee that AI "will also raise new and grave concerns in areas as diverse as cybersecurity, biology, and accidental loss of control."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Center for Security and Emerging Technology, "Ben Buchanan," staff biography and related publications. https://cset.georgetown.edu/staff/ben-buchanan/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Schmad, Robert. "Documents show how a tech-connected nonprofit shaped Biden-era AI policy." *Washington Examiner,* April 17, 2026. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/investigations/4532389/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, "Ben Buchanan," faculty biography, archived October 10, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20251010173145/https://sais.jhu.edu/users/bbuchan8
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Buchanan, Ben. Testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, "25 Years After 9/11: Confronting the Next Generation of Threats," July 21, 2026. https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/119472/witnesses/HHRG-119-IG00-Wstate-BuchananB-20260721.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Combs, Cody. "'Nvidia has done just fine': Former Biden AI adviser defends chip export policy." *The National,* April 7, 2025. https://www.thenationalnews.com/future/technology/2025/04/07/chip-exports-trump-biden-uae/
|
||||||
67
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Benazir Bhutto.md
Normal file
67
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Benazir Bhutto.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Political Figure"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Pakistan
|
||||||
|
- PakistanPeoplesParty
|
||||||
|
- Assassination
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Benazir
|
||||||
|
summary: "Daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People's Party and twice prime minister of Pakistan, assassinated at a Rawalpindi election rally on December 27, 2007."
|
||||||
|
died: 2007-12-27
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: relative_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Zulfikar Ali Bhutto]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "daughter"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: spouse_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Asif Ali Zardari]]"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Pakistan]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "prime minister, first term"
|
||||||
|
start: 1988
|
||||||
|
end: 1990
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Pakistan]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "prime minister, second term"
|
||||||
|
start: 1993
|
||||||
|
end: 1996
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Pakistan People's Party]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "leader"
|
||||||
|
end: 2007-12-27
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Benazir Bhutto was the daughter of [[Zulfikar Ali Bhutto]], the [[Pakistan|Pakistani]] prime minister whom [[Zia ul-Haq]] deposed in 1977 and hanged in 1979, and the leader of his [[Pakistan People's Party]] (PPP). She was prime minister from 1988 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1996, the first woman to head the government of an Islamic state, and was dismissed twice by the president on corruption charges. She was killed in [[Rawalpindi]] on December 27, 2007, as she left an election rally.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Opposition to Zia
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
She and her mother visited her father in Rawalpindi jail at 11:30 on the morning of April 3, 1979, without knowing the day or hour of his execution, and she spent the night that followed confined and apart from him; he was hanged shortly after two the next morning.[^3] She returned to Pakistan in April 1986 after two years of self-imposed exile, vowing to remove Zia and restore democracy; hundreds of thousands of supporters met her, but she did not gather enough support to topple him. On August 17, 1988, the day Zia died, she filed a petition in the [[Supreme Court of Pakistan]] asking that the elections he had called for November 16 be held on a party basis. Told of the crash that killed him, she said: "Life and death are in God's hands and we should accept it as such. There were apprehensions that martial law might have been imposed after the death of Zia, but the constitutional path has been followed and that augurs well for the country."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Governments
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The acting president who announced Zia's death, [[Ghulam Ishaq Khan]], had been deputy defense minister under her father and Zia's minister of finance from 1977 to 1984.[^1] He became president after Zia, having served, according to the [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate report]], as chairman of the BCCI Foundation in Pakistan throughout the 1980s. She became prime minister later in 1988.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
She ordered the arrest of General [[Fazle Haq]], the former governor of the North-West Frontier Province, on drug charges; the journalists [[Jonathan Beaty]] and [[S. C. Gwynne]] wrote that she meant it as a demonstration of action against the drug trade and that the charges disappeared after the generals removed her from power.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Return and Assassination
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
She spent five years in prison and later lived outside Pakistan, where she faced corruption charges. In October 2007 she returned under a power-sharing agreement with President [[Pervez Musharraf]], who had granted an amnesty covering the court cases against her; on the day of her arrival a double suicide attack on her motorcade through [[Karachi]] killed about 130 people. In 2006 she had formed an alliance with another former prime minister, [[Nawaz Sharif]].[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On December 27, 2007, after addressing a rally in Rawalpindi's Liaqat Bagh park ahead of elections set for January 8, she was shot in the neck and chest as her convoy left by the rear gate onto Murree Road, and the gunman then detonated a bomb. At least 20 other people died. She was pronounced dead at Rawalpindi General Hospital at 18:16 local time. It was the second suicide attack against her in recent months. Musharraf declared three days of mourning; Sharif announced that his party would boycott the elections and called on Musharraf to resign. Protests in the PPP's home province of [[Sindh]] left at least 11 dead, four of them in Karachi, where more than 100 cars were burned. Her husband, [[Asif Ali Zardari]], flew in from [[Dubai]] to escort her coffin, which was flown to [[Sukkur]] for burial in her home town, [[Larkana]].[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
She was educated at [[Harvard University|Harvard]] and [[Oxford University|Oxford]].[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Barnetson, Denholm. "President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel and...," United Press International, August 17, 1988. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1988/08/17/President-Mohammad-Zia-ul-Haq-US-Ambassador-Arnold-Raphel-and/3467587793600/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Benazir Bhutto killed in attack," BBC News, December 27, 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7161590.stm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Aziz, Shaikh. "A leaf from history: The prime minister is hanged," *Dawn*, February 1, 2015. https://www.dawn.com/news/1160422
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 5, "BCCI's Relationship with Foreign Governments, Central Banks, and International Organizations," section "Pakistan." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/05foreign.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 75.
|
||||||
68
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Brian Chau.md
Normal file
68
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Brian Chau.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAccelerationism
|
||||||
|
- AIPolicy
|
||||||
|
- Lobbying
|
||||||
|
- Journalism
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
summary: "Canadian olympiad mathematician who founded the anti-regulation AI think tank Alliance for the Future, left it in 2025, then founded Effort, a publication investigating Coefficient Giving's funding of journalists and policy staff."
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Alliance for the Future]]"
|
||||||
|
fn: 4
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Alliance for the Future]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "executive director"
|
||||||
|
end: 2025-03-05
|
||||||
|
fn: 6
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Effort News]]"
|
||||||
|
fn: 8
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Effort News]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "founder and chief executive"
|
||||||
|
fn: 8
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Brian Chau represented [[Canada]] at the 2017 [[International Olympiad in Informatics]], held in [[Tehran]] from July 28 to August 4, 2017, and won a gold medal, placing 17th of 304 contestants.[^1] The [[University of Waterloo]]'s Faculty of Mathematics, whose staff led the Canadian team, reported that he was "just about to begin Grade 10 at Woburn Collegiate Institute in [[Toronto]]."[^2] [[Alliance for the Future]] later described him as having "a background in Pure Mathematics," as "a former machine learning engineer" and as the author of the newsletter *AI Pluralism*, published on his Substack *From the New World*.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Alliance for the Future
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Chau founded and directed Alliance for the Future (AFTF), which *[[Transformer]]* called a "new AI think tank" in May 2024.[^4] AFTF describes itself as a [[Washington, D.C.]] nonprofit and "a coalition of entrepreneurs, technologists, and policy experts who believe that artificial intelligence will transform our world for the better," formed "to oppose the escalating panic around AI." Its chairman is the computer scientist [[Perry Metzger]]; its board members are [[Jon Askonas]], an assistant professor of politics at the [[Catholic University of America]] and a senior fellow at the [[Foundation for American Innovation]], and [[Guillaume Verdon]], a founder of the [[Effective Accelerationism]] movement and founder and chief executive of the AI hardware company [[Extropic AI|Extropic]]. The intellectual property lawyer [[Van Lindberg]] is its distinguished scholar and [[Neil Siefring]], a former senior staffer in the [[House of Representatives|U.S. House of Representatives]], its senior fellow.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2024 AFTF campaigned against California Senator [[Scott Wiener]]'s AI bill, [[SB 1047]]. *Transformer* wrote that the campaign made "several false claims," among them that the bill would create an "unaccountable Frontier Model Division ... with police powers" able to "throw model developers in jail for the thoughtcrime of doing AI research," and that Wiener had rejected Chau's claim that the bill had been "fast tracked."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On February 18, 2025, the firm Hilltop Advocacy of [[Rancho Mission Viejo, California]], whose contact was Erin Siefring, registered under the [[Lobbying Disclosure Act]] to lobby for AFTF, naming Neil Siefring as its lobbyist. Its six quarterly reports from the first quarter of 2025 through the second quarter of 2026 each disclosed 20,000 dollars in income from AFTF and each listed a single issue: "Artificial intelligence and federal preemption."[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On March 5, 2025, Chau announced that he was stepping down as executive director. "Of the major regulatory challenges to AI we initially set out to face, almost all have been defeated," he wrote. "I'm tired of winning." He wrote that AFTF had "played an important role in defeating SB 1047, ensuring the [[National Defense Authorization Act]] did not threaten open source AI, advocating for the repeal of the Biden Executive Order on AI, advocating for the revision of [[Office of Management and Budget|OMB]] memoranda limiting public sector AI use, and charting out a strategy for AI diplomacy."[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Transformer investigation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On May 23, 2024, *Transformer*, the in-house publication of the [[Tarbell Center for AI Journalism]], which stated in 2026 that "as of 2025, the majority of our funding originates with a single funder, [[Open Philanthropy|Coefficient Giving]],"[^7] published an article by [[Shakeel Hashim]] stating that Chau "has a history of expressing racist and sexist remarks." Hashim wrote that in a January 2024 post about AI deepfakes Chau had written "George Floyd was a deepfake," adding that [[George Floyd]]'s "life is a rounding error when determining the fakeness of the video," and that in December 2023 he had joked about a "dark comedy version of Ratatouille where the Harvard president is a [sic] affirmative action hire black woman" who would "beg a white guy to feed her answers through a brain implant," when Harvard's president was [[Claudine Gay]]. Hashim quoted posts in which Chau called single women "leftover," said a "pretty large subset of [Gen Z] women are literally undateable," called diversity "often used as a euphemism for anti-white and anti-male bias," described the [[United States]] as a "Black Supremacist country," and wrote that "mentally ill people stole 'woman.'" Hashim wrote that Chau had hosted [[Curtis Yarvin]] and [[Richard Hanania]] on his podcast, calling Hanania "a brilliant analyst and policy thinker" and Yarvin's episode "among the best," and that Chau had referred to other journalists as "retards." Chau did not respond to *Transformer*'s request for comment. The article noted that Chau had been featured in *[[Politico]]* and endorsed by [[Adam Thierer]] of the [[R Street Institute]], adding that "there is no suggestion that Politico or Thierer knew about Chau's remarks," and that Verdon, on AFTF's board, "has said that he is indifferent to the idea of human extinction."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Effort
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Chau then founded *Effort*, published by Effort News, Inc., and serves as its founder and chief executive. Describing its origins, Chau wrote: "It all started when I was experimenting with using AI for financial auditing," and "I founded Effort on the principle that no diligence will be spared for an investigation." It states that it is "a subscriber-funded publication" whose subscribers "do not receive control over findings, subjects or publication decisions."[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On September 2, 2026, *Effort* published "How [[Effective Altruism]] Bought the Media," which stated that all six participants in a *[[The Guardian|Guardian]]* article on the forecast "[[AI 2027]]," including the reporter and the publisher, were paid by Coefficient Giving, [[Jaan Tallinn]]'s [[Survival and Flourishing Fund]] or [[Effective Ventures]]; that Coefficient paid the reporter through the Tarbell Fellowship and had given the *Guardian* more than 3 million dollars; that "Coefficient pays the salaries of two dozen journalists at major news outlets through the Tarbell Fellowship program"; and that "58/100" of the *[[Time (magazine)|Time]] 100* profiles were written by Tarbell-paid journalists.[^9] Chau promoted it on X the same day: "BREAKING: AI Doomers Are Buying Potemkin Articles."[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On September 19, 2026, *Effort* published "Effective Altruism is Buying Political Staff," written in the first person, which stated that an archived Open Philanthropy grant table "shows a concerted 'placement' strategy by Open Philanthropy to put their hand-picked employees in US and UK government offices," and that "multiple sources tell me they continue to employ this strategy within the Trump administration." It stated that [[Dustin Moskovitz]] had been the third-largest Democratic donor in 2020 and the second-largest in 2024, and [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] the third-largest in 2022; that "EA fellowships have placed over 50 staffers in Congress and the administrative branch," drawing on biographies from the [[Horizon Institute for Public Service]], the [[Institute for Progress]] and the Foundation for American Innovation; and that several senior employees of the [[AI Security Institute|UK AI Safety Institute]] had previously been employed or funded by Moskovitz or Bankman-Fried. It quoted an unnamed senior staffer in a Republican senator's office on a Horizon fellow: "He went to Democrat policy meetings, and tried to hand Democrat policies to [the Senator he worked for]."[^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: International Olympiad in Informatics, "Brian Chau," results statistics. https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/6182
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Pretti, J. P. "IOI 2017." University of Waterloo, Faculty of Mathematics, August 3, 2017. https://uwaterloo.ca/math/news/ioi-2017
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Alliance for the Future, "About Us." https://www.affuture.org/about
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Hashim, Shakeel. "Alliance for the Future director Brian Chau has history of racist, sexist remarks." *Transformer,* May 23, 2024. https://www.transformernews.ai/p/alliance-for-the-future-director
|
||||||
|
[^5]: U.S. Senate, Lobbying Disclosure Act database, filings by Hilltop Advocacy for client Alliance for the Future: registration of February 18, 2025, and quarterly reports for 2025 Q1 through 2026 Q2. https://lda.senate.gov/api/v1/filings/?client_name=Alliance%20for%20the%20Future ; registration https://lda.gov/filings/public/filing/cb26cf73-865a-4bc5-bbd1-b6434f255b89/print/ ; 2026 Q2 report https://lda.gov/filings/public/filing/f56498bc-b77f-4c3e-954e-a123d0beee38/print/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Chau, Brian. "I'm Tired of Winning." *From the New World,* March 5, 2025. https://www.fromthenew.world/p/im-tired-of-winning
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, "Ethics and Standards policies," February 20, 2026. https://www.tarbellcenter.org/ethics-and-standards
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Effort News, "About." https://www.effort.news/about
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Effort Investigations Desk. "How Effective Altruism Bought the Media." *Effort,* September 2, 2026. https://www.effort.news/tarbell
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Chau, Brian (@brianchau57). Post on X, September 2, 2026. https://x.com/brianchau57/status/2095128785955987698
|
||||||
|
[^11]: Effort. "Effective Altruism is Buying Political Staff." September 19, 2026. https://www.effort.news/aisi
|
||||||
|
|
@ -1,21 +1,84 @@
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
category: "Law Enforcement & Legal"
|
category: "Law Enforcement & Legal"
|
||||||
created: 2024-04-25
|
created: 2024-04-25
|
||||||
updated: 2026-05-01
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
tags:
|
tags:
|
||||||
- Person
|
- Person
|
||||||
- OctoberSurprise
|
- OctoberSurprise
|
||||||
- Lawyer
|
- Lawyer
|
||||||
summary: "E. Lawrence Barcella, Jr. served as chief counsel for the House October Surprise Task Force from 1992 to 1993, reportedly urging a three-month extension of the investigation when substantial new evidence arrived in the final weeks, a request that Task Force co-chair Lee Hamilton declined."
|
- Prosecutor
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Lawrence Barcella
|
||||||
|
- Larry Barcella
|
||||||
|
- E. Lawrence Barcella
|
||||||
|
- Ernest Lawrence Barcella Jr.
|
||||||
|
born: 1945-05-23
|
||||||
|
died: 2010-11-04
|
||||||
|
location: "Washington, D.C."
|
||||||
|
summary: "Former federal prosecutor who built the case against Edwin Wilson, coordinated BCCI's defense after its 1988 Tampa indictment, and was chief counsel of the House October Surprise Task Force in 1992 and 1993."
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Department of Justice]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Assistant United States Attorney, District of Columbia; deputy chief, major crimes division"
|
||||||
|
end: 1986
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: investigated
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Edwin Wilson]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "prosecutor who gathered the evidence and arranged the 1982 arrest"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Lyn Nofziger]]"
|
||||||
|
start: 1988
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "defense coordinator, Tampa money-laundering case"
|
||||||
|
start: 1988
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: investigated
|
||||||
|
with: "[[October Surprise]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "chief counsel, House October Surprise Task Force"
|
||||||
|
start: 1992
|
||||||
|
end: 1993
|
||||||
|
fn: 5
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
[[E. Lawrence Barcella]], Jr. is a Washington, D.C. attorney and former federal prosecutor. He served as chief counsel for the House [[October Surprise]] Task Force, the bipartisan investigative panel co-chaired by Rep. [[Lee Hamilton]] (D-Indiana) and Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Illinois) that investigated allegations that the [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] campaign had secretly negotiated with [[Iran]] to delay the 1980 hostage release.
|
E. Lawrence Barcella, Jr. was a [[Washington, D.C.]] attorney and former federal prosecutor. He served as chief counsel for the House [[October Surprise]] Task Force, the bipartisan investigative panel co-chaired by Rep. [[Lee Hamilton]] (D-Indiana) and Rep. [[Henry Hyde]] (R-Illinois) that investigated allegations that the [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] campaign had secretly negotiated with [[Iran]] to delay the 1980 hostage release. Before taking that post he had been one of the Washington lawyers of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI).
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Prosecutor
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Ernest Lawrence Barcella Jr. was born in Washington on May 23, 1945, to Ernest and Louise Berniere Barcella; his father was a reporter and news executive for [[United Press International]]. He graduated from [[Dartmouth College|Dartmouth]] in 1967 and received his law degree from [[Vanderbilt University|Vanderbilt]] in 1970, and soon afterwards was hired as a clerk in the United States Attorney's office in Washington.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
His first major international case was the government's initial investigation of the September 21, 1976, car-bomb assassination in Washington of [[Orlando Letelier]], the former Chilean foreign minister, and his aide [[Ronni Moffitt|Ronni Karpen Moffitt]], which was traced to the Chilean intelligence service [[DINA]]; the DINA agent [[Michael Townley]] pleaded guilty in the [[United States]] in 1978. With a fellow prosecutor, [[Carol Bruce]], Barcella spent four years gathering evidence against [[Edwin Wilson]], a former [[Central Intelligence Agency]] operative who had supplied the Libyan government of [[Muammar Qaddafi]] with 21 tons of C-4 plastic explosive and had fled to [[Libya]]. In 1982, when Barcella was deputy chief of the major crimes division, Wilson was lured to the [[Dominican Republic]] by a former associate who proposed a deal involving support for the clandestine war against the government of [[Nicaragua]], and was arrested on arrival in [[Santo Domingo]]. Wilson then plotted to have Barcella and Bruce killed. He was sentenced to 52 years; in 2003 a federal judge in [[Texas]] vacated his conviction for selling explosives to Libya, ruling that prosecutors had used false testimony. The case was the subject of the 1986 book *Manhunt* by [[Peter Maas]]. Barcella also worked on the inquiries into the 1983 bombings of the American embassies in [[Beirut]] and [[Kuwait]] and the Marine barracks in Beirut, and into the 1985 hijacking of the *[[Achille Lauro]]*.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He left federal service in 1986. In private practice he conducted internal investigations for corporations and defended clients charged with securities fraud, antitrust violations, tax evasion and money laundering. His client [[Lyn Nofziger]], a political adviser to President Reagan, was convicted of illegal lobbying in 1988; an appeals court overturned the conviction the following year.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Senate subcommittee of Senator [[John Kerry]] listed Barcella with [[Lawrence Wechsler]] and [[Raymond Banoun]] as the former federal prosecutors in BCCI's Washington "cadre of professional help," which also included [[Clark Clifford]]. He was brought onto the case shortly after BCCI's indictment in [[Tampa, Florida|Tampa]] in October 1988; Wechsler, with whom he had worked at the [[Department of Justice]], recruited him "to coordinate the bank's defense." The report stated that "the full extent of Barcella's activities on behalf of BCCI remains unknown" and recorded the following. In 1988 he tried to persuade the lead partner of his firm, former Senator [[Paul Laxalt]], to meet BCCI's chief executive, [[Swaleh Naqvi]], in [[London]] and to lobby for the bank on Capitol Hill; the subcommittee could not determine what, if anything, Laxalt did for BCCI. In 1989 and 1990 he joined [[John Vardaman]] of [[Williams & Connolly]] and [[Robert Altman]] in warning the journalist [[Larry Gurwin]], then writing about BCCI and [[First American Bank|First American]] for *Regardie's* magazine, that it would be improper to link the two institutions, and called Gurwin's allegations "absurd." In early 1990, after members of Congress criticized the bank's plea bargain as too lenient, he met Senator [[Dennis DeConcini]], one of the critics, "in an effort to persuade him that BCCI was not the corrupt institution that he and others had claimed."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In mid-December 1989 Barcella and Wechsler represented BCCI in the meetings with the Tampa prosecutors at which the bank offered to plead guilty to money laundering in return for an end to its exposure for all offenses then known to the government; the agreement was reached in January 1990. After the United States Attorney in Tampa, [[Robert Genzman]], told Florida regulators on January 31, 1990, that he took no position on BCCI's state license, "BCCI's lawyers, principally former federal prosecutors Lawrence Wechsler, Lawrence Barcella, and Raymond Banoun, dissatisfied with this result, decided to talk to others in the Justice Department to bring about a different result." Two weeks later [[Charles Saphos]] of the Criminal Division wrote to the Florida comptroller, [[Gerald Lewis]], asking that BCCI be permitted to operate. Genzman's first assistant, [[Greg Kehoe]], testified that "[they] tried to go behind my back."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Antigua
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In April 1989 a network of Israeli arms traffickers operating out of [[Miami]] shipped 500 Israeli-made machine guns through the Caribbean island of [[Antigua and Barbuda|Antigua]] for members of the [[Medellin Cartel|Medellin cartel]]; one was later used in the assassination of the Colombian presidential candidate [[Luis Carlos Galan]]. The principals included [[Yair Klein]], [[Pinchas Shahar]] and [[Maurice Sarfati]]. The government of Antigua commissioned an investigation of the affair from Barcella, which, according to the Senate report, "left many questions unanswered." The shipment had grown out of a "melon farm" set up in Antigua in 1983 by Sarfati and financed by a two million dollar loan from the [[Overseas Private Investment Corporation]], granted partly on financial references supplied by BCCI's Miami branch.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### October Surprise Task Force
|
### October Surprise Task Force
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The Task Force operated from 1992 through January 1993, conducting over 250 interviews. Barcella and his staff directed the investigative work and managed the documentary record. As the investigation drew toward its close, Barcella reportedly requested that Hamilton extend the probe by three months, citing substantial new evidence that had arrived in the final weeks of the investigation. Hamilton declined the request, a decision that Barcella and others subsequently cited as a significant limitation on the Task Force's completeness.[^1]
|
The Task Force operated from 1992 through January 1993, conducting over 250 interviews. Barcella and his staff directed the investigative work and managed the documentary record. As the investigation drew toward its close, Barcella reportedly requested that Hamilton extend the probe by three months, citing substantial new evidence that had arrived in the final weeks of the investigation. Hamilton declined the request, a decision that Barcella and others subsequently cited as a significant limitation on the Task Force's completeness.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The Task Force's final report, released January 1993, concluded there was "no credible evidence" of a secret deal. Barcella's request to extend the investigation was not reflected in the public report, and only emerged through subsequent reporting by journalist [[Robert Parry]], who obtained information about the Task Force's internal deliberations.[^1]
|
The Task Force's final report, released January 1993, concluded there was "no credible evidence" of a secret deal. Barcella's request to extend the investigation was not reflected in the public report, and only emerged through subsequent reporting by journalist [[Robert Parry]], who obtained information about the Task Force's internal deliberations.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Senate BCCI report, issued in December 1992, noted that Barcella had been hired by the House Foreign Affairs Committee to investigate the October Surprise allegations, and that Greg Kehoe was on leave from the Justice Department to assist him; Kehoe was "the Justice Department official with whom BCCi lawyers, including Barcella, negotiated the bank's plea agreement in Tampa."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Death
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Barcella died of bladder cancer on November 4, 2010, at a hospital near his home in Washington, at 65. He was survived by his wife of 40 years, Mary Lashley, from whom he was separated, his daughter, Laura Barcella, and his sister, Andrea Kelleher.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[^1]: U.S. House of Representatives, October Surprise Task Force. *Joint Report of the Task Force to Investigate Certain Allegations Concerning the Holding of American Hostages by Iran in 1980*. 102nd Congress, 2nd Session, January 1993; Parry, Robert. "Inside the October Surprise Cover-up." *Consortium News*, July 12, 2011.
|
[^1]: Hevesi, Dennis. "E. Lawrence Barcella, Prosecutor of Terrorism Cases, Dies at 65." *The New York Times,* November 17, 2010 (corrected November 23, 2010). https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/us/18barcella.html (archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20240709144843/https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/us/18barcella.html)
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 17, "BCCI's Lawyers and Lobbyists." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/17law.htm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 8, "BCCI and Law Enforcement: The Justice Department and the U.S. Customs Service." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/08just.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 4, "BCCI's Criminality." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: U.S. House of Representatives, October Surprise Task Force. *Joint Report of the Task Force to Investigate Certain Allegations Concerning the Holding of American Hostages by Iran in 1980*. 102nd Congress, 2nd Session, January 1993; Parry, Robert. "Inside the October Surprise Cover-up." *Consortium News*, July 12, 2011.
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
61
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Jeff Alstott.md
Normal file
61
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Jeff Alstott.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
aliases:
|
||||||
|
- "Jeffrey Alstott"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- RAND
|
||||||
|
- IARPA
|
||||||
|
- NationalSecurityCouncil
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
- AIGovernance
|
||||||
|
- OpenPhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
summary: "IARPA program manager and National Security Council technology director who became founding director of RAND's Technology and Security Policy center and helped shape the compute thresholds in Biden's AI executive order."
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "program manager"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[National Science Foundation]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "expert; ran a program on technology forecasting"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[National Security Council]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "director for technology and national security"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Office of Science and Technology Policy]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "assistant director for technology competition and risks"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[RAND Corporation]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "senior information scientist; founding director of the Center for Technology and Security Policy"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Jeff Alstott holds a Ph.D. from the [[University of Cambridge]], where he studied complex networks, and an M.B.A., a B.S. and a B.A. from [[Indiana University]]. He worked in academia for the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]], the [[Singapore University of Technology and Design]], the [[World Bank]] and the [[University of Chicago]], publishing research on animal behavior, computational neuroscience, complex networks, design science, statistical methods and science and technology forecasting.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Intelligence community and White House
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Alstott was a program manager at the [[Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity]] (IARPA), with a portfolio covering artificial intelligence, analytic methods, biosecurity, and science and technology forecasting. He "helped lead intelligence working groups on AI intelligence collection and analysis, and was part of an award-winning team on technology counterintelligence." At the [[National Science Foundation]] he ran a program on technology forecasting and improving returns on research investment. In the [[White House]] he was director for technology and national security at the [[National Security Council]] and assistant director for technology competition and risks at the [[Office of Science and Technology Policy]].[^1] *[[Politico]]* described him as having worked in the White House alongside [[Jason Matheny]], the former IARPA director.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### RAND
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Alstott moved to the [[RAND Corporation]], whose president and chief executive since July 2022 has been Matheny,[^3] as a senior information scientist and founding director of its Center for Technology and Security Policy (TASP), which "performs policy R&D on technology competition and risks." He is also a professor of policy analysis at the [[Pardee RAND Graduate School|RAND School of Public Policy]].[^1] [[Open Philanthropy]] gave RAND 5.5 million dollars in April 2023 and 10.5 million dollars in October 2023, in each case "to be spent at the discretion of RAND president and CEO Jason Matheny."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In an email of April 19, 2023 to members of the [[Omidyar Network]], Alstott circulated a proposal for licensing advanced AI that he said he had shared with about "40 Hill staffers of both parties," asking recipients to "keep this document and attribution off the public internet." A RAND spokesperson, Jeffrey Hiday, confirmed the email to *Politico*.[^2] On September 19, 2023, Alstott testified before the [[Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee|Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs]] Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight, in testimony RAND published as "Preparing the Federal Response to Advanced Technologies."[^1] According to *Politico*, RAND personnel including Alstott helped draft the reporting requirements in Section 4 of President [[Joe Biden]]'s executive order on AI of October 30, 2023, which set the reporting threshold for advanced models at more than 10^26 operations, the figure Alstott had proposed, and all six of the recommendations he made at the September hearing appeared in Section 4 "in some fashion." Hours before the order was released, Alstott emailed RAND colleagues what he called "a version [of the order] from a week ago." Hiday confirmed the email.[^5] In a letter to Matheny of September 2024, Senator [[Ted Cruz]] wrote that the order "captures all six of the policy recommendations a senior RAND official provided in congressional testimony last year."[^6] Alstott was a co-author of RAND's report "Securing AI Model Weights: Preventing Theft and Misuse of Frontier Models" (May 2024).[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In an October 2025 interview with *[[ChinaTalk]]*, whose hosts [[Jordan Schneider]] and Phoebe Chow introduced him as "the fairy godfather of D.C. AI policy," Alstott described TASP as "a team of between 50 and 100 people" whose "mission is tech competition and tech risks. It's beat China and don't die. That has predominantly meant frontier AI issues." He described RAND's classified work as "a central institutional comparative advantage," naming the "Overmatch Brief," a classified analysis of a [[Taiwan]] conflict, then in its third version, as "the briefing that goes to the White House when the White House asks, 'All right, how would this happen?'" He said he had come to RAND "nearly three years ago to create a thriving, vibrant ecosystem of policy and technology R&D on frontier AI issues and how they affect national security," and that "within a few months, I'll be stepping down as director of the TASP center." He gave his "median prediction for an AGI that can do every economically and militarily relevant task as well as a human" as "the early 2040s."[^7] By September 2026 RAND listed him as the center's former founding director.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: RAND Corporation, "Jeff Alstott," staff profile and publications list, archived September 17, 2026. http://web.archive.org/web/20260917062102/https://www.rand.org/about/people/a/alstott_jeffrey.html
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Bordelon, Brendan. "How a billionaire-backed network of AI advisers took over Washington." *Politico,* October 13, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20250902172514/https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/13/open-philanthropy-funding-ai-policy-00121362
|
||||||
|
[^3]: RAND Corporation, "Jason Matheny," staff biography. https://www.rand.org/about/people/m/matheny_jason.html
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Open Philanthropy, "RAND Corporation, Emerging Technology Initiatives," gift of October 2023, with the related April 2023 gift, archived January 22, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250122041729/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/rand-corporation-emerging-technology-initiatives/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Bordelon, Brendan. "Think tank tied to tech billionaires played key role in Biden's AI order." *Politico,* December 15, 2023, archived February 11, 2026. http://web.archive.org/web/20260211112614/https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/15/billionaire-backed-think-tank-played-key-role-in-bidens-ai-order-00132128
|
||||||
|
[^6]: U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, "Sen. Cruz Sounds Alarm Over Industry Role in AI Czar Harris's Censorship Agenda," September 16, 2024, quoting Cruz's letter to Matheny. https://www.commerce.senate.gov/press/rep/release/sen-cruz-sounds-alarm-over-industry-role-in-ai-czar-harriss-censorship-agenda/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Schneider, Jordan, and Phoebe Chow. "RAND's Jeff Alstott on Facts and Policymaking." *ChinaTalk,* October 6, 2025. https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-facts-matter-for-tech-policymaking
|
||||||
53
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Jonathan Beaty.md
Normal file
53
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Jonathan Beaty.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Authors & Journalists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Journalist
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- TimeMagazine
|
||||||
|
- InvestigativeJournalism
|
||||||
|
- 1990s
|
||||||
|
summary: "Time journalist who with S. C. Gwynne wrote the July 29, 1991 cover story describing BCCI's 'black network' and the 1993 book The Outlaw Bank."
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Time]]"
|
||||||
|
start: 1991
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: investigated
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]"
|
||||||
|
start: 1991
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: partner_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[S. C. Gwynne]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "co-author of the 1991 Time cover story on BCCI and of The Outlaw Bank"
|
||||||
|
start: 1991
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Jonathan Beaty is an American journalist who, with [[S. C. Gwynne]], wrote the *[[Time]]* cover story of July 29, 1991, "B.C.C.I.: The Dirtiest Bank of All," published after regulators in July 1991 closed the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI), and the book *The Outlaw Bank*, published by [[Random House]] in 1993.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### "The Dirtiest Bank of All"
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The article carried the byline "Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne/New York" and a deck describing "How B.C.C.I. and its black network became a financial supermarket for crooks and spies" and "how the U.S. is trying to cover up its role." It opened with two unnamed sources. A former senior officer of the bank said: "I could tell you what you want to know, but I must worry about my wife and family," adding that "they could be killed." A Manhattan investigator said: "We better not talk about this over the phone. We've found some bugs in offices that haven't been put there by law enforcement."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The story called BCCI "the $20 billion rogue empire that regulators in 62 countries shut down early this month," and stated that "From interviews with sources close to B.C.C.I., TIME has pieced together a portrait of a clandestine division of the bank called the 'black network,'" which it described as a 1,500-employee unit "operating primarily out of the bank's offices in [[Karachi]], [[Pakistan]]," that used "sophisticated spy equipment and techniques, along with bribery, extortion, kidnapping and even, by some accounts, murder." It reported, citing its own earlier reporting that month, that the [[National Security Council]] had used BCCI "to funnel money for the Iran-contra deals" and that the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] "maintained accounts in B.C.C.I. for covert operations," and that investigators had said the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] kept "a slush-fund account" at the bank.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A self-described former operative, given the pseudonym "Mustafa," told the magazine: "I was recruited by the black network in the early 1980s." He described training in Pakistan and an operation of April 1989 in which crates from a Colombian container ship were unloaded at Karachi and flown out aboard an unmarked 707 to [[Czechoslovakia]] and then to the [[United States]], supervised by an American the operatives believed to be a CIA agent. The article quoted the Manhattan district attorney, [[Robert Morgenthau]]: "We have had no cooperation from the Justice Department since we first asked for records in March 1990. In fact they are impeding our investigation, and Justice Department representatives are asking witnesses not to cooperate with us." It also stated that the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]]'s main probe of BCCI was "being handled by a sole Assistant U.S. Attorney in [[Tampa, Florida|Tampa]], who has recently been assigned another major case," and that "one of B.C.C.I.'s Washington representatives distributed millions of dollars in payoffs to U.S. officials during the past decade."[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Senate Response
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The report of Senators [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]] to the [[Senate Foreign Relations Committee]] addressed the story directly, dating it "a Time magazine cover-story on BCCI on August 15, 1991." The report stated that "None of the BCCI officers interviewed by the Senate claimed to have knowledge of a 'black network' of intelligence operatives, arms dealers, drug traffickers, burglars, or assassins employed by BCCI," and that "They declared, to a person, that they did not believe such a network existed at the bank," though several suggested that a smaller team "carrying out Abedi's most secret missions" could have existed.[^4] The former United States Attorney in Miami, [[Dexter Lehtinen]], whose request to bring BCCI-related indictments in Miami was held back by the Justice Department until November 1991, told the subcommittee, implying that the reversal was the result of Congressional and media pressure: "There had been significant, Time Magazine and New York Times articles, very critical of the Department."[^5] See [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report]].
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Outlaw Bank
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*, by Beaty and Gwynne, was published by Random House in New York in 1993 (ISBN 0679413847). Its catalogued subjects are the corrupt practices of BCCI and of international finance, money laundering, bank failures and criminal investigation in the United States.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Beaty, Jonathan, and S. C. Gwynne. "B.C.C.I.: The Dirtiest Bank of All," *Time,* July 29, 1991. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,973481,00.html ; archive copy https://time.com/archive/6718229/b-c-c-i-the-dirtiest-bank-of-all/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Beaty, Jonathan, and S. C. Gwynne. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI.* New York: Random House, 1993. Internet Archive catalogue record, identifier outlawbank00jona. https://archive.org/details/outlawbank00jona
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Beaty, Jonathan, and S. C. Gwynne. "B.C.C.I.: The Dirtiest Bank of All," *Time,* July 29, 1991, p. 8 of the online edition. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,973481-8,00.html
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 4, "BCCI's Criminality." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 8, "BCCI and Law Enforcement: The Justice Department and the US Customs Service." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/08just.htm
|
||||||
26
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Mark Grobmyer.md
Normal file
26
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Mark Grobmyer.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Law Enforcement & Legal"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Lawyer
|
||||||
|
- Arkansas
|
||||||
|
- ClintonFundraising
|
||||||
|
summary: "Lawyer with Arnold Grobmyer & Haley and godson of Jackson Stephens who did legal work for Stephens Inc., sat on the Clinton-Gore Arkansas Finance Council in 1992 and introduced Clinton to Al Gore in 1988."
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Stephens Inc.]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "outside counsel with Arnold Grobmyer & Haley"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Mark Grobmyer is a lawyer with the firm of [[Arnold Grobmyer & Haley]]. He is a godson of [[Jackson Stephens]] and often did legal work for [[Stephens Inc.]][^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Clinton and Gore
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Grobmyer was a law student at the [[University of Arkansas]] while [[Bill Clinton]] taught there. A longtime friend of [[Al Gore|Albert Gore]] and [[Tipper Gore]], he introduced Clinton to Gore in 1988. During the 1992 presidential election he was a member of the Clinton-Gore Arkansas Finance Council. He and his wife, Libby, were profiled in a 1996 report by the [[Center for Public Integrity]] on overnight guests of the Clinton [[White House]]; he did not respond to the Center's inquiries.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Ebrahim, Margaret. "Fat Cat Hotel." Center for Public Integrity, August 1, 1996. https://publicintegrity.org/accountability/fat-cat-hotel/ (archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20260211100300/https://publicintegrity.org/accountability/fat-cat-hotel/)
|
||||||
88
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Robert Genzman.md
Normal file
88
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Robert Genzman.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,88 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "BCCI Scandal"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- Prosecutor
|
||||||
|
- IranContra
|
||||||
|
- OperationCChase
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Robert W. Genzman
|
||||||
|
summary: "United States Attorney in Tampa from 1988 to 1993 whose office took BCCI's 1990 guilty plea to money laundering, a settlement the Kerry-Brown Senate report criticized for ending the prosecution of the bank."
|
||||||
|
born: 1951-09-13
|
||||||
|
died: 1998-05
|
||||||
|
location: "Orlando, Florida"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Department of Justice]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "United States Attorney, Middle District of Florida"
|
||||||
|
start: 1988-09
|
||||||
|
end: 1993-06
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: prosecuted
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Tampa money-laundering case and 1990 plea agreement"
|
||||||
|
start: 1988
|
||||||
|
end: 1990
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[House Select Committee on Assassinations]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "staff counsel"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: investigated
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Iran-Contra Affair]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Republican minority counsel, House Iran-Contra committee"
|
||||||
|
start: 1987
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Robert W. Genzman was the United States Attorney for the [[Middle District of Florida]], based in [[Tampa, Florida|Tampa]], from September 1988 to June 1993. His office prosecuted the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) and its officers in the money-laundering case that grew out of the [[U.S. Customs|Customs]] undercover operation [[Operation C-Chase]], and in January 1990 accepted the bank's plea of guilty.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Genzman held degrees from the [[University of Pennsylvania]] and the [[London School of Economics]] and a 1977 law degree from [[Cornell University]]. After college he was a staff counsel to the [[House Select Committee on Assassinations]], which investigated the killing of President [[John F. Kennedy]]. He worked as a congressional aide and was a prosecutor in the United States Attorney's office in [[Orlando, Florida|Orlando]] from 1980 to 1983. He was in private practice when Representative [[Bill McCollum]] chose him in 1987 as a Republican minority counsel on the House committee that investigated the [[Iran-Contra Affair]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He succeeded [[Robert Merkle]] as United States Attorney in September 1988, after Merkle resigned to run for the Senate. Under Genzman the office doubled in size. He stepped down in June 1993, when President [[Bill Clinton]] replaced Republican appointees, and joined the Orlando law firm of [[Akerman, Senterfitt & Eidson]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### RICO
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1988 the Tampa office told the Customs Service that "probative evidence exists to establish corporate criminality against BCCI as an institution" and that "current plans for prosecution are to indict BCCI as an institution under the provisions of the RICO statutes." The [[Department of Justice]] did not approve a racketeering prosecution in the fall of 1988, and the case was brought as a narrower money-laundering indictment in October 1988. Genzman told the Senate subcommittee of Senator [[John Kerry]]: "Put simply, we believed that RICO charges would have added nothing, and would have greatly complicated the case. It is absolutely, untrue, as has been suggested, that the entire bank could have somehow been forfeited out the U.S. government had RICO charges been brought in Tampa. There was simply insufficient evidence to support such a sweeping international forfeiture."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The subcommittee's report replied that his "position also fails to take into account the obvious potential, if Justice had indeed decided to make a RICO case, of seeking plea agreements with the individual officers as a means of securing a broader RICO case against the bank itself in a superseding indictment."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Resources and Follow-Up
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Genzman testified that the prosecution had not been substantially impeded by a lack of resources, since BCCI had pleaded guilty, its officers had been convicted and the bank had paid a 14 million dollar forfeiture, then the largest imposed on a financial institution in a money-laundering case. He acknowledged that his office had been stretched by the complexity of the sting, by the "scorched earth" strategy of BCCI's lawyers, who "filed hundreds of motions and briefs on every imaginable subject," and by the transcription of some 2,000 taped conversations.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He told the subcommittee that "[I]t was never our intention to simply stop investigating BCCI after the first indictment." His assistant, [[Mark Jackowski]], told it that the grand jury investigation had been suspended "due to a lack of available leads and the press of the upcoming trial," a pause Jackowski calculated at thirteen months. The Customs undercover agent [[Robert Mazur]] testified that leads went unpursued, officers went uninterviewed and superseding indictments were not issued.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Plea Agreement
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In mid-December 1989 BCCI's lawyers, the former federal prosecutors [[Lawrence Wechsler|Lawrence H. Wechsler]] and [[E. Lawrence Barcella, Jr.]], met the Tampa prosecutors and offered a guilty plea by the bank to money laundering, with its cooperation, in return for an end to its criminal exposure for all offenses then known to the government. The bank agreed to a 14 million dollar forfeiture. Genzman testified: "We made that determination in the district ...[a]s a courtesy, we advised the Department of Justice of what we were about to do, and received no opposition." He listed his reasons, among them: "First, the Government secured the conviction of the bank, one of its principle objectives. Second, eliminating the corporation from the trial prevented a recurrence of a problem confronted in the 1986 case against the Bank of New England, where the corporation was convicted, but all the individual defendants were acquitted."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The report found that "Genzman's rationale, while understandable from a technical point of view, missed the underlying point. Long before the trial, the Tampa prosecutors had before them information that BCCI secretly owned First American, that BCCI's lawyers, Clark Clifford and Robert Altman, might well have committed crimes, and that BCCI itself might well be a host for criminality activity on a global basis." It named [[Amjad Awan]], [[Akbar Bilgrami]] and [[Nazir Chinoy]] among the Tampa defendants who could have supplied that information. Genzman testified that BCCI had cooperated during the seven-month trial of the individual defendants in 1990; the report stated that he "may not have been aware that while the bank was allegedly cooperating, it was also paying the astronomical lawyer's fees" of the defendants, which reached upwards of 20 million dollars, "providing for their housing, and working to insure that they could continue to stay silent about what they knew concerning the bank."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Of the 200 million dollar assessment later levied by the [[Federal Reserve Board|Federal Reserve]], he testified that those who used it as a measure of what the Justice Department should have obtained were "confusing apples with oranges."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Double Jeopardy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Genzman testified that the agreement contained "relatively standard language, committing the US Attorney's office for our district not to prosecute BCCI for any other Federal criminal offense then known to the government. . . It does not prevent the US Attorney in Tampa, or any other prosecutor, state or federal, from prosecuting any individual from the President of BCCI on down." His first assistant, [[Greg Kehoe]], said the question had been discussed at length within the Department. The United States Attorney in [[Miami]], [[Dexter Lehtinen]], testified that in September 1991, when he was ready to indict BCCI on tax fraud charges, the Department told his office each week that it was "blocked from bringing the indictment because of the Tampa plea and the Tampa double jeopardy."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Florida License
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lehtinen had advised that BCCI's Florida license should be in jeopardy after a successful prosecution. Genzman took a neutral position, and on January 31, 1990, the Tampa prosecutors wrote to the state regulators that the office had no position on whether BCCI should be closed or stay open. BCCI's lawyers, principally Wechsler, Barcella and [[Raymond Banoun]], then approached the Criminal Division in Washington, and on February 13, 1990, [[Charles Saphos]] wrote to Florida's comptroller, [[Gerald Lewis]], asking that BCCI be permitted to operate. Kehoe testified that "[O]bviously the attorneys for BCCI were talking to Mr. Saphos" and "[they] tried to go behind my back." Genzman told the subcommittee that "... in this case we told the Comptroller's office that we were taking no position."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Morgenthau
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Answering criticism from the Manhattan District Attorney, [[Robert Morgenthau]], that the Justice Department had refused to share information, Genzman testified that "all sorts of problems crop up" in joint efforts and that "because of the differing systems of immunity, giving up information [to a county DA] might taint the Federal investigation." The federal indictment of BCCI in September 1991 closely followed Morgenthau's and came nearly six weeks after it.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Death
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Genzman died of kidney cancer at his home in Orlando in May 1998, at 46. He was survived by his wife, Martha, and twin children.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Leusner, Jim. "Robert Genzman" (obituary). *Orlando Sentinel,* May 13, 1998, reproduced on the Find a Grave memorial for Robert W. Genzman. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/138851192/robert-w_-genzman (The memorial gives birth on September 13, 1951, and death on May 12, 1998; the reproduced obituary, dated May 13, says he "died Thursday." The day of death is left unresolved here.)
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 8, "BCCI and Law Enforcement: The Justice Department and the U.S. Customs Service." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/08just.htm
|
||||||
57
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/S. C. Gwynne.md
Normal file
57
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/S. C. Gwynne.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Authors & Journalists"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Journalist
|
||||||
|
- Author
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- TimeMagazine
|
||||||
|
- Banking
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Sam Gwynne
|
||||||
|
- S.C. Gwynne
|
||||||
|
summary: "Former international banker and Time correspondent, bureau chief and senior editor who co-wrote Time's 1991 BCCI cover story and The Outlaw Bank, later executive editor of Texas Monthly and a historian."
|
||||||
|
location: "Austin, Texas"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Time]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "correspondent, bureau chief, national correspondent and senior editor"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: investigated
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]"
|
||||||
|
start: 1991
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Texas Monthly]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "executive editor"
|
||||||
|
start: 2000
|
||||||
|
end: 2008
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
S. C. "Sam" Gwynne is an American journalist and author who worked as an international banker before joining *[[Time]]*, where he was a correspondent, bureau chief, national correspondent and senior editor. With [[Jonathan Beaty]] he wrote *Time*'s July 29, 1991, cover story on the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI), "B.C.C.I.: The Dirtiest Bank of All," and the book *The Outlaw Bank* (1993). He was executive editor of *[[Texas Monthly]]* from 2000 to 2008 and later wrote several histories, among them *Empire of the Summer Moon*.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Banking and Selling Money
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Before his career in journalism Gwynne was a French teacher and an international banker. An earlier book, *Selling Money*, concerned what his own biography calls "Sam's adventures in the international loan trade." He holds a bachelor's degree in history from [[Princeton University]] and a master's degree in writing from [[Johns Hopkins University]], where he studied under the novelist [[John Barth]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Time and BCCI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
At *Time* Gwynne reported from across the [[United States]] and from England, Austria, France, Belgium, Spain and Russia. The cover story he wrote with Beaty, bylined from New York, stated that "From interviews with sources close to B.C.C.I., TIME has pieced together a portrait of a clandestine division of the bank called the 'black network,'" which it said operated "primarily out of the bank's offices in [[Karachi]], [[Pakistan]]." The report of Senators [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]] later stated that none of the BCCI officers the Senate interviewed claimed knowledge of such a network.[^1][^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*, written with Beaty, was published by [[Random House]] in 1993.[^3] Gwynne's biography lists among the awards for his *Time* work the Gerald Loeb Award, the Jack Anderson Award "as the best investigative reporter," the John Hancock Award for Distinguished Financial Writing, and a National Headliners Award for his coverage of the [[Columbine High School massacre|Columbine High School shootings]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Later Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
At *Texas Monthly* Gwynne wrote cover stories on the [[White House]] adviser [[Karl Rove]], [[NASA]], the [[King Ranch]], the football player Johnny Manziel and [[Southwest Airlines]]; his 2005 story on the [[Houston]] surgeon Eric Scheffey was reprinted in *The Best American Crime Writing, 2006*, and in 2008 he won the National City and Regional Magazine Award as writer of the year. He has written for *Outside*, *[[The New York Times]]*, *Harper's*, the *[[Los Angeles Times]]* and other publications.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
His *Empire of the Summer Moon* spent 82 weeks on the *New York Times* bestseller list and was a finalist for the [[Pulitzer Prize]] and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was followed by *Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson* (2014), *The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football* (2016) and *His Majesty's Airship* (2023). He lives in [[Austin, Texas]], with his wife, the artist [[Katie Maratta]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Gwynne, S. C. "S. C. Gwynne," author biography, scgwynne.com, accessed September 23, 2026. https://scgwynne.com/author/s-c-gwynne
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Beaty, Jonathan, and S. C. Gwynne. "B.C.C.I.: The Dirtiest Bank of All," *Time,* July 29, 1991. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,973481,00.html
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Beaty, Jonathan, and S. C. Gwynne. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI.* New York: Random House, 1993. Internet Archive catalogue record, identifier outlawbank00jona. https://archive.org/details/outlawbank00jona
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 4, "BCCI's Criminality." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
|
||||||
66
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan.md
Normal file
66
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "BCCI Scandal"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- AbuDhabi
|
||||||
|
- Nominee
|
||||||
|
- FirstAmerican
|
||||||
|
- FinancialGeneral
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Sultan bin Zayed
|
||||||
|
- Sheikh Sultan bin Zayed
|
||||||
|
- Sultan Bin Zaid Al Nahyan
|
||||||
|
- Sultan bin Zaied al Nahyan
|
||||||
|
summary: "Son of Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi in whose name BCCI bought Financial General Bankshares stock in 1978; auditors later cited evidence that its four such shareholders concealed BCCI's role."
|
||||||
|
location: "Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: relative_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Zayed bin Sultan AL-Nahayan]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "son"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Financial General Bankshares]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "shareholder of record, described by Price Waterhouse as a BCCI nominee"
|
||||||
|
start: 1978-02
|
||||||
|
end: 1978-10-18
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Clark Clifford]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 1978
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Sheikh Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a son of Sheikh [[Zayed bin Sultan AL-Nahayan|Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan]], ruler of [[Abu Dhabi]] and President of the [[United Arab Emirates]], was in early 1978 one of four Middle Eastern "investors" in whose names the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) bought close to 20 percent of the voting shares of [[Financial General Bankshares]] (FGB), the Washington bank holding company later renamed [[First American Bank|First American Bankshares]]. The [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate Report]] called him "the crown prince of the Abu Dhabi royal family," and a chronology entered in the record of the [[House Banking Committee]]'s hearing of September 11, 1991 called him "the crown prince of Abu Dhabi."[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Sami Memorandum
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
From December 1977 through February 1978 BCCI, acting through [[Agha Hasan Abedi]], [[Abdus Sami]] and other agents, bought almost 20 percent of FGB, stating in filings with American regulators that it had bought the shares for four foreign clients: [[Kamal Adham]] of [[Saudi Arabia]]; [[Abdullah Darwaish]], for the benefit of Sheikh [[Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan]], described in the House chronology as "a minor and son of the ruler of Abu Dhabi"; [[Faisal Saud al-Fulaij]] of [[Kuwait]]; and Sultan bin Zayed.[^2] In a telex to Abedi of January 30, 1978, Sami wrote: "We have already given the names of Sheikh Kamal Adham and Mr. Fulaig [sic]. We want two other names immediately." The same telex, reproduced in the House hearing record, referred to "our desire to keep individual ownership to below 5 percent" and warned that BCCI had "to be careful that our name does not appear as financier" for most of the buyers.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
"Within a matter of days following the writing of the Sami memorandum," the Senate report stated, "BCCI added the crown prince of the Abu Dhabi royal family, Sheik Sultan bin Zayed al Nahyan, and Abdulah Darwaish, financial adviser to the Abu Dhabi royal family, as the two additional shareholders for the purpose of the takeover referred to by Sami."[^1] According to Abu Dhabi, Abedi had solicited their participation and they understood it to be a passive investment in a bank with high growth potential. The Senate report observed that "little if any investigation could have been done by the Abu Dhabi investors into the proposed investment between the time of the Sami memorandum and the time of their share purchases."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Litigation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Financial General's management sued the Arab buyers, BCCI and Abedi in 1978, and the [[Securities and Exchange Commission]] opened an inquiry in mid-February of that year. [[Clark Clifford]] later told the Senate that his firm had been "retained to represent Bert Lance, Agha Hasan Abedi, BCCI, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zaied al Nahyan, Sheikh Sultan bin Zaied al Nahyan, Faisal al Fulaij, and Abdullah Darwaish."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In July and August 1978 BCCI formed [[Credit and Commerce American Holdings]] (CCAH) in the [[Netherlands Antilles]] and its subsidiary Credit and Commerce American Investment B.V. in [[Amsterdam]] as vehicles for acquiring FGB. On October 18, 1978, according to the House chronology, "Sheik Sultan Bin Zaid Al Nahyan sold his shares in FG to Adham." The next day CCAH, CCAI and a new holding company applied to the [[Federal Reserve Board|Federal Reserve]] to become bank holding companies by acquiring all the voting shares of FGB.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Nominee Findings
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In its report to the [[Bank of England]] of June 1991 under section 41 of the Banking Act, [[Price Waterhouse]] wrote: "We have . . . seen evidence to suggest . . . that the four investors [Kamal Adham, Faisal al Fulaij, Sheikh Sultan Bin Zayed and Abdullah Darweish on behalf of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed] were used to keep individual ownership below 5% and to ensure that BCCI's name did not appear." According to information the Senate subcommittee obtained from "a Pakistani national familiar with the transaction," Sultan bin Zayed's shares and those held by Darwaish for Sheikh Mohammed "were 'allocated' by BCCI for the purpose of avoiding the SEC filing requirement that would have had to have been undertaken if the Abu Dhabi interests were combined together."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Abu Dhabi "vigorously denied that it was involved in any nominee arrangements with BCCI." The Senate report answered that "given the fact that BCCI had nominee arrangements with the leaders of three other emirates in the United Arab Emirates, as well as with all of the other principal Arab 'investors' involved with BCCI, the lack of involvement of Abu Dhabi in nominee arrangements would have been contrary to BCCI's practice."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Political Agenda
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Bert Lance]] described to the Senate subcommittee a meeting with Sheikh Zayed and Abedi in [[Islamabad]] in late 1977: "Abedi was concerned about the shifting tides towards the Soviets in Afghanistan, Iran, India and the Mideast. Both Abedi and Zayed each expressed their concerns about the Arab worlds lack of ties to the US. They wanted to do something about it." Answering a written question from the subcommittee chairman, [[John Kerry]], Abu Dhabi's representative [[Ahmed Al Sayegh]] stated: "The shares that were purchased for Sheikh Sultan and Sheikh Mohammed were solely intended as a passive commercial investment, not to acquire influence in the United States."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 6, "BCCI in the United States: Initial Entry." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/06early.htm
|
||||||
|
[^2]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs. *Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) Investigation, Part 1.* Hearing, 102nd Cong., 1st sess., September 11, 1991, Serial No. 102-69, "Full Chronology of BCCI and First American Bankshares, Inc.," pp. 665-666, 670. https://archive.org/details/BCCIHearingsBeforeTheCommitteeOnBankingFinanceAndUrbanAffairs
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 14, "Abu Dhabi: BCCI's Founding and Majority Stockholders." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/14abudhabi.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, Serial No. 102-69, telex of Abdus Sami to Agha Hasan Abedi, 1978, pp. 966-967. https://archive.org/details/BCCIHearingsBeforeTheCommitteeOnBankingFinanceAndUrbanAffairs
|
||||||
66
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.md
Normal file
66
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Political Figure"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Pakistan
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- Nationalization
|
||||||
|
- PakistanPeoplesParty
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Ali Bhutto
|
||||||
|
- Z. A. Bhutto
|
||||||
|
summary: "Pakistani prime minister whose government nationalized Agha Hasan Abedi's United Bank in 1974, who was deposed by Zia ul-Haq in 1977 and hanged in 1979."
|
||||||
|
died: 1979-04-04
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Pakistan]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "prime minister"
|
||||||
|
end: 1977
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: appointed
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Zia ul-Haq]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "chief of army staff"
|
||||||
|
start: 1976
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Pakistan People's Party]]"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Agha Hasan Abedi]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "campaign funds for the PPP in the March 1977 elections, per the Zia government's July 1978 White Paper"
|
||||||
|
start: 1977
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the elected prime minister of [[Pakistan]] until 1977, when the army chief he had appointed, [[Zia ul-Haq]], removed him in a pre-dawn coup and put him on trial for the murder of a political opponent. He was hanged in [[Rawalpindi]] on April 4, 1979.[^1] His government nationalized Pakistan's banks, among them [[United Bank Limited]], founded by [[Agha Hasan Abedi]], and the [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate report]] traced the founding of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) to Abedi's attempt to move beyond Bhutto's reach.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Nationalization and Abedi
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bhutto came to power after the war that separated East Pakistan as [[Bangladesh]]. The Senate report described Abedi as "just as cozy with Pakistani 'socialist' Ali Bhutto," the ideological opposite of [[Ayub Khan]], whose government Abedi had cultivated at United Bank.[^2][^4] According to the report, from the time he took power Bhutto "was threatening to nationalize the banks, as he already had nationalized other sectors," and Abedi began the first steps toward forming BCCI as a Pakistani-managed bank outside Pakistan. "When Bhutto in turn learned about Abedi's attempt to circumvent his new socialist order, he not only went ahead with plans for nationalizing the United Bank, but promptly placed Abedi under house arrest." Abedi explained his plan for a global bank to [[Masihur Rahman]], later BCCI's chief financial officer, while under house arrest.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The report dated to 1972 the nationalization of a substantial portion of the businesses of the [[Saigol family]], United Bank's principal shareholders. The banks themselves were taken by the Banks (Nationalization) Act, 1974 (Act XIX of 1974), which came into force at once and was "deemed to have taken effect on the 1st day of January, 1974," overriding any contrary law, contract or articles of association. Its schedule listed fourteen banks, including [[Habib Bank]], where Abedi had begun his career, the [[National Bank of Pakistan]], [[Muslim Commercial Bank]] and, as item ten, United Bank Limited.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Senate report found that nationalization gave BCCI its founding staff, "a group of like-minded Pakistanis to operate the bank," who "were now widely available as a result of Bhutto's nationalization of their banks," and gave Pakistani businessmen such as the Saigols and the [[Gokal brothers]] "powerful motivation to find a bank that could not be controlled by the Pakistani government."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Election Funds
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In July 1978 Zia's government issued a White Paper on "The Conduct of the General Elections in March 1977." In its section on illegal funding of the campaign of Bhutto's [[Pakistan People's Party]], it stated that "the other large source of funds was the money brought in by Agha Hasan Abdi [sic]," amounting to "two or three crores of rupees," and referred to Abedi's "travels . . . loaded as he used to be with bagfuls of money." The Senate report reproduced the White Paper in its hearing record and wrote that Zia "later executed Bhutto for financial crimes, in which Abedi, among others, was clearly involved."[^2][^4] The charge on which Bhutto was hanged was murder.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Coup, Trial and Execution
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1976 Bhutto appointed Zia chief of army staff over ten more senior officers. After three months of street fighting by anti-Bhutto rioters, Zia deposed him in 1977 and made himself president and chief martial law administrator.[^1] [[Ghulam Ishaq Khan]], who had been deputy defense minister under Bhutto, became Zia's minister of finance from 1977 to 1984.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On March 18, 1978, the [[Lahore High Court]] ordered Bhutto hanged for the murder of Nawab Mohammad Ahmad Khan. The [[Supreme Court of Pakistan]] rejected his appeal on February 6, 1979, and his review petition on March 24, 1979. On the evening of April 3, 1979, the superintendent of Rawalpindi jail read him the execution order, which stated that "the president of Pakistan has decided not to interfere in this matter." According to Lieutenant Colonel Rafiuddin, the jail's security officer, whose account appeared in his book *Bhutto Kay Aakhri 323 Din*, Bhutto objected that he had not been given 24 hours' notice, tried to write a will and burned the pages, and was carried to the scaffold on a stretcher. The executioner, Tara Masih, sprang the trap at four minutes past two on the morning of April 4. The body was taken to [[Chaklala]] air base and flown toward [[Jacobabad]] on a [[C-130]]; the first aircraft turned back with a fault after an hour and a second completed the flight.[^5] United Press International reported that the jail was a short walk from Zia's official residence.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bhutto's daughter, [[Benazir Bhutto]], returned from exile in April 1986 to oppose Zia and was regarded by her supporters as her father's political heir.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Barnetson, Denholm. "President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel and...," United Press International, August 17, 1988. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1988/08/17/President-Mohammad-Zia-ul-Haq-US-Ambassador-Arnold-Raphel-and/3467587793600/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 3, "The Origin and Early Years of BCCI," sections "Abedi As Pakistani Political Paymaster," "Impact of Nationalization" and "Critical Elements of BCCI's Creation" (citing testimony of Masihur Rahman, S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 1, pp. 489-491, and White Paper on the General Elections, Government of Pakistan, July 1978, S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 3, pp. 314-317). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: The Banks' (Nationalization) Act, 1974 (Act XIX of 1974), sections 1 and 2 and Schedule. http://nasirlawsite.com/laws/bna.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 5, "BCCI's Relationship with Foreign Governments, Central Banks, and International Organizations," section "Pakistan." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/05foreign.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Aziz, Shaikh. "A leaf from history: The prime minister is hanged," *Dawn*, February 1, 2015. https://www.dawn.com/news/1160422
|
||||||
59
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/A.Q. Khan.md
Normal file
59
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/A.Q. Khan.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Nuclear Scientists & Programs"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Pakistan
|
||||||
|
- NuclearProliferation
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- Kahuta
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Abdul Qadeer Khan
|
||||||
|
- A. Q. Khan
|
||||||
|
- A. Qadir Khan
|
||||||
|
summary: "Pakistani scientist associated with Pakistan's nuclear bomb program and its procurement network, and project director of the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute, which received BCCI grants."
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: director_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "project director"
|
||||||
|
fn: 4
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Abdul Qadeer Khan was a [[Pakistan|Pakistani]] scientist "closely associated with Pakistan's efforts to build a nuclear bomb," in the words of the [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate report]]. [[United States]] officials in the 1980s referred to the "Khan Laboratory's" gas centrifuge program and to a nuclear procurement network under his name, and tracked its purchases for the enrichment plant at [[Kahuta]]. They identified a [[Lahore]] firm, Multinational, as a procurement agent for his network, and in 1987 the arrest of its buyer [[Arshad Pervez]] in the United States exposed an attempt to obtain maraging steel and beryllium for Pakistan's program.[^1][^2][^3] Khan was project director of the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, to which, according to the Senate report, the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) gave 10 million dollars in grants in the late 1980s.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Kahuta and the Procurement Network
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1979 the administration of [[Jimmy Carter]] suspended aid to Pakistan under the Symington amendment after discovering the Kahuta enrichment plan; in 1981 the [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] administration obtained a five-year waiver from Congress because of Pakistan's role in channeling U.S. aid to the [[Mujahideen]] in [[Afghanistan]]. State Department telegrams of September and November 1985 show U.S. officials pressing [[West Germany]] over Pakistani agents seeking aluminum tubes for the Khan Laboratory's centrifuge program, and by fall 1986 the U.S. government regarded Multinational Inc. as a "procurement agent" for Khan's network. In May 1986 Representative [[Stephen Solarz]] told [[Zia ul-Haq]] that U.S. intelligence indicated Kahuta was enriching uranium to weapons grade, which Pakistani officials denied.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Pervez Case
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Arshad Pervez, a native of Pakistan who had moved to [[Canada]] in 1967, ran an import-export business, A.P. Enterprises, in [[Toronto]]. In October 1986 he sought "maraging 350 steel," a high-strength steel used in gas centrifuge enrichment plants, from [[Carpenter Technology Corporation]] of Pennsylvania, whose staff alerted the [[Nuclear Regulatory Commission]] and the [[U.S. Customs|United States Customs Service]]. Pervez named his client as Inam Ul-Haq of Multinational Corporation of Lahore. He offered a series of end uses, among them a research project of [[Karachi]] University's engineering program, rocket motors and antitank weapons, and paid 1,000 dollars to an undercover Customs agent posing as a [[United States Department of Commerce|Commerce Department]] licensing officer. In 1987 he added a request for beryllium and proposed commingling it with the steel. When the undercover agent suggested that other metals were for "another application in the plant at Kahuta," Pervez answered, "Could be," and at the end of the meeting said that "the Kahuta client is ready." He was arrested in [[Philadelphia]] in July 1987 while arranging the first shipment.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A federal grand jury indicted Pervez and Inam Ul-Haq on July 28, 1987. Pervez was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States, attempting to export beryllium and making false statements to the Commerce Department, acquitted on the bribery counts after claiming entrapment, and sentenced to five years' imprisonment on the conspiracy count. On March 6, 1989, the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit]] vacated the conspiracy and beryllium convictions and ordered a new trial on those counts under *Mathews v. United States*, which entitles a defendant who denies elements of the offense to an entrapment instruction whenever the evidence could support one, and remanded for a hearing on entrapment on the false statement counts.[^1] According to the [[National Security Archive]], Inam Ul-Haq, whom it called "a key figure in the A. Q. Khan nuclear procurement network," left the United States before he could be arrested.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A State Department intelligence memorandum of December 29, 1987, linked [[Khan Research Laboratories]] to the maraging steel and the [[Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission]] to the beryllium, and concluded that the network "could not exist without the umbrella of government approval, protection, and funding." An [[Arms Control and Disarmament Agency]] memorandum stated that "there is no plausible end-use for 25 tons of grade 350 maraging steel other than in the manufacture of centrifuges." President Reagan certified to Congress on December 17, 1987, that "Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device," and in January 1988 invoked and then waived the Solarz amendment.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI and the Pervez Claim
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Senate report stated that "arms trafficking involving BCCI included the financing of Pakistan's procurement of nuclear weapons through BCCI Canada, as documented in the Parvez case, involving a Pakistani who attempted to procure nuclear related materials financed by BCCI through the United States," and that in the late 1980s "other BCCI officials were assisting Pakistanis in purchasing nuclear technologies paid for by Pakistani-front companies through BCCI-Canada." Both statements rest on a single source, the testimony of [[Alan Kreczko]], Deputy Legal Adviser of the [[State Department]], in the Senate hearing record (S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 3, p. 599).[^3][^5] The Third Circuit's opinion in the Pervez case, which recounts the negotiations, payments and shipping arrangements, contains no reference to BCCI, to any bank, or to how the purchase was to be financed.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In a letter of November 22, 1991, the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] told the Subcommittee that "the Agency did have some reporting [as of 1987] on BCCI being used by third world regimes to acquire weapons and transfer technology," but declined to elaborate in public.[^5] The report's executive summary stated that documents on BCCI's use "to assist the builders of a Pakistani nuclear bomb" had been "sealed in the United Kingdom by British intelligence," and listed "the extent of BCCI's involvement in Pakistan's nuclear program" among its unanswered questions.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Pakistani BCCI Foundation, created to shelter BCCI's Pakistani profits from tax, received tax-free status in 1981 while [[Ghulam Ishaq Khan]] was minister of finance; Ishaq Khan chaired the foundation through the 1980s and became president of Pakistan after Zia's death in 1988. The Senate report stated that BCCI "provided $10 million in grants in the late 1980's to finance an officially 'private' science and technology institute named for Pakistani President Ishaq Khan, whose director, A. Qadir Khan, has been closely associated with Pakistan's efforts to build a nuclear bomb," and that the institute "is believed by some experts to be the headquarters for Pakistan's efforts to build an Islamic bomb."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
According to the [[Federation of American Scientists]], the institute was formed in December 1985, its parent body, the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Sciences and Technology in Pakistan (SOPREST), was registered in June 1988, and a group of scientists and engineers under Khan's leadership produced its feasibility study in 1989. Khan agreed to be project director, civil works began at the campus at [[Topi]], in the North-West Frontier Province at the foot of the [[Tarbela Dam]] reservoir, in early 1990, and the first students entered in October 1993. The FAS listed its main donors as the Infaq Foundation, Chiniot Anjuman-e-Islamia, the Dawood Group and the provincial government, which gave the land.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The institute's own history does not name Khan. It dates the project to December 1985, when "the Benevolent Community Care and Infaq Foundation donated Rs. 50 million," records that Ghulam Ishaq Khan, then president, was elected president of SOPREST for life, with H. U. Beg as honorary executive director and Samiullah Marwat as secretary, and attributes the planning of the institute to "a group of eminent scientists and engineers." It credits a further 750 million rupees to the Infaq Foundation.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: *United States v. Pervez*, 871 F.2d 310 (3d Cir. 1989), No. 88-1109, decided March 6, 1989, opinion of Scirica, J. https://static.case.law/f2d/871/cases/0310-01.json
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Burr, William, ed. "The Pervez Case and Reagan Administration Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy, 1987," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 446, November 22, 2013. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb446/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 5, "BCCI's Relationship with Foreign Governments, Central Banks, and International Organizations," section "Pakistan" (citing S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 3, p. 599). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/05foreign.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute (GIKI)," Federation of American Scientists, Special Weapons Guide: Pakistan, updated February 4, 2000. https://nuke.fas.org/guide/pakistan/agency/giki.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 4, "BCCI's Criminality" (citing testimony of Alan Kreczko, Deputy Legal Adviser, Department of State, S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 3, p. 599, and S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 3, p. 601). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 1, "Executive Summary." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/01exec.htm
|
||||||
|
[^7]: "About GIK Institute," Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology. https://giki.edu.pk/institute/
|
||||||
100
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Charles Keating.md
Normal file
100
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Charles Keating.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,100 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "BCCI Scandal"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- SavingsAndLoan
|
||||||
|
- KeatingFive
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- Fraud
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Charles H. Keating Jr.
|
||||||
|
- Charles Humphrey Keating Jr.
|
||||||
|
- Charles Keating Jr.
|
||||||
|
summary: "Phoenix developer whose American Continental Corporation bought Lincoln Savings and Loan in 1984; its failure cost taxpayers billions, and the Senate BCCI inquiry flagged unresolved ties between BCCI figures and his companies."
|
||||||
|
born: 1923-12-04
|
||||||
|
died: 2014-03-31
|
||||||
|
location: "Phoenix, Arizona"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[American Continental Corporation]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "chairman"
|
||||||
|
start: 1978
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Lincoln Savings and Loan]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "through American Continental Corporation"
|
||||||
|
start: 1984
|
||||||
|
end: 1989
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[American Financial Corporation]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "outside counsel, then executive vice president"
|
||||||
|
start: 1972
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: appointed
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Richard Nixon]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "member, federal commission on pornography"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Alan Cranston]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Keating Five"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Dennis DeConcini]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Keating Five"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[John Glenn]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Keating Five"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[John McCain]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Keating Five"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Donald W. Riegle Jr.]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Keating Five"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Citizens for Community Values]]"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Charles Humphrey Keating Jr. was an American lawyer, homebuilder and financier whose company, [[American Continental Corporation]] of [[Phoenix, Arizona|Phoenix]], bought [[Lincoln Savings and Loan]] of [[Irvine, California]], in 1984. The [[Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation]] put the cost of Lincoln's failure to taxpayers at 3.14 billion dollars; *[[The New York Times]]*, as cited by NBC News, at 3.4 billion. Five senators who intervened with regulators on its behalf became known as the Keating Five.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Early Life and Cincinnati
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Keating was born in [[Cincinnati]] on December 4, 1923, the first of two sons of Charles and Adele Keating. He started college at the [[University of Cincinnati]], served as a Navy fighter pilot in the Second World War, won a national collegiate swimming title, and graduated from the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 1948.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
With his brother William he practiced at the Cincinnati firm of [[Keating Muething & Keating]]. In 1959 he helped the businessman [[Carl Lindner]] create [[American Financial Corporation]], serving as its outside counsel and, from 1972, as executive vice president. A [[Securities and Exchange Commission]] lawsuit accused the two men of self-dealing; without admitting guilt, they signed consent orders promising not to violate securities laws. Keating founded the Cincinnati anti-pornography group later called [[Citizens for Community Values]], with Lindner as a principal backer, and served on a federal commission on pornography as an appointee of President [[Richard Nixon]].[^1][^2] His brother William served in the House of Representatives from 1971 to 1974 and became chairman and publisher of *[[The Cincinnati Enquirer]]*.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### American Continental and Lincoln
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1978 Keating bought a Phoenix homebuilding affiliate of American Financial, American Continental, and became its chairman. By 1983 it was the seventh-largest homebuilder in the country, with annual revenue of about 300 million dollars, and it paid 51 million dollars for Lincoln Savings and Loan. "We felt that it was time to diversify," Keating told *American Banker*. He grew Lincoln tenfold by soliciting brokered deposits from Wall Street firms and put the money into high-yield bonds and real estate development, among them The Phoenician resort in [[Scottsdale]].[^1] The economist [[Alan Greenspan]], later chairman of the [[Federal Reserve Board|Federal Reserve]], wrote a report stating that Lincoln was sound and had "seasoned and expert" managers.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The [[San Francisco]] office of the [[Federal Home Loan Bank Board]] opened an investigation of Lincoln's growth in March 1986. Five senators, [[Alan Cranston]], [[Dennis DeConcini]], [[John Glenn]], [[Donald W. Riegle Jr.|Donald Riegle]] and [[John McCain]], met officials of the bank board on Lincoln's behalf; they had received a combined 1.3 million dollars in donations and gifts from Keating, his family and his companies. Asked whether his giving had caused politicians to take up his cause, Keating answered, "I certainly hope so." In May 1987 the San Francisco regulators recommended seizing Lincoln; the pursuit ended under the successor of the bank board's chairman [[Edwin Gray]], [[M. Danny Wall]], who said the proof was insufficient to justify a seizure. Lincoln was taken over in April 1989, after Keating put American Continental into bankruptcy. The [[Senate Ethics Committee]] investigated the five, and Cranston alone was formally reprimanded.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Prosecution
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Keating was indicted in California on state charges of misleading investors into buying high-risk bonds that were not federally insured; some investors lost their life savings when the bonds defaulted. He was convicted on 17 of 18 counts and sentenced by Judge [[Lance Ito]] to ten years, the maximum. A federal grand jury indicted him, his son Charles III and three others on 77 counts of fraud, racketeering and conspiracy, and he was sentenced to twelve and a half years, concurrent with the state term. He was freed in October 1996 after an appeals court overturned the state conviction for faulty jury instructions; the federal conviction was later thrown out because jurors had discussed the state verdict. In 1999 he pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and was sentenced to the time he had served, four years and nine months, and the charges against his son were dropped.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Senate report of Senators [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]] on the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) listed among matters requiring further investigation "The financial dealings of BCCI directors with Charles Keating and several Keating affiliates and front-companies, including the possibility that BCCI related entities may have laundered funds for Keating to move them outside the United States. The Subcommittee found numerous connections among Keating and BCCI-related persons and entities, such as BCCI director Alfred Hartman; CenTrust chief David Paul and CenTrust itself; Capcom front-man Lawrence Romrell; BCCI shipping affiliate, the Gokal group and the Gokal family; and possibly Ghaith Pharaon. The ties between BCCI and Keating's financial empire require further investigation."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The persons and entities named were [[Alfred Hartman]], [[David L. Paul]] and [[CenTrust Savings Bank]], [[Larry Romrell]] of BCCI's commodities affiliate [[Capcom]], the [[Gulf Group]] of the [[Gokal brothers]], and [[Ghaith R. Pharaon]]. The report's appendix, under BCCI's collusion in savings and loan fraud, cited CenTrust, Caprock Savings and Loan of Texas, and "the involvement of BCCI figures with Charles Keating and his business empire. In each case, BCCI's involvement cost the U. S. taxpayers money."[^4] The executive summary of the report listed the same dealings among the matters left for further investigation.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Death
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Keating died in a Phoenix hospital on March 31, 2014, at 90, after an illness of a few weeks. His lawyer, [[Stephen C. Neal]], chairman of [[Cooley LLP]], said that he had "faced adversity with great dignity, wit and courage."[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Charles Keating, Face of Savings and Loan Bust, Dies at 90." *American Banker,* April 2, 2014. https://www.americanbanker.com/news/charles-keating-face-of-savings-and-loan-bust-dies-at-90
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Burns, Frances. "Charles Keating Jr., who became face of savings and loan scandal, dies at 90." United Press International, April 2, 2014. https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/04/02/Charles-Keating-Jr-who-became-face-of-savings-and-loan-scandal-dies-at-90/5631396444559/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Arkin, Daniel. "Charles Keating, Center of Savings and Loan Scandal, Dies at 90." NBC News, April 2, 2014. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/charles-keating-center-savings-loan-scandal-dies-90-n69386
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, Appendices, "Matters for Further Investigation," items 8 and 12. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/24appendic.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 1, "Executive Summary." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/01exec.htm
|
||||||
42
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Divesh Makan.md
Normal file
42
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Divesh Makan.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Business & Finance"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- FamilyOffice
|
||||||
|
- VentureCapital
|
||||||
|
- SiliconValley
|
||||||
|
- MarkZuckerberg
|
||||||
|
- DustinMoskovitz
|
||||||
|
summary: "Former Goldman Sachs broker who met Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, heads the investment adviser ICONIQ Capital, and sits as a director of Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna's Good Ventures Foundation."
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[ICONIQ Capital]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "principal"
|
||||||
|
start: 2011
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Goldman Sachs]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "broker"
|
||||||
|
start: 2004
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Divesh Makan is one of the principals of [[ICONIQ Capital]], LLC, an investment adviser registered with the [[Securities and Exchange Commission]] since December 1, 2011; its brochure of March 2026 names "Divesh Makan, [[Michael Anders]], [[Will Griffith]] and [[Matthew Jacobson]]" as its partners.[^1] In December 2014 *[[Forbes]]*, giving his age as 41, described the firm as "his otherwise run-of-the-mill registered investment advisory," turned into "an exclusive members-only [[Silicon Valley]] billionaires club that operates as a cross between a family office and a venture capital fund."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Zuckerberg and the Client Roster
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*Forbes* called [[Mark Zuckerberg]] Makan's "most famous client and the key to his success," and wrote that Makan met him "in 2004 when he was a broker at [[Goldman Sachs]]." Other clients it named were "[[Facebook]]'s [[Dustin Moskovitz]] and [[Sheryl Sandberg]], [[Twitter]]'s [[Jack Dorsey]] and [[LinkedIn]]'s [[Reid Hoffman]]." His board of directors, the magazine wrote, was "another power list, with nontech titans like [[Henry Kravis]] and [[David Bonderman]], [[Chase Coleman]] and steel tycoon [[Lakshmi Mittal]]'s son Aditya." Real-estate billionaires such as [[Sam Zell]] and [[Li Ka-shing]] had gained access through the firm to startups that "Makan & Co. advertise as being 'approved by Zuckerberg.'" In 2014 the firm had "full discretion over $1.4 billion in client funds" and advised "on another $7.6 billion," and its "$500 million Strategic Partners fund" was "Makan's flagship among 39 private investment vehicles."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
By December 31, 2025, ICONIQ reported about 85.8 billion dollars of discretionary and 31.7 billion dollars of non-discretionary assets under management, and stated that it generally worked with managed-account clients "with net worths of $25,000,000 or more." An affiliate of [[Blue Owl Capital]] held a passive minority stake in the firm.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Good Ventures
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Makan is listed as a director of the [[Good Ventures|Good Ventures Foundation]], without pay, alongside its president and board chair [[Cari Tuna]] and her husband Moskovitz, its secretary and treasurer, on the foundation's returns filed from 2023 to 2026. The foundation reported total assets of 10,107,955,038 dollars on the return it filed on May 15, 2026.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: ICONIQ Capital, LLC. Form ADV Part 2A, Firm Brochure, March 26, 2026, CRD 159198, via the SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure system. https://files.adviserinfo.sec.gov/IAPD/Content/Common/crd_iapd_Brochure.aspx?BRCHR_VRSN_ID=1027115 ; firm record https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/firm/summary/159198
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Solomon, Brian. "The Spider Of Silicon Valley: Inside 'Zuck & Friends' Secret Billionaire Fund." *Forbes,* December 1, 2014, archived December 1, 2014. http://web.archive.org/web/20141201154053/http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2014/12/01/the-spider-of-silicon-valley-inside-zuck-friends-secret-billionaire-fund/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Good Ventures Foundation," EIN 46-1008520, Form 990-PF data, returns filed May 16, 2023, to May 15, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/461008520
|
||||||
|
|
@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ relations:
|
||||||
with: "[[Future Forward]]"
|
with: "[[Future Forward]]"
|
||||||
start: 2020
|
start: 2020
|
||||||
role: "46.89 million dollars in 2019-2020, 3.3 million in 2021-2022, 50 million in 2023-2024"
|
role: "46.89 million dollars in 2019-2020, 3.3 million in 2021-2022, 50 million in 2023-2024"
|
||||||
fn: 22
|
fn: 24
|
||||||
- type: funded
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
with: "[[LCV Victory Fund]]"
|
with: "[[LCV Victory Fund]]"
|
||||||
start: 2016
|
start: 2016
|
||||||
|
|
@ -49,15 +49,15 @@ Moskovitz took part in Anthropic's first funding round of 124 million dollars in
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Open Philanthropy set aside nearly 3 million dollars in 2022 for the first fellows of the [[Horizon Institute for Public Service]], which pays technology fellows placed in congressional offices, federal agencies and think tanks, among them the offices of Senators [[Martin Heinrich]], [[Mike Rounds]] and [[Todd Young]], whom [[Chuck Schumer]] had put in charge of AI legislation; *Politico* wrote that Open Philanthropy had "effectively created" Horizon.[^10] Matheny served in the Biden [[White House]] from March 2021 to June 2022. According to documents the *Washington Examiner* obtained under the [[Freedom of Information Act]], he hired [[Ben Buchanan]], director of CSET's CyberAI project, under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, with Georgetown continuing to pay Buchanan's salary and the government reimbursing it; the paper noted that CSET had received 97 million dollars from Open Philanthropy between 2019 and 2021, and that Buchanan became an architect of the Biden export controls on advanced chips that Anthropic later urged the Trump administration to keep. Buchanan said he "scrupulously complied with all legal and ethics rules." Senator [[Ted Cruz]], who named Moskovitz in a 2024 letter, wrote that "large AI technology companies are influencing the Biden administration's AI policy from the inside."[^16]
|
Open Philanthropy set aside nearly 3 million dollars in 2022 for the first fellows of the [[Horizon Institute for Public Service]], which pays technology fellows placed in congressional offices, federal agencies and think tanks, among them the offices of Senators [[Martin Heinrich]], [[Mike Rounds]] and [[Todd Young]], whom [[Chuck Schumer]] had put in charge of AI legislation; *Politico* wrote that Open Philanthropy had "effectively created" Horizon.[^10] Matheny served in the Biden [[White House]] from March 2021 to June 2022. According to documents the *Washington Examiner* obtained under the [[Freedom of Information Act]], he hired [[Ben Buchanan]], director of CSET's CyberAI project, under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, with Georgetown continuing to pay Buchanan's salary and the government reimbursing it; the paper noted that CSET had received 97 million dollars from Open Philanthropy between 2019 and 2021, and that Buchanan became an architect of the Biden export controls on advanced chips that Anthropic later urged the Trump administration to keep. Buchanan said he "scrupulously complied with all legal and ethics rules." Senator [[Ted Cruz]], who named Moskovitz in a 2024 letter, wrote that "large AI technology companies are influencing the Biden administration's AI policy from the inside."[^16]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The lobbying arm of the Center for AI Safety stated that it secured 10 million dollars from Congress in 2024 to establish the [[U.S. AI Safety Institute]], where Christiano became head of AI safety.[^18] The 501(c)(4) [[Americans for Responsible Innovation]], founded in late 2023 by the former congressman [[Brad Carson]], lists Coefficient Giving among its funders with the [[Omidyar Network]], and reported in-house lobbying expenses of 1.51 million dollars in 2025. The [[Open Philanthropy Action Fund]] has paid outside lobbyists every year since 2021, the [[Kyle House Group]] since 2023.[^19]
|
The lobbying arm of the Center for AI Safety stated that it secured 10 million dollars from Congress in 2024 to establish the [[U.S. AI Safety Institute]], where Christiano became head of AI safety.[^18] The 501(c)(4) [[Americans for Responsible Innovation]], founded in late 2023 by the former congressman [[Brad Carson]], lists Coefficient Giving among its funders with the [[Omidyar Network]], and reported in-house lobbying expenses of 1.51 million dollars in 2025. The [[Open Philanthropy Action Fund]] has paid outside lobbyists every year since 2021, the [[Kyle House Group]] since 2023.[^19] Moskovitz has been a director of the Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) that files from the Palo Alto address of Good Ventures, on every return since 2017, alongside Tuna as president, Makan, and Open Philanthropy's chief executives, Holden Karnofsky and Alexander Berger; it reported about 270.4 million dollars in contributions from 2016 to 2023.[^20] On October 29, 2019, the Action Fund gave 750,000 dollars to the non-contribution account of [[Real Justice PAC]], which Tuna had funded with 1.9 million dollars in her own name.[^21] The Kyle House Group filings describe its work as "education and advocacy regarding U.S. foreign assistance policies and programs," on the State and Foreign Operations appropriations bills, and the three firms the fund has retained reported about 1.53 million dollars in income from it between 2021 and mid-2026.[^19]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### The Press
|
### The Press
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
By 2025 Coefficient Giving supplied most of the funding of the [[Tarbell Center for AI Journalism]], which pays journalists placed at *[[Time (magazine)|Time]]*, [[Bloomberg]], *[[The Verge]]* and other newsrooms and publishes the newsletter *Transformer*; Coefficient's director of communications, [[Naina Bajekal]], was a former executive editor of *Time*.[^20] In September 2026 the publication *Effort*, founded by [[Brian Chau]], wrote that "Coefficient pays the salaries of two dozen journalists at major news outlets," that Open Philanthropy had pursued a "placement" strategy "to put their hand-picked employees in US and UK government offices," and that Moskovitz was the third-largest Democratic donor in 2020 and the second-largest in 2024.[^21]
|
By 2025 Coefficient Giving supplied most of the funding of the [[Tarbell Center for AI Journalism]], which pays journalists placed at *[[Time (magazine)|Time]]*, [[Bloomberg]], *[[The Verge]]* and other newsrooms and publishes the newsletter *Transformer*; Coefficient's director of communications, [[Naina Bajekal]], was a former executive editor of *Time*.[^22] In September 2026 the publication *Effort*, founded by [[Brian Chau]], wrote that "Coefficient pays the salaries of two dozen journalists at major news outlets," that Open Philanthropy had pursued a "placement" strategy "to put their hand-picked employees in US and UK government offices," and that Moskovitz was the third-largest Democratic donor in 2020 and the second-largest in 2024.[^23]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Political Giving
|
### Political Giving
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
On September 8, 2016, Moskovitz and Tuna announced 20 million dollars in contributions to defeat [[Donald Trump]] and elect [[Hillary Clinton]], calling Trump's promises to voters who felt left behind "quite possibly a deliberate con." They named 5 million dollars each to the [[LCV Victory Fund]] and [[For Our Future PAC]], and wrote that "we have reservations about anyone using large amounts of money to influence elections."[^5] [[Federal Election Commission]] records itemize contributions from Moskovitz of about 18.0 million dollars in the 2015-2016 cycle, led by 6 million to [[Priorities USA Action]], 4.5 million to the LCV Victory Fund, 2.5 million to For Our Future and 1.65 million to [[Color of Change PAC]]; 5.7 million in 2017-2018, including 3 million to [[MoveOn]] and 2 million to the [[Senate Majority PAC]]; 51.8 million in 2019-2020, including 46.89 million to the Democratic super PAC [[Future Forward]] and 830,600 dollars to the [[Biden Victory Fund]]; 5.9 million in 2021-2022, including 3.3 million to Future Forward and 1.9 million to its affiliate FFPA; and 50.9 million in 2023-2024, of which 50 million went to Future Forward in eight payments between August 28 and October 22, 2024, 30 million of it in October, and 929,600 dollars to the [[Harris Victory Fund]]. None had been itemized for the 2025-2026 cycle by September 2026.[^22] In March 2024 *[[Puck]]*'s [[Theodore Schleifer]] wrote that Moskovitz had spent "up to $100 million to defeat Donald Trump last cycle" and was "leaning into his power... and his checkbook" to beat back "the Andreessens and Musks of the world."[^23]
|
On September 8, 2016, Moskovitz and Tuna announced 20 million dollars in contributions to defeat [[Donald Trump]] and elect [[Hillary Clinton]], calling Trump's promises to voters who felt left behind "quite possibly a deliberate con." They named 5 million dollars each to the [[LCV Victory Fund]] and [[For Our Future PAC]], and wrote that "we have reservations about anyone using large amounts of money to influence elections."[^5] [[Federal Election Commission]] records itemize contributions from Moskovitz of about 18.0 million dollars in the 2015-2016 cycle, led by 6 million to [[Priorities USA Action]], 4.5 million to the LCV Victory Fund, 2.5 million to For Our Future and 1.65 million to [[Color of Change PAC]]; 5.7 million in 2017-2018, including 3 million to [[MoveOn]] and 2 million to the [[Senate Majority PAC]]; 51.8 million in 2019-2020, including 46.89 million to the Democratic super PAC [[Future Forward]] and 830,600 dollars to the [[Biden Victory Fund]]; 5.9 million in 2021-2022, including 3.3 million to Future Forward and 1.9 million to its affiliate FFPA; and 50.9 million in 2023-2024, of which 50 million went to Future Forward in eight payments between August 28 and October 22, 2024, 30 million of it in October, and 929,600 dollars to the [[Harris Victory Fund]]. None had been itemized for the 2025-2026 cycle by September 2026.[^24] In March 2024 *[[Puck]]*'s [[Theodore Schleifer]] wrote that Moskovitz had spent "up to $100 million to defeat Donald Trump last cycle" and was "leaning into his power... and his checkbook" to beat back "the Andreessens and Musks of the world."[^25]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
@ -80,7 +80,9 @@ On September 8, 2016, Moskovitz and Tuna announced 20 million dollars in contrib
|
||||||
[^17]: Coacci, Jessica. "Meet the millennial Meta cofounder and his wife who are giving away $20 billion." *Fortune,* November 10, 2025, via Yahoo Finance, archived December 26, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20251226183707/https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meet-millennial-meta-cofounder-wife-170849820.html
|
[^17]: Coacci, Jessica. "Meet the millennial Meta cofounder and his wife who are giving away $20 billion." *Fortune,* November 10, 2025, via Yahoo Finance, archived December 26, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20251226183707/https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meet-millennial-meta-cofounder-wife-170849820.html
|
||||||
[^18]: Center for AI Safety Action Fund, "2024 Annual Impact Report." https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/66438c042d15b14b53b83006/68012dcfec6880aba24f528a_CAIS-ActionFund-ImpactReport_05.pdf
|
[^18]: Center for AI Safety Action Fund, "2024 Annual Impact Report." https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/66438c042d15b14b53b83006/68012dcfec6880aba24f528a_CAIS-ActionFund-ImpactReport_05.pdf
|
||||||
[^19]: Americans for Responsible Innovation, "About Us," https://ari.us/about-us/ ; U.S. Senate, Lobbying Disclosure Act database, filings for clients "Americans for Responsible Innovation" and "Open Philanthropy Action Fund," 2021 to 2026, retrieved September 2026. https://lda.senate.gov/api/v1/filings/?client_name=Americans+for+Responsible+Innovation
|
[^19]: Americans for Responsible Innovation, "About Us," https://ari.us/about-us/ ; U.S. Senate, Lobbying Disclosure Act database, filings for clients "Americans for Responsible Innovation" and "Open Philanthropy Action Fund," 2021 to 2026, retrieved September 2026. https://lda.senate.gov/api/v1/filings/?client_name=Americans+for+Responsible+Innovation
|
||||||
[^20]: Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, "Ethics and Standards policies," February 20, 2026, https://www.tarbellcenter.org/ethics-and-standards ; Tani, Max. "AI critics funded AI coverage at top newsrooms." *Semafor,* December 7, 2025. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/07/2025/ai-critics-funded-ai-coverage-at-top-newsrooms
|
[^20]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Coefficient Giving Action Fund" (formerly Open Philanthropy Action Fund), EIN 81-2644663, organization record, Form 990 data and Part VII officer listings for fiscal years 2016 to 2024, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/812644663
|
||||||
[^21]: Effort. "How Effective Altruism Bought the Media," September 2, 2026, https://www.effort.news/tarbell ; Effort. "Effective Altruism is Buying Political Staff," September 19, 2026. https://www.effort.news/aisi
|
[^21]: Federal Election Commission, Schedule A receipt from "Open Philanthropy Action Fund," 750,000 dollars, October 29, 2019, reported by Real Justice PAC (C00632554) on its 2019 year-end Form 3X, image 202007029244274196, retrieved September 23, 2026. http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?202007029244274196
|
||||||
[^22]: Federal Election Commission, itemized receipts (Schedule A, memo entries excluded) for contributor "Moskovitz, Dustin," two-year periods 2016 through 2026, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://api.open.fec.gov/v1/schedules/schedule_a/?contributor_name=Moskovitz%2C+Dustin
|
[^22]: Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, "Ethics and Standards policies," February 20, 2026, https://www.tarbellcenter.org/ethics-and-standards ; Tani, Max. "AI critics funded AI coverage at top newsrooms." *Semafor,* December 7, 2025. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/07/2025/ai-critics-funded-ai-coverage-at-top-newsrooms
|
||||||
[^23]: Schleifer, Theodore. "DustinBucks." *Puck,* March 20, 2024, archived January 10, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250110050826/https://puck.news/dustinbucks/
|
[^23]: Effort. "How Effective Altruism Bought the Media," September 2, 2026, https://www.effort.news/tarbell ; Effort. "Effective Altruism is Buying Political Staff," September 19, 2026. https://www.effort.news/aisi
|
||||||
|
[^24]: Federal Election Commission, itemized receipts (Schedule A, memo entries excluded) for contributor "Moskovitz, Dustin," two-year periods 2016 through 2026, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://api.open.fec.gov/v1/schedules/schedule_a/?contributor_name=Moskovitz%2C+Dustin
|
||||||
|
[^25]: Schleifer, Theodore. "DustinBucks." *Puck,* March 20, 2024, archived January 10, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250110050826/https://puck.news/dustinbucks/
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
|
|
@ -9,32 +9,81 @@ tags:
|
||||||
- Longtermism
|
- Longtermism
|
||||||
alias:
|
alias:
|
||||||
- Holden Karnofsky
|
- Holden Karnofsky
|
||||||
summary: "Holden Karnofsky is the cofounder of the charity evaluator GiveWell and of Open Philanthropy, the largest sustained funder of effective altruism and AI-safety work, an early backer of Anthropic who later moved into AI-safety strategy and joined Anthropic in 2025, and the husband of Anthropic president Daniela Amodei."
|
summary: "Cofounder of GiveWell and Open Philanthropy and its co-CEO until 2023, a Redwood Research director, an OpenAI director from 2017 to 2021, Anthropic staff from 2025, and husband of Anthropic president Daniela Amodei."
|
||||||
born: 1981
|
born: 1981
|
||||||
location: "San Francisco, California"
|
location: "San Francisco, California"
|
||||||
created: 2026-06-19
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
updated: 2026-06-19
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[GiveWell]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "cofounder with Elie Hassenfeld"
|
||||||
|
start: 2007
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: spouse_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Daniela Amodei]]"
|
||||||
|
fn: 18
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[OpenAI]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "director"
|
||||||
|
start: 2017
|
||||||
|
end: 2021
|
||||||
|
fn: 18
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Carnegie Endowment for International Peace]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "visiting scholar"
|
||||||
|
start: 2024-04-29
|
||||||
|
fn: 17
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Anthropic]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "member of technical staff, reporting to Jared Kaplan"
|
||||||
|
start: 2025-01
|
||||||
|
fn: 18
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Holden Karnofsky (born 1981) is an American grantmaker who cofounded the charity evaluator [[GiveWell]] and the foundation [[Open Philanthropy]], the durable financial backbone of the [[Effective Altruism]] movement and of [[Longtermism|longtermist]] and AI-safety work. As Open Philanthropy's co-chief executive he directed the institutional patronage that sustained AI-existential-risk research, was an early backer of the AI company [[Anthropic]], and in 2025 left grantmaking to work at Anthropic directly. He is married to Anthropic cofounder and president [[Daniela Amodei]].[^1][^2]
|
Holden Karnofsky (born 1981) is an American grantmaker who cofounded the charity evaluator [[GiveWell]] and the foundation [[Open Philanthropy]], the durable financial backbone of the [[Effective Altruism]] movement and of [[Longtermism|longtermist]] and AI-safety work. As Open Philanthropy's co-chief executive he directed the institutional patronage that sustained AI-existential-risk research, was an early backer of the AI company [[Anthropic]], and left Open Philanthropy's staff in 2024 and joined Anthropic in 2025. He is married to Anthropic cofounder and president [[Daniela Amodei]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### GiveWell
|
### GiveWell
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Karnofsky and [[Elie Hassenfeld]] met as analysts at the hedge fund [[Bridgewater Associates]], where they were part of a group of eight finance-industry friends researching charitable giving in their spare time. In 2007 the two left their jobs, raised about 300,000 dollars from former coworkers, and founded GiveWell, an organization that rates charities by the measured cost-effectiveness of their interventions and recommends a short list of top picks. The model, evidence-based giving aimed at maximizing lives saved per dollar, became one of the two intellectual streams of effective altruism, alongside the Oxford moral philosophy of [[Toby Ord]] and [[William MacAskill]].[^3][^4]
|
Karnofsky and [[Elie Hassenfeld]] met as analysts at the hedge fund [[Bridgewater Associates]], where they were part of a group of eight finance-industry friends researching charitable giving in their spare time. In 2007 the two left their jobs, raised about 300,000 dollars from former coworkers, and founded GiveWell, an organization that rates charities by the measured cost-effectiveness of their interventions and recommends a short list of top picks. The model, evidence-based giving aimed at maximizing lives saved per dollar, became one of the two intellectual streams of effective altruism, alongside the Oxford moral philosophy of [[Toby Ord]] and [[William MacAskill]].[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Months after the launch, Karnofsky was caught promoting GiveWell anonymously: in December 2007 he posted a question soliciting charity recommendations on the community site Ask MetaFilter under a false identity, then answered it touting GiveWell without disclosing his role. The board removed him as executive director and board secretary effective January 3, 2008, cut 5,000 dollars from his salary, and required him to take a professional-development course; he was later restored to the leadership. GiveWell grew into a major channel for evidence-based giving, directing more than 1.45 billion dollars to its top charities between 2009 and 2024, with roughly half of that going to the [[Against Malaria Foundation]] at an estimated cost of about 5,500 dollars per life saved.[^7][^8]
|
Months after the launch, Karnofsky was caught promoting GiveWell anonymously: in December 2007 he posted a question soliciting charity recommendations on the community site Ask MetaFilter under a false identity, then answered it touting GiveWell without disclosing his role. The board removed him as executive director and board secretary effective January 3, 2008, cut 5,000 dollars from his salary, and required him to take a professional-development course; he was later restored to the leadership. GiveWell grew into a major channel for evidence-based giving, directing more than 1.45 billion dollars to its top charities between 2009 and 2024, with roughly half of that going to the [[Against Malaria Foundation]] at an estimated cost of about 5,500 dollars per life saved.[^5][^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Clear Fund
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
GiveWell's legal name is The Clear Fund, EIN 20-8625442, a 501(c)(3) with an [[Internal Revenue Service|IRS]] ruling date of July 1, 2007, filing from 1714 Franklin Street in [[Oakland]]. For 2023 it reported revenue of 219.6 million dollars and year-end assets of 208.6 million.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Open Philanthropy
|
### Open Philanthropy
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
GiveWell's research into larger and riskier giving opportunities led to a partnership with Good Ventures, the foundation established in 2011 by [[Facebook]] cofounder [[Dustin Moskovitz]] and his wife [[Cari Tuna]]. The two efforts joined as the Open Philanthropy Project in 2014 and began independent operations in 2017, with Karnofsky as co-chief executive. Funded chiefly by Moskovitz and Tuna, Open Philanthropy directed more than four billion dollars in grants by 2025 across global health and "longtermism," the latter covering AI risk, pandemic preparedness, and the far future. Its AI-risk money flowed to the research community around the [[Machine Intelligence Research Institute]], the [[Future of Humanity Institute]], and the [[Rationalist Community]], making Open Philanthropy the principal patron of AI-safety work outside the technology companies. The organization renamed itself Coefficient Giving in 2025.[^1][^2]
|
GiveWell's research into larger and riskier giving opportunities led to a partnership with [[Good Ventures]], the foundation established in 2011 by [[Facebook]] cofounder [[Dustin Moskovitz]] and his wife [[Cari Tuna]]. The two efforts joined as the Open Philanthropy Project in 2014 and began independent operations in 2017, with Karnofsky as chief executive. Funded chiefly by Moskovitz and Tuna, Open Philanthropy directed more than four billion dollars in grants by 2025 across global health and "longtermism," the latter covering AI risk, pandemic preparedness, and the far future. Its AI-risk money flowed to the research community around the [[Machine Intelligence Research Institute]], the [[Future of Humanity Institute]], and the [[Rationalist Community]], making Open Philanthropy the principal patron of AI-safety work outside the technology companies. The organization renamed itself Coefficient Giving in 2025.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The effort began inside GiveWell as "GiveWell Labs" before splitting off, with Karnofsky and [[Alexander Berger]] sharing the chief-executive role until Berger became sole chief executive on Karnofsky's 2023 departure. In March 2017 Karnofsky steered Open Philanthropy's 30-million-dollar grant to [[OpenAI]], a sum that bought a board seat he held until 2021, when he resigned it after his wife cofounded a competing lab. Between 2021 and 2023 Karnofsky wrote the "most important century" series on his blog Cold Takes, more than twenty essays arguing that the development of transformative AI could make the present century the most consequential in human history, a thesis that supplied the intellectual rationale for Open Philanthropy's concentration of money on AI risk.[^2][^9]
|
The effort began inside GiveWell as "GiveWell Labs" before splitting off. On June 16, 2021, Karnofsky announced that his fellow cofounder [[Alexander Berger]] had been "promoted to co-CEO," in "a dual-CEO structure, with both of us reporting directly to the board"; Karnofsky kept oversight of "biosecurity and pandemic preparedness and potential risks from advanced AI," and Berger took global health, scientific research, farm animal welfare and criminal justice reform.[^8] On July 27, 2023, writing "on behalf of Open Philanthropy's board," Karnofsky announced that Berger was sole chief executive and that his own title was changing "from co-CEO to Director of AI Strategy"; he stayed on the staff.[^9] In March 2017 Karnofsky steered Open Philanthropy's 30-million-dollar grant to [[OpenAI]], a sum that bought a board seat he held until 2021, when he resigned it after his wife cofounded a competing lab. Between 2021 and 2023 Karnofsky wrote the "most important century" series on his blog Cold Takes, more than twenty essays arguing that the development of transformative AI could make the present century the most consequential in human history, a thesis that supplied the intellectual rationale for Open Philanthropy's concentration of money on AI risk.[^2][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Anthropic and the Amodei Tie
|
### Anthropic and the Amodei Tie
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Open Philanthropy was an early funder of Anthropic, the AI company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers from the effective-altruism milieu, and Karnofsky held a seat associated with that early backing. Karnofsky married Daniela Amodei in 2017; she cofounded Anthropic with her brother [[Dario Amodei]] and serves as its president. In 2022 [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] invested roughly 500 million dollars of [[FTX]]-derived capital in Anthropic through [[Alameda Research]], placing the company at the intersection of the movement's two largest funders during the period Karnofsky's foundation and his wife's company were both tied to it. Karnofsky took a leave from his co-chief-executive role in 2023 to focus on AI strategy and joined Anthropic in January 2025 to work on its responsible-scaling and safety policies.[^2][^5][^6]
|
Open Philanthropy was an early funder of Anthropic, the AI company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers from the effective-altruism milieu, and Karnofsky held a seat associated with that early backing. Karnofsky married Daniela Amodei in 2017; she cofounded Anthropic with her brother [[Dario Amodei]] and serves as its president. In 2022 [[Sam Bankman-Fried]] invested roughly 500 million dollars of [[FTX]]-derived capital in Anthropic through [[Alameda Research]], placing the company at the intersection of the movement's two largest funders during the period Karnofsky's foundation and his wife's company were both tied to it. Karnofsky took a leave from his co-chief-executive role in 2023 to focus on AI strategy, became Open Philanthropy's director of AI strategy in July 2023, left its staff for the [[Carnegie Endowment for International Peace]] in April 2024, and joined Anthropic in January 2025 to work on its responsible-scaling and safety policies.[^2][^11][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The overlap drew the criticism that the largest funder of independent AI-safety research was led by a man married to the president of a frontier AI lab his foundation had financed. Karnofsky's OpenAI board seat from 2017 to 2021 had already placed him inside one leading lab before the marriage tie connected him to a second; commentators noted that the same small network of effective-altruism figures sat on the funding, governance, and research sides of the field at once. At Anthropic he took up work on the company's Responsible Scaling Policy, the framework of capability thresholds and safety commitments the company uses to govern the release of more powerful models.[^2][^6]
|
The overlap drew the criticism that the largest funder of independent AI-safety research was led by a man married to the president of a frontier AI lab his foundation had financed. Karnofsky's OpenAI board seat from 2017 to 2021 had already placed him inside one leading lab before the marriage tie connected him to a second; commentators noted that the same small network of effective-altruism figures sat on the funding, governance, and research sides of the field at once. At Anthropic he took up work on the company's Responsible Scaling Policy, the framework of capability thresholds and safety commitments the company uses to govern the release of more powerful models.[^2][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Redwood Research
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
When [[Nate Thomas]] announced [[Redwood Research]] on October 6, 2021, he wrote that "our board is Nate, [[Paul Christiano]] and Holden Karnofsky." Karnofsky, then co-chief executive of Open Philanthropy, was listed as Redwood's unpaid treasurer on its return for 2021 and as treasurer and CFO for 2022, with Christiano as secretary. Open Philanthropy recommended four grants totaling 9.42 million dollars to Redwood in November 2021, followed by 10.7 million dollars in August 2022 and 5.3 million in June 2023; the archived grant pages do not mention Karnofsky. Redwood's return for 2023 listed him as a director "thru 11/23," Christiano "thru 6/23," and Open Philanthropy's senior program officer for AI risk, [[Ajeya Cotra]], as a director.[^13][^14][^15]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Action Fund
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Karnofsky was also an officer of the [[Open Philanthropy Action Fund]], the 501(c)(4) of Moskovitz and Tuna, which files from the [[Palo Alto]] address of the Good Ventures Foundation. Its returns list him as executive director for 2017, chief executive and director for 2018 to 2020, co-CEO and director for 2021 and 2022, "co-CEO thru 7/23/23" for 2023, and a director only for 2024. None of its officers was paid by it.[^16]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Carnegie Endowment
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On April 29, 2024, Karnofsky wrote: "Effective today, I've left Open Philanthropy and joined the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as a Visiting Scholar. At Carnegie, I will analyze and write about topics relevant to AI risk reduction." He named as his first subjects "what AI capabilities might increase the risk of a global catastrophe," how to "catch early warning signs of these capabilities," and what protective measures would be needed. He gave his reason for leaving: "my work no longer involves significant involvement in grantmaking, and given that I've overseen grantmaking historically, it's a significant problem for there to be confusion on this point. Philanthropy comes with particular power dynamics that I'd like to move away from, and I also think Open Philanthropy would benefit from less ambiguity about my role in its funding decisions (especially given the fact that I'm married to the President of a major AI company)." He wrote that he would "continue to serve on its board of directors (at least for the time being)," and named Carnegie's president, [[Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar|Tino Cuéllar]], and its scholar [[Matt Sheehan]], who "specializes in China's AI ecosystem."[^17]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the comments a reader posting as Adam_Scholl suggested Karnofsky might be among the people "who stands to personally lose the most money in the event of an AI pause." Karnofsky replied: "My spouse isn't currently planning to divest the full amount of her equity. Some factors here: (a) It's her decision, not mine. (b) The equity has important voting rights, such that divesting or donating it in full could have governance implications." He added: "The bottom line is that I have a significant conflict of interest that isn't going away, and I am trying to help reduce AI risk despite that. My new role will not have authority over grants or other significant resources besides my time and my ability to do analysis and make arguments."[^17]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The first comment on the same post, posted anonymously by a writer whose description of the couple's giving matches Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, read: "I'm grateful that Cari and I met Holden when we did (and grateful to Daniela for luring him to San Francisco for that first meeting). The last fourteen years of our giving would have looked very different without his work."[^17]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Anthropic Staff
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*[[Fortune (magazine)|Fortune]]* reported in February 2025 that Anthropic described Karnofsky's title only as "a member of the technical staff" reporting to its chief science officer, [[Jared Kaplan]], and quoted a spokesperson: "He is working on the responsible scaling policy and other aspects around safety planning ahead of highly advanced AI systems." The magazine wrote that with his arrival "Anthropic now has three close family members holding influential roles at the company," and that he had served on OpenAI's board "between 2017 and 2021."[^18]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
@ -42,8 +91,17 @@ The overlap drew the criticism that the largest funder of independent AI-safety
|
||||||
[^2]: "Who Funds the AI Safety Watchdogs," Inside The Black Box, on Open Philanthropy's share of AI-safety funding, the Karnofsky-Amodei marriage, and Karnofsky's 2025 move to Anthropic. https://itbb.substack.com/p/who-funds-the-watchdogs
|
[^2]: "Who Funds the AI Safety Watchdogs," Inside The Black Box, on Open Philanthropy's share of AI-safety funding, the Karnofsky-Amodei marriage, and Karnofsky's 2025 move to Anthropic. https://itbb.substack.com/p/who-funds-the-watchdogs
|
||||||
[^3]: "Our Story," GiveWell, on the 2007 founding by eight finance-industry friends and the 300,000-dollar startup raise. https://www.givewell.org/about/story
|
[^3]: "Our Story," GiveWell, on the 2007 founding by eight finance-industry friends and the 300,000-dollar startup raise. https://www.givewell.org/about/story
|
||||||
[^4]: "GiveWell Co-Founder Explains Effective Altruism Frameworks," *The Harvard Crimson,* December 4, 2015. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/12/4/givewell-founder-effective-altruism/
|
[^4]: "GiveWell Co-Founder Explains Effective Altruism Frameworks," *The Harvard Crimson,* December 4, 2015. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/12/4/givewell-founder-effective-altruism/
|
||||||
[^5]: "Effective Altruism After Sam Bankman-Fried," Seven Pillars Institute, 2023, on the 500 million dollar Anthropic investment via Alameda Research. https://www.sevenpillarsinstitute.org/effective-altruism-after-sam-bankman-fried/
|
[^5]: "GiveWell in turmoil after 'horrible lapse of judgement' by founders," *Alliance,* 2008, on the MetaFilter astroturfing and the board sanctions. https://www.alliancemagazine.org/news/givewell-in-turmoil-after-horrible-lapse-of-judgement-by-founders/
|
||||||
[^6]: "The Making of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei," Alex Kantrowitz, on Open Philanthropy as an early Anthropic funder and the Karnofsky tie. https://kantrowitz.medium.com/the-making-of-anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-449777529dd6
|
[^6]: "GiveWell's Fundraising and Grantmaking in 2023" and "GiveWell's 2024 Metrics and Impact," The GiveWell Blog, on the cumulative 1.45-billion-dollar total and the Against Malaria Foundation cost per life saved. https://blog.givewell.org/2025/08/13/givewells-2024-metrics-and-impact/
|
||||||
[^7]: "GiveWell in turmoil after 'horrible lapse of judgement' by founders," *Alliance,* 2008, on the MetaFilter astroturfing and the board sanctions. https://www.alliancemagazine.org/news/givewell-in-turmoil-after-horrible-lapse-of-judgement-by-founders/
|
[^7]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "The Clear Fund," EIN 20-8625442, organization record and Form 990 data, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/208625442
|
||||||
[^8]: "GiveWell's Fundraising and Grantmaking in 2023" and "GiveWell's 2024 Metrics and Impact," The GiveWell Blog, on the cumulative 1.45-billion-dollar total and the Against Malaria Foundation cost per life saved. https://blog.givewell.org/2025/08/13/givewells-2024-metrics-and-impact/
|
[^8]: Karnofsky, Holden. "Open Philanthropy's New Co-CEO." Open Philanthropy blog, June 16, 2021, archived May 31, 2022. http://web.archive.org/web/20220531031049/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/open-philanthropys-new-co-ceo
|
||||||
[^9]: "OpenAI General Support," Good Ventures, on the March 2017 30-million-dollar grant and Karnofsky's board seat through 2021; Karnofsky, Holden, "The Most Important Century," Cold Takes, 2021. https://www.cold-takes.com/the-most-important-century-in-a-nutshell/
|
[^9]: Karnofsky, Holden. "Alexander Berger is Now Sole CEO of Open Philanthropy." Open Philanthropy, July 27, 2023, archived March 17, 2026. http://web.archive.org/web/20260317060608/https://coefficientgiving.org/research/alexander-berger-is-now-sole-ceo-of-open-philanthropy/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: "OpenAI General Support," Good Ventures, on the March 2017 30-million-dollar grant and Karnofsky's board seat through 2021; Karnofsky, Holden, "The Most Important Century," Cold Takes, 2021. https://www.cold-takes.com/the-most-important-century-in-a-nutshell/
|
||||||
|
[^11]: "Effective Altruism After Sam Bankman-Fried," Seven Pillars Institute, 2023, on the 500 million dollar Anthropic investment via Alameda Research. https://www.sevenpillarsinstitute.org/effective-altruism-after-sam-bankman-fried/
|
||||||
|
[^12]: "The Making of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei," Alex Kantrowitz, on Open Philanthropy as an early Anthropic funder and the Karnofsky tie. https://kantrowitz.medium.com/the-making-of-anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-449777529dd6
|
||||||
|
[^13]: Thomas, Nate. "We're Redwood Research, we do applied alignment research, AMA." LessWrong, October 6, 2021. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qHvHvBR8L6oycnMXe/we-re-redwood-research-we-do-applied-alignment-research-ama
|
||||||
|
[^14]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Redwood Research Group Inc," EIN 87-1702255, Form 990 Part VII officer listings for fiscal years 2021 to 2024, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/871702255
|
||||||
|
[^15]: Open Philanthropy, "Redwood Research, General Support," November 2021, archived August 11, 2022, http://web.archive.org/web/20220811081927/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support/ ; "Redwood Research, General Support (2022)," archived November 6, 2022, http://web.archive.org/web/20221106183007/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support-2/ ; "Redwood Research, General Support (2023)," archived September 12, 2023, http://web.archive.org/web/20230912095528/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support-2023/ ; "Ajeya Cotra," team biography, archived November 11, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20231111135945/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/team/ajeya-cotra/
|
||||||
|
[^16]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Coefficient Giving Action Fund" (formerly Open Philanthropy Action Fund), EIN 81-2644663, Form 990 Part VII officer listings for fiscal years 2016 to 2024, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/812644663
|
||||||
|
[^17]: Karnofsky, Holden. "Joining the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace." EA Forum, April 29, 2024, with comments. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7gzgwgwefwBku2cnL/joining-the-carnegie-endowment-for-international-peace
|
||||||
|
[^18]: Mathews, Jessica. "Anthropic hired president Daniela Amodei's husband to work on the company's AI safety strategy." *Fortune,* February 13, 2025. https://fortune.com/2025/02/13/anthropic-hired-president-daniela-amodei-husband-ai-safety-responsible-scaling/
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
92
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/John Heimann.md
Normal file
92
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/John Heimann.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,92 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "BCCI Scandal"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- BankRegulator
|
||||||
|
- Comptroller
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- John G. Heimann
|
||||||
|
summary: "New York banking superintendent who twice blocked BCCI's attempts to buy a New York bank through nominees, then as Comptroller of the Currency approved Ghaith Pharaon's 1978 purchase of the National Bank of Georgia."
|
||||||
|
born: 1929-04-01
|
||||||
|
died: 2024-01-31
|
||||||
|
location: "New York City"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Office of the Comptroller of the Currency]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "24th Comptroller of the Currency"
|
||||||
|
start: 1977-07-21
|
||||||
|
end: 1981-05-15
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: appointed
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Jimmy Carter]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "Comptroller of the Currency"
|
||||||
|
start: 1977
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: investigated
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "New York Banking Superintendent; held nominee applications for New York banks"
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: investigated
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bert Lance]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Comptroller's review of Lance's banking practices"
|
||||||
|
start: 1977
|
||||||
|
fn: 4
|
||||||
|
- type: investigated
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Ghaith R. Pharaon]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "OCC inquiry whether Pharaon fronted for BCCI at the National Bank of Georgia"
|
||||||
|
start: 1978
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Warburg Pincus]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "founding partner, E.M. Warburg Pincus & Co."
|
||||||
|
start: 1967
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Merrill Lynch]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "vice chairman of capital markets"
|
||||||
|
end: 1999
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
John G. Heimann was an American investment banker and bank regulator who served as Superintendent of Banks for the State of [[New York]] and then, from July 21, 1977, to May 15, 1981, as the 24th Comptroller of the Currency, appointed by President [[Jimmy Carter]].[^1][^2] In both posts he dealt with the attempts of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) to enter the [[United States]].[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Early Life and Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Heimann was born in [[New York City]] on April 1, 1929, to Sydney and Dorothy Baright Heimann. His mother died in 1934 and his father, a lawyer, ten years later, after which he and his younger brother Richard were made wards of the court and sent to the [[New York Military Academy]]. He received a BA in economics from [[Syracuse University]] in 1950, was drafted into the Army during the [[Korean War]], and began his career at [[Smith Barney]], where he created the firm's pension fund business. In 1967 [[Lionel Pincus]] asked him to join his new firm, E.M. Warburg Pincus & Co., as a founding partner.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1975, during New York City's fiscal crisis, he became Superintendent of Banks for New York State in the administration of Governor [[Hugh Carey]], who later made him Commissioner of the Division of Housing and Community Renewal.[^2] As Comptroller he was the first chairman of the [[Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council]] and acting chairman of the [[Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI in New York
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
BCCI's first attempt to acquire an American bank was a bid for the [[Chelsea National Bank]] in New York through a member of the [[Gokal brothers|Gokal]] family as nominee. Heimann testified to the Senate subcommittee of Senator [[John Kerry]]: "My first supervisory contact with BCCI occurred when I was New York Banking Superintendent. New York law requires the Superintended to approve the change of control of a New York chartered bank. . . A young Pakistani national was the proposed purchaser. His uncertified financial statement showed total assets of $4.5 million, of which $3 million was in the form of a loan from his sister. His reported annual income for the prior year was, as I recall, approximately $34,000."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He found that BCCI had no central regulator and divided its operations between two auditors, so that it had no consolidated financial report, and put a hold on the application. BCCI then applied through a second nominee for a second New York bank, with the same result. [[Agha Hasan Abedi]] then met Heimann directly. Heimann testified: "In each instance, Mr. Abedi attempted to convince us of the secure nature and correct operations of BCCI, its financial strength, etc. On each of these occasions, I expressed my concern that BCCI did not have a primary regulator, and that, until it did, my office was reluctant to permit entry into the US." The Senate report concluded: "New York, the most important U.S. banking market for BCCI, would be closed to BCCI so long as Heimann was its chief regulator."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Before the subcommittee he stated: "Early on in my government service, I learned one very important and fundamental lesson; namely, that those so inclined to manipulate banks for their own benefit find it easiest to do so if they operate between different supervisory regimes."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Bert Lance and the National Bank of Georgia
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
As Comptroller, Heimann was, in the Senate report's words, "the principal person in the Carter Administration who determined that Bert Lance's banking practices were serious enough to warrant criminal investigation, and to require that Lance not remain as director of the Office of Management and Budget."[^4] His family's notice described the investigation of [[Bert Lance]] as his first challenge as Comptroller.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In January 1978 Lance sold his shares in the [[National Bank of Georgia]] to [[Ghaith R. Pharaon]]. In a memorandum to his files dated January 4, 1978, Heimann recorded that the bank's president, Guyton, "noted he was somewhat disturbed about the role played by the Pakistanis in this transaction," and that "He believes that Lance is presently on the BCCI payroll working with Addabi [sic] and Sami. As a matter of fact, Lance went to London last week and will be back today. The purpose of that trip, presumably, was to discuss further expansion of BCCI in the U.S." Within two weeks the OCC learned that Lance was receiving from BCCI "a tremendous salary," an airplane, office space and secretarial help.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
When BCCI's attempt, with Lance, to take over [[Financial General Bankshares]] became public, Heimann directed the OCC's enforcement staff to determine whether Pharaon, like Gokal before him, was a front for BCCI. [[Robert B. Serino]], director of enforcement and compliance, met Pharaon on March 30, 1978, and wrote to Heimann on April 3: "My conclusions from meeting with Pharaon are that he tells a convincing story; however, it appears that he is 'beholden' to or at least influenced by Abedi. I believe he could, in fact, be Abedi's alter ego in the United States." The Senate report found: "There is no evidence in OCC files to suggest that OCC sought to investigate further its suspicions about Pharaon acting as a front man for BCCI in the purchase of National Bank of Georgia."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The report described Heimann's position: "Heimann was faced with a difficult choice. Pharaon had agreed that Lance would have no further involvement with National Bank of Georgia if his application to buy it were approved." The OCC was preparing a fraud suit against Lance, and the bank had inadequate capital. "The OCC gave Pharaon permission to move forward and he concluded his tender offer to purchase a 60 percent interest in NBG on May 30, 1978." In the same period an OCC examiner in London, [[Joseph E. Vaez]], had found that BCCI used nominees in purchases of other banks; the report found that this information did not reach the examiners dealing with the Georgia bank, and that in 1981, when the [[Federal Reserve Board|Federal Reserve]] was considering the purchase of Financial General Bankshares, the OCC failed, inadvertently, to pass on what it knew of BCCI's possible use of nominees.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Later Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Heimann returned to Wall Street in 1981 as deputy chairman of [[Warburg, Paribas, Becker]], and through its acquisition moved to [[Merrill Lynch]], where he was vice chairman of capital markets, chairman of the executive committee of Merrill Lynch Europe and Middle East, and chairman of its global financial institutions group. After leaving Merrill Lynch in 1999 he became founding chairman of the Financial Stability Institute at the [[Bank for International Settlements]]. He was a member of the [[Group of Thirty]] and chaired the 2020 Andean Commission of the [[Council on Foreign Relations]].[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He died at his home in Manhattan in January 2024, at 94.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. "John G. Heimann, 24th Comptroller of the Currency." https://www.occ.gov/about/who-we-are/history/previous-comptrollers/bio-24-john-heimann.html
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "John G. Heimann" (paid death notice). *The New York Times,* February 4, 2024, via Legacy.com. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/nytimes/name/john-heimann-obituary?id=54285685 (archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20260224062907/https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/nytimes/name/john-heimann-obituary?id=54285685). The notice states that he died "on Wednesday," which fell on January 31, 2024.
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 6, "BCCI in the United States: Initial Entry and FGB and NBG Takeovers" (citing Heimann's testimony, S. Hrg. 102-379, pp. 76-77, and OCC memoranda of January 4 and April 3, 1978). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/06early.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 12, "The Regulators." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/12reg.htm
|
||||||
|
|
@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
category: "BCCI Scandal"
|
category: "BCCI Scandal"
|
||||||
created: 2026-05-01
|
created: 2026-05-01
|
||||||
updated: 2026-05-01
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
tags:
|
tags:
|
||||||
- Person
|
- Person
|
||||||
- BCCI
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
|
@ -27,6 +27,15 @@ relations:
|
||||||
start: 1992-07-01
|
start: 1992-07-01
|
||||||
end: 1993-12-23
|
end: 1993-12-23
|
||||||
fn: 2
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Skyway Aircraft Leasing]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "owner, per a court document"
|
||||||
|
fn: 7
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[James R. Bath]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "1.4 million dollar loan toward the Express Auto Park garage, Hobby Airport"
|
||||||
|
start: 1990
|
||||||
|
fn: 7
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
Khalid Salim bin Mahfouz was born December 26, 1949, in Jeddah, [[Saudi Arabia]]. His father, Salem bin Mahfouz, was a Yemeni-born money-changer who founded the [[National Commercial Bank]] (NCB), the first and largest private bank in Saudi Arabia. Khalid succeeded his father in management of NCB and by the 1990s personally held a 75% stake in the institution, with his wife Naela Kaaki holding the remaining 25%. In 1999, following the collapse of [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International|BCCI]], the Saudi government purchased a controlling 50% stake in NCB for at least $1 billion, partly used to retire Khalid's personal debts, after which the Mahfouz family retained a 34% stake but Khalid surrendered all management positions. Khalid bin Mahfouz died August 16, 2009, in Jeddah.[^1]
|
Khalid Salim bin Mahfouz was born December 26, 1949, in Jeddah, [[Saudi Arabia]]. His father, Salem bin Mahfouz, was a Yemeni-born money-changer who founded the [[National Commercial Bank]] (NCB), the first and largest private bank in Saudi Arabia. Khalid succeeded his father in management of NCB and by the 1990s personally held a 75% stake in the institution, with his wife Naela Kaaki holding the remaining 25%. In 1999, following the collapse of [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International|BCCI]], the Saudi government purchased a controlling 50% stake in NCB for at least $1 billion, partly used to retire Khalid's personal debts, after which the Mahfouz family retained a 34% stake but Khalid surrendered all management positions. Khalid bin Mahfouz died August 16, 2009, in Jeddah.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
@ -46,9 +55,25 @@ A document dated May 14, 1985, on [[Department of Justice]] letterhead and signe
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The document placed bin Mahfouz alongside Ghorbanifar and Khashoggi, both of whom were simultaneously central to the arms-for-hostages pipeline that became the [[Iran-Contra Affair]], in a network brokering intelligence-modified software to the Middle East.
|
The document placed bin Mahfouz alongside Ghorbanifar and Khashoggi, both of whom were simultaneously central to the arms-for-hostages pipeline that became the [[Iran-Contra Affair]], in a network brokering intelligence-modified software to the Middle East.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 1986 Share Agreement
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate Report]] described bin Mahfouz as "head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia and the most powerful banker in the Middle East," and wrote that the "forced sale" BCCI later considered for First American was "first considered, and attempted, by BCCI, in 1986 in connection with the purchases of BCCI and CCAH stock" by him. He had bought the shares "under a complex agreement that would permit him to purchase both banks, or to hold his interests temporarily with BCCI guaranteeing to buy them back at no risk to bin Mahfouz." According to the report, "After auditors for National Commercial Bank raised questions about bin Mahfouz's actions regarding BCCI, the transactions were fully unwound by 1989, leaving the First American problem for BCCI unsolved."[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In September 1990 [[Price Waterhouse]] learned that BCCI "had concealed further lending of over $500 million to its major customs by 'parking' that lending with a Middle Eastern bank, namely, the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia controlled by Khalid bin Mahfouz." The practice had continued after the removal of [[Swaleh Naqvi]], "with the knowledge and approval of the Board representative of the controlling shareholders," the government of [[Abu Dhabi]].[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Houston
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In June 1992 the *[[Houston Chronicle]]* reported that the [[Financial Crimes Enforcement Network]] and the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] were reviewing accusations that the Houston businessman [[James R. Bath]] had guided Saudi money into Houston, and that Bath had said in a sworn deposition that he was "the sole director of Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd., a company that a court document shows is owned by Khaled bin Mahfouz." The newspaper reported that in 1990 Bath bought the Express Auto Park garage at Houston's [[William P. Hobby Airport|Hobby Airport]] for 8.4 million dollars, "which included a $1.4 million loan provided by Mahfouz, according to transaction documents," and that after Sheikh [[Salem bin Laden|Salem M. Binladen]], for whom Bath had bought Houston Gulf Airport in 1977, died in 1988, "his interests in the airport were taken over by Mahfouz, according to court documents." Bath had invested 50,000 dollars in the Arbusto '79 and Arbusto '80 oil partnerships of [[George W. Bush]].[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The journalist [[Lucy Komisar]] wrote in 2007 that in 1976, when [[George H.W. Bush]] headed the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]], the agency sold some of the planes of its proprietary airline [[Air America]] to Skyway, "a company owned by Bath and Bin Mahfouz." She also described bin Mahfouz as the "chief banker" of the Saudi investor [[Abdullah Taha Bakhsh]], who held about 11 percent of [[Harken Energy]], the oil company of which George W. Bush was a director.[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[^1]: Beaty, Jonathan, and S.C. Gwynne. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI.* Random House, 1993.
|
[^1]: Beaty, Jonathan, and S.C. Gwynne. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI.* Random House, 1993.
|
||||||
[^2]: "Saudi to Pay $225 Million in BCCI Settlement." *The Washington Post*, December 24, 1993; "Top Saudi Banker Indicted in BCCI Fraud." United Press International, July 1, 1992.
|
[^2]: "Saudi to Pay $225 Million in BCCI Settlement." *The Washington Post*, December 24, 1993; "Top Saudi Banker Indicted in BCCI Fraud." United Press International, July 1, 1992.
|
||||||
[^3]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary. *The INSLAW Affair: Investigative Report.* House Report 102-857, 102nd Congress, 2nd Session, September 10, 1992.
|
[^3]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary. *The INSLAW Affair: Investigative Report.* House Report 102-857, 102nd Congress, 2nd Session, September 10, 1992.
|
||||||
[^4]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010.
|
[^4]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010.
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 7, "BCCI in the United States: Later Acquisitions." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/07later.htm
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 10, "BCCI and Its Accountants." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/10accounta.htm
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Urban, Jerry. "Bush Said Friend's Arbusto Investment Was His Own, Not Saudi Money." *Houston Chronicle,* June 4, 1992. Reproduced at https://911timeline.s3.amazonaws.com/1990s/houstonchronicle060492.html
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Komisar, Lucy. "Questions Linger About Bushes and BCCI." Inter Press Service, April 4, 2007. https://www.ipsnews.net/2007/04/finance-questions-linger-about-bushes-and-bcci/
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
122
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Norman Lamont.md
Normal file
122
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Norman Lamont.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "BCCI Scandal"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- UnitedKingdom
|
||||||
|
- ConservativeParty
|
||||||
|
- HMTreasury
|
||||||
|
- BankingSupervision
|
||||||
|
- 1990s
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Lord Lamont of Lerwick
|
||||||
|
- Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont
|
||||||
|
summary: "Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1990 to 1993 who answered for the government after BCCI's July 1991 closure and, with the Bank of England's Governor, commissioned the Bingham inquiry."
|
||||||
|
born: 1942-05-08
|
||||||
|
location: "London, United Kingdom"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[HM Treasury]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Chancellor of the Exchequer"
|
||||||
|
start: 1990-11-28
|
||||||
|
end: 1993-05-27
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[HM Treasury]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Chief Secretary to the Treasury"
|
||||||
|
start: 1989-07-24
|
||||||
|
end: 1990-11-28
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[HM Treasury]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Financial Secretary"
|
||||||
|
start: 1986-05-21
|
||||||
|
end: 1989-07-23
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[House of Commons]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Member of Parliament for Kingston upon Thames"
|
||||||
|
start: 1972-05-05
|
||||||
|
end: 1997-05-01
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[House of Lords]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Lord Lamont of Lerwick"
|
||||||
|
start: 1998-07-24
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Conservative Party]]"
|
||||||
|
start: 1972-05-05
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[N. M. Rothschild & Sons]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "merchant banker"
|
||||||
|
start: 1968
|
||||||
|
end: 1979
|
||||||
|
fn: 4
|
||||||
|
- type: director_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[N. M. Rothschild & Sons]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "non-executive director"
|
||||||
|
start: 1993
|
||||||
|
end: 1995
|
||||||
|
fn: 4
|
||||||
|
- type: appointed
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Thomas Bingham]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "jointly with the Governor of the Bank of England, to inquire into the supervision of BCCI"
|
||||||
|
start: 1991
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont, Lord Lamont of Lerwick (born May 8, 1942), is a British [[Conservative Party]] politician who sat as Member of Parliament for [[Kingston upon Thames]] from 1972 to 1997 and was [[Chancellor of the Exchequer]] from November 28, 1990, to May 27, 1993. As Chancellor he answered in the [[House of Commons]] for the government after the [[Bank of England]] closed the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) in July 1991, and with the Governor of the Bank, [[Robin Leigh-Pemberton]], he commissioned the inquiry of Lord Justice [[Thomas Bingham]] into the supervision of the bank.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Early Life and Banking
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lamont was born in [[Lerwick]], in the [[Shetland Islands]], where his father, [[Daniel Lamont]], a surgeon, was stationed during the [[World War II|Second World War]]; his mother was Helen Irene Lamont. He attended [[Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge|Fitzwilliam College]], [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge]], where he belonged to a group of young Conservatives known as the "Cambridge Mafia," among them [[Michael Howard]] and [[John Gummer]]. He was president of the Cambridge University Conservative Association and, in 1964, of the [[Cambridge Union]].[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He was principal assistant to the Conservative member [[Duncan Sandys]] in 1965 and worked on the staff of the [[Conservative Research Department]] from 1966 to 1968. From 1968 to 1979 he was a merchant banker at [[N. M. Rothschild & Sons]]. He married Alice Rosemary White in 1971; they had two children, Hilaire and Sophie.[^4] He contested [[Kingston upon Hull East]] without success at the general election of June 18, 1970, and entered the Commons for Kingston upon Thames at a by-election in May 1972.[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Parliamentary and Ministerial Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the Commons Lamont was parliamentary private secretary to [[Norman St John-Stevas]] in 1974, an opposition spokesman on prices and consumer affairs from 1975 to 1976 and on industry from 1976 to 1979.[^4] He sat on the Procedure Committee from November 1978 to June 1983 and on the [[Public Accounts Committee]] from June 1986 to July 1989.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
His government posts, as recorded by Parliament, were:[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- Parliamentary Under-Secretary, [[Department of Energy]], May 7, 1979, to September 5, 1981
|
||||||
|
- Minister of State, [[Department of Industry]], September 14, 1981, to June 12, 1983
|
||||||
|
- Minister of State, [[Department of Trade and Industry]], June 13, 1983, to September 2, 1985
|
||||||
|
- Minister of State for Defence Procurement, [[Ministry of Defence]], September 2, 1985, to May 20, 1986
|
||||||
|
- Financial Secretary, [[HM Treasury]], May 21, 1986, to July 23, 1989
|
||||||
|
- Chief Secretary to the Treasury, July 24, 1989, to November 28, 1990
|
||||||
|
- Chancellor of the Exchequer, November 28, 1990, to May 27, 1993
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He contested [[Harrogate and Knaresborough]] at the general election of May 1, 1997, and left the Commons that day. He entered the [[House of Lords]] as Lord Lamont of Lerwick on July 24, 1998, and has served there on the [[European Union Committee]], the Economic Affairs Committee and, from January 2026, the International Relations and Defence Committee.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After leaving the Treasury he was a non-executive director of N. M. Rothschild & Sons from 1993 to 1995, and a director of RAB Capital, [[Balli PLC]] and several investment trusts; he was vice president of the [[Bruges Group]] from 1997, an adviser to the Romanian government in 1997 and 1998, and chairman of Conservatives Against a Federal Europe from 1998 to 1999. He wrote *Electoral Reform, No Reform* (1975), *Sovereign Britain* (1995) and *In Office* (1999), a memoir.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Closure of BCCI, July 1991
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On July 19, 1991, two weeks after the Bank of England closed BCCI, Lamont made a statement to the Commons. He told the House that "under the 1987 Banking Act the supervision of banks is unambiguously the duty of the Bank of England and not of the Government," that the [[Deposit Protection Board]] would write to depositors at once, and that "Our latest estimate is that the United Kingdom branches at the bank had some 50,000 sterling accounts, although some customers may have had more than one account." He had met [[Keith Vaz]] and a group of other members the day before.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
He then announced the inquiry: "in the light of widespread public concern, the Governor and I have agreed that there should be an independent inquiry into the supervision, under the Banking Acts, of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, to establish the facts and to make such recommendations as arise from them. The report will be made public subject to such restrictions as may be needed to avoid prejudicing any criminal proceedings and subject to the provisions of the Banking Act." He added that the inquiry was "not to be taken as a criticism of the Bank of England. I have no reason to doubt that the Bank acted properly and promptly in the best interests of the depositors."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Replying to [[Gordon Brown]], Lamont said Brown's remarks "might have been more complete if he had referred to the massive, unprecedented fraud on a worldwide scale which is the real source of the problem facing us." Asked whether the [[Zayed bin Sultan AL-Nahayan|Sheikh of Abu Dhabi]] should have been asked to put more money into the bank before its closure, he said the auditors' report "contained evidence ... of massive and widespread fraud," and that "it was the Bank's view that the bank should be closed down." On the timing he told the House: "I was informed in general terms that fraud had been uncovered on 26 June. I was given some details of the section 41 report on 28 June, and the Treasury sent a report to No. 10 on 28 June. The final decision was taken on 4 July."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the debate of July 22, 1991, Vaz read a written ministerial answer given to him, that "the Chancellor had discussed a number of supervisory cases, including BCCI, with the Governors of the Bank of England on a number of occasions since becoming Chancellor, but was not aware until 26 June that fraud had been uncovered." Vaz set out a timeline: the final [[Price Waterhouse]] report "arrived on 25 June. By 26 June, the gist of the report had been given to a Treasury official, John Geeve. On 28 June, a special meeting was held at Downing street, which was attended by both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor." [[Michael Knowles]], member for Nottingham East, said of the auditors' 800-page report of June 26 that "It revealed not inefficiency or poor management but fraud on a massive scale. The phrase used was 'a bank within a bank.'"[^5] The Price Waterhouse report is described at [[Sandstorm Report]].
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Bingham Report
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bingham's report was published on October 22, 1992, when Lamont presented it to the Commons; his statement is described at [[Bingham Report]]. In the full debate of November 6, 1992, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, [[Anthony Nelson]], spoke for the government. He called the report "the conclusion of an inquiry into the largest and most wide-ranging fraud in the history of banking" and said "The bank's guiding principle was divide and deceive." He gave the figures: BCCI had 25 branches in the United Kingdom with deposits of 1.85 billion pounds and "more than 53,000 sterling accounts"; the Deposit Protection Board had sent claim forms to some 42,000 depositors and had paid out more than 54 million pounds. He announced that the Bank had set up a special investigations unit under [[Ian Watt]] and a legal unit under [[Peter Peddie]], "a former partner in Freshfields," and closed with five rules for depositors, the last that "one should never confuse authorisation with a guarantee."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Labour member [[Calum Macdonald]] quoted a letter Lamont had sent him: "my statements in July last year were about my willingness to reconsider the issue of compensation if evidence of negligence on the part of the supervisory authorities were to emerge. Lord Justice Bingham has found no such evidence." Macdonald wrote to Bingham, enclosing the letter, that "Mr. Lamont makes the bald statement that you found no evidence of negligence on the part of the Bank of England," and asked whether he agreed. He read Bingham's reply to the House: "Having been appointed to inquire and report by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England, and having delivered my report, I do not feel that it would be right for me to comment on the interpretation which either of them put on it ... I am afraid that the answer to your question must be found in the report."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Alistair Darling]], for Labour, said that "Alarm bells should also have rung in respect of the Tampa indictment," the 1988 charges brought in [[Tampa, Florida|Tampa]] after [[Operation C-Chase]], and quoted Bingham's paragraph 2.162: "The likelihood of involvement in handling the proceeds of drug-trafficking could scarcely have eluded a competent and diligent banker contemplating such an investment, particularly if he had branches in Panama and agencies in Florida." [[Terence Higgins]], chairman of the Treasury and Civil Service Committee, recalled that the committee had written "We simply do not understand why BCCI should have been the only bank in the world to be given such preferential treatment," and that the Bank of England had replied that "The BCCI was a unique problem and the college a unique response to it."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: UK Parliament, Members API, "Biography," Member ID 895 (Lord Lamont of Lerwick), accessed September 23, 2026. https://members-api.parliament.uk/api/Members/895/Biography
|
||||||
|
[^2]: House of Commons, "Bank of Credit and Commerce International," *Hansard,* July 19, 1991, vol. 195, cc. 714-727. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1991/jul/19/bank-of-credit-and-commerce-international
|
||||||
|
[^3]: House of Commons, "BCCI (Bingham Report)," *Hansard,* November 6, 1992, vol. 213, cc. 523-594. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1992/nov/06/bcci-bingham-report
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "Lamont, Norman 1942-," *Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series,* via Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/lamont-norman-1942
|
||||||
|
[^5]: House of Commons, "Bank of Credit and Commerce International," *Hansard,* July 22, 1991, vol. 195, cc. 903-924. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1991/jul/22/bank-of-credit-and-commerce-international
|
||||||
61
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Paula Hawkins.md
Normal file
61
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Paula Hawkins.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Political Figure"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Politician
|
||||||
|
- USSenate
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- DrugWar
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Paula Fickes Hawkins
|
||||||
|
summary: "Republican senator from Florida from 1981 to 1987 in whose Senate office BCCI's American manager met Justice Department officials in 1984 over her allegation that the bank laundered drug money."
|
||||||
|
born: 1927-01-24
|
||||||
|
died: 2009-12-04
|
||||||
|
location: "Winter Park, Florida"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[United States Senate]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Senator from Florida"
|
||||||
|
start: 1981
|
||||||
|
end: 1987
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Republican National Committee]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "National Committeewoman for Florida"
|
||||||
|
start: 1968
|
||||||
|
end: 1986
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Paula Hawkins was a Republican [[United States Senate|United States Senator]] from [[Florida]], elected in 1980, who served a single term. She was the first woman elected to the Senate from Florida and the first woman elected to a full Senate term without having been preceded in politics by a husband or father.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Early Life and Florida Politics
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
She was born Paula Fickes in [[Salt Lake City]] on January 24, 1927, to Paul Burt Fickes and Mary Leoan Staley, the oldest of four children. Her father was in the Navy, and the family lived in [[Long Beach, California|Long Beach]], [[Hawaii]], [[Jacksonville, Florida|Jacksonville]] and [[Atlanta]], where she met [[Walter Eugene Hawkins]] at Sunday school. They married in [[Logan, Utah]], while she was a student at [[Utah State University]], and moved to [[Winter Park, Florida|Winter Park]] in 1954. They were members of the [[The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints|Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]].[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Her political work began with a campaign for sewers in the town of Maitland. She was the Republican National Committeewoman for Florida from 1968 to 1986 and a delegate to five Republican National Conventions. In 1972 she was elected to the [[Florida Public Service Commission]], which regulated electricity, water, telephone and transportation monopolies, and in 1976 she became the first Republican reelected to office in the state.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Senate
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hawkins was elected in the Reagan landslide of 1980. She described herself as "feminine" as distinct from "feminist," and her opposition to abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment drew pickets from the [[National Organization for Women]].[^1] Her family's notice credits her with legislation that established the [[National Center for Missing and Exploited Children]] and [[Radio Marti]], and with measures against the importation and trafficking of illegal drugs.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Abdur Sakhia]], the former regional manager of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) in the [[United States]], testified before the subcommittee of Senator [[John Kerry]] that in the autumn of 1984 he met [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] officials in Hawkins's Senate office to discuss allegations of BCCI's involvement in drug money laundering. According to Sakhia, BCCI's president, [[Agha Hasan Abedi]], told him to meet Hawkins after she told President [[Zia ul-Haq|Zia]] of [[Pakistan]], on a trip to that country, that she was concerned about drug money laundering by a Pakistani bank in the [[Cayman Islands]], which she later identified as BCCI. Sakhia testified that the Justice Department told him BCCI was not under investigation, and that he later learned that the [[State Department]] had given the same message to the Pakistani government.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Senate report stated that the subcommittee "has been unable to determine the source for Senator Hawkin's [sic] information," and that as a Senate subcommittee chairman she "would have had access to classified material from both the DEA and the CIA." The report gave her post as chairman of the "Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations," the name of the subcommittee before which Sakhia testified.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Describing BCCI's cultivation of Florida politicians around the opening of its [[Miami]] office, Sakhia told the subcommittee: "Paula Hawkins came to the bank several times separately," in a passage that also named Governor [[Bob Graham]] and [[Jeb Bush]], who attended the opening, Representative [[Dante Fascell]], who came to Sakhia's house, and [[Reubin Askew]], who "came to the bank several times and had been to my house."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Death
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hawkins died in [[Orlando, Florida|Orlando]] on December 4, 2009, at 82, of complications of a fall after several years of health problems, including a stroke. She was buried in Palm Cemetery in Winter Park.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Paula Hawkins, 82, Florida Ex-Senator, Dies." *The New York Times,* December 2009, excerpted by History News Network. https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/paula-hawkins-82-florida-ex-senator-dies
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Paula Hawkins" (family death notice). *Orlando Sentinel,* December 6, 2009, via Legacy.com. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/orlandosentinel/name/paula-hawkins-obituary?id=22184089 (archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20231005101124/https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/orlandosentinel/name/paula-hawkins-obituary?id=22184089)
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 8, "BCCI and Law Enforcement: The Justice Department and the U.S. Customs Service." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/08just.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 7, "BCCI in the United States: Part Two" (Sakhia's testimony). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/07later.htm
|
||||||
70
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Tasha McCauley.md
Normal file
70
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Tasha McCauley.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,70 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- OpenAI
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- RAND
|
||||||
|
- Robotics
|
||||||
|
summary: "Robotics and geospatial entrepreneur, RAND adjunct and UK board member of Effective Ventures, who as an OpenAI director voted in November 2023 to remove Sam Altman and then left the board."
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[OpenAI]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "independent director of the nonprofit board"
|
||||||
|
end: 2023-11
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Rand Corporation]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "adjunct senior management scientist"
|
||||||
|
start: 2023
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Singularity University]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "director of an innovation lab"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Fellow Robots]]"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[GeoSim Systems]]"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[GeoSim Systems]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "chief executive officer"
|
||||||
|
end: 2022
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Effective Ventures]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "U.K. board of the Effective Ventures Foundation"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Center for the Governance of AI]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "advisory board"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: spouse_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Joseph Gordon-Levitt]]"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Tasha McCauley became an adjunct senior management scientist at the [[Rand Corporation|RAND Corporation]] in 2023. She had earlier directed an innovation lab at [[Singularity University]], co-founded the robotics startup [[Fellow Robots]] with a colleague from there, and then co-founded [[GeoSim Systems]], a geospatial technology company, where she was chief executive until 2022.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
With her husband, [[Joseph Gordon-Levitt]], she signed the [[Asilomar AI Principles]], 23 principles of AI governance published in 2017, which [[Sam Altman]], [[Ilya Sutskever]] and [[Elon Musk]] also signed. She sat on the advisory board of the [[Center for the Governance of AI]] with [[Helen Toner]], and on the U.K. board of the [[Effective Ventures|Effective Ventures Foundation]], the parent organization of the [[Centre for Effective Altruism]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### OpenAI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
McCauley was one of the independent directors of the nonprofit board of [[OpenAI]] which, on November 17, 2023, announced that Altman would leave as chief executive after "a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities." The company listed its board that day as "OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, independent directors Quora CEO [[Adam D'Angelo]], technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and [[Center for Security and Emerging Technology|Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology]]'s Helen Toner."[^2] OpenAI directors, according to the company's own description, held no equity and received no other compensation.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On November 29, 2023, Altman returned as chief executive with a new initial board of [[Bret Taylor]], [[Larry Summers]] and D'Angelo. He wrote that he was "grateful to Adam, Tasha, and Helen for working with us to come to this solution that best serves the mission," and "sincerely thankful to Helen and Tasha for investing a huge amount of effort in this process." McCauley, Toner and Sutskever left the board; D'Angelo stayed.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Cruz Letter
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On September 13, 2024, Senator [[Ted Cruz]], ranking member of the [[Senate Commerce Committee]], wrote to RAND's president [[Jason Matheny]] about RAND's part in drafting the [[Executive Order 14110|AI executive order]] of 2023. "RAND has both personal and financial connections to incumbent AI companies like [[Anthropic]] and OpenAI," he wrote. "For instance, you are one of five members on Anthropic's '[[Long-Term Benefit Trust]],' which oversees the AI company." McCauley, he continued, was "an adjunct senior management scientist at RAND and effective altruism advocate" who had "just left OpenAI's board last November." He added: "RAND is also connected with [[Open Philanthropy]], the charitable arm of these AI companies. Last year, Open Philanthropy gave RAND $16 million to advance its 'work on potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence.'"[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Konrad, Alex, and Sarah Emerson. "These Are The People That Fired OpenAI CEO Sam Altman." *Forbes,* November 17, 2023, archived November 18, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20231118075941/https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2023/11/17/these-are-the-people-that-fired-openai-ceo-sam-altman/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: OpenAI. "OpenAI announces leadership transition." November 17, 2023, archived November 17, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20231117210540/https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transition
|
||||||
|
[^3]: OpenAI. "Sam Altman returns as CEO, OpenAI has a new initial board." November 29, 2023, archived November 30, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20231130020514/https://openai.com/blog/sam-altman-returns-as-ceo-openai-has-a-new-initial-board
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Cruz, Ted. Letter to Jason Matheny, President and CEO, RAND Corporation, September 13, 2024, U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/AF082319-C877-47CC-95F6-8240EE6A105D
|
||||||
45
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Will Henshall.md
Normal file
45
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Will Henshall.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Journalism
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- OpenPhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
- TarbellFellowship
|
||||||
|
summary: "Science and technology reporter placed at Time through the Tarbell Fellowship in 2023 and 2024 who joined Coefficient Giving, formerly Open Philanthropy, as a program officer for AI governance in July 2024."
|
||||||
|
location: "New York City"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Tarbell Center for AI Journalism]]"
|
||||||
|
start: 2023
|
||||||
|
end: 2024
|
||||||
|
role: "fellow, placed at Time"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Open Philanthropy]]"
|
||||||
|
start: 2024-07
|
||||||
|
role: "program officer, AI governance and policy, Coefficient Giving"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bain & Company]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "associate consultant"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Will Henshall is a science and technology reporter who was placed at *[[Time]]* from 2023 to 2024 through the fellowship of the [[Tarbell Center for AI Journalism]], and who joined Coefficient Giving, the renamed [[Open Philanthropy]], as a program officer for AI governance and policy in July 2024.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Tarbell's fellow page describes him as a science and technology reporter based in [[New York City]] who holds a master's degree in chemistry from the [[University of Oxford]] and a master's in public policy from [[Harvard University|Harvard]]'s [[John F. Kennedy School of Government]], and who had worked as a management consultant and policy researcher.[^1] Coefficient Giving's team page gives the same degrees, and records that before joining in July 2024 he had worked as an editorial fellow at *Time* and as an associate consultant at [[Bain & Company]].[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Tarbell's ethics policy states that as of 2025 "the majority of our funding originates with a single funder, Coefficient Giving (formerly known as Open Philanthropy)." Open Philanthropy recommended 575,000 dollars in September 2023 for the Tarbell Fellowship, then run under the fiscal sponsor [[Training for Good]], and 816,000 dollars to the Tarbell Center in November 2024.[^3][^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, "Will Henshall." https://www.tarbellcenter.org/fellows/will-henshall
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Coefficient Giving, "Will Henshall," team page, archived May 23, 2026. http://web.archive.org/web/20260523181838id_/https://coefficientgiving.org/team/will-henshall/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, "Ethics and Standards policies," February 20, 2026. https://www.tarbellcenter.org/ethics-and-standards
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Open Philanthropy, "Training for Good, Operating Costs and Tarbell Fellowship," September 2023, archived. http://web.archive.org/web/20240225122410id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/training-for-good-operating-costs-and-tarbell-fellowship/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Open Philanthropy, "Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, General Support," November 2024, archived. http://web.archive.org/web/20251030212332id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/tarbell-center-for-ai-journalism-general-support/
|
||||||
|
|
@ -4,16 +4,38 @@ tags:
|
||||||
- Person
|
- Person
|
||||||
- ArmsDealer
|
- ArmsDealer
|
||||||
- Israel
|
- Israel
|
||||||
summary: "Palestinian terrorist and target of Israeli intelligence operations, connected to the Achille Lauro attack and arms trafficking networks."
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- Terrorism
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Sabri al-Banna
|
||||||
|
- Sabri Al-Bannah
|
||||||
|
summary: "Palestinian terrorist and target of Israeli intelligence operations, connected to the Achille Lauro attack and arms trafficking networks, whose organization was financed through BCCI in London."
|
||||||
born: 1937
|
born: 1937
|
||||||
died: 2002
|
died: 2002
|
||||||
location: "Jaffa, British Mandate Palestine"
|
location: "Jaffa, British Mandate Palestine"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Abu Nidal Organization]]"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
[[Abu Nidal]] was a Palestinian terrorist. He was a target of [[Israel|Israeli]] intelligence operations. Arms dealers like [[John Knight]] and [[Sidem International Limited]] acquired arms from [[Yugoslavia]] and sold them to [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]], who in turn sold them to [[Abu Nidal|Nidal]] and other Palestinian groups. [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]] was unaware of [[Anthony Pearson|Pearson's]] [[Israel|Israeli]] connection.[^1]
|
Abu Nidal, whose real name was Sabri al-Banna, was a Palestinian terrorist and the leader of the [[Abu Nidal Organization]]. He was a target of [[Israel|Israeli]] intelligence operations. According to the former Israeli intelligence officer [[Ari Ben-Menashe]], arms dealers like [[John Knight]] and [[Sidem International Limited]] acquired arms from [[Yugoslavia]] and sold them to [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah]], who in turn sold them to Nidal and other Palestinian groups. Radi was unaware of [[Anthony Pearson|Pearson's]] Israeli connection.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]] later presented his case to [[Abu Nidal|Nidal]] in [[Baghdad]], claiming he had been unwittingly used by [[Anthony Pearson|Pearson]]. [[Abu Nidal|Nidal]] believed his story and put out the word that [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]] was "clean," placing the blame on [[Yasser Arafat|Yasser Arafat's]] group.[^1]
|
Ben-Menashe wrote that Radi later presented his case to Nidal in [[Baghdad]], claiming he had been unwittingly used by Pearson. Nidal believed his story and put out the word that Radi was "clean," placing the blame on [[Yasser Arafat|Yasser Arafat's]] group.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[[Abu Nidal|Nidal]] was also involved in the [[Achille Lauro]] attack in 1985, which was an [[Israel|Israeli]] "black" propaganda operation. [[Rafi]] passed instructions to [[Mohammed Radi Abdullah|Radi]], who then relayed orders to [[Abul Abbas]] to carry out a cruel attack. [[Abul Abbas|Abbas]] was reportedly receiving millions from [[Israel|Israeli]] intelligence officers posing as Sicilian dons.[^1]
|
Ben-Menashe also wrote that Nidal was involved in the [[Achille Lauro]] attack in 1985, which he described as an Israeli "black" propaganda operation. In his account, [[Rafi]] passed instructions to Radi, who then relayed orders to [[Abul Abbas]] to carry out a cruel attack. Abbas was reportedly receiving millions from Israeli intelligence officers posing as Sicilian dons.[^1] These accounts rest on Ben-Menashe's book alone.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Abu Nidal's accounts were held at the Sloane Street branch in [[London]] of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI), whose manager, [[Ghassan Qassem]], passed information on them to British and American intelligence. A [[State Department]] report of July 1987, "Abu Nidal's Terror Network," stated that the organization's commercial network was run from the [[INTRACO]] building in [[Warsaw]] by [[Samir Najmeddin|Samir Hasan Najm al-Din (Samir Najmeddin)]], who held "a general account at a major West European Bank [BCCI in London]" and was "responsible for forwarding all major contracts to Sabri al-Banna for final approval."[^2] The [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] learned, in an operation against BCCI that ran from 1986 to 1990, of the bank's role in "handling the finances of Sabri Al-Bannah or Abu Nidal, and his terrorist organization."[^3] According to the [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate Report]], by 1986 "the State Department knew that the terrorist Abu Nidal was using the bank to finance his operations in Europe."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After BCCI's closure in July 1991, a British judge, on the application of the bank's liquidators, refused to let the Senate subcommittee receive BCCI documents held in the [[United Kingdom]] without the written "permission" of the depositors concerned, "such as Abu Nidal." In July 1991 *[[The Guardian]]*, quoting what it described as a confidential French intelligence document of February 1988, reported that the Kuwaiti embassy in London had paid 60 million dollars into Abu Nidal's BCCI account in 1987.[^3][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. TrineDay, 1992.
|
[^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. TrineDay, 1992.
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 4, "BCCI's Criminality" (quoting "Abu Nidal's Terror Network," U.S. Department of State, July 1987). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 11, "BCCI, the CIA and Foreign Intelligence." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 16, "BCCI and Georgia Politicians." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/16ga.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Daily Says Kuwait Put $60 Million Into Nidal's BCCI Account." *Deseret News* (wire report), July 25, 1991. https://www.deseret.com/1991/7/25/18932483/daily-says-kuwait-put-60-million-into-nidal-s-bcci-account/
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
38
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Alec Stapp.md
Normal file
38
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Alec Stapp.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- InstituteForProgress
|
||||||
|
- OpenPhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
- ThinkTank
|
||||||
|
- Biosecurity
|
||||||
|
- PermittingReform
|
||||||
|
- Immigration
|
||||||
|
summary: "Former Progressive Policy Institute and Niskanen Center technology policy fellow who co-founded the Open Philanthropy-funded Institute for Progress in 2021 and became its sole chief executive in 2026."
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Institute for Progress]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "co-chief executive, then chief executive"
|
||||||
|
start: 2021
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Alec Stapp received a bachelor's degree from the [[University of Arizona]] and a master's degree in economics from [[George Mason University]], where he was a graduate research fellow at the [[Mercatus Center]]. He was a technology policy fellow at the [[Niskanen Center]], a research fellow at the [[International Center for Law and Economics]] and director of technology policy at the [[Progressive Policy Institute]], and wrote for *[[The Washington Post]]*, *[[The Atlantic]]*, *[[MIT Technology Review]]* and *[[Politico]]*.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Institute for Progress
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Stapp and [[Caleb Watney]] co-founded the [[Institute for Progress]] (IFP) in 2021 and announced it on January 20, 2022, with the mission "to accelerate scientific, technological, and industrial progress while safeguarding humanity's future," applying "a framework we like to borrow from the effective altruism community" of choosing issues "that are important, neglected, and tractable."[^2][^3] [[Open Philanthropy]] (later renamed Coefficient Giving)[^4] granted IFP 1.6 million dollars in October 2021, "to conduct research and advocacy on policies relevant to a number of our grantmaking areas," and 9 million dollars over three years in March 2023.[^5] IFP's returns report Stapp's pay as co-chief executive as 54,231 dollars for 2021, 163,125 dollars for 2022, 202,500 dollars for 2023 and 246,008 dollars for 2024.[^6] After Watney left in 2026 to become managing director of public policy at Coefficient Giving, Stapp was listed as IFP's sole chief executive.[^3][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
His IFP writing includes "Why [[SpaceX]] Is an Underrated Strategic National Asset for the U.S." (March 2022); "The Case for High-Skilled Immigration Reform (And How to Make It Happen)" (August 2022, with Jeremy Neufeld); papers on permitting reform and environmental review with [[Brian Potter]], Arnab Datta and Aidan Mackenzie (2022 to 2024); responses to the [[Office of Science and Technology Policy]] on research with dangerous pathogens (October 2023) and to the [[Environmental Protection Agency]] on far-UVC systems for pandemic prevention (December 2022); a January 2024 paper urging Congress to strengthen the [[Federal Select Agent Program]]; and "Biosecurity in the Trump Era" (November 2024).[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Institute for Progress, "Alec Stapp," author biography and publications. https://ifp.org/author/alec-stapp/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Institute for Progress, "Caleb Watney," author biography. https://ifp.org/author/caleb-watney/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Institute for Progress, "About," and Stapp, Alec, and Caleb Watney, "Progress Is a Policy Choice," January 20, 2022. https://ifp.org/about/ ; https://ifp.org/progress-is-a-policy-choice/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, "Ethics and Standards policies," February 20, 2026, referring to "Coefficient Giving (formerly known as Open Philanthropy)." https://www.tarbellcenter.org/ethics-and-standards
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Open Philanthropy, "Institute for Progress, Policy Research," grant of October 2021, archived July 1, 2022, http://web.archive.org/web/20220701180156/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/institute-for-progress-policy-research/ ; "Institute for Progress, General Support (2023)," archived August 26, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20230826080214/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/institute-for-progress-general-support-2023/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Institute For Progress," EIN 87-2449729, Form 990 filings for fiscal years 2021 through 2024. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/872449729
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Coefficient Giving, "Introducing Our New Managing Director of Public Policy, Caleb Watney," July 9, 2026, archived July 14, 2026. http://web.archive.org/web/20260714172124/https://coefficientgiving.org/research/introducing-our-new-managing-director-of-public-policy/
|
||||||
|
|
@ -13,7 +13,17 @@ alias:
|
||||||
summary: "Indonesian banker, son of Lippo Group founder Mochtar Riady, who interned at Stephens Inc., ran Worthen Bank's international division in Little Rock, and in 2001 paid the largest campaign finance fine in American history."
|
summary: "Indonesian banker, son of Lippo Group founder Mochtar Riady, who interned at Stephens Inc., ran Worthen Bank's international division in Little Rock, and in 2001 paid the largest campaign finance fine in American history."
|
||||||
location: "Jakarta, Indonesia"
|
location: "Jakarta, Indonesia"
|
||||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||||
updated: 2026-09-21
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Stephens Inc.]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "intern"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: prosecuted
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Department of Justice]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 2001-01-11
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
James Tjahaja Riady is an [[Indonesia|Indonesian]] banker and the son of [[Mochtar Riady]], founder of the [[Lippo Group]]. His father met [[Jackson Stephens]] and [[Witt Stephens]] in 1976 while looking for a stake in an American bank, and the two families formed [[Stephens Finance Ltd.]] in [[Hong Kong]] in 1978. James Riady served an internship at [[Stephens Inc.]] in [[Little Rock, Arkansas|Little Rock]].[^1]
|
James Tjahaja Riady is an [[Indonesia|Indonesian]] banker and the son of [[Mochtar Riady]], founder of the [[Lippo Group]]. His father met [[Jackson Stephens]] and [[Witt Stephens]] in 1976 while looking for a stake in an American bank, and the two families formed [[Stephens Finance Ltd.]] in [[Hong Kong]] in 1978. James Riady served an internship at [[Stephens Inc.]] in [[Little Rock, Arkansas|Little Rock]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
@ -30,8 +40,14 @@ On June 23, 1994, Riady had breakfast at the [[Hay-Adams Hotel]] with [[Webster
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
On January 11, 2001, Riady agreed to plead guilty in the federal court in Los Angeles to a felony charge of conspiring to defraud the [[United States]] by reimbursing campaign donors with foreign corporate funds, and to pay 8.61 million dollars, which the Justice Department called the largest fine in the history of campaign finance law. LippoBank pleaded guilty to 86 misdemeanor counts covering 1988 to 1994. Indonesia has no extradition treaty with the United States, and Riady surrendered voluntarily after about six sessions with prosecutors. He agreed to 400 hours of community service and to stay out of the country for two years. The benefits the charge said he sought included "[[Community Reinvestment Act]] exemptions for LippoBank," "a repeal of the [[Glass-Steagall Act]]," and "Most Favored Nation status for [[China]]."[^3]
|
On January 11, 2001, Riady agreed to plead guilty in the federal court in Los Angeles to a felony charge of conspiring to defraud the [[United States]] by reimbursing campaign donors with foreign corporate funds, and to pay 8.61 million dollars, which the Justice Department called the largest fine in the history of campaign finance law. LippoBank pleaded guilty to 86 misdemeanor counts covering 1988 to 1994. Indonesia has no extradition treaty with the United States, and Riady surrendered voluntarily after about six sessions with prosecutors. He agreed to 400 hours of community service and to stay out of the country for two years. The benefits the charge said he sought included "[[Community Reinvestment Act]] exemptions for LippoBank," "a repeal of the [[Glass-Steagall Act]]," and "Most Favored Nation status for [[China]]."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Leaving Worthen
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, drawing on the depositions of [[Vernon Weaver|Arthur Vernon Weaver]] and C. Joseph Giroir, gave the reason for the family's departure from Worthen: "The Riadys were bought out of Worthen by the Stephens family after the bank experienced a major defalcation by Bevil Bressler in 1986. After the defalcation, regulators investigated the quality of Worthen's assets and determined there were problems. Allegations were made against Worthen's loan practices and asset quality. Eventually, the Riadys traded their interest in the Worthen Bank for the Stephens' interest in the Hong Kong Chinese Bank, and also traded their interests in other joint ventures." Riady and Huang then "focused their attention on a bank they previously had purchased in San Francisco, California. Soon thereafter they established the Bank of Trade in Los Angeles, which later became LippoBank."[^4] Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation records show that the Bank of Trade, chartered in [[San Francisco]] in 1961, moved its main office to Los Angeles on October 31, 1989 and took the name Lippo Bank on January 18, 1990.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[^1]: House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, *Investigation of Political Fundraising Improprieties and Possible Violations of Law,* H. Rept. 105-829, 1998, vol. 2. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt829/html/CRPT-105hrpt829-vol2.htm ; Hubbell, Webster. *Friends in High Places*. William Morrow, 1997.
|
[^1]: House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, *Investigation of Political Fundraising Improprieties and Possible Violations of Law,* H. Rept. 105-829, 1998, vol. 2. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt829/html/CRPT-105hrpt829-vol2.htm ; Hubbell, Webster. *Friends in High Places*. William Morrow, 1997.
|
||||||
[^2]: Truell, Peter, and Larry Gurwin. *False Profits: The Inside Story of BCCI, the World's Most Corrupt Financial Empire*. Houghton Mifflin, 1992.
|
[^2]: Truell, Peter, and Larry Gurwin. *False Profits: The Inside Story of BCCI, the World's Most Corrupt Financial Empire*. Houghton Mifflin, 1992.
|
||||||
[^3]: Department of Justice, "James Riady Pleads Guilty, Will Pay Largest Fine in Campaign Finance History for Violating Federal Election Law," press release 01-17, January 11, 2001.
|
[^3]: Department of Justice, "James Riady Pleads Guilty, Will Pay Largest Fine in Campaign Finance History for Violating Federal Election Law," press release 01-17, January 11, 2001.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, *Investigation of Political Fundraising Improprieties and Possible Violations of Law,* H. Rept. 105-829, 1998, vol. 2, footnotes 14-15. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt829/html/CRPT-105hrpt829-vol2.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, BankFind Suite, institution history for certificate 18453 (Lippo Bank), queried September 23, 2026. https://api.fdic.gov/banks/history?filters=CERT:18453&limit=50
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
78
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Kemal Shoaib.md
Normal file
78
10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Kemal Shoaib.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "BCCI Scandal"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- Banker
|
||||||
|
- Pakistan
|
||||||
|
summary: "BCCI officer whom Agha Hasan Abedi installed as chairman of the secretly acquired Independence Bank of Encino; the Federal Reserve fined him 20 million dollars in 1991."
|
||||||
|
born: 1936
|
||||||
|
died: 2020
|
||||||
|
location: "Karachi, Pakistan"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "senior officer; continued to report to BCCI while heading Independence Bank"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: appointed
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Agha Hasan Abedi]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "chairman, Independence Bank of Encino"
|
||||||
|
start: 1985-10
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: reported_to
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Swaleh Naqvi]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "while chairman of Independence Bank"
|
||||||
|
start: 1986
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: investigated
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Federal Reserve Board]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "20 million dollar civil money penalty"
|
||||||
|
start: 1991-07
|
||||||
|
fn: 5
|
||||||
|
- type: relative_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Nafis Sadik]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "brother"
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: relative_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Muhammad Shoaib]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "son"
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Kemal Shoaib was a Pakistani banker and officer of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) who chaired the [[Independence Bank of Encino]] in [[California]] after BCCI secretly acquired it in October 1985 through [[Ghaith R. Pharaon]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Family and Education
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Shoaib was born in [[Jaunpur]], [[India]], in 1936, to Iffat Ara and [[Muhammad Shoaib]], a civil servant who later became Finance Minister of [[Pakistan]] and an adviser to the [[World Bank]]. He was the fifth of six children; his eldest sister, [[Nafis Sadik]], later headed the [[United Nations Population Fund]]. The family moved from Delhi to [[Karachi]] at Partition. He studied chemical engineering at [[Imperial College London]] and the [[Catholic University of America|Catholic University]] in Washington, went on to the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]], and later took a master's degree in Islamic history at the [[School of Oriental and African Studies]] in London. His first job, in [[Lahore]], was designing a chemicals factory for [[Wyeth]].[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In September 1965 he married, in [[Rawalpindi]], the daughter of [[Syed Hashim Raza]], the first administrator of Karachi and later Governor of East Pakistan. President [[Ayub Khan]] and the whole cabinet attended the wedding, at which news arrived that war with India had begun.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A memorandum of July 25, 1983, from the BCCI employee [[Aijaz Afridi]] to BCCI's second in command, [[Swaleh Naqvi]], with copies to Shoaib and [[K. K. Elley]], set out BCCI's plan for the New York bank of [[First American Bank|First American]]; it described the bank as operating independently of the other First American banks while drawing on them as sources of funds and for "their entire international business," so that First American New York would "become their Central Treasury."[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
According to the [[Federal Reserve Board|Federal Reserve]], Shoaib had been general manager of BCCI's United Kingdom Group in [[London]] and head of its Group Planning Division. In 1983 and 1984, after Abedi expressed interest in acquiring a medium-sized California bank, BCCI officials including Shoaib investigated at least three possible targets, and in November 1984 BCCI employees recommended Independence. The Federal Reserve found that Shoaib, "who had been instrumental in the acquisition of Independence, was appointed its chairman immediately following the acquisition," that he "had solicited the position as chairman of Independence from Abedi, rather than from Pharaon," and that he "was not interviewed by Pharaon prior to becoming chairman." Regulators knew a former BCCI officer would chair the bank but were not told that BCCI had made the decision.[^2] The Senate report describes Abedi's appointment of Shoaib, "a high-level BCCI official," as chief operating officer, and records that BCCI abandoned an earlier plan to place [[Roy P. M. Carlson|Roy Carlson]], president of the [[National Bank of Georgia]], on the board as well.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Federal Reserve found that while chairman he "continued to act on behalf of BCCI, reported to senior BCCI officials concerning Independence, and continued to receive benefits, including a subsidized home mortgage loan and accrual of pension benefits, from BCCI," benefits conditioned on his remaining at Independence. In March 1986 he wrote to Naqvi listing "points that need to be discussed" about the bank's budget, capital, strategy and planning, and urged that new managers and a treasury officer come from BCCI. In June 1986 he sent Naqvi the resume of a proposed director for approval before forwarding it to Pharaon, and in July 1987 the resume of a candidate for executive vice president, who then met Abedi and Naqvi. In November 1987, when the bank needed capital, he attached his letter asking Pharaon for 7.5 million dollars to a note asking Naqvi to "forward [the letter] to Dr. Pharaon after you have examined and agreed." He was paid as chairman from October 1985 to January 15, 1989.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The [[Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation]] knew that Pharaon had selected a former BCCI officer to chair the bank. Its enforcement chief, [[John W. Stone]], testified that "Mr. Shoaib had embarked on a program of investing in joint ventures involving acquisition, development and construction of real estate projects, primarily in southern California. In 1988, FDIC examiners discovered improper account of these projects which resulted in the understatement of total assets and liabilities, and the overstatement of the bank's capital." The FDIC required further capital from Pharaon and the resignation of Shoaib, who left the bank in January 1989.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Enforcement
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On July 12, 1991, the Federal Reserve issued a notice of intent to bar Pharaon, Abedi, Naqvi and Shoaib permanently from banking.[^2] On July 29, 1991, it assessed a 200 million dollar fine against BCCI, 37 million dollars against Pharaon and 20 million dollars against Shoaib.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Later Life
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Shoaib and his family lived in London while he worked for BCCI and in [[Los Angeles]] while he chaired Independence Bank. In 1990 they returned to Karachi, where he was chairman of [[International Industries]], [[International Steels]] and [[Century Paper]]. He represented Pakistan at bridge, captained its bridge team, and had been national table tennis champion as a young man. He died in 2020.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 7, "BCCI in the United States: Part Two." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/07later.htm
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, *In the Matter of Ghaith R. Pharaon, Agha Hasan Abedi, Swaleh Naqvi, and Kemal Shoaib,* Docket Nos. 91-037-E-I1 to I4, Notice of Intent to Prohibit, July 12, 1991. https://www.federalreserve.gov/supervisionreg/files/19910712.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Shoaib, Alia. "Kemal Shoaib, 1936-2020." *The Friday Times* (Lahore), December 25, 2020 (a tribute by his granddaughter). https://www.thefridaytimes.com/25-Dec-2020/kemal-shoaib-1936-2020
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 13, "Clark Clifford and Robert Altman." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/13clifford.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 12, "The Regulators" (Stone's testimony and the July 29, 1991 assessments). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/12reg.htm
|
||||||
|
|
@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ created: 2026-09-22
|
||||||
updated: 2026-09-23
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Mochtar Riady is an Indonesian of Chinese descent who built the [[Lippo Group]]; according to the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, citing *Forbes,* he found it necessary to "Indonesianize" his name, which had been Li Mo Tie. He first met [[Jackson Stephens]] and [[Witt Stephens]] of [[Little Rock, Arkansas|Little Rock]] in 1976, when he was looking into buying [[Bert Lance]]'s share of the [[National Bank of Georgia]]; that purchase fell through, and in 1978 the two families formed Stephens Finance Ltd. in [[Hong Kong]].[^1] The Riady and Stephens families later controlled [[Worthen Bank]] in Little Rock together.[^1][^2]
|
Mochtar Riady is an Indonesian of Chinese descent who built the [[Lippo Group]]; according to the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, citing *Forbes,* he found it necessary to "Indonesianize" his name, which had been Li Mo Tie. He first met [[Jackson Stephens]] and [[Witt Stephens]] of [[Little Rock, Arkansas|Little Rock]] in 1976, when he was looking into buying [[Bert Lance]]'s share of the [[National Bank of Georgia]]; that purchase fell through, and in 1978 the two families formed [[Stephens Finance Ltd.]] in [[Hong Kong]].[^1] The Riady and Stephens families later controlled [[Worthen Bank]] in Little Rock together.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Clinton
|
### Clinton
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
@ -40,6 +40,10 @@ The Riadys gave more than 450,000 dollars to the [[Democratic National Committee
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
In 1998 the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, in its report on the 1996 campaign-finance investigation, stated: "James and Mochtar Riady have had a long-term relationship with a Chinese intelligence agency." It also noted that they had known Clinton since the mid-1980s, when they held a controlling interest in Worthen Bank.[^4] His son [[James Riady]] pleaded guilty in January 2001 to violating federal election law.[^5]
|
In 1998 the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, in its report on the 1996 campaign-finance investigation, stated: "James and Mochtar Riady have had a long-term relationship with a Chinese intelligence agency." It also noted that they had known Clinton since the mid-1980s, when they held a controlling interest in Worthen Bank.[^4] His son [[James Riady]] pleaded guilty in January 2001 to violating federal election law.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Hong Kong Chinese Bank
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After a defalcation at Worthen Bank in 1986 and the regulatory review of its assets that followed, the Riadys, according to the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, "traded their interest in the Worthen Bank for the Stephens' interest in the [[Hong Kong Chinese Bank]], and also traded their interests in other joint ventures." In late 1992 [[China Resources]], described by the committee as "a Chinese Government owned company which is a joint venture partner with the Lippo Group," bought 15 percent of that bank, and it later "infused the failing LippoLand with tens of millions of dollars, effectively bailing the Riady family out of a precarious financial situation." In 1993 Riady and Huang also arranged a meeting between Shen Jueren of China Resources and Vice President [[Al Gore]].[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[^1]: House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. *Investigation of Political Fundraising Improprieties and Possible Violations of Law,* H. Rept. 105-829, vol. 2, 1998. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt829/html/CRPT-105hrpt829-vol2.htm
|
[^1]: House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. *Investigation of Political Fundraising Improprieties and Possible Violations of Law,* H. Rept. 105-829, vol. 2, 1998. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt829/html/CRPT-105hrpt829-vol2.htm
|
||||||
|
|
@ -47,3 +51,4 @@ In 1998 the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, in its report on the 1996
|
||||||
[^3]: Office of the Independent Counsel. *Final Report of the Independent Counsel In Re: Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Association,* vol. 3, part C, on Webster Hubbell. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-ICREPORT-MADISON/pdf/GPO-ICREPORT-MADISON-3-2.pdf
|
[^3]: Office of the Independent Counsel. *Final Report of the Independent Counsel In Re: Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Association,* vol. 3, part C, on Webster Hubbell. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-ICREPORT-MADISON/pdf/GPO-ICREPORT-MADISON-3-2.pdf
|
||||||
[^4]: Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. *Investigation of Illegal or Improper Activities in Connection with 1996 Federal Election Campaigns,* S. Rept. 105-167, 1998, "The China Connection." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1998_rpt/sgo-sir/2-18.htm
|
[^4]: Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. *Investigation of Illegal or Improper Activities in Connection with 1996 Federal Election Campaigns,* S. Rept. 105-167, 1998, "The China Connection." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1998_rpt/sgo-sir/2-18.htm
|
||||||
[^5]: U.S. Department of Justice. "James Riady Pleads Guilty, Will Pay Largest Fine in Campaign Finance History for Violating Federal Election Law." Press release 01-17, January 11, 2001.
|
[^5]: U.S. Department of Justice. "James Riady Pleads Guilty, Will Pay Largest Fine in Campaign Finance History for Violating Federal Election Law." Press release 01-17, January 11, 2001.
|
||||||
|
[^6]: House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. *Investigation of Political Fundraising Improprieties and Possible Violations of Law,* H. Rept. 105-829, vol. 2, 1998, footnotes 14 and 115-119. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt829/html/CRPT-105hrpt829-vol2.htm
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
53
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Caleb Watney.md
Normal file
53
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Caleb Watney.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- InstituteForProgress
|
||||||
|
- OpenPhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
- CoefficientGiving
|
||||||
|
- AIPolicy
|
||||||
|
- Metascience
|
||||||
|
- ThinkTank
|
||||||
|
summary: "Co-founder and co-chief executive of the Institute for Progress who in July 2026 became Coefficient Giving's first managing director of public policy, taking over its U.S. AI policy grantmaking."
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Institute for Progress]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "co-chief executive"
|
||||||
|
start: 2021
|
||||||
|
end: 2026
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: director_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Institute for Progress]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "external board member"
|
||||||
|
start: 2026
|
||||||
|
fn: 7
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Open Philanthropy]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "managing director of public policy, Coefficient Giving"
|
||||||
|
start: 2026-07
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Caleb Watney received a bachelor of business administration from [[Sterling College]] and a master's degree in economics from [[George Mason University]], where he was a graduate research fellow at the [[Mercatus Center]]. He was a technology policy fellow at the [[R Street Institute]] and director of innovation policy at the [[Progressive Policy Institute]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Institute for Progress
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Watney co-founded the [[Institute for Progress]] (IFP) with [[Alec Stapp]] in 2021 and served as its co-chief executive until 2026, overseeing its metascience, high-skilled immigration and emerging technology policy teams.[^1] Their founding essay of January 20, 2022 borrowed "a framework ... from the effective altruism community" of prioritizing issues "that are important, neglected, and tractable."[^3] [[Open Philanthropy]] (later renamed Coefficient Giving)[^4] gave IFP 1.6 million dollars in October 2021 and 9 million dollars in March 2023.[^5] IFP's returns report Watney's pay as 54,231 dollars for 2021, 163,125 dollars for 2022, 202,500 dollars for 2023 and 240,362 dollars for 2024.[^6] In October 2023 he testified before the [[House Science Committee|House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology]] on federal AI research funding; his IFP work included papers on "X-Labs" for AI-driven science, a response to the [[Office of Science and Technology Policy]] on a national AI research and development plan, and, with [[Tim Hwang]], a response to a [[Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency|DARPA]] request for information on shaping emerging technologies.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Coefficient Giving
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On July 9, 2026, Coefficient Giving announced that Watney had joined as its "inaugural managing director of public policy," overseeing "our work on U.S. AI policy, our Abundance & Growth Fund, and government relations." It wrote: "We were an early supporter of IFP and think they have an incredible track record of counterfactual policy impact." Watney said: "Coefficient Giving took an early bet on IFP as we were just getting off the ground, and now I'm excited to help scale what we learned across the broader policy ecosystem." He said that "AI may be the most consequential technology transition in modern history," and that he was "equally excited to reunite with my former IFP colleague [[Matt Clancy]] on the Abundance & Growth Fund." Clancy, the fund's program director, said there were "very few people with such extensive national policymaking expertise bridging frontier AI and the work we do at the Abundance & Growth Fund."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The announcement stated that [[Luke Muehlhauser]] "previously ran the U.S. AI policy portfolio as part of his 'AI Governance & Policy' team. He helped recruit Caleb to take U.S. AI policy off his plate, and Luke has renamed his team 'AI Governance & International Policy' to make the distinction with Caleb's team clear," adding that "our hope is for Caleb to own all of it over time." Watney was building "a team of grantmakers, operators, and policy entrepreneurs to work on U.S. AI policy."[^2] He remained on IFP's board, whose other external members were Dan Correa of the [[Federation of American Scientists]], Zachary Graves of the [[Foundation for American Innovation]] and Tamara Winter of [[Stripe Press]]; IFP listed Clancy, identified as of Coefficient Giving, among its non-resident senior fellows.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Institute for Progress, "Caleb Watney," author biography and publications. https://ifp.org/author/caleb-watney/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Coefficient Giving, "Introducing Our New Managing Director of Public Policy, Caleb Watney," July 9, 2026, archived July 14, 2026. http://web.archive.org/web/20260714172124/https://coefficientgiving.org/research/introducing-our-new-managing-director-of-public-policy/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Stapp, Alec, and Caleb Watney. "Progress Is a Policy Choice." Institute for Progress, January 20, 2022. https://ifp.org/progress-is-a-policy-choice/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, "Ethics and Standards policies," February 20, 2026, referring to "Coefficient Giving (formerly known as Open Philanthropy)." https://www.tarbellcenter.org/ethics-and-standards
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Open Philanthropy, "Institute for Progress, General Support (2023)," grant of March 2023, archived August 26, 2023, with the October 2021 grant. http://web.archive.org/web/20230826080214/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/institute-for-progress-general-support-2023/ ; Open Philanthropy, "Institute for Progress, Policy Research," archived July 1, 2022. http://web.archive.org/web/20220701180156/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/institute-for-progress-policy-research/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Institute For Progress," EIN 87-2449729, Form 990 filings for fiscal years 2021 through 2024. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/872449729
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Institute for Progress, "About." https://ifp.org/about/
|
||||||
|
|
@ -14,17 +14,17 @@ relations:
|
||||||
with: "[[GiveWell]]"
|
with: "[[GiveWell]]"
|
||||||
role: "board of directors"
|
role: "board of directors"
|
||||||
start: 2011-04
|
start: 2011-04
|
||||||
fn: 6
|
fn: 7
|
||||||
- type: funded
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
with: "[[Real Justice PAC]]"
|
with: "[[Real Justice PAC]]"
|
||||||
start: 2017-03
|
start: 2017-03
|
||||||
end: 2019-04
|
end: 2019-04
|
||||||
role: "1.9 million dollars"
|
role: "1.9 million dollars"
|
||||||
fn: 17
|
fn: 18
|
||||||
- type: head_of
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
with: "[[Open Philanthropy]]"
|
with: "[[Open Philanthropy]]"
|
||||||
role: "chair"
|
role: "chair"
|
||||||
fn: 9
|
fn: 10
|
||||||
created: 2026-06-19
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
updated: 2026-09-23
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
@ -33,25 +33,31 @@ Cari Tuna graduated from Yale and reported for *[[The Wall Street Journal]]*, wr
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Early Life
|
### Early Life
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Tuna was raised in Evansville, Indiana, the eldest of three children of two doctors. At [[Signature School]] she was co-valedictorian and student council president and founded the school's [[Amnesty International]] chapter; she was a parishioner at Aldersgate United Methodist Church. At Yale she studied political science and worked on the college paper, wrote for the *[[Evansville Courier & Press]]*, interned at the *[[Minneapolis Star Tribune]]*, spoke some Arabic and Turkish, and considered becoming a foreign correspondent.[^3][^4] At *The Wall Street Journal* she was a junior reporter in the San Francisco bureau covering enterprise technology and the California economy.[^3][^5] In 2009 a *Journal* colleague who knew Moskovitz from college set the two up on a blind date. They married in 2013.[^3]
|
Tuna was raised in Evansville, Indiana, the eldest of three children of two doctors. At [[Signature School]] she was co-valedictorian and student council president and founded the school's [[Amnesty International]] chapter; she was a parishioner at Aldersgate United Methodist Church. At Yale she studied political science and worked on the college paper, wrote for the *[[Evansville Courier & Press]]*, interned at the *[[Minneapolis Star Tribune]]*, spoke some Arabic and Turkish, and considered becoming a foreign correspondent.[^3][^4] At *The Wall Street Journal* she was a junior reporter in the San Francisco bureau covering enterprise technology and the California economy.[^3][^5] In 2009 a *Journal* colleague who knew Moskovitz from college set the two up on a blind date. They married in 2013.[^3] *Forbes* identified the colleague in 2025 as [[Jessica Lessin]], later chief executive of *[[The Information]]*, and reported that Tuna was born in [[Minnesota]] before growing up in Evansville.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### GiveWell and Good Ventures
|
### GiveWell and Good Ventures
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Tuna read about [[GiveWell]] in [[Peter Singer]]'s *The Life You Can Save* and met its co-founder [[Holden Karnofsky]] through a mutual friend; she joined its board in April 2011. In December 2011, as president of [[Good Ventures]], "a foundation in the San Francisco Bay Area which she created with her partner Dustin Moskovitz earlier this year," she announced grants of 500,000 dollars to the [[Against Malaria Foundation]] and 250,000 dollars to the [[Schistosomiasis Control Initiative]], and planned grants to [[GiveDirectly]], [[Innovations for Poverty Action]], [[KIPP Houston]], [[Nyaya Health]], [[Pratham]] and the [[Small Enterprise Foundation]].[^6] In 2012 GiveWell moved its office from New York to San Francisco "to be closer to Tuna and other technology-industry donors," and the joint project GiveWell Labs became the Open Philanthropy Project, led by Tuna, Karnofsky and [[Alexander Berger]]. Asked in 2018 whether she identified as an effective altruist, she answered, "Yes. Do you?"[^1]
|
Tuna read about [[GiveWell]] in [[Peter Singer]]'s *The Life You Can Save* and met its co-founder [[Holden Karnofsky]] through a mutual friend; she joined its board in April 2011. In December 2011, as president of [[Good Ventures]], "a foundation in the San Francisco Bay Area which she created with her partner Dustin Moskovitz earlier this year," she announced grants of 500,000 dollars to the [[Against Malaria Foundation]] and 250,000 dollars to the [[Schistosomiasis Control Initiative]], and planned grants to [[GiveDirectly]], [[Innovations for Poverty Action]], [[KIPP Houston]], [[Nyaya Health]], [[Pratham]] and the [[Small Enterprise Foundation]].[^7] In 2012 GiveWell moved its office from New York to San Francisco "to be closer to Tuna and other technology-industry donors," and the joint project GiveWell Labs became the Open Philanthropy Project, led by Tuna, Karnofsky and [[Alexander Berger]]. Asked in 2018 whether she identified as an effective altruist, she answered, "Yes. Do you?"[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Tuna has been president of the Good Ventures Foundation on every return since 2015, and its board chair by 2025, with Moskovitz as secretary and treasurer and [[Divesh Makan]] of [[ICONIQ Capital]] as director; none is paid. The foundation's assets reached 10.1 billion dollars in 2025.[^7] Open Philanthropy, which draws nearly all of its grant money from Good Ventures, had given away about 7 billion dollars by September 2026.[^8] In 2026 Coefficient Giving, as [[Open Philanthropy]] was renamed in November 2025, listed her as chair, with Berger as chief executive, [[Emily Oehlsen]] as president, [[Naina Bajekal]] as managing director for communications and [[Luke Muehlhauser]] as managing director for AI governance and international policy.[^9] Announcing the renamed organization's free advisory service in November 2025, Tuna told the Associated Press: "It's always been a vision of mine to create a resource that could support not just Dustin and me, but many donors looking for advice on how to do as much good as they can with their giving." The AP reported that Coefficient Giving is incorporated as a limited liability company with several affiliated tax-exempt nonprofits, that outside donors had given more than 300 million dollars on its advice, and that it had given more than 580 million dollars to build the field of AI-risk research.[^10] In 2025 it launched a 120-million-dollar fund, half from Good Ventures, for research and advocacy against regulatory barriers to housing and energy infrastructure, and the couple joined the [[Gates Foundation]] and [[Lucy Southworth]] in the 100-million-dollar [[Lead Exposure Action Fund]].[^5][^11]
|
Tuna has been president of the Good Ventures Foundation on every return since 2015, and its board chair by 2025, with Moskovitz as secretary and treasurer and [[Divesh Makan]] of [[ICONIQ Capital]] as director; none is paid. The foundation's assets reached 10.1 billion dollars in 2025.[^8] Open Philanthropy, which draws nearly all of its grant money from Good Ventures, had given away about 7 billion dollars by September 2026.[^9] In 2026 Coefficient Giving, as [[Open Philanthropy]] was renamed in November 2025, listed her as chair, with Berger as chief executive, [[Emily Oehlsen]] as president, [[Naina Bajekal]] as managing director for communications and [[Luke Muehlhauser]] as managing director for AI governance and international policy.[^10] Announcing the renamed organization's free advisory service in November 2025, Tuna told the Associated Press: "It's always been a vision of mine to create a resource that could support not just Dustin and me, but many donors looking for advice on how to do as much good as they can with their giving." The AP reported that Coefficient Giving is incorporated as a limited liability company with several affiliated tax-exempt nonprofits, that outside donors had given more than 300 million dollars on its advice, and that it had given more than 580 million dollars to build the field of AI-risk research.[^11] In 2025 it launched a 120-million-dollar fund, half from Good Ventures, for research and advocacy against regulatory barriers to housing and energy infrastructure, and the couple joined the [[Gates Foundation]] and [[Lucy Southworth]] in the 100-million-dollar [[Lead Exposure Action Fund]].[^5][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Seven Entities
|
### Seven Entities
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
In 2018 the *Stanford Social Innovation Review* writer [[Marc Gunther]] wrote that Tuna played "a key role in no fewer than seven entities, as a director or major donor": the Open Philanthropy Project LLC; the [[Open Philanthropy Action Fund]], a 501(c)(4); the Open Philanthropy Project fund, a donor-advised fund at the [[Silicon Valley Community Foundation]]; the Good Ventures Foundation; Good Ventures, a supporting organization at the same community foundation; Good Ventures LLC, "a for-profit impact investment firm"; and GiveWell. He wrote that grants through the donor-advised funds "can't be traced back to the original donors." Tuna and Moskovitz were also investors in [[Breakthrough Energy Ventures]].[^1] The Open Philanthropy Action Fund has paid outside lobbyists every year from 2021 through 2026.[^12] Asana's 2026 proxy statement noted that Moskovitz and "his spouse" were directors of Good Ventures, which held Asana shares.[^13]
|
In 2018 the *Stanford Social Innovation Review* writer [[Marc Gunther]] wrote that Tuna played "a key role in no fewer than seven entities, as a director or major donor": the Open Philanthropy Project LLC; the [[Open Philanthropy Action Fund]], a 501(c)(4); the Open Philanthropy Project fund, a donor-advised fund at the [[Silicon Valley Community Foundation]]; the Good Ventures Foundation; Good Ventures, a supporting organization at the same community foundation; Good Ventures LLC, "a for-profit impact investment firm"; and GiveWell. He wrote that grants through the donor-advised funds "can't be traced back to the original donors." Tuna and Moskovitz were also investors in [[Breakthrough Energy Ventures]].[^1] The Open Philanthropy Action Fund has paid outside lobbyists every year from 2021 through 2026.[^13] Asana's 2026 proxy statement noted that Moskovitz and "his spouse" were directors of Good Ventures, which held Asana shares.[^14]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Causes
|
### Causes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Gunther reported that the cause-selection process Tuna led with Karnofsky and Berger settled on criminal justice reform, farm animal welfare, macroeconomic stabilization, immigration policy and land-use reform, and on two catastrophic-risk areas, biosecurity and advanced artificial intelligence, and that Tuna had concluded that "a lot of philanthropy's biggest claimed successes have come from improving policy."[^1] The criminal justice program, led by the former [[American Civil Liberties Union]] advocate [[Chloe Cockburn]], became an independent organization, [[Just Impact]], in November 2021, with a 50-million-dollar grant over three and a half years.[^14] Its AI grantmaking included 30 million dollars to [[OpenAI]] in 2017, with a board seat for Karnofsky, who later married [[Daniela Amodei]], president of [[Anthropic]].[^1][^15]
|
Gunther reported that the cause-selection process Tuna led with Karnofsky and Berger settled on criminal justice reform, farm animal welfare, macroeconomic stabilization, immigration policy and land-use reform, and on two catastrophic-risk areas, biosecurity and advanced artificial intelligence, and that Tuna had concluded that "a lot of philanthropy's biggest claimed successes have come from improving policy."[^1] The criminal justice program, led by the former [[American Civil Liberties Union]] advocate [[Chloe Cockburn]], became an independent organization, [[Just Impact]], in November 2021, with a 50-million-dollar grant over three and a half years.[^15] Its AI grantmaking included 30 million dollars to [[OpenAI]] in 2017, with a board seat for Karnofsky, who later married [[Daniela Amodei]], president of [[Anthropic]].[^1][^16]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Politics
|
### Politics
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
On September 8, 2016, Tuna and Moskovitz jointly announced 20 million dollars in contributions to elect [[Hillary Clinton]], writing that Trump's promises were "quite possibly a deliberate con" and that "we have reservations about anyone using large amounts of money to influence elections."[^16] [[Federal Election Commission]] records itemize about 7.04 million dollars in contributions from Tuna in the 2015-2016 cycle, including 2.5 million each to the [[LCV Victory Fund]] and [[For Our Future PAC]], 1.25 million to [[MoveOn]] and 416,119 dollars to the [[Hillary Victory Fund]]. Between March 2017 and April 2019 she gave 1.9 million dollars to [[Real Justice PAC]], in payments of 653,480 dollars, 350,000, 850,000 and 50,000, and 200,000 dollars to [[Color of Change PAC]]. No contributions from her were itemized after April 2019.[^17]
|
On September 8, 2016, Tuna and Moskovitz jointly announced 20 million dollars in contributions to elect [[Hillary Clinton]], writing that Trump's promises were "quite possibly a deliberate con" and that "we have reservations about anyone using large amounts of money to influence elections."[^17] [[Federal Election Commission]] records itemize about 7.04 million dollars in contributions from Tuna in the 2015-2016 cycle, including 2.5 million each to the [[LCV Victory Fund]] and [[For Our Future PAC]], 1.25 million to [[MoveOn]] and 416,119 dollars to the [[Hillary Victory Fund]]. Between March 2017 and April 2019 she gave 1.9 million dollars to [[Real Justice PAC]], in payments of 653,480 dollars, 350,000, 850,000 and 50,000, and 200,000 dollars to [[Color of Change PAC]]. No contributions from her were itemized after April 2019.[^18] Six months later, on October 29, 2019, the Open Philanthropy Action Fund, of which Tuna has been president and director on every return since 2017, gave 750,000 dollars to Real Justice PAC's non-contribution account.[^19][^20]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Giving Totals
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In November 2025 *Forbes* reported that the couple had donated more than 4 billion dollars, including more than 600 million in fiscal 2025, and held another 11 billion dollars in Moskovitz's personal fortune and about 10 billion in the Good Ventures Foundation, "plus more in donor-advised funds." A decade earlier they had helped give 1 million dollars to the [[Future of Life Institute]]; in 2017 they put 30 million dollars through their foundation into OpenAI's nonprofit, and Moskovitz invested in Anthropic's 124-million-dollar round of 2021, "before it was obvious that these labs would make money," in Tuna's words. Their Anthropic stake, which *Forbes* estimated at 500 million dollars, was moved into a nonprofit vehicle in early 2025 so that any "significant financial return" would go back into philanthropy and to "dispel any perception of conflict of interest," she said.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The same article reported that fellow billionaires, among them the [[Stripe]] co-founder [[Patrick Collison]] and Lucy Southworth, the wife of [[Larry Page]], had made more than 200 million dollars of commitments to Open Philanthropy's initiatives that year, seeding the Lead Exposure Action Fund, which had distributed 20 million dollars, 17 million of it to [[Pure Earth]], and the Abundance and Growth Fund. It named the [[Center for Security and Emerging Technology]], the [[RAND Corporation]] and [[FAR.AI]] as Open Philanthropy's largest AI-safety recipients, and reported that FAR.AI, headed by [[Adam Gleave]], had used 59 million dollars of Open Philanthropy funding. Organizations funded by Open Philanthropy had paid lobbyists at least 3 million dollars that year, and Open Philanthropy itself about 110,000 dollars a quarter. The largest global health recipients were the [[Malaria Consortium]] (307 million dollars), [[Evidence Action]] (206 million) and [[Helen Keller Intl]] (103 million). Berger, the chief executive, and Tuna held weekly walking meetings on strategy and on how quickly funds could be distributed; he said, "We want to build a resource that's ready for the next set of donors."[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
@ -60,15 +66,18 @@ On September 8, 2016, Tuna and Moskovitz jointly announced 20 million dollars in
|
||||||
[^3]: Cha, Ariana Eunjung. "Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz: Young Silicon Valley billionaires pioneer new approach to philanthropy." *The Washington Post,* December 26, 2014, copy hosted by Coefficient Giving. https://coefficientgiving.org/wp-content/uploads/washingtonpost.com-Cari-Tuna-and-Dustin-Moskovitz-Young-Silicon-Valley-billionaires-pioneer-new-approach-to-philanthropy.pdf
|
[^3]: Cha, Ariana Eunjung. "Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz: Young Silicon Valley billionaires pioneer new approach to philanthropy." *The Washington Post,* December 26, 2014, copy hosted by Coefficient Giving. https://coefficientgiving.org/wp-content/uploads/washingtonpost.com-Cari-Tuna-and-Dustin-Moskovitz-Young-Silicon-Valley-billionaires-pioneer-new-approach-to-philanthropy.pdf
|
||||||
[^4]: "Billionaire from Evansville to spread the wealth." WFIE 14 News, December 2014. https://www.14news.com/story/27724783/billionaire-from-evansville-to-spread-the-wealth/
|
[^4]: "Billionaire from Evansville to spread the wealth." WFIE 14 News, December 2014. https://www.14news.com/story/27724783/billionaire-from-evansville-to-spread-the-wealth/
|
||||||
[^5]: Coacci, Jessica. "Meet the millennial Meta cofounder and his wife who are giving away $20 billion." *Fortune,* November 10, 2025, via Yahoo Finance, archived December 26, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20251226183707/https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meet-millennial-meta-cofounder-wife-170849820.html
|
[^5]: Coacci, Jessica. "Meet the millennial Meta cofounder and his wife who are giving away $20 billion." *Fortune,* November 10, 2025, via Yahoo Finance, archived December 26, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20251226183707/https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meet-millennial-meta-cofounder-wife-170849820.html
|
||||||
[^6]: Tuna, Cari. "Guest post from Cari Tuna." The GiveWell Blog, December 23, 2011, archived February 7, 2026. http://web.archive.org/web/20260207082111/https://blog.givewell.org/2011/12/23/guest-post-from-cari-tuna/
|
[^6]: Liu, Phoebe. "Inside A Billionaire Couple's Plan To Give Away A $20 Billion Facebook Fortune." *Forbes,* November 7, 2025, updated version, archived. http://web.archive.org/web/20260730221730id_/https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2025/11/07/cari-tuna-billionaire-open-philanthropy-facebook/
|
||||||
[^7]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Good Ventures Foundation," EIN 46-1008520, Form 990-PF data through fiscal year ending June 2025. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/461008520
|
[^7]: Tuna, Cari. "Guest post from Cari Tuna." The GiveWell Blog, December 23, 2011, archived February 7, 2026. http://web.archive.org/web/20260207082111/https://blog.givewell.org/2011/12/23/guest-post-from-cari-tuna/
|
||||||
[^8]: Smith, Ben. "Coefficient Giving's CEO on Silicon Valley's $40 billion philanthropy boom." *Semafor,* September 3, 2026. https://www.semafor.com/article/09/03/2026/coefficient-givings-ceo-on-silicon-valley-40-billion-philanthropy-boom
|
[^8]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Good Ventures Foundation," EIN 46-1008520, Form 990-PF data through fiscal year ending June 2025. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/461008520
|
||||||
[^9]: Coefficient Giving, "Team," accessed September 2026. https://coefficientgiving.org/about-us/team/
|
[^9]: Smith, Ben. "Coefficient Giving's CEO on Silicon Valley's $40 billion philanthropy boom." *Semafor,* September 3, 2026. https://www.semafor.com/article/09/03/2026/coefficient-givings-ceo-on-silicon-valley-40-billion-philanthropy-boom
|
||||||
[^10]: Beaty, Thalia. "Cari Tuna's organization Open Philanthropy to advise other major donors for free." Associated Press, November 18, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/open-philanthropy-cari-tuna-dustin-moskovitz-effective-altruism-0e9e93d9ed9e094f32e4070ecc5b9b2b
|
[^10]: Coefficient Giving, "Team," accessed September 2026. https://coefficientgiving.org/about-us/team/
|
||||||
[^11]: "TIME100 Philanthropy 2025: Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz." *Time,* May 20, 2025. https://time.com/collections/time100-philanthropy-2025/7286010/cari-tuna-dustin-moskovitz/
|
[^11]: Beaty, Thalia. "Cari Tuna's organization Open Philanthropy to advise other major donors for free." Associated Press, November 18, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/open-philanthropy-cari-tuna-dustin-moskovitz-effective-altruism-0e9e93d9ed9e094f32e4070ecc5b9b2b
|
||||||
[^12]: U.S. Senate, Lobbying Disclosure Act database, filings for client "Open Philanthropy Action Fund," 2021 to 2026, retrieved September 2026. https://lda.senate.gov/api/v1/filings/?client_name=Open+Philanthropy+Action+Fund
|
[^12]: "TIME100 Philanthropy 2025: Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz." *Time,* May 20, 2025. https://time.com/collections/time100-philanthropy-2025/7286010/cari-tuna-dustin-moskovitz/
|
||||||
[^13]: Asana, Inc. Schedule 14A definitive proxy statement, filed April 20, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1477720/000162828026025998/asan-20260420.htm
|
[^13]: U.S. Senate, Lobbying Disclosure Act database, filings for client "Open Philanthropy Action Fund," 2021 to 2026, retrieved September 2026. https://lda.senate.gov/api/v1/filings/?client_name=Open+Philanthropy+Action+Fund
|
||||||
[^14]: Open Philanthropy, "Criminal Justice Reform (Closed)," archived November 13, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20251113222726/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/criminal-justice-reform/
|
[^14]: Asana, Inc. Schedule 14A definitive proxy statement, filed April 20, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1477720/000162828026025998/asan-20260420.htm
|
||||||
[^15]: Bordelon, Brendan. "How a billionaire-backed network of AI advisers took over Washington." *Politico,* October 13, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20250902172514/https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/13/open-philanthropy-funding-ai-policy-00121362
|
[^15]: Open Philanthropy, "Criminal Justice Reform (Closed)," archived November 13, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20251113222726/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/criminal-justice-reform/
|
||||||
[^16]: Moskovitz, Dustin, and Cari Tuna. "Compelled to Act." *Medium,* September 8, 2016, archived December 31, 2016. http://web.archive.org/web/20161231130245/https://medium.com/@moskov/compelled-to-act-1413930041ee
|
[^16]: Bordelon, Brendan. "How a billionaire-backed network of AI advisers took over Washington." *Politico,* October 13, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20250902172514/https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/13/open-philanthropy-funding-ai-policy-00121362
|
||||||
[^17]: Federal Election Commission, itemized receipts (Schedule A, memo entries excluded) for contributor "Tuna, Cari," two-year periods 2016 through 2026, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://api.open.fec.gov/v1/schedules/schedule_a/?contributor_name=Tuna%2C+Cari
|
[^17]: Moskovitz, Dustin, and Cari Tuna. "Compelled to Act." *Medium,* September 8, 2016, archived December 31, 2016. http://web.archive.org/web/20161231130245/https://medium.com/@moskov/compelled-to-act-1413930041ee
|
||||||
|
[^18]: Federal Election Commission, itemized receipts (Schedule A, memo entries excluded) for contributor "Tuna, Cari," two-year periods 2016 through 2026, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://api.open.fec.gov/v1/schedules/schedule_a/?contributor_name=Tuna%2C+Cari
|
||||||
|
[^19]: Federal Election Commission, Schedule A receipt from "Open Philanthropy Action Fund," 750,000 dollars, October 29, 2019, reported by Real Justice PAC (C00632554) on its 2019 year-end Form 3X, image 202007029244274196, retrieved September 23, 2026. http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?202007029244274196
|
||||||
|
[^20]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Coefficient Giving Action Fund" (formerly Open Philanthropy Action Fund), EIN 81-2644663, organization record, Form 990 data and Part VII officer listings for fiscal years 2016 to 2024, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/812644663
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
59
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Lawrence Wechsler.md
Normal file
59
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Lawrence Wechsler.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "BCCI Scandal"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- Lawyer
|
||||||
|
- IranContra
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Lawrence H. Wechsler
|
||||||
|
- Larry Wechsler
|
||||||
|
summary: "Washington defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor who assembled BCCI's legal team after the 1988 Tampa indictment, negotiated its 1990 plea agreement and lobbied the Senate on the bank's behalf."
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "defense counsel, Tampa money-laundering case"
|
||||||
|
start: 1988
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Albert Hakim]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "counsel in the Iran-Contra affair"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Department of Justice]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "prosecutor, United States Attorney's office for the District of Columbia"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lawrence H. Wechsler is a [[Washington, D.C.]] criminal defense lawyer and a former prosecutor in the United States Attorney's office for the District of Columbia. In 1992 he practiced with the Washington firm of [[Janis, Schuelke and Wechsler]]. He represented [[Albert Hakim]] in the [[Iran-Contra Affair]], and after the indictment of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) in [[Tampa, Florida|Tampa]] in October 1988 he was brought in by his close friend [[Robert Altman]] to put together the bank's defense team.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI Defense
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Wechsler recruited [[E. Lawrence Barcella, Jr.|Lawrence Barcella]], with whom he had worked at the [[Department of Justice]], to coordinate the defense, together with, in the words of the Senate report, a "bevy of other top lawyers." The Senate subcommittee chaired by [[John Kerry]] listed him with [[Raymond Banoun]] and Barcella as the former federal prosecutors among BCCI's Washington "cadre of professional help," which also included [[Clark Clifford]], the former legislators [[John Culver]] and [[Michael Barnes]], and the former [[Federal Reserve Board|Federal Reserve]] attorneys [[Baldwin Tuttle]] and [[Jerry Hawke]].[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
At a meeting with Senate staff that the report dates May 14, 1989, Wechsler, Altman and Banoun produced 775 pages of new documents concerning General [[Manuel Noriega]]. The lawyers stated that they had relied on the statements of the BCCI officer [[Amjad Awan]] and had conducted no independent searches for documents in 1988 in response to the subcommittee's subpoena.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Plea Agreement
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In mid-December 1989 Wechsler and Barcella represented BCCI in a series of meetings with the United States Attorney's office in Tampa and with the [[U.S. Customs|Customs Service]], the [[Internal Revenue Service]] and the [[Drug Enforcement Administration]]. They offered a guilty plea by the bank to money laundering and its cooperation against other launderers in return for a commitment that this would end BCCI's criminal exposure for all offenses then known to the government. The agreement was reached in January 1990, with a forfeiture of 14 million dollars.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Florida License
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After the United States Attorney in Tampa, [[Robert Genzman]], told Florida regulators on January 31, 1990, that his office took no position on BCCI's state license, the bank's lawyers, "principally former federal prosecutors Lawrence Wechsler, Lawrence Barcella, and Raymond Banoun," approached others in the Justice Department. On February 13, 1990, [[Charles Saphos]], head of the narcotics section of the Criminal Division, wrote to Florida's comptroller, [[Gerald Lewis]], requesting "that BCCI be permitted to operate in your jurisdiction." Saphos sent copies of his letters "to the Federal Reserve, and to BCCI lawyers Banoun and Wechsler." He withdrew the request three days later. The subcommittee concluded that "Saphos was personally lobbied by people he knew who had formerly been with the Justice Department and now represented BCCI on the outside, and agreed to do them a favor."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Senate
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Wechsler declined to meet the subcommittee's staff. The report stated that "documents show that he and Banoun lobbied the US Senate on behalf of BCCI."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Gurwin
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1989 and 1990 Barcella, Altman and the lawyer [[John Vardaman]] of [[Williams & Connolly]] warned the freelance journalist [[Larry Gurwin]], who was writing about BCCI and [[First American Bank|First American]] for *Regardie's* magazine, that it would be improper to link the two institutions. BCCI's British solicitors separately threatened to sue Gurwin over an article in *[[The Economist]]*, basing their charges on information from the Washington lawyers who had spoken to him. According to the Senate report, "At this point Gurwin had only spoken to Wechsler and Barcella."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 17, "BCCI's Lawyers and Lobbyists." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/17law.htm
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 1, "Executive Summary." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/01exec.htm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 13, "Clark Clifford and Robert Altman." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/13clifford.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 8, "BCCI and Law Enforcement: The Justice Department and the U.S. Customs Service." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/08just.htm
|
||||||
85
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Zia ul-Haq.md
Normal file
85
10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Zia ul-Haq.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,85 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Political Figure"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Person
|
||||||
|
- Pakistan
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- MartialLaw
|
||||||
|
- NuclearProliferation
|
||||||
|
- AfghanWar
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq
|
||||||
|
- Mohammad Zia ul-Haq
|
||||||
|
- General Zia
|
||||||
|
summary: "Pakistani army chief who seized power in 1977, hanged Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, ruled until his 1988 death in a plane crash, and was cultivated by BCCI's Agha Hasan Abedi."
|
||||||
|
born: 1924-08-12
|
||||||
|
died: 1988-08-17
|
||||||
|
location: "Jullundur, British India"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Pakistan]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "president and chief martial law administrator"
|
||||||
|
start: 1977
|
||||||
|
end: 1988-08-17
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "40 million Pakistani rupees paid by BCCI's United Arab Emirates branch"
|
||||||
|
start: 1985-05
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Muhammad Zia ul-Haq was a [[Pakistan|Pakistani]] army officer who, as chief of army staff, removed Prime Minister [[Zulfikar Ali Bhutto]] in a pre-dawn army coup in 1977, named himself president and chief martial law administrator, and governed Pakistan until he was killed when his military transport plane exploded after takeoff from [[Bahawalpur]] on August 17, 1988.[^1] Through most of that period [[Agha Hasan Abedi]], founder of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI), called on him privately whenever he flew into Pakistan, and in May 1985 BCCI's branch in the [[United Arab Emirates]] paid him 40 million Pakistani rupees.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Early Life and Army Career
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Zia was born into a middle-class Muslim family in Jullundur, [[British India]], on August 12, 1924. His father, Akbar Ali, was a clerical officer in the British colonial Indian army. Zia was commissioned into the Indian army in 1945 and served in [[Burma]], [[Malaya]] and [[Java]] during the [[World War II|Second World War]]. At partition his family crossed 75 miles of [[Punjab]] into Pakistan. He graduated from the Staff College at [[Quetta]] in 1955 and in 1963 attended the U.S. Command and General Staff College at [[Fort Leavenworth]], Kansas.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1976 Bhutto appointed him army chief of staff over more senior officers. "Shocked, not surprised, when I was selected chief of the army by the former prime minister," Zia later said. "There were 10 chaps senior to me. I was just one of the army."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Coup and the Execution of Bhutto
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After three months of street fighting by anti-Bhutto rioters, Zia deposed Bhutto in 1977, appointed himself president and chief martial law administrator, and formed a cabinet drawn mostly from the army, navy and air force. He put Bhutto on trial for the alleged murder of a political opponent.[^1] On March 18, 1978, the [[Lahore High Court]] sentenced Bhutto to hang for the murder of Nawab Mohammad Ahmad Khan; the [[Supreme Court of Pakistan]] rejected his appeal on February 6, 1979, and his review petition on March 24, 1979. The execution order read to Bhutto stated: "The president of Pakistan has decided not to interfere in this matter." He was hanged in [[Rawalpindi]] jail, a short walk from Zia's official residence, at four minutes past two on the morning of April 4, 1979, according to the account of the jail's security officer, Lieutenant Colonel Rafiuddin.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In July 1978 Zia's government issued a White Paper on the conduct of the March 1977 general elections that named Abedi as a source of illegal funds for Bhutto's [[Pakistan People's Party]].[^4] The [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate report]], which placed the coup in 1978, wrote that Abedi "swiftly changed allegiances" to "Bhutto's successor, Islamic 'puritan' General Zia," and that Zia "later executed Bhutto for financial crimes, in which Abedi, among others, was clearly involved, while forming close ties to Abedi, on whose financial skills he increasingly relied."[^2][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Rule
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Zia repeatedly promised elections and withdrew the promise as polling dates approached; United Press International reported that many Western diplomats and Pakistani politicians said he knew he would lose. In 1979 he announced the restructuring of Pakistani society to conform to traditional Islamic law, under which theft could be punished by amputation of the right hand, adultery or rape by stoning, and drinking alcohol by five years' imprisonment and 30 lashes.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Washington supplied him with 40 [[F-16]] warplanes and other military and economic aid, and channeled aid through Pakistan to the [[Mujahideen|rebels]] fighting the Soviet-backed government of [[Afghanistan]].[^1] Zia arrived in Washington on December 6, 1982, and met Secretary of State [[George Shultz]].[^5] [[Benazir Bhutto]], daughter of the prime minister he had hanged, returned to Pakistan in April 1986 after two years of exile, vowing to remove him. On May 29, 1988, Zia dissolved the National Assembly and dismissed Prime Minister [[Mohammad Khan Junejo]], citing a breakdown of law and order, the slow pace of Islamic reform and official corruption; on July 20 he announced national elections for November 16, and the next day declared they would be held on a non-party basis.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Senate report found that although Abedi had been close to Bhutto, it was Zia who governed Pakistan during most of BCCI's existence, and "General Zia who did the most for BCCI." [[Nazir Chinoy]], BCCI's branch chief in Pakistan in the late 1970s and early 1980s, told Senate staff:[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
> Every time Mr. Abedi came, he always called on President Zia. President Zia did not meet Abedi during office hours, but in the night when Mr. Abedi would fly in, they would finish official dinners first and I would be sitting with Abedi and Abedi would leave for two to three hours and meet with Zia. It was the President Zia that he spoke to first before speaking to the finance minister. I think that Abedi used Zia and Zia used Abedi also for the gulf countries, when he wanted some assistance. It was a two way street.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Subcommittee obtained what it described as a sample BCCI payment to Zia: 40 million Pakistani rupees from BCCI's branch in the United Arab Emirates, which the report valued at several hundred thousand dollars. The report's text dates the payment May 26, 1985; its footnote cites a check to General Zia from BCCI-UAE dated May 25, 1985, reproduced in the Senate hearing record (S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 2, pp. 510-511).[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
According to the report, the Pakistani government guaranteed BCCI's ability "to push aside immigration and customs requirements for its distinguished Arab visitors on their holidays in Pakistan," and BCCI in return helped the government evade monetary controls. Chinoy described how in 1979, with Pakistan under [[World Bank]] credit ceilings, 50 million dollars was routed through BCCI's Kuwaiti affiliate [[Kuwait International Finance Company|KIFCO]] into BCCI [[Karachi]], so that the central bank could report an increase in Pakistan's dollar reserves to the World Bank. An indictment brought by New York District Attorney [[Robert Morgenthau]] on July 29, 1992, put the sum at 100 million dollars.[^2] The Pakistani BCCI Foundation, which received BCCI's Pakistani profits, obtained tax-free status in 1981 while [[Ghulam Ishaq Khan]] was minister of finance; Ishaq Khan held that post under Zia from 1977 to 1984 and chaired the foundation through the 1980s.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
According to BCCI's former regional manager [[Abdur Sakhia]], it was generally believed among BCCI officials that had Zia been alive in October 1988, when BCCI was indicted in [[Tampa, Florida|Tampa]] after [[Operation C-Chase]], he would have used his influence with the [[United States]] government to soften the case.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Nuclear Program
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In May 1986 Representative [[Stephen Solarz]] confronted Zia and other officials with his view, based on U.S. intelligence, that the plant at [[Kahuta]] was producing weapons-grade enriched uranium; the Pakistanis denied it and refused independent verification. In July 1987 [[U.S. Customs]] arrested [[Arshad Pervez]], a Pakistani native living in [[Canada]], while he was trying to export maraging steel and beryllium to Pakistan. In meetings with Zia on August 5, 1987, Under Secretary of State [[Michael Armacost]] said that Washington could not "wink" at Pakistani procurement, said that U.S. information indicated "enrichment levels above 90[percent] have been achieved at Kahuta," and told Zia that the [[State Department]] had alerted the Pakistani government that "there was an issue here that needed to be addressed urgently." Zia replied: "I understand the idea of warning."[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research memorandum of December 29, 1987, concluded that the procurement network "could not exist without the umbrella of government approval, protection, and funding," and that Zia and Junejo had "allowed the nuclear procurement network to flourish and the clandestine ethic to become ingrained in their subordinates and agents." On December 17, 1987, the day a federal jury convicted Pervez, President [[Ronald Reagan]] informed Congress that he had "concluded that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device," and in January 1988 the [[White House]] invoked the Solarz amendment and waived it in the same determination.[^5] The Senate report separately stated that in the late 1980s BCCI provided 10 million dollars in grants to a science institute named for Ghulam Ishaq Khan and directed by [[A.Q. Khan]].[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Death
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On August 17, 1988, a [[C-130]] transport carrying Zia exploded shortly after takeoff from Bahawalpur, 450 miles south of [[Islamabad]], where the party had watched a demonstration of a U.S.-built M-1 tank. The dead included U.S. Ambassador [[Arnold Raphel]]; Brigadier General [[Herbert Wassom]], the senior U.S. military attache; General [[Akhtar Abdur Rahman]], Pakistan's chief of staff; Lieutenant General Mian Mohammad Afzaal, chief of staff of the army; three major generals, five brigadier generals and 13 crew. The State Department counted 39 aboard; Pakistan listed 30 victims. Acting President Ghulam Ishaq Khan said, "There is the possibility of sabotage in the crash," ordered an inquiry, declared a state of emergency, and said elections would be held on November 16. A State Department official discounted sabotage because of the security that surrounded Zia. Vice President [[George H.W. Bush|George Bush]] called the death "a great tragedy."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Zia was married to Shafiz; they had two sons and three daughters.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Barnetson, Denholm. "President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel and...," United Press International, August 17, 1988. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1988/08/17/President-Mohammad-Zia-ul-Haq-US-Ambassador-Arnold-Raphel-and/3467587793600/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 5, "BCCI's Relationship with Foreign Governments, Central Banks, and International Organizations," section "Pakistan" (citing staff interviews with Nazir Chinoy, March 9 to 16, 1992; staff interview with Abdur Sakhia, October 7, 1991; and S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 2, pp. 510-511). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/05foreign.htm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Aziz, Shaikh. "A leaf from history: The prime minister is hanged," *Dawn*, February 1, 2015. https://www.dawn.com/news/1160422
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 3, "The Origin and Early Years of BCCI," section "Abedi As Pakistani Political Paymaster" (citing White Paper on the General Elections, Government of Pakistan, July 1978, S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 3, pp. 314-317). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Burr, William, ed. "The Pervez Case and Reagan Administration Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy, 1987," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 446, November 22, 2013. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb446/
|
||||||
50
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/Nordic Resistance Movement.md
Normal file
50
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/Nordic Resistance Movement.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Extremism & Violent Networks"
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- NRM
|
||||||
|
- Nordiska motståndsrörelsen
|
||||||
|
- Pohjoismainen vastarintaliike
|
||||||
|
- Pohjoinen Perinne ry
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- NeoNazi
|
||||||
|
- Sweden
|
||||||
|
- Finland
|
||||||
|
- Accelerationism
|
||||||
|
- WhiteSupremacy
|
||||||
|
summary: "Neo-Nazi organization founded in Sweden in 1997 and active across the Nordic countries, whose members trained at Russia's Partizan camp before the Gothenburg bombings and whose Finnish branch was judicially dissolved in 2020."
|
||||||
|
start: 1997
|
||||||
|
location: "Sweden; Finland; Norway; Denmark"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: participant_in
|
||||||
|
with: "[[2017 Gothenburg Neo-Nazi Bombings]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "members Viktor Melin and Anton Thulin"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: investigated
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Supreme Court of Finland]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 2017-03
|
||||||
|
end: 2020-09-22
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM; Swedish Nordiska motståndsrörelsen, Finnish Pohjoismainen vastarintaliike) is a neo-Nazi organization founded in [[Sweden]] in 1997 that operates in all the Nordic countries and aims, in the description of researchers at the [[University of Oslo]]'s Center for Research on Extremism, "to overthrow the current democratic order in the Nordic region and establish a national socialist state in its stead." Its Finnish chapter was founded in 2008.[^1] Two members of its [[Gothenburg]] cell trained at the [[Partizan]] camp of the [[Russian Imperial Movement]] in [[St. Petersburg]] in August 2016 before a series of bombings in Gothenburg, which the [[U.S. Department of State|State Department]] cited when it designated the Russian group a [[Specially Designated Global Terrorist]] in April 2020.[^2][^3] The [[Supreme Court of Finland]] ordered the organization dissolved in Finland on September 22, 2020.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Partizan and the Gothenburg Bombings
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Anton Thulin and [[Viktor Melin]] traveled to St. Petersburg and took part in the Partizan paramilitary course in August 2016, receiving eleven days of instruction. On November 11, 2016, Melin bombed a left-wing bookstore café in Gothenburg. On January 5, 2017, Melin and Jimmy Jonasson, who had no connection to the Russian group, bombed a refugee shelter, wounding one person, and on January 25, 2017, Melin, Thulin and Jonasson attempted to bomb a campground housing asylum seekers.[^2] The Swedish prosecutor who charged Thulin and Melin said their training in Russia was "a key step in [their] radicalization" and may have been where they learned to use the explosives.[^2] All three maintained their innocence; on July 7, 2017, the court sentenced them to terms ranging from eighteen months to eight and a half years in prison.[^4] Secretary of State [[Mike Pompeo]] cited the attacks when he announced the designation of the Russian Imperial Movement and its leaders on April 7, 2020, the first designation of a white supremacist group as a terrorist entity by the [[United States]].[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Dissolution in Finland
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Finnish authorities came under pressure to act against the organization in late 2016, after a long-standing member assaulted a passer-by who had protested against a public NRM event in [[Helsinki]]; the victim died a week later after leaving hospital against medical advice, and the assailant was convicted of aggravated assault with a racist motive. The [[National Police Board of Finland|National Police Board]] sued to dissolve the organization in March 2017. The Birkaland District Court ruled for the police in November 2017, and the Turku Court of Appeal upheld the decision in September 2018. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal in March 2019 and imposed a temporary ban, which became permanent on September 22, 2020, when it ordered the NRM and its registered vehicle, Pohjoinen Perinne ry ("Northern Tradition"), disbanded. The court found the group's objectives illegal, its propaganda to include "agitation against ethnic and other minorities," and its stance on violence by its members supportive. It was the first court-ordered dissolution of an extreme right-wing group in Finland since 1977.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The ruling did not cover the group's charity, Suomalaisapu, or its party project, Kansan Yhtenäisyys, which had been abandoned after the temporary ban. Members founded a successor group, Kohti Vapautta! ("Towards Freedom!"), in the spring of 2019, and prosecutors considered charging it with illegally continuing the NRM's activities. The organization's Finnish members worked closely from 2017 with the street patrol group [[Soldiers of Odin]], and some activists moved after the ban toward accelerationist positions.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Sallamaa, Daniel, and Tommi Kotonen. "The case against the Nordic Resistance Movement in Finland: an overview and some explanations," C-REX Center for Research on Extremism, University of Oslo, November 2, 2020. https://www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/english/news-and-events/right-now/2020/the-case-against-the-nordic-resistance-movement.html
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Mapping Militants Project, Stanford University, "Russian Imperial Movement." https://mappingmilitants.org/profiles/russian-imperial-movement
|
||||||
|
[^3]: U.S. Department of State, "The U.S. Department of State's Designation of the Russian Imperial Movement and its Leaders as Global Terrorists," April 7, 2020. https://2017-2021.state.gov/the-u-s-department-of-states-designation-of-the-russian-imperial-movement-and-its-leaders-as-global-terrorists/index.html
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Feder, J. Lester. "These Swedish Nazis Trained In Russia Before Bombing A Center For Asylum Seekers," *BuzzFeed News,* July 22, 2017. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/lesterfeder/these-swedish-nazis-trained-in-russia
|
||||||
63
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PARAMILITARY/Abu Nidal Organization.md
Normal file
63
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PARAMILITARY/Abu Nidal Organization.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Paramilitary"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- Paramilitary
|
||||||
|
- Palestine
|
||||||
|
- Terrorism
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- AbuNidal
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- ANO
|
||||||
|
- Fatah Revolutionary Council
|
||||||
|
- Abu Nidal organization
|
||||||
|
summary: "Palestinian terrorist organization of Sabri al-Banna (Abu Nidal) whose commercial and arms network was financed through a general account at BCCI in London, as a 1987 State Department report described."
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Samir Najmeddin]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "general manager of the commercial network"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: investigated
|
||||||
|
with: "[[State Department]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 1987-07
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: investigated
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Central Intelligence Agency]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 1986
|
||||||
|
end: 1990
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), which called itself the Fatah Revolutionary Council, was the Palestinian terrorist group of Sabri al-Banna, known as [[Abu Nidal]]. Its accounts were held at the Sloane Street branch in [[London]] of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI), whose manager, [[Ghassan Qassem]], passed details of them to British and American intelligence.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Commercial Network
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In July 1987, on the basis of Qassem's information, the [[State Department]] prepared a report, "Abu Nidal's Terror Network," which was declassified in 1991 at the request of Senator [[John Kerry]]'s subcommittee. It stated: "The ANO commercial network comprises several businesses created over the past seven years with the long-term goal of establishing legitimate trading enterprises in various countries, gaining experience in commercial trade, and making a profit for the group. . . The general manager of the commercial network and the principal agent in gray-arms transactions is Samir Hasan Najm al-Din (Samir Najmeddin). He has directed many of ANO's commercial activities, both licit and illicit, from his offices in the [[INTRACO]] building in [[Warsaw]], Poland. . . He has maintained a general account at a major West European Bank [BCCI in London] from which he transfers money to individual company accounts at local banks. He maintains joint control of each company's ban[k] accounts, along with the company manager, and he is responsible for forwarding all major contracts to Sabri al-Banna for final approval."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
According to the [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate Report]], the information on Abu Nidal's use of BCCI was detailed enough by 1986 to be disseminated within the [[United States]] intelligence community, and after its dissemination "the U.S. coordinated efforts to shut down the financing of the activities exposed in its targeting of Abu Nidal through BCCI-London, with some success."[^1] The [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]], in an operation against BCCI's laundering of narcotics money that ran from 1986 to 1990, learned of BCCI's role "in supporting international terrorism, including handling the finances of Sabri Al-Bannah or Abu Nidal, and his terrorist organization."[^2] In its chapter on [[Jimmy Carter]]'s dealings with BCCI's founder, [[Agha Hasan Abedi]], the Senate report stated that by 1986 "the State Department knew that the terrorist Abu Nidal was using the bank to finance his operations in Europe," and that Carter was never briefed about BCCI by any agency of the government.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Disclosure
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A chronology entered in the record of the [[House Banking Committee]]'s hearing of September 11, 1991 dated the first press report to July 21, 1991, sixteen days after BCCI was closed: "London Sunday Times reports that Abu Nidal's terrorist group used accounts at BCCI in England."[^4] On July 25, 1991, a wire report carried in the *[[Deseret News]]* stated that *[[The Guardian]]*, "quoting what it said was a confidential French secret service document," had reported that the Kuwaiti embassy in London paid 60 million dollars into Abu Nidal's London BCCI account in 1987. The Guardian quoted the French document, dated February 1988: "Certain countries like Kuwait, which were for some time targets of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, now seem to enjoy relative peace." According to the Guardian's account of the French report, the account "was in the name of Samir Najmeddin, described as the head of the Fatah Revolutionary Council's commercial network," whom the newspaper identified as an Iraqi businessman who had supplied arms to [[Saddam Hussein]] and to [[Argentina]] during the [[Falklands War]].[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After BCCI's closure, a British judge, on the application of BCCI's liquidators, refused to let the Senate subcommittee receive BCCI documents held in the [[United Kingdom]] without the written "permission" of the depositors concerned, "such as Abu Nidal, and the deceased Ben Banerjee and [[Cyrus Hashemi]]." Other BCCI documents in Britain, the Senate report stated, "have been segregated and sealed by British intelligence ([[MI5|MI-5]]), and withheld from dissemination to anyone."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Task Force Papers
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Two papers of the [[Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare]] of the House Republican Research Committee, directed by [[Yossef Bodansky]], were entered into the hearing record of September 11, 1991 by the committee chairman, [[Henry B. Gonzalez]]. The first, "BCCI: An Introduction," dated September 4, 1991, stated that "by the early-1980s, Sabri Al-Banna (Abu-Nidal) was extorting money from rich Arabs in Europe, and many diplomats, especially representatives of Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, had bought his 'protection.' BCCI enjoyed the fruits of these operations by handling Abu-Nidal's extortion money." It asserted that Abedi established relations with al-Banna in the early 1980s "through the mediation and recommendation of [[Libya]] and [[Pakistan]]," and quoted Abu Nidal's former deputy, Atif Abu-Bakr: "Behind the soldier there is a businessman. Abu-Nidal opened up commercial branches in London, Athens, and Cyprus." It quoted Qassem as saying that "the terrorist accounts had been set up with the knowledge of senior officials within BCCI."[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The second paper, "BCCI: Between Peru and Washington, D.C.," dated September 10, 1991, stated that in early 1988 "BCCI arranged for the Abu-Nidal Organization to begin helping" the [[Shining Path]] in [[Peru]] with urban operations and sabotage training, with BCCI handling the funds, and quoted Abu-Bakr: "In 1989, for example, he [Abu-Nidal] made more than $4 million in Peru, Cocaine money, to be sure." According to the paper, the money was shipped through BCCI's London branches.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 4, "BCCI's Criminality" (quoting "Abu Nidal's Terror Network," U.S. Department of State, July 1987). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 11, "BCCI, the CIA and Foreign Intelligence." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 16, "BCCI and Georgia Politicians." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/16ga.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs. *Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) Investigation, Part 1.* Hearing, 102nd Cong., 1st sess., September 11, 1991, Serial No. 102-69, "Full Chronology of BCCI and First American Bankshares, Inc.," pp. 696-697, and "Condensed Chronology of BCCI," p. 808. https://archive.org/details/BCCIHearingsBeforeTheCommitteeOnBankingFinanceAndUrbanAffairs
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Daily Says Kuwait Put $60 Million Into Nidal's BCCI Account." *Deseret News* (wire report), July 25, 1991. https://www.deseret.com/1991/7/25/18932483/daily-says-kuwait-put-60-million-into-nidal-s-bcci-account/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, Serial No. 102-69, Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, House Republican Research Committee, "BCCI: An Introduction," September 4, 1991, pp. 969-983 (at pp. 979-980), and "BCCI: Between Peru and Washington, D.C.," September 10, 1991, pp. 984 ff. (at pp. 991-992). https://archive.org/details/BCCIHearingsBeforeTheCommitteeOnBankingFinanceAndUrbanAffairs
|
||||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,134 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
aliases:
|
||||||
|
- "ARI"
|
||||||
|
- "Americans For Responsible Innovation Ltd"
|
||||||
|
- "ARI PAC"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- AIPolicy
|
||||||
|
- Lobbying
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- OpenPhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
- PoliticalActionCommittee
|
||||||
|
summary: "Washington 501(c)(4) AI-policy lobby founded in late 2023 by former congressman Brad Carson and Eric Gastfriend, funded by Coefficient Giving and Omidyar Network, whose PAC is financed by AI-safety researchers."
|
||||||
|
start: 2023
|
||||||
|
location: "Washington, D.C."
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Brad Carson]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 2023
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Eric Gastfriend]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 2023
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Brad Carson]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "president"
|
||||||
|
fn: 4
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Eric Gastfriend]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "executive director; treasurer of ARI PAC"
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Douglass Calidas]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "senior vice president of government affairs"
|
||||||
|
start: 2024
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Satya Thallam]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "senior vice president of government affairs"
|
||||||
|
start: 2024-05
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Open Philanthropy]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "listed donor, as Coefficient Giving"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Omidyar Network]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "listed donor"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Inclusive Abundance Action]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "listed donor"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: contractor_to
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "registered outside lobbying firm"
|
||||||
|
start: 2024
|
||||||
|
fn: 5
|
||||||
|
- type: contractor_to
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Navigators Global]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "registered outside lobbying firm"
|
||||||
|
start: 2024
|
||||||
|
end: 2024
|
||||||
|
fn: 5
|
||||||
|
- type: contractor_to
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Mindset Advocacy]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "registered outside lobbying firm"
|
||||||
|
start: 2025
|
||||||
|
fn: 5
|
||||||
|
- type: contractor_to
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Neil Hill Global Strategies]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "registered outside lobbying firm"
|
||||||
|
start: 2025
|
||||||
|
fn: 5
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Americans for Responsible Innovation (ARI) is a [[Washington, D.C.]] nonprofit that lobbies on the regulation of artificial intelligence. It states that it "was founded in late 2023 by former Congressman [[Brad Carson]] (President) and tech entrepreneur [[Eric Gastfriend]] (Executive Director)," and that its mission is to "help U.S. policymakers develop a thoughtful governance framework for rapidly advancing technologies that protects the public from harm while continuing to foster innovation."[^1] Its public launch was announced on March 6, 2024, in a letter signed by the two men as co-founders, describing themselves as "a former member of Congress and health tech startup founder, respectively," and stating that ARI was "funded by individuals who share our concern for responsible innovation, rather than by industry."[^2] Its offices are at 750 17th Street NW, Suite 1200, in Washington. A sister 501(c)(3), the [[Center for Responsible Innovation]], operates alongside it.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Funding
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
ARI describes itself as "a 501c4 nonprofit organization" and lists as its supporters "organizations including [[Inclusive Abundance Action]], [[Omidyar Network]], and Coefficient Giving and ... individual donors including Brad Carson & Julie Carson, Eric Gastfriend & Caroline Mehl, and Steve Newman." It states that it does "not take money from for-profit corporations or non-U.S. entities" and that it is "run fully independently of our donors." It adds that it is "recommended for giving by [[Founders Pledge]]."[^1] Coefficient Giving is the name adopted in November 2025 by [[Open Philanthropy]], the grantmaker funded by [[Dustin Moskovitz]] and [[Cari Tuna]].
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The organization is registered with the [[Internal Revenue Service]] as Americans For Responsible Innovation Ltd, EIN 93-3248564, under section 501(c)(4). For 2023 it reported revenue of 501,673 dollars, 500,100 dollars of it contributions, expenses of 23,064 dollars and no executive pay. For 2024 it reported revenue of 5,244,469 dollars, almost all of it contributions, expenses of 2,592,128 dollars and net assets of 3,130,427 dollars; executive compensation came to 1,095,356 dollars, 42.3 percent of expenses. The 2024 return listed [[Douglass Calidas]], senior vice president of government affairs, at 438,631 dollars; [[Satya Thallam]], senior vice president of government affairs from May 2024, at 265,156 dollars; Gastfriend, executive director, at 253,159 dollars; [[Adam Pastrich]], chief of staff from June 2024, at 102,711 dollars; Carson, president, at no salary; and [[Thomas Adelson]], board member and treasurer from December 2024.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Staff and Advisers
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Carson is described on ARI's staff page as a former president of the [[University of Tulsa]], former congressman, [[Under Secretary of the Army]] and acting [[Under Secretary of Defense]]; Gastfriend as the former chief executive and president of DynamiCare Health, "a digital health startup with awards from NIH & FDA." Calidas, listed as Doug Calidas, is a former chief of staff to Senator [[Amy Klobuchar]] and former chief counsel to Senator [[Joe Manchin]]. The chief of staff, [[Blair Mallin]], was director of operations to [[Samantha Power]] at [[USAID]] and to Klobuchar. Other staff came from the [[Bureau of Industry and Security]] (policy director [[Rachel Hovde]]), the [[Department of the Treasury]] and [[Tanium]] (Pastrich), the offices of Senator [[John Barrasso]] and the [[Department of Transportation]] ([[Mitch Kominsky]]), the Navy staff at [[The Pentagon]] ([[Jared Wilhelm]]), the [[National Security Innovation Network]] of the [[Department of Defense]] ([[Michael Dila]] and [[Morgan C. Plummer]]), the [[Air Force Research Laboratory]] ([[George Dougherty]]) and the [[House Select Committee on the CCP]]. [[McKenna Fitzgerald]], in external relations, is a former research manager at the [[ML Alignment & Theory Scholars|MATS]] AI-safety training program and former deputy director of the [[Global Catastrophic Risk Institute]].[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Its board of advisors, which "have no official authority in our decision-making process," comprises [[Scott Aaronson]] of the [[University of Texas at Austin]]; [[Erik Brynjolfsson]] of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab; [[Gillian Hadfield]] of [[Johns Hopkins University]], a "former Senior Policy Advisor, Open AI"; [[Samuel Hammond]] of the [[Foundation for American Innovation]]; [[Stuart Russell]], director of the [[Center for Human-Compatible AI]] at the [[University of California, Berkeley]]; and the former congressman [[Tim Ryan]].[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Lobbying
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
ARI registered as its own lobbyist in the first quarter of 2024, reporting 50,000 dollars in lobbying expenses, with Calidas as its lobbyist; in the second quarter it reported 220,000 dollars, listing Calidas and Thallam and naming the House, the Senate and the [[National Institute of Standards and Technology]] among the bodies lobbied. Its quarterly expenses were 230,000 and 200,000 dollars in the second half of 2024; 260,000, 330,000, 450,000 and 470,000 dollars in the four quarters of 2025, or 1.51 million dollars for the year; and 480,000 and 620,000 dollars in the first two quarters of 2026. Under both issue codes it used, computer industry and science and technology, the filings give the same description: "Issues related to the responsible governance of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies."[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Four outside firms have been registered to lobby for ARI. [[Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid]] has filed for it continuously since the first quarter of 2024, its quarterly fee rising from 20,000 to 90,000 dollars; the lobbyists on its first registration were [[Lisa Kountoupes]], a former deputy assistant to the president and House liaison and former assistant director for legislative affairs at the [[Office of Management and Budget]]; [[Clayton Patrick Hayes]], a former chief of staff to Manchin and deputy legislative director to Senator [[Evan Bayh]]; [[Adam Hechavarria]], a former legislative director to Senators [[Todd Young]] and [[Kelly Ayotte]]; [[MJ Kenny]], a former deputy floor director for the Senate Democratic whip and aide to Senator [[Richard Durbin]]; and [[David Paul Peluso]], a former chief of staff to Representatives [[Cathy McMorris Rodgers]] and [[Gus Bilirakis]]. [[Navigators Global]], formerly DC Navigators, filed from the first to the third quarter of 2024 at 40,000 to 50,000 dollars a quarter, with the lobbyists [[Andy Keiser]], [[Ryan Berger]] and [[Philmore B. Anderson]]. [[Mindset Advocacy]] registered in the second quarter of 2025 at 80,000 dollars a quarter, and [[Neil Hill Global Strategies]] in the fourth quarter of 2025 at 20,000 to 40,000 dollars.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid and Navigators Global were also registered as outside lobbying firms for [[Anthropic]], the first reporting 10,000 dollars from Anthropic in the fourth quarter of 2025 and the second 30,000 to 60,000 dollars a quarter in 2026.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### ARI PAC
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Americans for Responsible Innovation Ltd. Political Action Committee (ARI PAC), [[Federal Election Commission]] identifier C00893883, registered on December 11, 2024, as a lobbyist-registrant political action committee of a membership organization, at ARI's address and with Gastfriend as treasurer. Through its report of July 15, 2026, it had received 390,475 dollars in contributions, 99.2 percent of them from individuals, had given 329,000 dollars to federal candidates and held 49,150.51 dollars in cash.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Its itemized receipts consist almost entirely of 5,000-dollar contributions, the annual limit on an individual's contribution to a political action committee, many of them repeated in 2025 and 2026. The employers entered on the filings include Anthropic, for [[Todor Markov]], [[Peter Lofgren]], [[Evan Hubinger]], [[Daniel Ziegler]], [[Jan Leike]], [[Scott Johnston]], [[Steven Bills]], [[Andrew Charles Callahan]], [[Samuel R. Bowman]], [[Jascha Sohl-Dickstein]] and [[Adam Jermyn|Adam S. Jermyn]]; Open Philanthropy, for its program director [[Claire Zabel]] and for [[Howard Lempel]], each giving twice; [[METR]], for [[Benjamin West]], [[Sydney Von Arx]], [[Lawrence Chan]] and [[Tao Lin]]; [[Redwood Research]], for its chief executive [[Michael Shlegeris]], [[Ryan Greenblatt]], [[Vivek Hebbar]], [[Aryan Bhatt]] and [[Alex Mallen]]; the [[Alignment Research Center]], for [[Eric Neyman]]; [[OpenAI]], for [[Julie Steele]] and [[Dillon Bowen]]; and [[Google DeepMind]], for [[Kate Woolverton]]. Gastfriend himself gave 5,000 dollars on February 21, 2025, and again on May 9, 2026, listing his employer as ARI.[^8] Several of the same donors (Lofgren, Leike, Jermyn, Bowen and Woolverton) gave again in 2026 to the super PAC Public First, affiliated with [[Public First Action]], Lofgren giving 999,900 dollars and Leike 400,000 dollars.[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Among the PAC's other donors was [[Derek Kaufman]] of [[Greenwich, Connecticut]], who gave 5,000 dollars listing "Inclusive Abundance" as his employer.[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Americans for Responsible Innovation, "About Us," accessed September 23, 2026. https://ari.us/about-us/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Carson, Brad, and Eric Gastfriend. "Announcing Americans for Responsible Innovation." Americans for Responsible Innovation, March 6, 2024. https://ari.us/announcing-americans-for-responsible-innovation/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Americans For Responsible Innovation Ltd," EIN 93-3248564, Form 990 data for 2023 (filed April 10, 2025) and 2024 (filed November 17, 2025). https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/933248564
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Americans for Responsible Innovation, "Our Team," accessed September 23, 2026. https://ari.us/team/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: U.S. Senate, Lobbying Disclosure Act database, 38 registrations and quarterly reports for client "Americans for Responsible Innovation," first quarter 2024 to second quarter 2026, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://lda.senate.gov/api/v1/filings/?client_name=Americans+for+Responsible+Innovation
|
||||||
|
[^6]: U.S. Senate, Lobbying Disclosure Act database, filings with client "Anthropic," 2023 to second quarter 2026, retrieved September 2026. https://lda.senate.gov/api/v1/filings/?client_name=Anthropic
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Federal Election Commission, committee C00893883, "Americans for Responsible Innovation Ltd. Political Action Committee," registration and financial totals through the report of July 15, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00893883/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Federal Election Commission, itemized receipts (Schedule A) for committee C00893883, 94 records, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?committee_id=C00893883
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Federal Election Commission, itemized receipts (Schedule A) for committee C00930503, "Public First," retrieved September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?committee_id=C00930503
|
||||||
65
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Attock Oil.md
Normal file
65
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Attock Oil.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- Oil
|
||||||
|
- Pakistan
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- Nominees
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- The Attock Oil Company Limited
|
||||||
|
- Attock Oil Company
|
||||||
|
- AOC
|
||||||
|
summary: "Oil company incorporated in England in 1913 and operating in Pakistan, called BCCI's oil company by the Senate, in which Kamal Adham, Faisal al-Fulaij and Ghaith Pharaon held interests as BCCI nominees."
|
||||||
|
start: 1913-12-01
|
||||||
|
location: "England and Pakistan"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "described by the Senate report as BCCI's oil company; interests held through nominees"
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Kamal Adham]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "nominee shareholder for BCCI; loans secured by the shares booked at ICIC"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Faisal Saud al-Fulaij]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "nominee for BCCI in stock transactions"
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Ghaith R. Pharaon]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "nominee interest for BCCI, eliminated in the National Bank of Georgia sale"
|
||||||
|
fn: 4
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Attock Oil Company Limited is an oil company incorporated in [[England]] on December 1, 1913, which operates in [[Pakistan]] as the branch of a foreign company. The [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate report]] called it "BCCI's oil company" and listed it among the affiliates of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) whose shares were held by nominees with money advanced by BCCI's [[Cayman Islands]] affiliate, [[ICIC]].[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Company
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The company made its first discovery at Khaur, in the [[Attock District]], in 1915, and opened the [[Potwar Basin]], which by the company's account remained the only oil-producing basin in Pakistan until the early 1970s. In 1978 it transferred its exploration and production business to its subsidiary [[Pakistan Oilfields Limited]] and its refining business to [[Attock Refinery Limited]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI Nominees
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
ICIC (Overseas) Limited, incorporated on April 6, 1976, to trade BCCI shares and provide private banking to BCCI shareholders, "also advanced funds to nominees to allow them to purchase interests in the three other BCCI affiliates," according to the Senate report, which named them as Attock Oil, [[Credit and Commerce Insurance]] and the [[Saudi Development Company]].[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
At the [[Federal Reserve Board|Federal Reserve]] hearing of April 23, 1981, on the acquisition of [[Financial General Bankshares]] by [[Credit and Commerce American Holdings]] (CCAH), Sheikh [[Kamal Adham]] testified that he had not met his fellow investor [[Faisal Saud al-Fulaij]] for ten years and that their joint involvement was coincidence. The Senate report found the statement false: "In fact, both had been involved with other transactions involving BCCI, including acting as nominees for BCCI in connection with recent stock transactions involving BCCI's oil company, Attock Oil."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On August 2, 1987, the BCCI officer H. M. Kazmi wrote to Adham confirming that he was not liable for any loans recorded in his name on the books of ICIC, "including Adham's loans secured by his shares of CCAH for the First American Bank and Attock Oil." The letter appears in the report among examples, drawn from [[Price Waterhouse]]'s June 17, 1991 report on the ICIC group, of ICIC handling BCCI's relations with its nominees.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Ghaith R. Pharaon]] also held a nominee interest. From 1985 BCCI made payments to Pharaon structured as loans against the expected proceeds of the sale of his half of the [[National Bank of Georgia]]; in December 1986, in the words of the Federal Reserve's charges, "BCCI caused CCAH to agree to purchase the shares of NBG [Financial] from Pharaon for $220 million," and the funds that passed from BCCI through [[First American Bank|First American]] to the Georgia bank paid off the loans. "Ironically, since the 'loans' were used by BCCI to wipe out Pharaon's shares of BCCI itself and Pharaon's interests as a nominee in other BCCI-related institutions such as Attock Oil, the entire transaction was largely a wash," the Senate report concluded, eliminating Pharaon's nominee interests in the National Bank of Georgia, BCCI and BCCI-related entities.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Attock Oil is a separate company from [[Attock Cement]], a Pakistani cement company in which the Pakistani BCCI Foundation made a 3 million dollar "investment," and which the Senate report described as "ostensibly owned by BCCI front-man Ghaith Pharaon, but in fact a front for BCCI itself."[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "About AOC," The Attock Oil Company Limited. https://the-aoc.com/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 4, "BCCI's Criminality" (citing Price Waterhouse, Report to the Director on ICIC Group, June 17, 1991). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 6, "BCCI in the United States: Initial Entry and FGB and NBG Takeovers," section "The April 23, 1981 Federal Reserve Hearing." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/06early.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 7, "BCCI in the United States, Part Two: Acquisition, Consolidation, and Consequences." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/07later.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 5, "BCCI's Relationship with Foreign Governments, Central Banks, and International Organizations," section "Pakistan" (citing S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 4, pp. 392-393). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/05foreign.htm
|
||||||
74
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Bank of America.md
Normal file
74
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Bank of America.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- Bank
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- BankAmerica
|
||||||
|
- BofA
|
||||||
|
summary: "San Francisco bank that supplied BCCI's founding capital and Western credibility in 1972, held up to 30 percent of it, and sold out to BCCI's affiliate ICIC from 1978 while keeping a correspondent relationship."
|
||||||
|
location: "San Francisco, California, USA"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Yves Lamarche]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "former manager of Bank of America's Middle East operations; BCCI director"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Alvin C. Rice]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "executive vice president"
|
||||||
|
start: 1976
|
||||||
|
fn: 4
|
||||||
|
- type: investigated
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Office of the Comptroller of the Currency]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "London examination of Bank of America's overseas holdings, including BCCI"
|
||||||
|
start: 1977
|
||||||
|
end: 1978
|
||||||
|
fn: 4
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bank of America, then based in [[San Francisco]], became in 1972 the first Western partner of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI), supplying its initial capital. It announced the sale of its stake in January 1978, and the Senate report dates its withdrawal to 1980.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 1972 Investment
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Agha Hasan Abedi]] needed, in the words of the Senate report of Senators [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]], five things to create BCCI, among them "a source of capital, $2.5 million, which Abedi ultimately obtained from Bank of America," and "credibility in the international community, through a relationship with an established Western financial institution which would provide prestige to BCCI, but not interfere with its unique approach to banking. This too was provided by Bank of America during BCCI's formative years."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Abedi's first choice of partner, [[American Express]], insisted on a major say in management. Bank of America, then "one of the most aggressive of U.S. international banks, with a presence in Iran already and in Pakistan," gave BCCI recognition in the West and access to its correspondent network, and gained "a potentially lucrative entry to Arab oil wealth, at a tiny capitalization cost of just $2.5 million." After what Abedi called "an historic lunch" in San Francisco, the bank agreed to be a passive partner. Abedi told *[[Euromoney]]* in 1978: "Bank of America agreed to become a shareholder, but we made it a condition that we would establish the management style."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Senior Bank of America officials sat on BCCI's board, recruited bankers for it and approved its major loans. The directors drawn from the bank included [[Yves Lamarche]], who had managed its [[Middle East]] operations, [[J. D. Van Oenen]], a European official, and [[P. C. Twitchen]], a former vice president.[^2] [[Roy P. M. Carlson|Roy Carlson]] spent twenty years at Bank of America, was stationed in [[Tehran]] in the 1960s and [[Beirut]] in the early 1970s, became head of its operations in the Middle East and East Africa, and advised Abedi on the formation of BCCI in 1972; he later became president of the [[National Bank of Georgia]] while it was secretly owned by BCCI.[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
BCCI's own group profile of the mid-1980s stated that its "initial paid up capital of $2.5 million wa[s] subscribed by Bank of America (25% later increased to 30%) and the balance by investors from the Middle East." Apart from Bank of America's 2.5 million dollars and 500,000 dollars acknowledged by [[Abu Dhabi]], the subcommittee found no evidence of other substantial cash in the bank's early years. A register of BCCI's shares in Bank of America's files as of September 30, 1977, showed [[ICIC]] as majority owner with 50.1 percent, Bank of America with 30 percent, [[Majid Al Futtaim|Majid Al-Futaim]] of [[Dubai]] with 4 percent and the family of Abu Dhabi with 3.4 percent; the same records showed several shareholders on the Luxembourg register acting as nominees for BCCI.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Disquiet, 1976 to 1978
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
By 1976 Bank of America had stopped contributing to BCCI's capital increases, and its share fell from 30 to 24 percent. On May 10, 1976, Executive Vice President [[Alvin C. Rice]] wrote to Senior Vice President [[Scudden Hersman Jr.]] that "We are just not operating on the basis of mutual trust and cooperation that make the whole effort and exercise worthwhile. Substantial profits usually have a way of curing problems but this case is an exception. If we can't make some major breakthroughs in the near future, we will have to consider alternatives such as divestiture." A memorandum of May 26, 1976, after Rice met Abedi, recorded: "According to Abedi, frank criticism 'American style' is something Pakistanis are not accustomed to. Criticism is taken as a personal affront and for this reason, sometimes BCCI officers have not wanted to disclose fully operating procedures that they knew would not meet BofA's quality standards." Both memoranda became exhibits in the 1978 litigation over the takeover of [[Financial General Bankshares]]. Rice later told journalists that BCCI believed even obstacles with regulators could be fixed through "baksheesh."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A BCCI case study written in 1982 by the officer [[K. K. Elley]] gave the bank's version: "The Bank of America found on their hands an affiliate which had already become one of their largest and in which they had no management control."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the fall of 1977 an examiner of the [[Office of the Comptroller of the Currency]] in London, responsible for Bank of America's overseas holdings, began asking questions, and by February 1978 he had concluded that Bank of America was substantially at risk from BCCI.[^4] The examiner, [[Joseph E. Vaez]], also found that BCCI had used nominees in purchases of other banks.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Divestiture
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
While Bank of America held its stake, BCCI could not legally buy a bank outside [[California]]; the Senate report put the stake at 24 percent at the time of the late 1977 moves on the National Bank of Georgia and Financial General Bankshares, and elsewhere at 28 percent.[^3] The report found that divestiture served both banks: "BCCI needed to sever its relationship with Bank of America to provide itself with additional options in connection with its ongoing attempt to buy Financial General Bankshares. Bank of America needed to reduce what might soon become an actual liability on its books." A press release of January 30, 1978, announced the sale of its shares to ICIC, described as "one of the other major BCCI shareholders," and stated that "the close co-operation that has developed between the two banks will be maintained."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The report found that ICIC "owned" 70 percent of BCCI "in 1980 upon Bank of America's withdrawal."[^2] In 1980 and 1981 the [[Abu Dhabi Investment Authority]] acquired a 10 percent stake in BCCI from ICIC, after ICIC had agreed to buy back the shares of "its departing U.S. partner, Bank of America."[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### After 1978
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
According to the Senate report, over the following decade Bank of America "would in fact maintain correspondent banking relationships with BCCI, continually seek additional business from BCCI, collude in at least one of BCCI's purchases of foreign banks through nominees in South America, and earn a great deal of money from the relationship until BCCI's closure."[^4] In 1988 the manager of BCCI's Paris branch, [[Nazir Chinoy]], described loans of over five million dollars as ordinarily requiring a credit report "based on the Bank of Americas loan reporting procedure adopted years ago."[^7] Bank of America International in New York was the main American bank of a [[Cayman Islands]] investment fund run through BCCI's commodities affiliate [[Capcom]].[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 3, "The Origin and Early Years of BCCI," section "Critical Elements of BCCI's Creation." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 3, sections "Bank of America" and "Ownership of BCCI." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 6, "BCCI in the United States: Initial Entry and FGB and NBG Takeovers"; ch. 11, "BCCI, the CIA and Foreign Intelligence." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/06early.htm ; https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 3 (citing Bank of America memoranda of May 10 and May 26, 1976, Lamarche deposition exhibits 6 and 7, August 1978, FGB litigation; and the OCC report of Joseph Vaez, February 15, 1978). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 12, "The Regulators." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/12reg.htm
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 14, "Abu Dhabi: BCCI's Founding and Majority Stockholders." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/14abudhabi.htm
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 7, "BCCI in the United States: Part Two" (staff interview with Nazir Chinoy). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/07later.htm
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 21, "Capcom: A Case Study of Money Laundering," note 99. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/21capcom.htm
|
||||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- Bank
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- Paris
|
||||||
|
- FirstAmerican
|
||||||
|
- FinancialGeneral
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- BAII
|
||||||
|
- B.A.I.I.
|
||||||
|
- Banque Arabe et Internationale d'Investissement, Paris
|
||||||
|
summary: "Arab-owned Paris consortium bank sharing directors with BCCI, which lent 50 million dollars for the 1982 Financial General takeover and passed BCCI money to Ghaith Pharaon for Independence Bank."
|
||||||
|
location: "Paris, France"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Credit and Commerce American Holdings]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "lead lender, 50 million dollar acquisition loan to FGB Holding Corp."
|
||||||
|
start: 1982-03
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: partner_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "directors in common"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Banque Arabe et Internationale d'Investissement (BAII) was a consortium bank in [[Paris]]. In 1982 it lent the money that completed the purchase of [[Financial General Bankshares]], later [[First American Bank|First American]], by [[Credit and Commerce American Holdings]] (CCAH), the holding company that the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) secretly controlled. The tender offer for the Financial General shares stated that BAII was "not affiliated with the Purchaser or the Investors." The [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate Report]] described it as "a bank which shared directors in common with BCCI," and the minority staff of the [[House Banking Committee]] as "an Arab-owned French investment bank."[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 1982 Loan
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the offer to purchase all outstanding Financial General shares at 33.80 dollars each, the bidder, FGB Holding Corp., estimated that it needed about 185 million dollars, of which about 137.2 million would come from CCAH's shareholders "from their personal resources." BAII agreed "to lend the Purchaser up to $50 million to be used in acquiring Shares and paying related expenses," under a commitment expiring March 2, 1983. The principal was repayable over the fourth to tenth years after drawdown, at the three-month or six-month London Interbank Offered Rate plus 1.5 percent, and BAII "has been and shall be paid $750,000 representing commitment fees of $100,000 and management fees of $650,000." Deposits for each payment were to be made with BAII in advance, and "Messrs. Adham and Fulaij will unconditionally and irrevocably guarantee the payment of such funds and such interest thereon." The purchaser pledged all the shares it acquired, and "BAII intends to syndicate the loan to several banks, with BAII acting as agent bank."[^1] The [[Federal Reserve Board|Federal Reserve]] had made its approval conditional on CCAH raising additional capital from an institution not related to BCCI.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The two guarantors were [[Kamal Adham]] and [[Faisal Saud al-Fulaij]]. In a letter of April 23, 1991 to the French [[Commission Bancaire]], the Federal Reserve's general counsel, [[Virgil Mattingly|J. Virgil Mattingly]], reported that a subpoena for BAII's records of its lending to CCAH and its shareholders had been issued on January 31, 1991, and wrote: "We have reason to believe from our review of certain records of BCCI that this loan was guaranteed by two CCAH shareholders and that BCCI indemnified these individuals against any loss they might sustain by reason of their guarantee."[^4] The House minority staff reported in September 1991, citing the Federal Reserve's notice of charges, that the loan was "secured by a deposit from Adham. Adham concealed from the Federal Reserve the fact that BCCI was indirectly funding his deposit and thereby the BAII loan."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On about May 13, 1982, BCCI or [[ICIC|ICIC Overseas]] paid 2.5 million dollars to Credit and Commerce American Investment (CCAI), one of First American's holding companies, "to permit it to pay interest on a loan from BAII," followed by 2.3 million dollars on about July 13, 1982. The Federal Reserve found that these payments broke the commitment given by [[Clark Clifford]], [[Robert Altman]] and CCAH that no more than 50 million dollars of debt would be incurred for the acquisition.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Independence Bank
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1985 BCCI used BAII again, in the secret purchase of the [[Independence Bank of Encino]] in [[California]] through [[Ghaith R. Pharaon]]. According to the Senate report, BCCI "loaned $8.5 million to Pharaon and transferred the proceeds to Pharaon's account at Banque Arabe et Internationale d'Investissement, Paris (BAII), a bank which shared directors in common with BCCI, and which had also been used to shield BCCI's funding of the First American purchase four years earlier. BCCI instructed BAII to send a telegram to California banking authorities stating that Pharaon had deposits of that amount with BAII that were being held for the purchase of Independence." The rest of the price came from the [[First National Bank of Boston]], against a letter of credit from BAII, "which in turn received a counter-guarantee from BCCI holding BAII harmless against any claim that might arise."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Clifford and Altman
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1985 and 1986 Clifford and Altman sought loans to buy CCAH shares left unsubscribed in a rights offering. In testimony to the Senate subcommittee they stated: "The first institution we approached for financing was Banque Arabe et Internatinale d'Investissement ('BAII') in Paris, the consortium bank that acted as the lead lender in the syndicate that had lent $50 million in connection with the acquisition of FGB in 1982." Federal investigators later reviewed a BAII file entitled "1st American 1985" containing a "Memo re loan to Clifford & Altman 12/29/85," whose notes included "No syndication of the loan" and "No participation by BCCI in loan"; the House minority staff wrote that documents at BAII "appear to indicate that BCCI was acting as an agent for Clifford and Altman in soliciting loans to finance their CCAH stock purchases."[^3][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
According to the Senate report, BAII was prepared to make the loan only if BCCI simultaneously guaranteed it, "making BAII effectively acting as a pass through to cover BCCI's involvement, just as it had done in connection in lending money at the outset of the FGB purchase." Clifford and Altman insisted that the loans be non-recourse, and "BAII refused to provide the lending, even with a backup guarantee from BCCI, on a non-recourse basis." The report concluded: "Thus, even with protection from BCCI, and with a BCCI director on its board, BAII viewed the transaction as sufficiently unusual to pull out." BCCI itself then lent the two men 15 million dollars, on a 100 percent non-recourse basis for 18 months at the London interbank rate.[^5] The report does not name the BCCI director on BAII's board.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs. *Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) Investigation, Part 1.* Hearing, 102nd Cong., 1st sess., September 11, 1991, Serial No. 102-69, "Offer to Purchase for Cash Any and All Outstanding Shares of the Common Stock of Financial General Bankshares, Inc., by FGB Holding Corp." (1982), section 10, "Source and Amount of Funds," pp. 631-632. https://archive.org/details/BCCIHearingsBeforeTheCommitteeOnBankingFinanceAndUrbanAffairs
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 7, "BCCI in the United States: Later Acquisitions." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/07later.htm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, Serial No. 102-69, Minority Staff Report, "BCCI and Its Activities in the United States," September 10, 1991, pp. 899-900, 917, 933. https://archive.org/details/BCCIHearingsBeforeTheCommitteeOnBankingFinanceAndUrbanAffairs
|
||||||
|
[^4]: House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, Serial No. 102-69, letter of J. Virgil Mattingly, Jr., General Counsel, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, to Jean-Louis Fort, Commission Bancaire, April 23, 1991, pp. 836-838. https://archive.org/details/BCCIHearingsBeforeTheCommitteeOnBankingFinanceAndUrbanAffairs
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 13, "Clark Clifford and Robert Altman." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/13clifford.htm
|
||||||
47
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Center for AI Policy.md
Normal file
47
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Center for AI Policy.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
aliases:
|
||||||
|
- "CAIP"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- AISafety
|
||||||
|
- Lobbying
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
summary: "Washington AI-safety advocacy nonprofit that registered its first lobbyist in December 2023, promoted a draft Responsible AI Act, and drew about a third of its donations from Jaan Tallinn's Lightspeed Grants."
|
||||||
|
start: 2023
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Jason Green-Lowe]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "executive director"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Lightspeed Grants]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "about a third of total donations, per Green-Lowe"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Kate Forscey]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 2023-12
|
||||||
|
role: "lobbyist"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Center for AI Policy (CAIP) is a nonprofit that lobbies in [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]] for legislation on catastrophic risks from advanced artificial intelligence. It registered its first lobbyist in December 2023, the same season in which the similarly named [[Center for AI Safety]], through its Action Fund, registered its own, and in that one month it spent 98,000 dollars lobbying Congress and the [[State Department]] on "issues relating to the support of mitigating catastrophic risks from advanced, general-purpose artificial intelligence."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Lobbying
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Its lobbying was led by [[Kate Forscey]], a former technology policy adviser to Representative [[Anna Eshoo]] of California. In February 2024 the organization was promoting a draft "Responsible AI Act," which, as *[[Politico]]* described it, "would hold AI developers liable for 'severe harms,' require permits to develop 'high-risk' systems and empower regulators to 'pause AI projects if they identify a clear emergency.'"[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Funding
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The executive director, [[Jason Green-Lowe]], told *Politico* that about a third of the center's donations came from [[Lightspeed Grants]], which is backed by [[Jaan Tallinn]], the [[Skype]] co-founder who was an early investor in [[DeepMind]] and led a 2021 investment in [[Anthropic]] that included money from [[Dustin Moskovitz]] and the former Google chief executive [[Eric Schmidt]]. Green-Lowe called the center "fully independent of big AI labs" and said its policies "won't give those labs unfair advantages because the cost of compliance is tiny compared to the price of hardware and talent."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The same article quoted [[Suresh Venkatasubramanian]] of Brown University, who said of the new lobbying by the two centers: "We should discuss what the science is telling us about AI... But if they want to go lobbying, then that is a different path. It's about who has more money, and [who] wants to fund their agenda through infusions of cash from a rich doomsday cult."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Bordelon, Brendan. "AI doomsayers funded by billionaires ramp up lobbying." *Politico,* February 23, 2024. http://web.archive.org/web/20240223123509id_/https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/23/ai-safety-washington-lobbying-00142783
|
||||||
|
|
@ -19,6 +19,23 @@ relations:
|
||||||
reverse: true
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
role: "executive and research director"
|
role: "executive and research director"
|
||||||
fn: 1
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[FTX]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
end: 2022
|
||||||
|
role: "6.5 million dollars before its collapse"
|
||||||
|
fn: 10
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Nathan Calvin]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "senior policy counsel, CAIS Action Fund"
|
||||||
|
fn: 10
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Varun Krovi]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 2023
|
||||||
|
role: "lobbyist for the CAIS Action Fund"
|
||||||
|
fn: 10
|
||||||
created: 2026-09-22
|
created: 2026-09-22
|
||||||
updated: 2026-09-23
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
@ -37,6 +54,12 @@ The Center for AI Safety Action Fund is a 501(c)(4), so contributions to it are
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Hendrycks, the center's executive and research director, with [[Oliver Zhang]] as managing director,[^1] advises [[Elon Musk]]'s [[xAI]], which he joined in 2023 for a salary of one dollar a year, and [[Scale AI]], which he began advising in 2024 for twelve dollars a year. He told an audience at [[TechCrunch]] Disrupt in October 2025 that he had helped craft SB 1047 and that Musk was the only AI company head to support it: "No other A.I. companies officially supported that bill, and that's because he takes this much more seriously."[^7] In July 2024, as SB 1047 moved through the legislature, the AI security company [[Gray Swan AI]] announced that Hendrycks, one of its advisers, had "decided to divest his entire financial stake in Gray Swan" "to avoid even the appearance of a financial conflict," and would remain an unpaid adviser without equity.[^8] In March 2025 Hendrycks published "Superintelligence Strategy" with the former Google chief executive [[Eric Schmidt]] and Scale AI's founder [[Alexandr Wang]], proposing "Mutual Assured AI Malfunction (MAIM): a deterrence regime resembling nuclear mutual assured destruction (MAD) where any state's aggressive bid for unilateral AI dominance is met with preventive sabotage by rivals," through means "ranging from covert cyberattacks to potential kinetic strikes on datacenters."[^9]
|
Hendrycks, the center's executive and research director, with [[Oliver Zhang]] as managing director,[^1] advises [[Elon Musk]]'s [[xAI]], which he joined in 2023 for a salary of one dollar a year, and [[Scale AI]], which he began advising in 2024 for twelve dollars a year. He told an audience at [[TechCrunch]] Disrupt in October 2025 that he had helped craft SB 1047 and that Musk was the only AI company head to support it: "No other A.I. companies officially supported that bill, and that's because he takes this much more seriously."[^7] In July 2024, as SB 1047 moved through the legislature, the AI security company [[Gray Swan AI]] announced that Hendrycks, one of its advisers, had "decided to divest his entire financial stake in Gray Swan" "to avoid even the appearance of a financial conflict," and would remain an unpaid adviser without equity.[^8] In March 2025 Hendrycks published "Superintelligence Strategy" with the former Google chief executive [[Eric Schmidt]] and Scale AI's founder [[Alexandr Wang]], proposing "Mutual Assured AI Malfunction (MAIM): a deterrence regime resembling nuclear mutual assured destruction (MAD) where any state's aggressive bid for unilateral AI dominance is met with preventive sabotage by rivals," through means "ranging from covert cyberattacks to potential kinetic strikes on datacenters."[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Lobbying and FTX
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The center and the unaffiliated [[Center for AI Policy]] registered their first federal lobbyists in late 2023. The CAIS Action Fund spent 80,000 dollars on congressional and agency lobbying from October to December 2023 and engaged [[Varun Krovi]], a former chief of staff to Representative [[Brenda Lawrence]], to lead it. Its senior policy counsel, [[Nathan Calvin]], said that Open Philanthropy "has not made any contributions" to the Action Fund, whose lobbying he said was funded by a "mix of donors." *Politico* reported in February 2024 that Open Philanthropy had given the center "more than $10.5 million" since November 2022, a figure below the sum of the four grants listed on Open Philanthropy's grant pages, and that the center had received 6.5 million dollars from the cryptocurrency exchange [[FTX]] before its collapse in late 2022. The bankrupt FTX later "demanded information from CAIS regarding that donation," and Calvin declined to say whether the center would return the money. The center had also partnered with the [[United Kingdom]] on AI risks and was among the first members of the Commerce Department's AI Safety Institute Consortium, announced in February 2024.[^2][^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The *Politico* article quoted [[Suresh Venkatasubramanian]], a Brown University professor and co-author of a 2022 White House document on AI's near-term risks: "It's about who has more money, and [who] wants to fund their agenda through infusions of cash from a rich doomsday cult." [[Divyansh Kaushik]] of the [[Federation of American Scientists]] said such organizations were "trying to build more mature efforts to get in front of more members, make arguments that at least sound reasonable."[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[^1]: Center for AI Safety, "Statement on AI Risk," May 30, 2023, https://www.safe.ai/work/statement-on-ai-risk ; "About Us," https://www.safe.ai/about
|
[^1]: Center for AI Safety, "Statement on AI Risk," May 30, 2023, https://www.safe.ai/work/statement-on-ai-risk ; "About Us," https://www.safe.ai/about
|
||||||
|
|
@ -48,3 +71,4 @@ Hendrycks, the center's executive and research director, with [[Oliver Zhang]] a
|
||||||
[^7]: "Meet the Researcher Elon Musk Pays $1 a Year to Safeguard A.I." *Observer,* October 28, 2025. https://observer.com/2025/10/dan-hendrycks-ai-safety-advisory-xai/
|
[^7]: "Meet the Researcher Elon Musk Pays $1 a Year to Safeguard A.I." *Observer,* October 28, 2025. https://observer.com/2025/10/dan-hendrycks-ai-safety-advisory-xai/
|
||||||
[^8]: Gray Swan AI, "Statement on SB-1047 and Founders," July 25, 2024. https://www.grayswan.ai/news/sb1047
|
[^8]: Gray Swan AI, "Statement on SB-1047 and Founders," July 25, 2024. https://www.grayswan.ai/news/sb1047
|
||||||
[^9]: Hendrycks, Dan, Eric Schmidt, and Alexandr Wang. "Superintelligence Strategy: Expert Version." arXiv:2503.05628, March 7, 2025. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.05628
|
[^9]: Hendrycks, Dan, Eric Schmidt, and Alexandr Wang. "Superintelligence Strategy: Expert Version." arXiv:2503.05628, March 7, 2025. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.05628
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Bordelon, Brendan. "AI doomsayers funded by billionaires ramp up lobbying." *Politico,* February 23, 2024. http://web.archive.org/web/20240223123509id_/https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/23/ai-safety-washington-lobbying-00142783
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
|
|
@ -44,6 +44,11 @@ relations:
|
||||||
with: "[[Open Philanthropy]]"
|
with: "[[Open Philanthropy]]"
|
||||||
role: "nearly all of its grant money"
|
role: "nearly all of its grant money"
|
||||||
fn: 6
|
fn: 6
|
||||||
|
- type: contractor_to
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Silicon Valley Community Foundation]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "administrative support and grant processing"
|
||||||
|
fn: 14
|
||||||
created: 2026-06-20
|
created: 2026-06-20
|
||||||
updated: 2026-09-23
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
@ -68,6 +73,18 @@ Open Philanthropy, renamed Coefficient Giving in November 2025, draws nearly all
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The foundation's assets were 27 million dollars in the fiscal year ending June 2013, 1.02 billion in 2017, 3.34 billion in 2020, 5.86 billion in 2023 and 10.11 billion in 2025. Contributions received were 1.02 billion dollars in fiscal 2020, 1.91 billion in 2023, 801 million in 2024 and 1.40 billion in 2025, when it also reported 847 million dollars from sales of assets and paid 338 million dollars in charitable disbursements.[^2] In 2026 it held 1,720,916 Class A shares of Asana, the company Moskovitz controls; Asana's proxy statement said that Moskovitz and "his spouse serve as directors on the board of Good Ventures Foundation and may be deemed to have shared voting and dispositive power" over them. The same proxy disclosed that Asana bought 1.1 million dollars of AI services from [[Anthropic]], in which Moskovitz "has a minority ownership interest."[^9] In April 2026 the *[[Washington Examiner]]* reported that in 2025 Moskovitz had transferred his Anthropic stake, "which had reportedly grown to roughly $500 million, to his charity to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interests," without naming the entity.[^10]
|
The foundation's assets were 27 million dollars in the fiscal year ending June 2013, 1.02 billion in 2017, 3.34 billion in 2020, 5.86 billion in 2023 and 10.11 billion in 2025. Contributions received were 1.02 billion dollars in fiscal 2020, 1.91 billion in 2023, 801 million in 2024 and 1.40 billion in 2025, when it also reported 847 million dollars from sales of assets and paid 338 million dollars in charitable disbursements.[^2] In 2026 it held 1,720,916 Class A shares of Asana, the company Moskovitz controls; Asana's proxy statement said that Moskovitz and "his spouse serve as directors on the board of Good Ventures Foundation and may be deemed to have shared voting and dispositive power" over them. The same proxy disclosed that Asana bought 1.1 million dollars of AI services from [[Anthropic]], in which Moskovitz "has a minority ownership interest."[^9] In April 2026 the *[[Washington Examiner]]* reported that in 2025 Moskovitz had transferred his Anthropic stake, "which had reportedly grown to roughly $500 million, to his charity to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interests," without naming the entity.[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Action Fund
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Open Philanthropy Action Fund, renamed Coefficient Giving Action Fund, EIN 81-2644663, is a 501(c)(4) that files in care of Apercen Partners at 314 Lytton Avenue, the foundation's own address. Tuna, Moskovitz and Makan have sat on its board on every return since 2017, with Van Loben Sels as treasurer, joined by Open Philanthropy's chief executives, Holden Karnofsky and Alexander Berger, and in 2017 and 2018 by Hassenfeld. It reported about 270.4 million dollars in contributions from 2016 to 2023, and liabilities greater than its assets at the end of each year from 2021 to 2023.[^11] On October 29, 2019, it gave 750,000 dollars to the non-contribution account of [[Real Justice PAC]], listing its address as 314 Lytton Avenue, Suite 200.[^12] Its lobbyists reported about 1.53 million dollars in income from it between 2021 and mid-2026.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Supporting Organization
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A second tax-exempt entity named simply Good Ventures, EIN 45-2757586, files in care of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation at the community foundation's own headquarters, 2440 West El Camino Real, Suite 300, [[Mountain View, California|Mountain View]]. Its [[Internal Revenue Service]] record classifies it as a 509(a)(3) supporting organization, and its tax exemption was ruled on September 1, 2012, six months before the Good Ventures Foundation's own exemption in March 2013. It received 79.3 million dollars in contributions in fiscal 2012, 80.1 million in 2013, 70.5 million in 2014, 174.6 million in 2015, 38.3 million in 2016 and 6.1 million in 2017. In fiscal 2017 its total expenses were 188.9 million dollars against revenue of 26.7 million, and its net assets fell from 262.0 million dollars at the end of fiscal 2016 to 99.4 million a year later. A return for the fiscal year ending October 2018 is listed without extracted data, and no later return appears in the index.[^13]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A document prepared for a GiveWell board meeting of June 17, 2015, stated: "The Silicon Valley Community Foundation provides some administrative support to Good Ventures including some support on grants made via OP. This is not included in Good Ventures' support of OP and GiveWell." It recorded that Tuna, as president of Good Ventures, sat on Open Philanthropy's leadership team with Elie Hassenfeld, Alexander Berger and "Howie," and decided whether to approve grants, and that Good Ventures had filed for the Open Philanthropy Project trademark and owned the openphilanthropy.org address.[^14] Open Philanthropy's grantmaking process page states that "The Open Philanthropy Project, LLC (the organization that employs most Open Philanthropy staff) generally does not pay grants directly, but instead submits formal recommendations to one of our external funding partners, such as the Silicon Valley Community Foundation or the Good Ventures Foundation, which then conducts legal due diligence and a formal approval process to determine whether or not to fund the grant."[^15]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Good Ventures LLC, which Gunther described as a for-profit impact investment firm, does not appear as a filer in the [[Securities and Exchange Commission]]'s company index, and no filing in the commission's full-text index names it together with Moskovitz.[^16] *Forbes* reported in 2025 that most of Good Ventures' impact investments were in drug development and that its largest holdings included [[Impossible Foods]], its first impact investment, and the semiconductor and technology companies [[TSMC]], [[ASML]], [[Nvidia]] and [[Microsoft]].[^17]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[^1]: Gunther, Marc. "Giving in the Light of Reason." *Stanford Social Innovation Review,* Summer 2018. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/giving_in_the_light_of_reason
|
[^1]: Gunther, Marc. "Giving in the Light of Reason." *Stanford Social Innovation Review,* Summer 2018. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/giving_in_the_light_of_reason
|
||||||
|
|
@ -80,3 +97,10 @@ The foundation's assets were 27 million dollars in the fiscal year ending June 2
|
||||||
[^8]: Smith, Ben. "Coefficient Giving's CEO on Silicon Valley's $40 billion philanthropy boom." *Semafor,* September 3, 2026. https://www.semafor.com/article/09/03/2026/coefficient-givings-ceo-on-silicon-valley-40-billion-philanthropy-boom
|
[^8]: Smith, Ben. "Coefficient Giving's CEO on Silicon Valley's $40 billion philanthropy boom." *Semafor,* September 3, 2026. https://www.semafor.com/article/09/03/2026/coefficient-givings-ceo-on-silicon-valley-40-billion-philanthropy-boom
|
||||||
[^9]: Asana, Inc. Schedule 14A definitive proxy statement, filed April 20, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1477720/000162828026025998/asan-20260420.htm
|
[^9]: Asana, Inc. Schedule 14A definitive proxy statement, filed April 20, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1477720/000162828026025998/asan-20260420.htm
|
||||||
[^10]: Schmad, Robert. "Documents show how a tech-connected nonprofit shaped Biden-era AI policy." *Washington Examiner,* April 17, 2026. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/investigations/4532389/
|
[^10]: Schmad, Robert. "Documents show how a tech-connected nonprofit shaped Biden-era AI policy." *Washington Examiner,* April 17, 2026. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/investigations/4532389/
|
||||||
|
[^11]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Coefficient Giving Action Fund" (formerly Open Philanthropy Action Fund), EIN 81-2644663, organization record, Form 990 data and Part VII officer listings for fiscal years 2016 to 2024, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/812644663
|
||||||
|
[^12]: Federal Election Commission, Schedule A receipt from "Open Philanthropy Action Fund," 750,000 dollars, October 29, 2019, reported by Real Justice PAC (C00632554) on its 2019 year-end Form 3X, image 202007029244274196, retrieved September 23, 2026. http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?202007029244274196
|
||||||
|
[^13]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Good Ventures," EIN 45-2757586, organization record and Form 990 data for fiscal years 2011 to 2017. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/452757586
|
||||||
|
[^14]: GiveWell, "Attachment C: The Open Philanthropy Project: Good Ventures' and GiveWell's roles and responsibilities," board meeting of June 17, 2015. https://files.givewell.org/files/ClearFund/Meeting_2015_06_17/Attachment_C_Open_Phil_roles_and_responsibilities.pdf
|
||||||
|
[^15]: Open Philanthropy, "Grantmaking Process," archived November 19, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20251119074907id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grantmaking-process/
|
||||||
|
[^16]: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR company search for "Good Ventures" and full-text search for "Good Ventures LLC" with "Moskovitz," searched September 23, 2026. https://efts.sec.gov/LATEST/search-index?q=%22Good%20Ventures%20LLC%22%20Moskovitz
|
||||||
|
[^17]: Liu, Phoebe. "Inside A Billionaire Couple's Plan To Give Away A $20 Billion Facebook Fortune." *Forbes,* November 7, 2025, updated version, archived. http://web.archive.org/web/20260730221730id_/https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2025/11/07/cari-tuna-billionaire-open-philanthropy-facebook/
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
89
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Harken Energy.md
Normal file
89
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Harken Energy.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,89 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- Oil
|
||||||
|
- Texas
|
||||||
|
- Bahrain
|
||||||
|
- GeorgeWBush
|
||||||
|
- HarkenEnergy
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Harken Energy Corporation
|
||||||
|
- Harken Energy Corp.
|
||||||
|
- Harken
|
||||||
|
summary: "Texas oil company, with George W. Bush as director and consultant, that won an exclusive Bahrain offshore concession in January 1990 while a Saudi investor held about 11 percent of its stock."
|
||||||
|
start: 1973
|
||||||
|
location: "Grand Prairie, Texas, USA"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: director_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[George W. Bush]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
end: 1993-10-26
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[George W. Bush]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "consultant"
|
||||||
|
start: 1987-04
|
||||||
|
end: 1993-10-26
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: director_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Talat Othman]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 1987
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Aeneas Venture Corporation]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "15.27 percent (April 1994), Harvard endowment affiliate"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: partner_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bahrain National Oil Company]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "production sharing agreement for most of Bahrain's offshore territory"
|
||||||
|
start: 1990-01
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: partner_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bass Enterprises Production Company]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "Bahrain joint venture"
|
||||||
|
start: 1990-07
|
||||||
|
end: 1993-04-08
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Alan Quasha]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "chairman"
|
||||||
|
start: 1983
|
||||||
|
end: 1991-02
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Harken Energy Corporation, an oil and gas company, was incorporated in [[California]] in 1973 and reincorporated in [[Delaware]] in 1979; in 1994 its offices were at Grand Prairie, [[Texas]]. [[George W. Bush]] joined it in 1986 and served as a director and consultant until October 26, 1993. In January 1990 its subsidiary, Harken Bahrain Oil Company, obtained exclusive exploration rights over most of [[Bahrain]]'s offshore territory.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Early History
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
According to *[[Time (magazine)|Time]]*, Harken "began life in the late 1970s as an unprofitable collection of Texas oil wells for investors seeking tax write-offs." In 1984 [[Alan Quasha]], a lawyer, bought control and became chairman, and traded Harken stock for distressed oil companies; the magazine counted among its investors the [[Harvard University|Harvard]] endowment, [[George Soros]] and the [[Rupert family]] of [[South Africa]]. Harken's proxy statement of 1994 gave Quasha's tenure as chairman as 1983 to February 1991, when he was succeeded by the chief executive, Mikel D. Faulkner. Quasha's law firm, Quasha Wessely & Schneider of New York, had collected more than one million dollars in fees from Harken since 1988, according to *Time*.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
"George Bush Jr.'s affiliation with Harken began in the oil-bust year of 1986," *Time* reported, "when he and a group of partners received more than $2 million worth of Harken stock in exchange for his floundering 180-well Texas oil operation, Spectrum 7 Energy Corp., which had lost $400,000 in the six months before the sale." A director told the magazine: "His properties were pretty well encumbered. The banks hadn't foreclosed, but that was in the wind." The *[[Houston Chronicle]]* traced the company's descent from Bush's first oil venture: "George W. Bush's company, Bush Exploration Co., general partner in the limited partnerships, went through several mergers, eventually evolving into Harken Energy Corp., a suburban Dallas-based company." The Houston businessman [[James R. Bath]] had held a 5 percent interest in those partnerships, Arbusto '79 Ltd. and Arbusto '80 Ltd., investing 50,000 dollars.[^3][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bush served as a consultant to Harken under an agreement dating from April 1987. *Time* put his fees at 50,000 to 120,000 dollars a year.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Saudi Shareholder
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
"The year after Bush came aboard," *Time* reported, "a reclusive Saudi named Abdullah Taha Bakhsh bought an 11% stake in Harken through a Netherlands Antilles shell company." Harken's proxy statement of April 1994 listed [[Abdullah Taha Bakhsh]] of [[Jeddah]] as the owner of 11.66 percent of its common stock, held of record by Traco International N.V., which he wholly owned, and Atherstone Corporation N.V., which he indirectly owned. The largest holder, at 15.27 percent, was [[Aeneas Venture Corporation]], an affiliate of the Harvard endowment; Michael R. Eisenson, president of its affiliate Aeneas Group and a vice president and director of Aeneas Venture, sat on Harken's board. [[Talat Othman]], a director since 1987, was president of Dearborn Financial, Inc., which the proxy described as "an affiliate of Traco and Atherstone, significant record stockholders of Harken." During 1993 Harken's audit committee consisted of Othman and Bush until Bush's resignation.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Bahrain
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bahrain's rulers awarded the concession, *Time* wrote, after officials "suddenly and mysteriously broke off promising talks with [[Amoco]]" in 1989. Michael Ameen, a former head of [[Mobil]]'s [[Middle East]] operations, told the magazine that a Bahraini minister had telephoned him in search of "a small American company," and that ten minutes later "an investment banking friend in Arkansas" called him and recommended Harken.[^3] Harken's 1994 proxy recorded that Michael M. Ameen Jr. had served since 1989 as a part-time consultant to Harken "with regard to Middle Eastern exploration projects," paid 20,000 dollars in 1993, and that on February 11, 1994 the board elected him to the seat left vacant by Bush's resignation.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In January 1990, according to Harken's annual report for 1993, Harken Bahrain Oil Company "entered into a production sharing agreement with the Bahrain National Oil Company ('BANOCO') which gave it the exclusive right to explore for, develop and produce oil and gas throughout most of Bahrain's Arabian Gulf offshore territories," for a term of thirty-five years. In July 1990 [[Bass Enterprises Production Company]] agreed to fund at least the first three exploratory wells, with the option of then earning a fifty percent interest in Harken's rights by funding further drilling. The first well, Jarim No. 2 on the Jarim Reef, was abandoned as dry in March 1992. The second, Muharraq No. 1, begun on December 28, 1992, was plugged and abandoned at 8,778 feet after Harken announced on February 10, 1993 that no shows of oil or gas had been found. On April 8, 1993 the Bass company was released from further drilling obligations on payment of about two million dollars and the well's remaining costs, and Harken let part of the acreage lapse.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*Time* reported in October 1991 that "in late June 1990, five months after the deal was sealed and about a month before Iraq invaded Kuwait, young Bush sold 66% of his Harken stake (or 212,140 shares) at the top of the market for nearly $850,000," and that he did not report the sale until March 1991. Bush said the [[Securities and Exchange Commission]] had misplaced the report; an SEC spokesman, John Heine, told the magazine: "As far as I know, nobody ever found the 'lost' filing." Harken's chairman, Faulkner, said his Bahraini partners would not let him discuss the terms of the agreement "even with board members."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Harken Energy Corporation. Proxy statement (Schedule 14A), filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission April 25, 1994. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313478/0000950134-94-000454.txt
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Harken Energy Corporation. Annual report on Form 10-K for 1993, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission March 29, 1994, "Bahrain Operations." https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313478/0000950134-94-000289.txt
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Behar, Richard. "Global Intrigue: The Wackiest Rig in Texas." *Time,* October 28, 1991. https://time.com/archive/6718865/global-intrigue-the-wackiest-rig-in-texas/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Urban, Jerry. "Bush Said Friend's Arbusto Investment Was His Own, Not Saudi Money." *Houston Chronicle,* June 4, 1992. Reproduced at https://911timeline.s3.amazonaws.com/1990s/houstonchronicle060492.html
|
||||||
56
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Hong Kong Chinese Bank.md
Normal file
56
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Hong Kong Chinese Bank.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- Bank
|
||||||
|
- HongKong
|
||||||
|
- LippoGroup
|
||||||
|
- WorthenBank
|
||||||
|
- ChinaResources
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Hongkong Chinese Bank
|
||||||
|
- HKCB
|
||||||
|
- Hong Kong Chinese Bank, Ltd.
|
||||||
|
summary: "Hong Kong bank whose Stephens family stake the Riadys took in exchange for their Worthen Bank shares about 1987, later part-owned by China Resources and sold to CITIC Ka Wah Bank in 2001."
|
||||||
|
location: "Hong Kong"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Jackson Stephens]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "Stephens family interest, traded to the Riadys about 1987"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Lippo Group]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "59 percent"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[China Resources]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "15 percent"
|
||||||
|
start: 1992
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Hong Kong Chinese Bank was a bank in [[Hong Kong]] in which the family of [[Jackson Stephens]] of [[Little Rock, Arkansas|Little Rock]] held an interest until about 1987, when they exchanged it for the shares of [[Mochtar Riady]]'s family in [[Worthen Bank]]. The bank then became part of the Riadys' [[Lippo Group]], which sold it to [[CITIC Ka Wah Bank]] in 2001.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Worthen Exchange
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Stephens and Riady families had formed [[Stephens Finance Ltd.]] in Hong Kong in 1978 and both bought into Worthen in 1983. [[James Riady]] and [[John Huang]] stayed in Little Rock until about 1987, when, according to the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, "the Riadys sold their shares of Worthen Bank and focused their attention on a bank they previously had purchased in San Francisco." The committee explained the exchange in a footnote sourced to the depositions of [[Vernon Weaver|Arthur Vernon Weaver]] and [[C. Joseph Giroir]]: "The Riadys were bought out of Worthen by the Stephens family after the bank experienced a major defalcation by Bevil Bressler in 1986. After the defalcation, regulators investigated the quality of Worthen's assets and determined there were problems. Allegations were made against Worthen's loan practices and asset quality. Eventually, the Riadys traded their interest in the Worthen Bank for the Stephens' interest in the Hong Kong Chinese Bank, and also traded their interests in other joint ventures." The failed securities dealer was [[Bevill, Bresler and Schulman]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### China Resources
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
"In late 1992," the House committee reported, "China Resources purchased 15 percent of the Lippo owned Hong Kong Chinese Bank." It described [[China Resources]] as "a Chinese Government owned company which is a joint venture partner with the Lippo Group and partner in the Lippo controlled Hong Kong Chinese Bank," and stated that China Resources "subsequently infused the failing LippoLand with tens of millions of dollars, effectively bailing the Riady family out of a precarious financial situation." In 1993 Huang and Mochtar Riady asked the Commerce Secretary, [[Ron Brown]], to meet [[Shen Jueren]], chairman of China Resources, and arranged a meeting between Shen and Vice President [[Al Gore]] during the same visit to the [[United States]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Citing sources of 1995 and 1996, the committee reported that Lippo owned 59 percent of the Hong Kong Chinese Bank, "a banking and finance firm with $2.3 billion in assets," and 70 percent of [[Hong Kong China Limited]], "a property investment and development firm with $1.2 billion in assets."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Sale to CITIC Ka Wah
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On October 31, 2001, CITIC Ka Wah Bank agreed to buy the Hongkong Chinese Bank for about 4.2 billion Hong Kong dollars in cash, about 1.4 times its book value. The bank then had 25 branches and total assets of about 20 billion Hong Kong dollars, and was the principal operating subsidiary of the listed HKCB Bank Holdings, whose majority shareholder, Lippo CRE (Financial Services), held 58.78 percent and had indicated that it would vote for the sale. Lippo CRE was a joint venture between Lippo China Resources, controlled by the Riady family's Lippo Group, and China Resources Enterprise, which the *[[South China Morning Post]]* described as "the locally listed arm of the mainland foreign trade ministry's China Resources Holdings"; China Resources Enterprise also held 5.84 percent of HKCB Bank Holdings directly. CITIC Ka Wah was 55.24 percent controlled by [[CITIC Group|CITIC]], "the mainland's largest investment company under the control of the State Council." The sale excluded HKCB Bank Holdings' brokerage and fund-management businesses, and required the approval of the [[Hong Kong Monetary Authority]].[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, *Investigation of Political Fundraising Improprieties and Possible Violations of Law,* H. Rept. 105-829, 1998, vol. 2, footnotes 6, 14 and 115-117. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt829/html/CRPT-105hrpt829-vol2.htm
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Citic Ka Wah snares HKCB." *South China Morning Post,* November 1, 2001. https://www.scmp.com/article/361790/citic-ka-wah-snares-hkcb
|
||||||
127
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/ICONIQ Capital.md
Normal file
127
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/ICONIQ Capital.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,127 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
aliases:
|
||||||
|
- "ICONIQ Capital, LLC"
|
||||||
|
- "Iconiq"
|
||||||
|
- "Iconiq Capital"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- FamilyOffice
|
||||||
|
- VentureCapital
|
||||||
|
- SiliconValley
|
||||||
|
- MarkZuckerberg
|
||||||
|
- DustinMoskovitz
|
||||||
|
summary: "Investment adviser run by Divesh Makan since 2011, built on managing Mark Zuckerberg's money, which advises billionaire families and runs private funds, with about 117.5 billion dollars under management in 2025."
|
||||||
|
start: 2011
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Michael Anders]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "principal"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Will Griffith]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "principal"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Matthew Jacobson]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "principal"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Blue Owl Capital]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "passive minority equity stake, through an affiliate"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: partner_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Iron Point Partners]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "joint venture in IPI Partners"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: contractor_to
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Ajax Health Management Company]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "expected sub-advisor to an ICONIQ private fund"
|
||||||
|
start: 2026
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Mark Zuckerberg]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "investment adviser"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Dustin Moskovitz]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "investment adviser"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Sheryl Sandberg]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "investment adviser"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Jack Dorsey]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "investment adviser"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Reid Hoffman]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "investment adviser"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Henry Kravis]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "director"
|
||||||
|
start: 2014
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[David Bonderman]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "director"
|
||||||
|
start: 2014
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Chase Coleman]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "director"
|
||||||
|
start: 2014
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Aditya Mittal]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "director"
|
||||||
|
start: 2014
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Sprinklr]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "led 40-million-dollar Series D round"
|
||||||
|
start: 2014-05
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Pluralsight]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "participant in 135-million-dollar Series B round"
|
||||||
|
start: 2014
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
ICONIQ Capital, LLC, is a [[Delaware]] limited liability company registered with the [[Securities and Exchange Commission]] as an investment adviser, CRD number 159198 and SEC file number 801-72878. Its registration took effect on December 1, 2011. Its brochure of March 26, 2026, states that it "has been in business as an investment adviser since 2011 and our partners include [[Divesh Makan]], [[Michael Anders]], [[Will Griffith]] and [[Matthew Jacobson]] (our 'Principals')."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Zuckerberg Client Base
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In December 2014 *[[Forbes]]* wrote that Makan had "turned his otherwise run-of-the-mill registered investment advisory into an exclusive members-only [[Silicon Valley]] billionaires club that operates as a cross between a family office and a venture capital fund. His most famous client and the key to his success is billionaire Facebook founder [[Mark Zuckerberg]], whom Makan met in 2004 when he was a broker at [[Goldman Sachs]]." The magazine named among the firm's other clients "[[Facebook]]'s [[Dustin Moskovitz]] and [[Sheryl Sandberg]], [[Twitter]]'s [[Jack Dorsey]] and [[LinkedIn]]'s [[Reid Hoffman]]," and wrote that the real-estate billionaires [[Sam Zell]] and [[Li Ka-shing]] had gained access through it to startups that "Makan & Co. advertise as being 'approved by Zuckerberg.'" The firm then had "full discretion over $1.4 billion in client funds" and advised "on another $7.6 billion."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*Forbes* described Makan's board of directors in 2014 as "another power list, with nontech titans like [[Henry Kravis]] and [[David Bonderman]], [[Chase Coleman]] and steel tycoon [[Lakshmi Mittal]]'s son Aditya" ([[Aditya Mittal]]). "The centerpiece of this action is Iconiq's $500 million Strategic Partners fund, Makan's flagship among 39 private investment vehicles, which total about $1 billion. The firm claims only 100 family office clients, but regulatory forms report some 300 investors, who put pre-IPO money into such companies as [[Alibaba]] and India's e-commerce giant [[Flipkart]]." ICONIQ had led a 40-million-dollar Series D round for [[Sprinklr]] in May 2014, whose founder [[Ragy Thomas]] said: "When someone like Iconiq wants to invest, you can't say no. They can probably connect to anyone in the world." It also took part in a 135-million-dollar Series B round for [[Pluralsight]], whose cofounder [[Aaron Skonnard]] said: "They don't want operational involvement. They just want to connect and network and give more access."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Makan is listed as an unpaid director of the [[Good Ventures|Good Ventures Foundation]] of Moskovitz and [[Cari Tuna]], alongside the couple, on the foundation's returns filed from 2023 to 2026; the foundation, which funds [[Open Philanthropy]], reported total assets of 10.1 billion dollars on its return filed in May 2026.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Scale and Fees
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
As of December 31, 2025, ICONIQ reported regulatory assets under management of "approximately $85.8 billion, all on a discretionary basis and approximately $31.7 billion on a non-discretionary basis," together about 117.5 billion dollars. Its managed-account clients are "family offices; individuals and high net worth individuals; trusts, estates or charitable organizations; corporations, limited liability companies and/or other business types; and private pooled investment vehicles," and it "generally work[s] with Managed Account Clients with net worths of $25,000,000 or more." Managed-account fees "can range up to 1.5%" of assets a year; its private funds, open to accredited investors from a minimum of 10,000 dollars, generally charge a management fee of 2 percent a year and a performance allocation of "as much as 20% of the net profits" and "in some cases up to 30%." The brochure states that the firm uses "tools powered by artificial intelligence" in its analysis and that clients may trade in "cryptocurrency and other digital asset accounts."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Ownership and Affiliates
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
"An affiliate of [[Blue Owl Capital]] Inc. owns a passive minority equity stake in ICONIQ Capital," the 2026 brochure states. "In addition, in late 2024, Blue Owl effectively acquired the assets of [[IPI Partners]], LLC, a digital infrastructure fund manager that was previously a joint venture of ICONIQ Capital and [[Iron Point Partners]], and many former IPI Partners personnel are now employed by Blue Owl Digital Infrastructure." The same document discloses that ICONIQ expects to engage [[Ajax Health Management Company]], LLC, as a sub-advisor to one of its private funds, that Ajax "will be entitled to a portion of the carried interest and management fees," and that "certain affiliates of ICONIQ hold an economic interest in Ajax," creating "a financial incentive to appoint and retain Ajax." It reports that "ICONIQ Capital has no disclosable disciplinary information."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: ICONIQ Capital, LLC. Form ADV Part 2A, Firm Brochure, March 26, 2026, CRD 159198, SEC file 801-72878, via the SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure system. https://files.adviserinfo.sec.gov/IAPD/Content/Common/crd_iapd_Brochure.aspx?BRCHR_VRSN_ID=1027115 ; firm record https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/firm/summary/159198
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Solomon, Brian. "The Spider Of Silicon Valley: Inside 'Zuck & Friends' Secret Billionaire Fund." *Forbes,* December 1, 2014 (print issue December 15, 2014), archived December 1, 2014. http://web.archive.org/web/20141201154053/http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2014/12/01/the-spider-of-silicon-valley-inside-zuck-friends-secret-billionaire-fund/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Good Ventures Foundation," EIN 46-1008520, Form 990-PF data, 990-PF filed May 15, 2026, and earlier returns. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/461008520
|
||||||
75
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Institute for Progress.md
Normal file
75
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Institute for Progress.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
aliases:
|
||||||
|
- "IFP"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- ThinkTank
|
||||||
|
- OpenPhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- ProgressStudies
|
||||||
|
- Metascience
|
||||||
|
- Immigration
|
||||||
|
- ArtificialIntelligence
|
||||||
|
summary: "Washington think tank founded in 2021 by Alec Stapp and Caleb Watney with Open Philanthropy money, working on metascience, high-skilled immigration, biotechnology, infrastructure and emerging technology policy."
|
||||||
|
location: "Washington, D.C."
|
||||||
|
start: 2021
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Alec Stapp]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 2021
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Caleb Watney]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 2021
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Open Philanthropy]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 2021-10
|
||||||
|
role: "1.6 million dollars for policy research (October 2021, later listed as 2.215 million) and 9 million dollars in general support (March 2023)"
|
||||||
|
fn: 8
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Institute for Progress (IFP) was announced on January 20, 2022 by [[Alec Stapp]] and [[Caleb Watney]] as "a new think tank in [[Washington, D.C.]]," with the mission "to accelerate scientific, technological, and industrial progress while safeguarding humanity's future." Their founding essay stated: "There's a framework we like to borrow from the effective altruism community that says, to do the most good in the world, prioritize issues that are important, neglected, and tractable." It named three initial areas: metascience, immigration and biosecurity.[^1] Watney's IFP biography dates the founding to 2021.[^2] The organization's first federal tax return, for calendar 2021, reported 1.9 million dollars in contributions; the [[Internal Revenue Service]] recognized its tax exemption in May 2022.[^3] Its office is at 1255 Union Street NE in Washington.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
By 2026 IFP described five "policy verticals": metascience, high-skilled immigration, biotechnology, infrastructure and emerging technology. It stated that it provides "technical assistance to federal agencies" and "educational briefings on Capitol Hill," and that it is "laser-focused on counterfactual policy impact."[^4] A search of the Senate [[Lobbying Disclosure Act]] database returned no filings for the organization; all eleven results for the client name "Institute for Progress" concern unrelated Turkish and Syrian clients.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Funding
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In October 2021 [[Open Philanthropy]], later rebranded as Coefficient Giving,[^6] granted 1.6 million dollars over a year and a half to "the Institute for Progress, a new think tank, to conduct research and advocacy on policies relevant to a number of our grantmaking areas, including immigration policy and scientific research"; the grant investigator was [[Jacob Trefethen]], and the grant page noted that "Institute for Progress staff also reviewed this page prior to publication."[^7] A later Open Philanthropy page, archived in August 2023, listed the same grant at 2,215,000 dollars. In March 2023 Open Philanthropy recommended "two grants totaling $9,000,000 over three years" for general support, within its innovation policy focus area.[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
IFP lists its funders as "foundations like the [[Alfred P. Sloan Foundation]], [[Arnold Ventures]], [[Astera Foundation]], Coefficient Giving, [[Heising-Simons Foundation]], and the [[Smith Richardson Foundation]]." It states that it does not accept donations from corporations or foreign governments and that "the majority of our support is unrestricted."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
IFP's Form 990 returns report the following:[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
| Fiscal year | Revenue | Expenses | Net assets | Pay to each co-founder |
|
||||||
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||||
|
| 2021 | 1,900,000 | 159,934 | 1,740,066 | 54,231 |
|
||||||
|
| 2022 | 970,114 | 1,201,769 | 1,508,411 | 163,125 |
|
||||||
|
| 2023 | 8,198,072 | 3,079,238 | 6,482,015 | 202,500 |
|
||||||
|
| 2024 | 1,075,917 | 3,597,698 | 3,658,868 | 246,008 (Stapp); 240,362 (Watney) |
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2024 the highest-paid person was Amy Nice, "Distinguished Immigration Counsel," at 250,000 dollars; other paid staff that year included Jeremy Neufeld, Tim Fist, director of emerging technology policy, Santiago Ruiz and [[Brian Potter]].[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### People
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The returns list Dan Correa, Zachary Graves and Tamara Winter as unpaid directors from the first year.[^3] In 2026 IFP's external board comprised Correa of the [[Federation of American Scientists]], Graves of the [[Foundation for American Innovation]], Winter of [[Stripe Press]], and Watney, by then at Coefficient Giving.[^4] Watney served as co-chief executive until 2026, when Coefficient Giving hired him as its first managing director of public policy, overseeing its U.S. AI policy grantmaking and its Abundance and Growth Fund; Coefficient wrote that it "was an early supporter of IFP." The fund's program director, [[Matt Clancy]], was a former IFP colleague of Watney's,[^9] and in 2026 IFP listed Clancy, with the affiliation "Coefficient Giving," among its non-resident senior fellows, together with Santi Ruiz of [[Anthropic]], [[Miles Brundage]] and the economist [[Pierre Azoulay]]. Its staff included [[Heidi Williams]] as distinguished metascience fellow and [[Saif Khan]] as distinguished technology fellow.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In September 2026 *[[Effort News|Effort]]*, a publication founded by [[Brian Chau]], stated that "EA fellowships have placed over 50 staffers in Congress and the administrative branch," citing as its sources "Horizon, IFP and FAI biographies and government records."[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Stapp, Alec, and Caleb Watney. "Progress Is a Policy Choice." Institute for Progress, January 20, 2022. https://ifp.org/progress-is-a-policy-choice/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Institute for Progress, "Caleb Watney," author biography. https://ifp.org/author/caleb-watney/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Institute For Progress," EIN 87-2449729, Form 990 filings for fiscal years 2021 through 2024. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/872449729
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Institute for Progress, "About." https://ifp.org/about/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: U.S. Senate, Lobbying Disclosure Act database, search for client name "Institute for Progress." https://lda.senate.gov/api/v1/filings/?client_name=Institute+for+Progress
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Effort. "Effective Altruism is Buying Political Staff." September 19, 2026. https://www.effort.news/aisi
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Open Philanthropy, "Institute for Progress, Policy Research," grant of October 2021, archived July 1, 2022. http://web.archive.org/web/20220701180156/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/institute-for-progress-policy-research/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Open Philanthropy, "Institute for Progress, General Support (2023)," grant of March 2023, archived August 26, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20230826080214/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/institute-for-progress-general-support-2023/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Coefficient Giving, "Introducing Our New Managing Director of Public Policy, Caleb Watney," July 9, 2026, archived July 14, 2026. http://web.archive.org/web/20260714172124/https://coefficientgiving.org/research/introducing-our-new-managing-director-of-public-policy/
|
||||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- Bank
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- Kuwait
|
||||||
|
- ParallelBank
|
||||||
|
- SandstormReport
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- KIFCO
|
||||||
|
- Kifco
|
||||||
|
- Kuwaiti Investment Finance Company
|
||||||
|
summary: "Kuwaiti finance company in which BCCI ostensibly held 49 percent but which it controlled through its nominee Faisal al-Fulaij, used as a parallel bank to move and disguise BCCI funds."
|
||||||
|
location: "Kuwait"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "ostensibly 49 percent; actual control through nominee Faisal al-Fulaij"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Faisal Saud al-Fulaij]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "loan for his Financial General share purchases"
|
||||||
|
start: 1977-12
|
||||||
|
end: 1978-02
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Kuwait International Finance Company (KIFCO) was a [[Kuwait|Kuwaiti]] finance company that the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) used as one of its "parallel banks." According to the [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate Report]], BCCI "purportedly had a 49 percent interest in, but actually owned and controlled" it "through its nominee, [[Faisal Saud al-Fulaij|Faisal al-Fulaij]]."[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Parallel Bank
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Senate report described BCCI's corporate structure as "intentionally further complicated by the establishment of a series of additional entities, used as 'parallel banks' by BCCI as needed for financial manipulations. These parallel entities included the Kuwait International Finance Company (KIFCO), in which BCCI ostensibly had only a minority interest; a Swiss bank, Bank de Commerce et Placements SA (BCP), in which BCCI also ostensibly had only a minority interest; the [[National Bank of Oman]], again with BCCI formally holding only a minority interest; a 100% owned finance subsidiary, Credit & Finance Corporation Ltd,; and the series of entities" known as [[ICIC]].[^1] The Swiss bank was the [[Banque de Commerce et de Placements]] in [[Geneva]].[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Financial General
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
From December 1977 through February 1978 BCCI bought almost 20 percent of the voting shares of [[Financial General Bankshares]], later [[First American Bank|First American]], in the names of four Middle Eastern clients. Of one of them the chronology entered in the record of the [[House Banking Committee]]'s hearing of September 11, 1991 stated: "Fulaij borrowed the funds required to purchase his shares from the Kuwait International Finance Company ('KIFCO'), an affiliate of BCCI."[^2] At the [[Federal Reserve Board|Federal Reserve]]'s hearing of April 23, 1981 on the acquisition, Fulaij described his career as chairman of [[Kuwait Airways]] from 1964 to 1977 and said: "I have been involved in KIFCO and have had business interests in a real estate firm and a travel agency." When the Federal Reserve's counsel, Robert Mannion, asked what KIFCO was, Fulaij replied: "I am chairman of this company."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Pakistan
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
According to the former BCCI executive [[Nazir Chinoy]], in 1979, when the [[World Bank]] had capped commercial lending in [[Pakistan]] and tied increases to the country's foreign-exchange reserves, [[Agha Hasan Abedi]] or [[Swaleh Naqvi]] devised a means of raising BCCI's limit. Chinoy said: "$50 million would be placed with BCCI Pakistan through BCCI's Kuwaiti affiliate, KIFCO. BCCI transferred money to KIFCO. I have a feeling that KIFCO got the money from Caymans. In any case, Kifco placed the money with BCCI Karachi." The Senate report concluded that BCCI had used an affiliate "officially separate from BCCI, but secretly controlled by it and owned by it, to launder BCCI funds from one BCCI location to BCCI Pakistan."[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Sandstorm
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
When [[Price Waterhouse]] took over the consolidated audit of BCCI in 1987 it was still "not in the position to review BCCI's overall picture due to the exclusion from its audit work of a number of BCCI affiliates, some secretly owned, including ICIC, KIFCO, and BCP."[^1] The Price Waterhouse report to the [[Bank of England]] code-named [[Sandstorm Report|Sandstorm]], released to Congress only in a heavily censored form, listed among BCCI's frauds "routing funds through [ICIC], LOANS, KIFCO, SDCC and other affiliates and third parties to make adjustments prior to accounting reference dates and audit confirmation dates, which were often reversed at a later date," and stated that the routing of funds had "been carried out on a very significant scale, involving a number of related companies, including the [ICIC Holdings Group], LOANS, NBO, and KIFCO, and third party banks such that it is now difficult for anyone to ascertain the true nature of external exposures recorded in the names of certain major customers."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Price Waterhouse found that placements recorded by BCCI with KIFCO did not match KIFCO's own financial statements for the same transactions, and that "the principal mechanism for repaying Kifco's loans from BCCI was a mysterious Kuwaiti entity called 'the IZ company for Exchange.'" The auditors wrote that "we now have suspicions as to the propriety of the transactions." Their request for access to KIFCO's records had been denied.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 3, "The Origin and Early Years of BCCI." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
|
||||||
|
[^2]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs. *Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) Investigation, Part 1.* Hearing, 102nd Cong., 1st sess., September 11, 1991, Serial No. 102-69, "Full Chronology of BCCI and First American Bankshares, Inc.," p. 666; see also Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 6, "BCCI in the United States: Initial Entry." https://archive.org/details/BCCIHearingsBeforeTheCommitteeOnBankingFinanceAndUrbanAffairs ; https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/06early.htm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 4, "BCCI's Criminality." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, Serial No. 102-69, transcript of the Federal Reserve Board hearing on the application of Credit and Commerce American Holdings, April 23, 1981, pp. 404-406, 450-451. https://archive.org/details/BCCIHearingsBeforeTheCommitteeOnBankingFinanceAndUrbanAffairs
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 5, "BCCI's Relationship with Foreign Governments, Central Banks, and International Organizations." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/05foreign.htm
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 10, "BCCI and Its Accountants." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/10accounta.htm
|
||||||
127
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Leading the Future.md
Normal file
127
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Leading the Future.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,127 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
aliases:
|
||||||
|
- "Leading the Future PAC"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- SuperPAC
|
||||||
|
- AIPolicy
|
||||||
|
- AndreessenHorowitz
|
||||||
|
- OpenAI
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAccelerationism
|
||||||
|
summary: "Super PAC registered in Henderson, Nevada, in 2025, funded with 75.1 million dollars from Andreessen Horowitz, Greg and Anna Brockman and Perplexity, which passes its money to affiliated committees spending in 2026 congressional races."
|
||||||
|
start: 2025-08-15
|
||||||
|
location: "Henderson, Nevada"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Andreessen Horowitz]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "50 million dollars through A16Z Capital Management LLC, attributed equally to Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz"
|
||||||
|
start: 2025-08
|
||||||
|
end: 2026-02
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Greg Brockman]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "12.5 million dollars"
|
||||||
|
start: 2025-09
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Anna Brockman]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "12.5 million dollars"
|
||||||
|
start: 2025-09
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Perplexity]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "100,000 dollars, as Perplex AI Inc."
|
||||||
|
start: 2025-08
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Think Big (PAC)]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "20 million dollars in four transfers"
|
||||||
|
start: 2025-12
|
||||||
|
end: 2026-06
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[American Mission (PAC)]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "20 million dollars in four transfers"
|
||||||
|
start: 2025-12
|
||||||
|
end: 2026-06
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[American Mission Florida]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "3 million dollars"
|
||||||
|
start: 2026-03
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Build American AI]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "500,000 dollars"
|
||||||
|
start: 2025-10
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Zac Moffatt]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "leader"
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Josh Vlasto]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "leader"
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: contractor_to
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Prusik Partners]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "strategy, management and communications consulting"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: contractor_to
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Crosby Ottenhoff Group]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "compliance consulting"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: contractor_to
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Wiley Rein]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "legal services"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Leading the Future is a super PAC, a political committee that may make only independent expenditures, registered with the [[Federal Election Commission]] on August 15, 2025, under identifier C00916114. Its address is 675 South Green Valley Parkway, #1333, [[Henderson, Nevada]], and its treasurer of record is [[Britney Gonzalez]] of [[Mountain Brook, Alabama]]. The email contact on its filings uses the domain of the [[Crosby Ottenhoff Group]], which the committee also pays as a compliance consultant.[^1][^2] Its leaders, [[Zac Moffatt]] and [[Josh Vlasto]], described the [[RAISE Act]] of the New York Assembly member [[Alex Bores]] in November 2025 as "ideological and politically motivated legislation" and said that "bills like the RAISE Act threaten American competitiveness, limit economic growth."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Donors
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Through its report of July 15, 2026, Leading the Future had received 75,100,000 dollars in contributions and 75,788,224.10 dollars in total receipts, had disbursed 44,755,780.65 dollars and held 31,032,443.45 dollars in cash.[^4] The contributions came from four sources:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- A16Z Capital Management LLC of [[Menlo Park, California]], the management company of [[Andreessen Horowitz]], gave 25,000,000 dollars on August 22, 2025, and another 25,000,000 dollars on February 11, 2026. Each check was attributed on the filing, as a partnership contribution, half to [[Ben Horowitz]] of [[Las Vegas]] and half to [[Marc Andreessen]] of [[Los Altos, California]], at 12,500,000 dollars each.
|
||||||
|
- [[Greg Brockman]], president and co-founder of [[OpenAI]], gave 12,500,000 dollars on September 12, 2025.
|
||||||
|
- [[Anna Brockman]] gave 12,500,000 dollars on the same day.
|
||||||
|
- Perplex AI Inc., the company behind [[Perplexity]], gave 100,000 dollars on August 22, 2025.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The remaining itemized receipts are interest and similar income on the committee's account at [[Chain Bridge Bank]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Transfers
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Almost all of the committee's spending consists of transfers to other committees. On each of four dates, December 15, 2025, and February 24, May 19 and June 8, 2026, it gave 5,000,000 dollars to a committee called [[Think Big (PAC)|Think Big]] and 5,000,000 dollars to one called [[American Mission (PAC)|American Mission]], 40,000,000 dollars in all. It also gave 3,000,000 dollars to [[American Mission Florida]] on March 4, 2026, and 500,000 dollars to [[Build American AI]] on October 9, 2025. These transfers came to 43.5 million of its 44.76 million dollars in disbursements. The rest went mostly to [[Prusik Partners]] for strategy, management and communications consulting, to the law firm [[Wiley Rein]], to [[Schoen Survey Research]] for polling (89,000 dollars in October 2025) and to Crosby Ottenhoff.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Think Big
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Think Big (FEC identifier C00923417) reported 23,021,600.71 dollars in receipts, 20,760,549.23 dollars in disbursements and 17,224,117.88 dollars in independent expenditures.[^5] Its largest single target was Bores, then a candidate in the Democratic primary for [[New York]]'s 12th congressional district;[^6] the FEC's aggregation of its independent expenditures by candidate shows 8,145,697.68 dollars spent opposing him, in 55 transactions, all through the vendor [[Lantern Production Consultants]].[^5] In February 2026 *[[TechCrunch]]* reported that Leading the Future had "already poured $1.1 million into ads attacking Bores" when the [[Anthropic]]-funded [[Public First Action]] began spending in his support.[^6] Think Big also reported expenditures supporting other candidates, among them [[Jesse Jackson Jr.]] and [[Melissa Bean]] in [[Illinois]], [[Ben McAdams]] in [[Utah]], [[Ritchie Torres]], [[Joseph Morelle]] and [[Yvette Clarke]] in New York, [[Jimmy Panetta]] in [[California]], [[Rob Menendez|Robert Menendez]] in [[New Jersey]], [[Greg Stanton]] in [[Arizona]] and [[Valerie Hoyle]] in [[Oregon]].[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The counter-campaign for Bores was run by the Jobs and Democracy PAC, funded through the Public First super PAC, which the FEC's aggregation shows spent 15,026,937.99 dollars supporting him.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### American Mission
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
American Mission (FEC identifier C00916692) reported 23,943,009.62 dollars in receipts, 13,412,103.80 dollars in disbursements and 10,853,994.82 dollars in independent expenditures. Its expenditures, placed through [[Summit Ridge Media Group]], supported candidates in many states, among them [[Andy Barr]] in [[Kentucky]], [[Julia Letlow]] in [[Louisiana]], [[Clay Fuller]] and [[James Kingston]] in [[Georgia]], [[Chris Gober]] and [[Jessica Hart Steinmann]] in [[Texas]], [[Aaron Flint]] in [[Montana]], [[Laurie Buckhout]] in [[North Carolina]] and [[Kevin Hern]] in [[Oklahoma]].[^5] Hern also received independent expenditures in his support from the Defending Our Values PAC of the Public First Action group.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Federal Election Commission, committee C00916114, "Leading the Future," statement of organization and itemized receipts (Schedule A), retrieved September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00916114/ ; https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?committee_id=C00916114
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Federal Election Commission, itemized disbursements (Schedule B) for committee C00916114, 53 records, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?committee_id=C00916114
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Bellan, Rebecca. "a16z-backed super PAC is targeting Alex Bores, sponsor of New York's AI safety bill; he says bring it on." *TechCrunch,* November 17, 2025. https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/17/a16z-backed-super-pac-is-targeting-alex-bores-sponsor-of-new-yorks-ai-safety-bill-he-says-bring-it-on/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Federal Election Commission, financial totals for committee C00916114, 2025 to 2026 cycle, through the report of July 15, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00916114/?tab=summary
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Federal Election Commission, committees C00923417 ("Think Big") and C00916692 ("American Mission"), financial totals and independent expenditures (Schedule E), including the by-candidate aggregation for Alex Bores, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00923417/ ; https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00916692/ ; https://www.fec.gov/data/independent-expenditures/?committee_id=C00923417
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Bellan, Rebecca. "Anthropic-funded group backs candidate attacked by rival AI super PAC." *TechCrunch,* February 20, 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/20/anthropic-funded-group-backs-candidate-attacked-by-rival-ai-super-pac/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Federal Election Commission, committees C00928374 ("Jobs and Democracy PAC") and C00928390 ("Defending Our Values PAC"), independent expenditures (Schedule E), including the by-candidate aggregation for Alex Bores, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/independent-expenditures/?committee_id=C00928374 ; https://www.fec.gov/data/independent-expenditures/?committee_id=C00928390
|
||||||
55
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Lincoln Savings and Loan.md
Normal file
55
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Lincoln Savings and Loan.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- SavingsAndLoan
|
||||||
|
- KeatingFive
|
||||||
|
- Fraud
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Lincoln Savings & Loan
|
||||||
|
- Lincoln Savings
|
||||||
|
- Lincoln Savings and Loan Association
|
||||||
|
summary: "Irvine, California savings and loan bought in 1984 by Charles Keating's American Continental Corporation and seized in April 1989; its failure cost taxpayers more than three billion dollars."
|
||||||
|
end: 1989
|
||||||
|
location: "Irvine, California, USA"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[American Continental Corporation]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 1984
|
||||||
|
end: 1989
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: investigated
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Federal Home Loan Bank Board]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "San Francisco office examination"
|
||||||
|
start: 1986-03
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lincoln Savings and Loan Association was a savings institution based in [[Irvine, California]]. [[American Continental Corporation]], the [[Phoenix, Arizona|Phoenix]] homebuilder headed by [[Charles Keating]], bought it in 1984 for 51 million dollars, and federal regulators took it over in April 1989.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Growth
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Rather than write mortgages, Lincoln under Keating grew tenfold by soliciting large deposits from Wall Street brokerages in exchange for fees, and invested them in high-yield junk bonds and in real estate development by American Continental, including The Phoenician resort in [[Scottsdale]].[^1] Its reported growth differs by source: its assets quadrupled in three years to 3.9 billion dollars according to United Press International, and rose from 1.1 billion to 5.5 billion dollars in four years according to NBC News.[^2][^3] [[Alan Greenspan]], later chairman of the [[Federal Reserve Board|Federal Reserve]], wrote a report stating that Lincoln was sound and had "seasoned and expert" managers.[^2] [[L. William Seidman]], who led the government's cleanup of the industry, later wrote that Lincoln "simply exchanged interest-rate risks for much greater asset quality risks," and called The Phoenician "a monument to Keating's ego."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Regulators and the Keating Five
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The [[San Francisco]] office of the [[Federal Home Loan Bank Board]] opened an investigation of Lincoln's growth in March 1986. Senators [[Alan Cranston]], [[Dennis DeConcini]], [[John Glenn]], [[Donald W. Riegle Jr.|Donald Riegle]] and [[John McCain]], who had received a combined 1.3 million dollars in donations and gifts from Keating, his family and his companies, met officials of the bank board on Lincoln's behalf. In May 1987 the San Francisco regulators recommended seizing Lincoln for unsound lending, but [[M. Danny Wall]], successor to the board's chairman [[Edwin Gray]], said there was insufficient proof to justify a seizure. Lincoln was taken over in April 1989, after Keating placed American Continental in bankruptcy, and the [[Resolution Trust Corporation]] later sold a majority interest in The Phoenician among Lincoln's assets.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Bonds and Cost
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
According to NBC News, Keating "allegedly fleeced Lincoln customers by selling them $200 million of unsecured 'junk' bonds," which became useless when his company went bankrupt; he was convicted in California of misleading investors into buying bonds that were not federally insured.[^1][^3] The [[Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation]] put the cost of Lincoln's failure to taxpayers at 3.14 billion dollars; NBC News, citing *[[The New York Times]]*, gave 3.4 billion.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Senate report on the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) listed among matters requiring further investigation "The financial dealings of BCCI directors with Charles Keating and several Keating affiliates and front-companies," naming the BCCI director [[Alfred Hartman]], [[David L. Paul]] and [[CenTrust Savings Bank]], [[Larry Romrell]] of [[Capcom]], the [[Gokal brothers]] and possibly [[Ghaith R. Pharaon]], and stated that "The ties between BCCI and Keating's financial empire require further investigation." It grouped these ties with BCCI's involvement in CenTrust and in Caprock Savings and Loan of Texas under "BCCI's collusion in Savings & Loan fraud in the U.S."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Charles Keating, Face of Savings and Loan Bust, Dies at 90." *American Banker,* April 2, 2014. https://www.americanbanker.com/news/charles-keating-face-of-savings-and-loan-bust-dies-at-90
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Burns, Frances. "Charles Keating Jr., who became face of savings and loan scandal, dies at 90." United Press International, April 2, 2014. https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/04/02/Charles-Keating-Jr-who-became-face-of-savings-and-loan-scandal-dies-at-90/5631396444559/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Arkin, Daniel. "Charles Keating, Center of Savings and Loan Scandal, Dies at 90." NBC News, April 2, 2014. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/charles-keating-center-savings-loan-scandal-dies-90-n69386
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, Appendices, "Matters for Further Investigation," items 8 and 12. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/24appendic.htm
|
||||||
|
|
@ -11,10 +11,15 @@ tags:
|
||||||
- BCCI
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
alias:
|
alias:
|
||||||
- Lippo
|
- Lippo
|
||||||
summary: "Indonesian banking and property conglomerate of the Riady family, partner of the Stephens family of Arkansas from 1978, employer of John Huang and Webster Hubbell, whose California bank pleaded guilty to 86 campaign finance counts in 2001."
|
summary: "Indonesian banking and property conglomerate of the Riady family, partner of the Arkansas Stephens family from 1978 and employer of John Huang, whose California bank pleaded guilty to campaign finance counts in 2001."
|
||||||
location: "Jakarta, Indonesia"
|
location: "Jakarta, Indonesia"
|
||||||
created: 2026-09-21
|
created: 2026-09-21
|
||||||
updated: 2026-09-22
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Hong Kong China Limited]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "70 percent"
|
||||||
|
fn: 4
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The Lippo Group is the banking, insurance, and property conglomerate of [[Mochtar Riady]] of [[Indonesia]] and his son [[James Riady]]. A Senate committee dated its business relationship with [[Stephens Inc.]] of [[Little Rock, Arkansas|Little Rock]] to 1977, and a House committee to a meeting between Mochtar Riady, [[Jackson Stephens]], and [[Witt Stephens]] in 1976.[^1]
|
The Lippo Group is the banking, insurance, and property conglomerate of [[Mochtar Riady]] of [[Indonesia]] and his son [[James Riady]]. A Senate committee dated its business relationship with [[Stephens Inc.]] of [[Little Rock, Arkansas|Little Rock]] to 1977, and a House committee to a meeting between Mochtar Riady, [[Jackson Stephens]], and [[Witt Stephens]] in 1976.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
@ -31,8 +36,17 @@ The two families formed [[Stephens Finance Ltd.]] in [[Hong Kong]] in 1978 and b
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The companies [[Hip Hing Holdings]], [[San Jose Holdings]], and [[Toy Center Holdings]] were used in 1992 and 1993 to pass money from Jakarta to the [[Democratic National Committee]]. Huang pleaded guilty on August 12, 1999. On January 11, 2001, James Riady agreed to plead guilty to a felony and pay 8.61 million dollars, and LippoBank to 86 misdemeanor counts for contributions made from 1988 to 1994. The charge listed transfers from foreign Lippo companies to Huang's account in Hong Kong in 1990 and 1991, to the group's American subsidiaries from August 1992 to September 1993, and in cash to a Lippo executive in Hong Kong until May 1994. LippoBank had been sold to [[First Banks America]] about March 1, 2000.[^1][^3]
|
The companies [[Hip Hing Holdings]], [[San Jose Holdings]], and [[Toy Center Holdings]] were used in 1992 and 1993 to pass money from Jakarta to the [[Democratic National Committee]]. Huang pleaded guilty on August 12, 1999. On January 11, 2001, James Riady agreed to plead guilty to a felony and pay 8.61 million dollars, and LippoBank to 86 misdemeanor counts for contributions made from 1988 to 1994. The charge listed transfers from foreign Lippo companies to Huang's account in Hong Kong in 1990 and 1991, to the group's American subsidiaries from August 1992 to September 1993, and in cash to a Lippo executive in Hong Kong until May 1994. LippoBank had been sold to [[First Banks America]] about March 1, 2000.[^1][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Banks
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In late 1992, according to the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, [[China Resources]], "a Chinese Government owned company which is a joint venture partner with the Lippo Group," bought 15 percent of the Hong Kong Chinese Bank, and it later "infused the failing LippoLand with tens of millions of dollars, effectively bailing the Riady family out of a precarious financial situation." The committee, citing sources of 1995 and 1996, reported that Lippo owned 59 percent of the Hong Kong Chinese Bank, with 2.3 billion dollars in assets, and 70 percent of Hong Kong China Limited, with 1.2 billion dollars in assets.[^4] In 2001 CITIC Ka Wah Bank, controlled by the Chinese state investment company [[CITIC Group|CITIC]], agreed to buy the Hongkong Chinese Bank for about 4.2 billion Hong Kong dollars; the seller's parent was majority owned by Lippo CRE (Financial Services), a joint venture of the Riadys' Lippo China Resources and China Resources Enterprise.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's records for LippoBank show a bank chartered in [[San Francisco]] on November 15, 1961 as the Bank of Trade of San Francisco, renamed Bank of Trade on November 13, 1984, moved to [[Los Angeles]] on October 31, 1989, renamed Lippo Bank on January 18, 1990, moved back to San Francisco on March 26, 1998, and merged into the First Bank of California on May 31, 2000.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[^1]: House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, *Investigation of Political Fundraising Improprieties and Possible Violations of Law,* H. Rept. 105-829, 1998, vol. 2. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt829/html/CRPT-105hrpt829-vol2.htm ; Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, *Investigation of Illegal or Improper Activities in Connection with 1996 Federal Election Campaigns,* S. Rept. 105-167, 1998.
|
[^1]: House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, *Investigation of Political Fundraising Improprieties and Possible Violations of Law,* H. Rept. 105-829, 1998, vol. 2. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt829/html/CRPT-105hrpt829-vol2.htm ; Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, *Investigation of Illegal or Improper Activities in Connection with 1996 Federal Election Campaigns,* S. Rept. 105-167, 1998.
|
||||||
[^2]: Truell, Peter, and Larry Gurwin. *False Profits: The Inside Story of BCCI, the World's Most Corrupt Financial Empire*. Houghton Mifflin, 1992.
|
[^2]: Truell, Peter, and Larry Gurwin. *False Profits: The Inside Story of BCCI, the World's Most Corrupt Financial Empire*. Houghton Mifflin, 1992.
|
||||||
[^3]: Department of Justice, "James Riady Pleads Guilty, Will Pay Largest Fine in Campaign Finance History for Violating Federal Election Law," press release 01-17, January 11, 2001.
|
[^3]: Department of Justice, "James Riady Pleads Guilty, Will Pay Largest Fine in Campaign Finance History for Violating Federal Election Law," press release 01-17, January 11, 2001.
|
||||||
|
[^4]: House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, *Investigation of Political Fundraising Improprieties and Possible Violations of Law,* H. Rept. 105-829, 1998, vol. 2, footnotes 6 and 115-117. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt829/html/CRPT-105hrpt829-vol2.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Citic Ka Wah snares HKCB." *South China Morning Post,* November 1, 2001. https://www.scmp.com/article/361790/citic-ka-wah-snares-hkcb
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, BankFind Suite, institution history for certificate 18453 (Lippo Bank), queried September 23, 2026. https://api.fdic.gov/banks/history?filters=CERT:18453&limit=50
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
58
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/LippoBank.md
Normal file
58
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/LippoBank.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- Bank
|
||||||
|
- LippoGroup
|
||||||
|
- California
|
||||||
|
- CampaignFinance
|
||||||
|
- JohnHuang
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Lippo Bank
|
||||||
|
- LippoBank California
|
||||||
|
- Bank of Trade
|
||||||
|
- Bank of Trade of San Francisco
|
||||||
|
summary: "California bank chartered in 1961 as the Bank of Trade of San Francisco, renamed Lippo Bank in 1990, which pleaded guilty in 2001 to 86 misdemeanor counts of illegal foreign campaign contributions."
|
||||||
|
start: 1961-11-15
|
||||||
|
end: 2000-05-31
|
||||||
|
location: "Los Angeles and San Francisco, California, USA"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Lippo Group]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: prosecuted
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Department of Justice]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 2001-01-11
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
LippoBank was a California state-chartered commercial bank affiliated with the [[Lippo Group]] of [[Mochtar Riady]] and [[James Riady]] of [[Indonesia]]. It was chartered in [[San Francisco]] in 1961 as the Bank of Trade of San Francisco and took the name Lippo Bank in [[Los Angeles]] in January 1990. In January 2001 James Riady agreed to plead guilty on its behalf to 86 misdemeanor counts charging that its agents, Riady and [[John Huang]], had made illegal foreign campaign contributions from 1988 through 1994.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Charter History
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The records of the [[Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation]] for the bank (certificate 18453), a state-chartered bank that was not a member of the [[Federal Reserve System]], show the following changes:[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- November 15, 1961: opened as the Bank of Trade of San Francisco, San Francisco.
|
||||||
|
- November 13, 1984: legal name changed to Bank of Trade, still in San Francisco.
|
||||||
|
- October 31, 1989: main office moved to Los Angeles.
|
||||||
|
- January 18, 1990: legal name changed to Lippo Bank, Los Angeles.
|
||||||
|
- March 26, 1998: main office moved back to San Francisco.
|
||||||
|
- May 31, 2000: merged, without assistance, into the First Bank of California, which survived.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The House Government Reform and Oversight Committee reported that when the Riadys left [[Worthen Bank]] in [[Little Rock, Arkansas|Little Rock]] about 1987 they "focused their attention on a bank they previously had purchased in San Francisco, California. Soon thereafter they established the Bank of Trade in Los Angeles, which later became LippoBank." Huang's résumé was among the documents LippoBank produced to the committee. The committee found that the Lippo Group's American operations were generally unprofitable, and that while many in the group's hierarchy wanted unprofitable operations closed, others argued that "LippoBank California was important 'strategically,' in order to have a presence in the United States," and prevailed.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Plea
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On January 11, 2001, the [[Department of Justice]]'s Campaign Financing Task Force and the United States Attorney in Los Angeles announced that James Riady would plead guilty to a felony charge of conspiring to defraud the [[United States]] and would enter a plea on behalf of LippoBank to 86 misdemeanor counts, paying 8,610,000 dollars in fines levied against himself and the bank. According to the information, contributions made by Huang and LippoBank employees from 1988 through 1991 were reimbursed from May 1990 to July 1991 with money wired from a foreign Lippo entity to Huang's account in [[Hong Kong]]; from August to October 1992, "shortly after Riady pledged $1 million in support of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton's campaign for the Presidency," contributions by Huang were reimbursed with money wired from a foreign Lippo entity into an account Riady kept at LippoBank and passed to Huang in cash; and from January 1993 to February 1994 contributions by Huang and Lippo and LippoBank employees were reimbursed through a fictitious bonus paid to Huang by a foreign Lippo entity.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The benefits the contributions were meant to secure for the group and "defendant LippoBank" included "Most Favored Nation status for China, open trade policies with Indonesia, normalization of relations with Vietnam, Community Reinvestment Act exemptions for LippoBank, a repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act which limited business opportunities for LippoBank, and a relaxation of Taiwanese restrictions on investment by foreign banks," as well as "the deposit of funds into LippoBank by political campaign committees and government agencies." The Justice Department stated that the conduct had occurred before LippoBank's acquisition by [[First Banks America]] on or about March 1, 2000, and that First Banks America had no involvement in it.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, BankFind Suite, institution history for certificate 18453 (Lippo Bank), queried September 23, 2026. https://api.fdic.gov/banks/history?filters=CERT:18453&limit=50 ; https://api.fdic.gov/banks/institutions?filters=CERT:18453
|
||||||
|
[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice. "James Riady Pleads Guilty, Will Pay Largest Fine in Campaign Finance History for Violating Federal Election Law." Press release 017, January 11, 2001. http://web.archive.org/web/20140715142633/http://www.justice.gov:80/opa/pr/2001/January/017crm.htm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, *Investigation of Political Fundraising Improprieties and Possible Violations of Law,* H. Rept. 105-829, 1998, vol. 2. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-105hrpt829/html/CRPT-105hrpt829-vol2.htm
|
||||||
91
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/METR.md
Normal file
91
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/METR.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,91 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
aliases:
|
||||||
|
- "Model Evaluation and Threat Research"
|
||||||
|
- "Model Evaluation & Threat Research"
|
||||||
|
- "ARC Evals"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- AISafety
|
||||||
|
- AIEvaluation
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
summary: "AI model evaluation nonprofit led by Beth Barnes, spun off in December 2023 from Paul Christiano's Alignment Research Center, and partner with RAND in the Canary project funded through the Audacious Project."
|
||||||
|
start: 2023-12-04
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Beth Barnes]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "founder and chief executive"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Alignment Research Center]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "incubated as ARC Evals, 2022 to 2023"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Chris Painter]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "president"
|
||||||
|
fn: 5
|
||||||
|
- type: director_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Adam Gleave]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "adviser and board member"
|
||||||
|
fn: 5
|
||||||
|
- type: director_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Rajiv Dattani]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "adviser and board member"
|
||||||
|
fn: 5
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Ajeya Cotra]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "technical staff"
|
||||||
|
fn: 5
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Jasmine Dhaliwal]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "policy staff"
|
||||||
|
fn: 6
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[The Audacious Project]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 2024
|
||||||
|
role: "about 17 million dollars of the 38 million pooled for Canary"
|
||||||
|
fn: 8
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
METR (Model Evaluation and Threat Research) is a nonprofit that evaluates advanced AI models for dangerous capabilities. It began in 2022 as ARC Evals, a team that [[Beth Barnes]] led inside the [[Alignment Research Center]] (ARC), the alignment-theory organization run by [[Paul Christiano]], and on December 4, 2023, announced its separation into a standalone 501(c)(3) under its present name. The name, pronounced "meter," "nods to metrology," the science of measurement.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Spin-Off
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Announcing the separation on September 19, 2023, Barnes wrote that ARC had hired her in 2022 and incubated ARC Evals, that Christiano "remained focused on theory, but spent a significant minority of his time overseeing and advising on evaluations work," and that the team had completed independent evaluations of [[OpenAI]]'s GPT-4 and [[Anthropic]]'s Claude in partnership with the two companies and had partnered with the [[United Kingdom]]'s Foundation Model Taskforce. Both the September announcement and the December renaming carried the same note: "While we had initially planned for Paul Christiano to be a board member and advisor, he declined involvement in light of his new role as Head of Safety at the US AI Safety Institute."[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Before the separation, [[Open Philanthropy]] gave ARC 265,000 dollars for general support in March 2022 and 1,250,000 dollars over two years in November 2022.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Filings and People
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The organization is registered with the [[Internal Revenue Service]] as Model Evaluation And Threat Research, EIN 99-1219864, at a mailing address in [[Covina, California]]; its tax exemption was ruled on March 1, 2024. For 2024 it reported revenue of 13,639,155 dollars and assets of 6,544,206 dollars.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Its website lists Barnes as founder and chief executive, [[Chris Painter]], formerly a technology and national security fellow at the Defense Department's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, as president, [[Hjalmar Wijk]] as chief scientist and [[Nate Rush]] as chief technology officer. [[Adam Gleave]], chief executive of [[FAR.AI]], and [[Rajiv Dattani]] are listed as advisers and board members, and [[Alec Radford]], [[Chase Hasbrouck]], [[Marco Mascorro]] and [[Yoshua Bengio]] as advisers. Christiano is not listed. [[Ajeya Cotra]], formerly Open Philanthropy's senior program officer for AI risk, appears among the technical staff, not among the advisers or board.[^5] [[Jasmine Dhaliwal]], who leads federal government engagement and communications, was previously chief of staff at [[FutureHouse]] and, according to her METR biography, "was also Chief of Staff at Open Philanthropy."[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Funding and Canary
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
METR states that it has not accepted funding from AI companies, "though we make use of significant free tokens," and that it cannot accept donations "made by or at the direction of frontier AI company employees." It lists as funders [[The Audacious Project]], individuals from [[Jane Street]], the Sijbrandij Foundation, the [[Pew Charitable Trusts]], [[Schmidt Sciences]], the [[Packard Foundation]], the LaCentra-Sumerlin Foundation, the Astralis Foundation and Expa.org, the [[AI Security Institute]], the pooled funds of [[Longview Philanthropy]] and [[Effektiv Spenden]], recommendations by the [[Survival and Flourishing Fund]], and individuals including David Farhi, Geoff Ralston, [[Dylan Field]] and Steve Newman. Open Philanthropy is not named on the list.[^5] In August 2026 it said it had "raised commitments of around $71 million" in the preceding six months.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In October 2024 METR announced that the Audacious Project, a funding initiative housed at [[TED (conference)|TED]], had "catalyzed approximately $38 million of funding for Canary, a collaboration with METR and RAND focused on developing and deploying evaluations to monitor AI systems for dangerous capabilities," about 17 million dollars of it for METR.[^8] The Audacious Project names the [[RAND Corporation]]'s president, [[Jason Matheny]], and Barnes as the project's leads.[^9] In September 2025 Open Philanthropy gave RAND 10 million dollars over three years "in support of Canary, a collaboration between RAND and METR," on the recommendation of [[Trevor Levin]] of its AI governance and policy team.[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Barnes, Beth. "ARC Evals is spinning out from ARC." METR, September 19, 2023. https://metr.org/blog/2023-09-19-spin-out-announcement/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: METR, "ARC Evals is now METR," December 4, 2023. https://metr.org/blog/2023-12-04-metr-announcement/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Open Philanthropy, "Alignment Research Center, General Support," March 2022, and "Alignment Research Center, General Support (November 2022)," archived. http://web.archive.org/web/20220816132918id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/alignment-research-center-general-support/ ; http://web.archive.org/web/20230512114157id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/alignment-research-center-general-support-november-2022/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Model Evaluation And Threat Research," EIN 99-1219864, organization record. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/991219864
|
||||||
|
[^5]: METR, "About." https://metr.org/about ; team pages for Beth Barnes and Chris Painter. https://metr.org/team/beth-barnes/ ; https://metr.org/team/chris-painter/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: METR, "Jasmine Dhaliwal," team page. https://metr.org/team/jasmine-dhaliwal/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: METR, "Funding update," August 14, 2026. https://metr.org/blog/2026-08-14-funding-update/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: METR, "New Support Through The Audacious Project," October 9, 2024. https://metr.org/blog/2024-10-09-new-support-through-the-audacious-project/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: The Audacious Project, "Project Canary: A collaboration between METR and RAND." https://audaciousproject.org/grantees/project-canary-a-collaboration-between-metr-and-rand
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Open Philanthropy, "RAND Corporation, AI Evaluation and Testing," September 2025, archived. http://web.archive.org/web/20251025225511id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/rand-corporation-ai-evaluation-and-testing/
|
||||||
44
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/National Commercial Bank.md
Normal file
44
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/National Commercial Bank.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- Bank
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- SaudiArabia
|
||||||
|
- KhalidBinMahfouz
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia
|
||||||
|
- NCB
|
||||||
|
summary: "Jeddah bank controlled by Khalid bin Mahfouz, with which BCCI concealed more than 500 million dollars of lending to its major customers, a practice auditors found continuing in 1990."
|
||||||
|
location: "Jeddah, Saudi Arabia"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Khalid bin Mahfouz]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "with his family"
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: partner_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "held over 500 million dollars of BCCI lending off BCCI's books"
|
||||||
|
end: 1990-09
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The National Commercial Bank of [[Saudi Arabia]], based in [[Jeddah]], was controlled by [[Khalid bin Mahfouz]], whom the [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate Report]] called "the most powerful banker in the Middle East." The *[[Houston Chronicle]]* reported in 1992 that "Mahfouz and his family own the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia."[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The 1986 Share Purchases
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
According to the Senate report, the "forced sale" that the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) later contemplated for [[First American Bank|First American]] was "first considered, and attempted, by BCCI, in 1986 in connection with the purchases of BCCI and CCAH stock by the Khalid bin Mahfouz, head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia." Bin Mahfouz had bought shares of BCCI and of [[Credit and Commerce American Holdings]] (CCAH), the secret holding company of First American, "under a complex agreement that would permit him to purchase both banks, or to hold his interests temporarily with BCCI guaranteeing to buy them back at no risk to bin Mahfouz." The report continued: "After auditors for National Commercial Bank raised questions about bin Mahfouz's actions regarding BCCI, the transactions were fully unwound by 1989, leaving the First American problem for BCCI unsolved." In 1989 BCCI asked [[Clark Clifford]] to retain an investment banker to find buyers for First American, and [[Goldman Sachs]] was engaged in July of that year.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Parking
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
By 1990 the government of [[Abu Dhabi]] had become BCCI's controlling shareholder. "In September, 1990," the Senate report stated, "[[Price Waterhouse]] learned that BCCI had concealed further lending of over $500 million to its major customs by 'parking' that lending with a Middle Eastern bank, namely, the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia controlled by Khalid bin Mahfouz." The auditors also found that since the removal of BCCI's chief executive, [[Swaleh Naqvi]], the practice had continued "with the knowledge and approval of the Board representative of the controlling shareholders," the government of Abu Dhabi.[^3] Naqvi had been living under house arrest in Abu Dhabi since March or April 1990, where he kept some 6,000 files whose existence had not been disclosed to the auditors.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 7, "BCCI in the United States: Later Acquisitions." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/07later.htm
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Urban, Jerry. "Bush Said Friend's Arbusto Investment Was His Own, Not Saudi Money." *Houston Chronicle,* June 4, 1992. Reproduced at https://911timeline.s3.amazonaws.com/1990s/houstonchronicle060492.html
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 10, "BCCI and Its Accountants." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/10accounta.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 14, "Abu Dhabi: BCCI's Founding and Majority Stockholders." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/14abudhabi.htm
|
||||||
127
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Open Philanthropy Action Fund.md
Normal file
127
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Open Philanthropy Action Fund.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,127 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
aliases:
|
||||||
|
- "Coefficient Giving Action Fund"
|
||||||
|
- "OPAF"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- OpenPhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
- CoefficientGiving
|
||||||
|
- GoodVentures
|
||||||
|
- DustinMoskovitz
|
||||||
|
- CariTuna
|
||||||
|
- Lobbying
|
||||||
|
- PoliticalAdvocacy
|
||||||
|
summary: "The 501(c)(4) of Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, renamed Coefficient Giving Action Fund, run by the Good Ventures and Open Philanthropy officers, which received about 270 million dollars from 2016 to 2023."
|
||||||
|
location: "Palo Alto, California"
|
||||||
|
start: 2016
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Cari Tuna]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "president and director"
|
||||||
|
start: 2017
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Holden Karnofsky]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "executive director, then chief executive; co-CEO from 2021 to July 23, 2023"
|
||||||
|
start: 2017
|
||||||
|
end: 2023-07-23
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Holden Karnofsky]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "director"
|
||||||
|
start: 2018
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Alexander Berger]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "director from 2018; co-CEO from 2021; sole chief executive from July 2023"
|
||||||
|
start: 2018
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Dustin Moskovitz]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "director"
|
||||||
|
start: 2017
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Divesh Makan]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "secretary and director"
|
||||||
|
start: 2017
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Elie Hassenfeld]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "director"
|
||||||
|
start: 2017
|
||||||
|
end: 2018
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Tom Van Loben Sels]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "treasurer"
|
||||||
|
start: 2017
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Real Justice PAC]]"
|
||||||
|
start: 2019-10-29
|
||||||
|
role: "750,000 dollars to its non-contribution account"
|
||||||
|
fn: 6
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Arnold & Porter]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "federal lobbying on rapid antigen COVID-19 testing"
|
||||||
|
start: 2021-02-22
|
||||||
|
end: 2021-09
|
||||||
|
fn: 8
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Tarplin, Downs & Young]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "federal lobbying on pandemic preparedness and appropriations"
|
||||||
|
start: 2021
|
||||||
|
end: 2022-03
|
||||||
|
fn: 8
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Kyle House Group]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "federal lobbying on foreign assistance and State and Foreign Operations appropriations"
|
||||||
|
start: 2023
|
||||||
|
fn: 8
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Open Philanthropy Action Fund is the 501(c)(4) social welfare organization of [[Dustin Moskovitz]] and [[Cari Tuna]], whose donations are not tax-deductible. Its current legal name is Coefficient Giving Action Fund, following the November 2025 renaming of [[Open Philanthropy]] as Coefficient Giving. It holds EIN 81-2644663, with an [[Internal Revenue Service|IRS]] ruling date of August 1, 2018, and files in care of [[Apercen Partners]] LLC at 314 Lytton Avenue, [[Palo Alto]], the address from which the couple's private foundation, the Good Ventures Foundation, also files.[^1][^2][^3] In 2018 the *[[Stanford Social Innovation Review]]* writer [[Marc Gunther]] listed it among the seven entities in which Tuna served "as a director or major donor," describing it as a 501(c)(4) "that supports nonpartisan advocacy."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Officers
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The fund's officers and directors have included the three directors of the [[Good Ventures]] Foundation and the chief executives of Open Philanthropy, none of them paid by the fund. On the return for 2017 Tuna was president and director, [[Holden Karnofsky]] executive director, [[Divesh Makan]] secretary and director, and Moskovitz a director, with [[Tom Van Loben Sels]] as treasurer. [[Elie Hassenfeld]], who had cofounded [[GiveWell]] with Karnofsky, was a director in 2017 and 2018, and received 186,582 and 222,900 dollars in those years from a related organization. [[Alexander Berger]] joined as a director on the return for 2018, when Karnofsky was styled chief executive officer. Karnofsky and Berger were each listed as co-CEO and director for 2021 and 2022, matching their titles at Open Philanthropy from June 2021, and the return for 2023 listed both as "co-CEO thru 7/23/23," with Berger as chief executive thereafter. On the return for 2024 Berger was chief executive and director and Karnofsky, who had left Open Philanthropy's staff in April 2024 and joined [[Anthropic]] in January 2025, a director only.[^1][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Finances
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The fund reported 55.22 million dollars in contributions for 2016, its first year, and none for 2017. It reported contributions of 4.81 million dollars for 2018, 1.34 million for 2019, 16.0 million for 2020, 66.52 million for 2021, 48.82 million for 2022 and 77.71 million for 2023, about 270.4 million dollars over the eight years. Its expenses were 4.98 million dollars in 2016, 24.12 million in 2019, 89.32 million in 2021 and 77.51 million in 2023. From 2021 its liabilities exceeded its assets: at the end of 2021 it reported 54.06 million dollars in liabilities against 40.72 million in assets, and its net assets stood at minus 18.52 million dollars at the end of 2022 and minus 16.70 million at the end of 2023. It reported gross sales of securities of 51.37 million dollars in 2016, 63.97 million in 2021, 49.80 million in 2022 and 77.37 million in 2023.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Real Justice PAC
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On October 29, 2019, the fund gave 750,000 dollars to [[Real Justice PAC]], a [[San Francisco]] hybrid PAC with a non-contribution account, which reported the receipt on its 2019 year-end report as "Other Federal Receipts" to its "NON-CONTRIBUTION ACCOUNT," listing the fund's address as 314 Lytton Avenue, Suite 200, Palo Alto. It is the only itemized receipt from the fund in [[Federal Election Commission]] records.[^6] Tuna had given Real Justice PAC 1.9 million dollars in her own name between March 2017 and April 2019.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Lobbying
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The fund registered as a federal lobbying client on February 22, 2021, describing itself as a "non-profit studying and promoting effective giving for policy, advocacy and social welfare." Its first registrant, the law firm [[Arnold & Porter]] Kaye Scholer, reported 50,000 dollars in the first quarter of 2021 for work on "federal support for rapid antigen testing" and terminated the engagement in the third quarter with no further activity. [[Tarplin, Downs & Young]] reported 270,000 dollars in 2021 and a final 20,000 dollars in the first quarter of 2022 on "pandemic preparedness, innovation, supply chain, biodefense" and appropriations, naming S. 1260, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021; the budget resolution S. Con. Res. 14; H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act; and H.R. 5376, the Build Back Better Act.[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The [[Kyle House Group]] registered the fund in April 2023 for "education and advocacy in support of Open Philanthropy," amended to "education and advocacy regarding U.S. foreign assistance policies and programs, with a focus on cost-effectiveness and innovation." It reported 170,000 dollars for the last three quarters of 2023, 90,000 dollars a quarter in 2024 and 110,000 dollars a quarter from 2025, on the House and Senate State and Foreign Operations appropriations bills, including H.R. 4665 and H.R. 8771 in 2024, H.R. 5300 and H.R. 7006 in 2025, and H.R. 8595, the National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2027, in 2026. Through the second quarter of 2026 the three firms had reported about 1.53 million dollars in lobbying income from the fund, and none of the filings listed artificial intelligence as an issue.[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Coefficient Giving Action Fund," EIN 81-2644663, Form 990 Part VII officer listings for fiscal years 2016 to 2024, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/812644663
|
||||||
|
[^2]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Coefficient Giving Action Fund," EIN 81-2644663, organization record and Form 990 data for fiscal years 2016 to 2023, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/api/v2/organizations/812644663.json
|
||||||
|
[^3]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Good Ventures Foundation," EIN 46-1008520. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/461008520
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Gunther, Marc. "Giving in the Light of Reason." *Stanford Social Innovation Review,* Summer 2018. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/giving_in_the_light_of_reason
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Karnofsky, Holden. "Joining the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace." EA Forum, April 29, 2024, https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7gzgwgwefwBku2cnL/joining-the-carnegie-endowment-for-international-peace ; Mathews, Jessica. "Anthropic hired president Daniela Amodei's husband to work on the company's AI safety strategy." *Fortune,* February 13, 2025. https://fortune.com/2025/02/13/anthropic-hired-president-daniela-amodei-husband-ai-safety-responsible-scaling/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Federal Election Commission, Schedule A receipt from "Open Philanthropy Action Fund," 750,000 dollars, October 29, 2019, reported by Real Justice PAC (C00632554) on its 2019 year-end Form 3X, filed July 7, 2020, image 202007029244274196, retrieved September 23, 2026. http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?202007029244274196
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Federal Election Commission, itemized receipts (Schedule A, memo entries excluded) for contributor "Tuna, Cari," two-year periods 2016 through 2026, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://api.open.fec.gov/v1/schedules/schedule_a/?contributor_name=Tuna%2C+Cari
|
||||||
|
[^8]: U.S. Senate, Lobbying Disclosure Act database, client record 208642 and filings for client "Open Philanthropy Action Fund," 2021 to 2026, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://lda.senate.gov/api/v1/filings/?client_name=Open+Philanthropy+Action+Fund
|
||||||
|
|
@ -28,14 +28,15 @@ relations:
|
||||||
- type: head_of
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
with: "[[Holden Karnofsky]]"
|
with: "[[Holden Karnofsky]]"
|
||||||
reverse: true
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
role: "chief executive"
|
role: "chief executive; co-chief executive from June 2021; director of AI strategy from July 2023 until April 2024"
|
||||||
|
end: 2023-07
|
||||||
fn: 6
|
fn: 6
|
||||||
- type: head_of
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
with: "[[Alexander Berger]]"
|
with: "[[Alexander Berger]]"
|
||||||
reverse: true
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
role: "chief executive"
|
role: "co-chief executive from June 2021; sole chief executive from July 2023"
|
||||||
start: 2023
|
start: 2021-06
|
||||||
fn: 1
|
fn: 12
|
||||||
- type: funded
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
with: "[[OpenAI]]"
|
with: "[[OpenAI]]"
|
||||||
start: 2017-03
|
start: 2017-03
|
||||||
|
|
@ -57,6 +58,31 @@ relations:
|
||||||
start: 2025-11
|
start: 2025-11
|
||||||
role: "36 million dollars"
|
role: "36 million dollars"
|
||||||
fn: 1
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Redwood Research]]"
|
||||||
|
start: 2021-11
|
||||||
|
role: "four grants totaling 9.42 million dollars; grant investigator Nick Beckstead"
|
||||||
|
fn: 17
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Redwood Research]]"
|
||||||
|
start: 2022-08
|
||||||
|
role: "10.7 million dollars over 18 months"
|
||||||
|
fn: 17
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Redwood Research]]"
|
||||||
|
start: 2023-06
|
||||||
|
role: "5.3 million dollars"
|
||||||
|
fn: 17
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Redwood Research]]"
|
||||||
|
start: 2025-05
|
||||||
|
role: "1.1 million dollars for research collaborations"
|
||||||
|
fn: 17
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Alignment Research Center]]"
|
||||||
|
start: 2022-03
|
||||||
|
role: "1,515,000 dollars in 2022"
|
||||||
|
fn: 18
|
||||||
created: 2026-06-19
|
created: 2026-06-19
|
||||||
updated: 2026-09-23
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
@ -77,6 +103,18 @@ Muehlhauser was the grant investigator on the 55-million-dollar grant of January
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
In 2022 Open Philanthropy set aside nearly 3 million dollars for what became the first cohort of the [[Horizon Institute for Public Service]], which pays technology fellows placed in congressional offices, federal agencies and think tanks; the *Politico* reporter [[Brendan Bordelon]] wrote in October 2023 that Open Philanthropy had "effectively created" Horizon. A spokesperson, [[Mike Levine]], said Open Philanthropy "did not play an active role in screening, training, or placement of fellows" and that "the idea that we, our funders, or our grantees are motivated by pecuniary interests is misguided."[^6] By 2025 Coefficient Giving supplied the majority of the funding of the [[Tarbell Center for AI Journalism]], which places paid fellows in newsrooms and publishes the newsletter *Transformer*.[^10] In December 2025 *Semafor* reported that Open Philanthropy had been "bothered by media coverage of it, in particular a series of critical stories from Politico," and had hired political communications staff; its director of communications, [[Naina Bajekal]], was a former executive editor of *Time*, which had hosted four Tarbell fellows.[^11]
|
In 2022 Open Philanthropy set aside nearly 3 million dollars for what became the first cohort of the [[Horizon Institute for Public Service]], which pays technology fellows placed in congressional offices, federal agencies and think tanks; the *Politico* reporter [[Brendan Bordelon]] wrote in October 2023 that Open Philanthropy had "effectively created" Horizon. A spokesperson, [[Mike Levine]], said Open Philanthropy "did not play an active role in screening, training, or placement of fellows" and that "the idea that we, our funders, or our grantees are motivated by pecuniary interests is misguided."[^6] By 2025 Coefficient Giving supplied the majority of the funding of the [[Tarbell Center for AI Journalism]], which places paid fellows in newsrooms and publishes the newsletter *Transformer*.[^10] In December 2025 *Semafor* reported that Open Philanthropy had been "bothered by media coverage of it, in particular a series of critical stories from Politico," and had hired political communications staff; its director of communications, [[Naina Bajekal]], was a former executive editor of *Time*, which had hosted four Tarbell fellows.[^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Leadership
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Karnofsky led Open Philanthropy as chief executive until June 16, 2021, when he announced that the cofounder Alexander Berger had been "promoted to co-CEO" in "a dual-CEO structure, with both of us reporting directly to the board," Karnofsky keeping biosecurity and AI risk and Berger taking the portfolio renamed "Global Health and Wellbeing."[^12] On July 27, 2023, Karnofsky announced "on behalf of Open Philanthropy's board" that Berger was sole chief executive and that his own title was changing to director of AI strategy; Tuna, styled in the announcement as president, said that "Dustin and I have worked closely with Alexander for many years," and Berger recalled the time "when Holden, Cari, Dustin and I were starting to think about it together."[^13] Karnofsky left the staff on April 29, 2024, for the [[Carnegie Endowment for International Peace]], writing that the organization "would benefit from less ambiguity about my role in its funding decisions (especially given the fact that I'm married to the President of a major AI company)," and that he would remain on its board "at least for the time being."[^14] The same officers ran the [[Open Philanthropy Action Fund]], a 501(c)(4) whose returns list Karnofsky and Berger as co-CEOs for 2021 and 2022 and "co-CEO thru 7/23/23" for 2023.[^15]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Redwood Research
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Redwood Research, a [[Berkeley]] AI-alignment nonprofit, announced in October 2021 that its board was [[Nate Thomas]], Paul Christiano and Karnofsky; its returns list Karnofsky as treasurer for 2021 and treasurer and CFO for 2022, and as a director until November 2023.[^16] Open Philanthropy recommended four grants totaling 9.42 million dollars to Redwood in November 2021, with [[Nick Beckstead]] as grant investigator, then 10.7 million dollars in August 2022, 5.3 million in June 2023 and 1.1 million in May 2025, before the 36 million dollars of November 2025, a total of 62.52 million dollars. None of the four archived grant pages mentions Karnofsky's or Christiano's board seats. Open Philanthropy's senior program officer for AI risk, [[Ajeya Cotra]], was a Redwood director on its return for 2023 and until August 2024.[^16][^17]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### ARC and Canary
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Open Philanthropy gave the [[Alignment Research Center]], founded by Paul Christiano, 265,000 dollars for general support in March 2022 and 1,250,000 dollars over two years in November 2022. The center incubated ARC Evals, which spun off in December 2023 as [[METR]].[^18][^19][^20] In September 2025 Open Philanthropy gave the RAND Corporation 10 million dollars over three years for Canary, "a collaboration between RAND and METR to develop advanced methods for evaluating AI systems," on the recommendation of [[Trevor Levin]] of its AI governance and policy team.[^21]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[^1]: Smith, Ben. "Coefficient Giving's CEO on Silicon Valley's $40 billion philanthropy boom." *Semafor,* September 3, 2026. https://www.semafor.com/article/09/03/2026/coefficient-givings-ceo-on-silicon-valley-40-billion-philanthropy-boom
|
[^1]: Smith, Ben. "Coefficient Giving's CEO on Silicon Valley's $40 billion philanthropy boom." *Semafor,* September 3, 2026. https://www.semafor.com/article/09/03/2026/coefficient-givings-ceo-on-silicon-valley-40-billion-philanthropy-boom
|
||||||
|
|
@ -90,3 +128,13 @@ In 2022 Open Philanthropy set aside nearly 3 million dollars for what became the
|
||||||
[^9]: Open Philanthropy, "Center for AI Safety, General Support (2022)," grant of November 2022, archived January 2, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250102035329/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/center-for-ai-safety-general-support/
|
[^9]: Open Philanthropy, "Center for AI Safety, General Support (2022)," grant of November 2022, archived January 2, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250102035329/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/center-for-ai-safety-general-support/
|
||||||
[^10]: Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, "Ethics and Standards policies," February 20, 2026. https://www.tarbellcenter.org/ethics-and-standards
|
[^10]: Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, "Ethics and Standards policies," February 20, 2026. https://www.tarbellcenter.org/ethics-and-standards
|
||||||
[^11]: Tani, Max. "AI critics funded AI coverage at top newsrooms." *Semafor,* December 7, 2025. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/07/2025/ai-critics-funded-ai-coverage-at-top-newsrooms
|
[^11]: Tani, Max. "AI critics funded AI coverage at top newsrooms." *Semafor,* December 7, 2025. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/07/2025/ai-critics-funded-ai-coverage-at-top-newsrooms
|
||||||
|
[^12]: Karnofsky, Holden. "Open Philanthropy's New Co-CEO." Open Philanthropy blog, June 16, 2021, archived May 31, 2022. http://web.archive.org/web/20220531031049/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog/open-philanthropys-new-co-ceo
|
||||||
|
[^13]: Karnofsky, Holden. "Alexander Berger is Now Sole CEO of Open Philanthropy." Open Philanthropy, July 27, 2023, archived March 17, 2026. http://web.archive.org/web/20260317060608/https://coefficientgiving.org/research/alexander-berger-is-now-sole-ceo-of-open-philanthropy/
|
||||||
|
[^14]: Karnofsky, Holden. "Joining the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace." EA Forum, April 29, 2024. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7gzgwgwefwBku2cnL/joining-the-carnegie-endowment-for-international-peace
|
||||||
|
[^15]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Coefficient Giving Action Fund" (formerly Open Philanthropy Action Fund), EIN 81-2644663, organization record, Form 990 data and Part VII officer listings for fiscal years 2016 to 2024, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/812644663
|
||||||
|
[^16]: Thomas, Nate. "We're Redwood Research, we do applied alignment research, AMA." LessWrong, October 6, 2021, https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qHvHvBR8L6oycnMXe/we-re-redwood-research-we-do-applied-alignment-research-ama ; ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Redwood Research Group Inc," EIN 87-1702255, Form 990 Part VII officer listings for fiscal years 2021 to 2024, https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/871702255 ; Open Philanthropy, "Ajeya Cotra," team biography, archived November 11, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20231111135945/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/team/ajeya-cotra/
|
||||||
|
[^17]: Open Philanthropy grant pages, archived: "Redwood Research, General Support," November 2021, http://web.archive.org/web/20220811081927/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support/ ; "Redwood Research, General Support (2022)," http://web.archive.org/web/20221106183007/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support-2/ ; "Redwood Research, General Support (2023)," http://web.archive.org/web/20230912095528/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support-2023/ ; "Redwood Research, AI Safety Research Collaborations," May 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250810094119/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-ai-safety-research-collaborations/
|
||||||
|
[^18]: Open Philanthropy, "Alignment Research Center, General Support," March 2022, archived. http://web.archive.org/web/20220816132918id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/alignment-research-center-general-support/
|
||||||
|
[^19]: Open Philanthropy, "Alignment Research Center, General Support (November 2022)," archived. http://web.archive.org/web/20230512114157id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/alignment-research-center-general-support-november-2022/
|
||||||
|
[^20]: METR, "ARC Evals is now METR," December 4, 2023. https://metr.org/blog/2023-12-04-metr-announcement/
|
||||||
|
[^21]: Open Philanthropy, "RAND Corporation, AI Evaluation and Testing," September 2025, archived. http://web.archive.org/web/20251025225511id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/rand-corporation-ai-evaluation-and-testing/
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
141
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Public First Action.md
Normal file
141
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Public First Action.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,141 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
aliases:
|
||||||
|
- "Public First Action Inc."
|
||||||
|
- "Public First"
|
||||||
|
- "Public First PAC"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- SuperPAC
|
||||||
|
- AIPolicy
|
||||||
|
- Anthropic
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
summary: "501(c)(4) given 40 million dollars by Anthropic in 2026, linked to the Public First super PAC funded by Anthropic staff, which passes money to committees backing Alex Bores and other candidates."
|
||||||
|
start: 2025-12
|
||||||
|
location: "Washington, D.C."
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Anthropic]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "20 million dollars"
|
||||||
|
start: 2026-02
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Anthropic]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "a further 20 million dollars, 40 million in all"
|
||||||
|
start: 2026-07
|
||||||
|
fn: 4
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Dario Amodei]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "1,000,000 dollars to the Public First super PAC"
|
||||||
|
start: 2026-05
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Peter Lofgren]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "999,900 dollars to the Public First super PAC"
|
||||||
|
start: 2026-06
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Shauna Kravec]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "500,000 dollars to the Public First super PAC"
|
||||||
|
start: 2026-06
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Michael Cohen (researcher)]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "500,000 dollars to the Public First super PAC"
|
||||||
|
start: 2026-01
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Jan Leike]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "400,000 dollars to the Public First super PAC"
|
||||||
|
start: 2026-06
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Kate Woolverton]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "250,000 dollars to the Public First super PAC"
|
||||||
|
start: 2026-06
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Nicholas Joseph]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "250,000 dollars to the Public First super PAC"
|
||||||
|
start: 2026-06
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Jobs and Democracy PAC]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "transfers from the Public First super PAC"
|
||||||
|
start: 2026-03
|
||||||
|
end: 2026-06
|
||||||
|
fn: 7
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Defending Our Values PAC]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "300,000 dollars from the Public First super PAC"
|
||||||
|
start: 2026-02
|
||||||
|
fn: 7
|
||||||
|
- type: contractor_to
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bryson Gillette]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "vendor to the Public First super PAC and the Jobs and Democracy PAC"
|
||||||
|
fn: 7
|
||||||
|
- type: contractor_to
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Steptoe]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "legal services"
|
||||||
|
fn: 7
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Public First Action Inc. is a nonprofit political group in [[Washington, D.C.]], at 1930 18th Street NW, which, with a super PAC called Public First and two further political action committees, forms a group of committees spending on candidates in the 2026 elections.[^1][^2] On February 12, 2026, [[Anthropic]] announced that it was "contributing $20 million to Public First Action, a new bipartisan 501(c)(4) that will support public education about AI, promote safeguards, and ensure America leads the AI race." The organization, it wrote, was "founded and led both by Republican and Democratic strategists." Anthropic gave as the reason that "vast resources have flowed to political organizations that oppose these efforts," and listed among the policies the group would pursue "opposing preemption of state laws unless Congress enacts stronger safeguards" and "smart export controls on AI chips."[^3] On July 21, 2026, Anthropic announced "an additional $20 million to Public First Action, bringing our total support to $40 million," describing it as "a nonpartisan organization that educates the public about AI" and stating that both donations "cannot be used to influence the election of any candidate for federal, state, or local office."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Public First Action Inc. first filed with the [[Federal Election Commission]] on March 10, 2026, as a filer of electioneering communications, under identifier C30003586.[^1] No return for it appeared in ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer by September 2026.[^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Public First Super PAC
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Public First (FEC identifier C00930503), an independent-expenditure-only committee registered on December 12, 2025, with [[M'liss Hadley]] as treasurer, lists the [[Defending Our Values PAC]] as an affiliated committee. It reported 3,910,450 dollars in contributions and 4,416,899.94 dollars in disbursements. Its itemized donors were ten:[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- [[Dario Amodei]], chief executive of Anthropic, 1,000,000 dollars on May 4, 2026.
|
||||||
|
- Public First Action Inc., 1,000,000 dollars on February 24, 2026.
|
||||||
|
- [[Peter Lofgren]], member of technical staff at Anthropic, 999,900 dollars on June 8, 2026.
|
||||||
|
- [[Shauna Kravec]], member of technical staff at Anthropic, 500,000 dollars on June 11, 2026.
|
||||||
|
- [[Michael Cohen (researcher)|Michael Cohen]], a postdoctoral researcher at the [[University of California]], 500,000 dollars on January 8, 2026.
|
||||||
|
- [[Jan Leike]], member of technical staff at Anthropic, 400,000 dollars on June 8, 2026.
|
||||||
|
- [[Kate Woolverton]], software engineer at [[Google DeepMind]], 250,000 dollars on June 10, 2026.
|
||||||
|
- [[Nicholas Joseph]], member of technical staff at Anthropic, 250,000 dollars on June 10, 2026.
|
||||||
|
- [[Adam Jermyn]], research scientist at Anthropic, 5,000 dollars on June 22, 2026.
|
||||||
|
- [[Dillon Bowen]], member of technical staff at [[OpenAI]], 5,000 dollars on June 13, 2026.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Lofgren, Leike, Jermyn, Woolverton and Bowen also gave 5,000-dollar contributions to the political action committee of [[Americans for Responsible Innovation]].[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The super PAC passed most of its money to the [[Jobs and Democracy PAC]], in transfers that included 500,000 dollars on March 4, 750,000 dollars on May 22, 150,000 dollars on May 26, 400,000 dollars on June 3 and 2,000,000 dollars on June 12, 2026, and gave 300,000 dollars to the Defending Our Values PAC on February 11, 2026. Its vendors included [[The Money Wheel]] for compliance and accounting, [[Bryson Gillette]], [[Minnow Co]] for communications and the law firm [[Steptoe]].[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Jobs and Democracy PAC
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Jobs and Democracy PAC (FEC identifier C00928374) reported 20,725,723.37 dollars in receipts, 19,714,370.04 dollars in disbursements and 17,859,226.24 dollars in independent expenditures, placed through Bryson Gillette.[^8] Its principal beneficiary was [[Alex Bores]], the New York Assembly member and sponsor of the state's [[RAISE Act]], in the Democratic primary for [[New York]]'s 12th congressional district: the FEC's aggregation by candidate shows 15,026,937.99 dollars spent supporting him, in 114 transactions.[^8] On February 20, 2026, *[[TechCrunch]]* reported that Public First Action was "spending $450,000 to boost Bores" in the race, where the super PAC [[Leading the Future]] "has already poured $1.1 million into ads attacking Bores."[^9] Leading the Future's contributions, 75.1 million dollars by July 2026, came from [[Andreessen Horowitz]], [[Greg Brockman]] of OpenAI and Anna Brockman, and [[Perplexity]].[^10] Think Big, a committee to which Leading the Future transferred 20 million dollars, spent 8,145,697.68 dollars opposing him.[^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Jobs and Democracy PAC also reported expenditures supporting [[Valerie Foushee]] in [[North Carolina]], [[Brian Poindexter]] in [[Ohio]], [[Bob Brooks]] in [[Pennsylvania]] and [[Colin Allred]] in [[Texas]], and an expenditure opposing [[Jesse Jackson Jr.]] in [[Illinois]], whom Think Big supported.[^8][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Defending Our Values PAC
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Defending Our Values PAC (FEC identifier C00928390) reported 8,406,067.63 dollars in receipts, 7,430,648.98 dollars in disbursements and 7,064,884.59 dollars in independent expenditures. It supported [[Carlos De La Cruz Jr.]] and [[Alexandra Mealer]] in Texas, [[Celeste Maloy]] in [[Utah]], [[Rhett Marques]] in [[Alabama]], [[Kevin Hern]] in [[Oklahoma]], [[Scott Singer]] in [[Florida]], [[John Cowan]] in [[Georgia]] and [[Pete Ricketts]] in [[Nebraska]], and opposed [[Daniel Franzese]] in Florida and [[Briscoe Cain]] in Texas.[^8] Hern was also supported by American Mission, one of the two committees to which Leading the Future transferred most of its money.[^10][^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Federal Election Commission, committee C30003586, "Public First Action Inc.," retrieved September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C30003586/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Federal Election Commission, committee C00930503, "Public First," statement of organization, financial totals and itemized receipts (Schedule A), retrieved September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00930503/ ; https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?committee_id=C00930503
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Anthropic. "Anthropic is donating $20 million to Public First Action." February 12, 2026. https://www.anthropic.com/news/donate-public-first-action
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Anthropic. "Anthropic is donating another $20 million to Public First Action." July 21, 2026. https://www.anthropic.com/news/donation-public-first-action
|
||||||
|
[^5]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, search for "Public First Action," September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/search?q=%22Public+First+Action%22
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Federal Election Commission, itemized receipts (Schedule A) for committee C00893883, "Americans for Responsible Innovation Ltd. Political Action Committee," retrieved September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?committee_id=C00893883
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Federal Election Commission, itemized disbursements (Schedule B) for committee C00930503, 22 records, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?committee_id=C00930503
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Federal Election Commission, committees C00928374 ("Jobs and Democracy PAC") and C00928390 ("Defending Our Values PAC"), financial totals and independent expenditures (Schedule E), including the by-candidate aggregation for Alex Bores, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/independent-expenditures/?committee_id=C00928374 ; https://www.fec.gov/data/independent-expenditures/?committee_id=C00928390
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Bellan, Rebecca. "Anthropic-funded group backs candidate attacked by rival AI super PAC." *TechCrunch,* February 20, 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/20/anthropic-funded-group-backs-candidate-attacked-by-rival-ai-super-pac/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Federal Election Commission, committee C00916114, "Leading the Future," itemized receipts (Schedule A) and disbursements (Schedule B), retrieved September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?committee_id=C00916114 ; https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?committee_id=C00916114
|
||||||
|
[^11]: Federal Election Commission, committees C00923417 ("Think Big") and C00916692 ("American Mission"), independent expenditures (Schedule E), including the by-candidate aggregation for Alex Bores, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/independent-expenditures/?committee_id=C00923417 ; https://www.fec.gov/data/independent-expenditures/?committee_id=C00916692
|
||||||
108
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Redwood Research.md
Normal file
108
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Redwood Research.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,108 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "AI & Effective Altruism"
|
||||||
|
aliases:
|
||||||
|
- "Redwood Research Group"
|
||||||
|
- "Redwood Research Group Inc"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- AISafety
|
||||||
|
- OpenPhilanthropy
|
||||||
|
- EffectiveAltruism
|
||||||
|
- Longtermism
|
||||||
|
- Berkeley
|
||||||
|
summary: "Berkeley AI-alignment nonprofit founded in 2021, with Open Philanthropy co-CEO Holden Karnofsky on its board until 2023, to which Open Philanthropy gave 62.52 million dollars from 2021 to 2025."
|
||||||
|
location: "Berkeley, California"
|
||||||
|
start: 2021
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Nate Thomas]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "chief executive and president, later board chair"
|
||||||
|
start: 2021
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Buck Shlegeris]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "chief technology officer, chief executive from 2023"
|
||||||
|
start: 2021
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Holden Karnofsky]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "director; treasurer, later treasurer and CFO"
|
||||||
|
start: 2021
|
||||||
|
end: 2023-11
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Paul Christiano]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "director; secretary"
|
||||||
|
start: 2021
|
||||||
|
end: 2023-06
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Ajeya Cotra]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "director"
|
||||||
|
end: 2024-08
|
||||||
|
fn: 8
|
||||||
|
- type: member_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Ammon Bartram]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "director"
|
||||||
|
fn: 8
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bill Zito]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "chief operating officer"
|
||||||
|
start: 2021
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: employed_by
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Ryan Greenblatt]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "member of technical staff, later chief scientist"
|
||||||
|
fn: 8
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Redwood Research is a [[Berkeley]], California nonprofit that conducts AI alignment research. Its legal name is Redwood Research Group Inc, EIN 87-1702255, a 501(c)(3) whose tax exemption dates from September 1, 2021, filing in care of Nathaniel Thomas at 2150 Shattuck Avenue, Suite 1200, Berkeley.[^1] Announcing the group on October 6, 2021, [[Nate Thomas]] wrote: "Redwood Research is a longtermist research lab focusing on applied AI alignment. We're led by Nate Thomas (CEO), [[Buck Shlegeris]] (CTO), and [[Bill Zito]] (COO/software engineer); our board is Nate, [[Paul Christiano]] and [[Holden Karnofsky]]. We currently have ten people on staff."[^2] Karnofsky was then co-chief executive of [[Open Philanthropy]], which recommended its first grants to Redwood the following month and had given it 62.52 million dollars by the end of 2025.[^3][^4][^5][^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Board and Officers
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On Redwood's first return, for 2021, Nathaniel Thomas was chief executive and president, Michael Shlegeris (Buck Shlegeris) chief technology officer and William Zito chief operating officer, each paid 56,250 dollars; Holden Karnofsky was treasurer and Paul Christiano secretary, both unpaid. For 2022 the return listed Karnofsky as treasurer and CFO and Christiano as secretary, both unpaid, with Thomas as chairperson and president at 274,361 dollars and the highest-paid employee, the member of technical staff [[Daniel Ziegler]], at 384,872 dollars. The return for 2023 listed Christiano as a director "thru 6/23" and Karnofsky as a director "thru 11/23," with [[Ajeya Cotra]] as a director, Shlegeris as chief executive and director, and Thomas as director and board chair.[^1][^8] Cotra was then Open Philanthropy's senior program officer for "Potential Risks from Advanced AI," leading its "grantmaking on technical research that could help to clarify and reduce catastrophic risks from advanced AI."[^9] The return for 2024 listed Cotra as a director "thru 8/24," [[Ammon Bartram]] as a director, [[Ryan Greenblatt]] as chief scientist at 314,922 dollars, and Shlegeris as chief executive at 272,164 dollars.[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Christiano left the board in June 2023. In April 2024 the Commerce Secretary, [[Gina Raimondo]], named him head of AI safety at the [[U.S. AI Safety Institute]] at the [[National Institute of Standards and Technology]].[^10] In July 2023 Karnofsky's Open Philanthropy title changed from co-CEO to director of AI strategy; he left Redwood's board in November 2023, left Open Philanthropy's staff for the [[Carnegie Endowment for International Peace]] on April 29, 2024, and joined [[Anthropic]], whose president [[Daniela Amodei]] is his wife, in January 2025.[^11][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Open Philanthropy Grants
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Open Philanthropy recommended "four grants totaling $9,420,000 to Redwood Research for general support" in November 2021, describing it as "a new research institution that conducts research to better understand and make progress on AI alignment in order to improve the long-run future." The grant investigator was [[Nick Beckstead]], who had joined Open Philanthropy in 2014 and was its program officer for global catastrophic risks, and the page noted that "Redwood Research staff also reviewed this page prior to publication."[^3][^13] By the February 2022 launch of the [[FTX Future Fund]], financed by [[Sam Bankman-Fried]], Beckstead was its chief executive.[^14] Open Philanthropy followed with 10.7 million dollars "over 18 months" in August 2022, 5.3 million dollars in June 2023, 1.1 million dollars in May 2025 "to support collaborations with external researchers working on technical AI safety projects," and 36 million dollars in November 2025.[^4][^5][^6][^7] None of the four archived grant pages for 2021 to 2025 mentions Karnofsky, Christiano or a board relationship; Open Philanthropy's 2017 page for its 30-million-dollar grant to [[OpenAI]] had disclosed that Christiano and [[Dario Amodei]] were technical advisers who lived in Karnofsky's house.[^3][^4][^5][^6][^15]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Redwood reported contributions of 13.9 million dollars for 2021, 11.97 million for 2022 and 9.4 million for 2023. Its expenses were 2.34 million dollars in 2021, 12.76 million in 2022 and 12.59 million in 2023, and its total assets fell from 14.52 million dollars at the end of 2021 to 11.98 million at the end of 2023.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Constellation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On Redwood's return for 2022, [[James Bregan]] was listed as "Head of Constellation Operations," paid 234,234 dollars.[^8] The [[Constellation Institute]], EIN 93-2465256, a 501(c)(3) with a tax exemption dated January 1, 2024, files from the same address as Redwood, 2150 Shattuck Avenue, Suite 1200, Berkeley. Its return for 2023 listed Nathaniel Thomas as chief executive, Bregan as secretary and treasurer, William Zito as president, and [[Eli Rose]] and [[Tyler Storlie]] as directors; the compensation it paid Thomas (91,091 dollars), Bregan (103,953 dollars) and Zito (50,341 dollars) matches the "related organization" compensation reported for the same three men on Redwood's return for that year, and Redwood's own payments to them (183,333, 145,833 and 78,138 dollars) appear as related-organization pay on Constellation's. Constellation reported 4.9 million dollars in contributions for 2023. Its return for 2024 listed Thomas as chief executive "thru 7/24" and Zito as president "thru 11/24."[^8][^16]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Later Work
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In July 2026 OpenAI brought in Redwood Research to analyze an AI-agent attack on [[Hugging Face]].[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Redwood Research Group Inc," EIN 87-1702255, organization record and Form 990 data for fiscal years 2021 to 2023, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/api/v2/organizations/871702255.json
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Thomas, Nate. "We're Redwood Research, we do applied alignment research, AMA." LessWrong, October 6, 2021, linkpost of the EA Forum original. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qHvHvBR8L6oycnMXe/we-re-redwood-research-we-do-applied-alignment-research-ama
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Open Philanthropy, "Redwood Research, General Support," November 2021, archived August 11, 2022. http://web.archive.org/web/20220811081927/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support/
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Open Philanthropy, "Redwood Research, General Support (2022)," August 2022, archived November 6, 2022. http://web.archive.org/web/20221106183007/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support-2/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Open Philanthropy, "Redwood Research, General Support (2023)," June 2023, archived September 12, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20230912095528/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-general-support-2023/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Open Philanthropy, "Redwood Research, AI Safety Research Collaborations," May 2025, archived August 10, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250810094119/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/redwood-research-ai-safety-research-collaborations/
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Smith, Ben. "Coefficient Giving's CEO on Silicon Valley's $40 billion philanthropy boom." *Semafor,* September 3, 2026. https://www.semafor.com/article/09/03/2026/coefficient-givings-ceo-on-silicon-valley-40-billion-philanthropy-boom
|
||||||
|
[^8]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Redwood Research Group Inc," Form 990 Part VII officer listings for fiscal years 2021 to 2024, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/871702255
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Open Philanthropy, "Ajeya Cotra," team biography, archived November 11, 2023. http://web.archive.org/web/20231111135945/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/team/ajeya-cotra/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: National Institute of Standards and Technology, "U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo Announces Expansion of U.S. AI Safety Institute Leadership Team," April 16, 2024. https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2024/04/us-commerce-secretary-gina-raimondo-announces-expansion-us-ai-safety
|
||||||
|
[^11]: Karnofsky, Holden. "Alexander Berger is Now Sole CEO of Open Philanthropy." Open Philanthropy, July 27, 2023, archived March 17, 2026, http://web.archive.org/web/20260317060608/https://coefficientgiving.org/research/alexander-berger-is-now-sole-ceo-of-open-philanthropy/ ; Karnofsky, Holden. "Joining the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace." EA Forum, April 29, 2024. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7gzgwgwefwBku2cnL/joining-the-carnegie-endowment-for-international-peace
|
||||||
|
[^12]: Mathews, Jessica. "Anthropic hired president Daniela Amodei's husband to work on the company's AI safety strategy." *Fortune,* February 13, 2025. https://fortune.com/2025/02/13/anthropic-hired-president-daniela-amodei-husband-ai-safety-responsible-scaling/
|
||||||
|
[^13]: Open Philanthropy, "Nick Beckstead," team biography, archived September 24, 2021. http://web.archive.org/web/20210924070234/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/team/nick-beckstead
|
||||||
|
[^14]: "Announcing the Future Fund," reposted at Marginal Revolution, March 2022. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/03/announcing-the-future-fund.html
|
||||||
|
[^15]: Open Philanthropy, "OpenAI, General Support," grant of March 2017, archived January 1, 2025. http://web.archive.org/web/20250101012608/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/openai-general-support/
|
||||||
|
[^16]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Constellation Institute Inc," EIN 93-2465256, organization record, Form 990 data and Part VII officer listings for fiscal years 2023 and 2024, retrieved September 23, 2026. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/932465256
|
||||||
65
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Southern Poverty Law Center.md
Normal file
65
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Southern Poverty Law Center.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- SPLC
|
||||||
|
- SPLC Hatewatch
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- Nonprofit
|
||||||
|
- Extremism
|
||||||
|
- HateGroupClassification
|
||||||
|
- Alabama
|
||||||
|
summary: "Montgomery, Alabama nonprofit founded in 1971 by Morris Dees and Joseph Levin Jr. that classifies hate and extremist groups; it fired its co-founder Dees in 2019."
|
||||||
|
start: 1971
|
||||||
|
location: "Montgomery, Alabama"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Morris Dees]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 1971
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Joseph Levin Jr.]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 1971
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Richard Cohen (SPLC)|Richard Cohen]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
end: 2019-03
|
||||||
|
role: "president"
|
||||||
|
fn: 8
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a nonprofit organization in [[Montgomery, Alabama]], founded in 1971 by the civil rights lawyers [[Morris Dees]] and [[Joseph Levin Jr.]], which describes its founding purpose as "to ensure that the promise of the civil rights movement became a reality for all."[^1] It is best known for tracking and classifying groups it considers hate and extremist organizations, through its "extremist files" and its Hatewatch and *Intelligence Report* publications.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Litigation and Security
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Dees won a 7 million dollar judgment against the [[United Klans of America]] on behalf of Beulah Mae Donald, whose son had been murdered by Ku Klux Klan members in [[Mobile, Alabama|Mobile]]. The center's office was firebombed in 1983, and three Klansmen later pleaded guilty. It operates from a high-security building near the church where [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] first served as a pastor.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Finances
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The center's Form 990 for the fiscal year ending October 2025, filed on June 11, 2026, reported total revenue of 149,576,773 dollars, of which 127,336,336 dollars were contributions, 16,234,912 dollars came from the sale of assets and 5,571,519 dollars from investment income; expenses of 127,910,803 dollars; total assets of 921,762,979 dollars; and net assets of 886,648,000 dollars, up from 786,768,246 dollars a year earlier.[^3] Tax records for 2017 had shown about 450 million dollars in assets.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Classifications
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The center files the [[Pioneer Fund]] under its "White Nationalist" category. Its file describes the fund as founded in [[New York City]] in 1937 by [[Wickliffe Draper]], with an original mission of "race betterment" for people "deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons," and records its grants to [[Arthur Jensen]], [[J. Philippe Rushton]], [[Richard Lynn]] and [[Jared Taylor]]; its support for the American Immigration Control Foundation and the [[Federation for American Immigration Reform]], both of which the center lists as hate groups; the association of [[Roger Pearson]] with [[Willis Carto]]'s [[Liberty Lobby]]; Rushton's leadership of the fund from 2002 to 2012, during which he personally received more than 1 million dollars; the 286,372 dollars paid to Lynn's [[Ulster Institute for Social Research|Ulster Institute]] from 2002 to 2006; and [[Walter P. Kistler]] as a remaining major donor.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 2019 Hatewatch identified "Alexander Slavros," the founder of the [[Iron March]] forum, as [[Alisher Mukhitdinov]] through a domain registration record.[^5] The center's staff have testified before Congress on extremism: Heidi Beirich testified with the [[Anti-Defamation League]]'s Mark Pitcavage before a House Armed Services subcommittee on February 11, 2020, on [[The Base]], and at the House Armed Services Committee hearing on extremism in the armed forces on March 24, 2021, chief of staff [[Lecia Brooks]] testified that the center had "identified dozens of former and active military personnel among the membership of some of the country's most dangerous and violent white supremacist groups," including [[Atomwaffen Division]].[^6][^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### 2019 Leadership Crisis
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On March 14, 2019, the center announced that it had fired Dees, whose employment had ended the previous day, without giving a reason. A statement by its president, [[Richard Cohen (SPLC)|Richard Cohen]], said: "As a civil rights organization, the SPLC is committed to ensuring that the conduct of our staff reflects the mission of the organization and the values we hope to instill in the world. When one of our own fails to meet those standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action." Dees, then 82, said the matter involved a personnel issue: "I think the Southern Poverty Law Center is a very fine group and I devoted nearly 50 years of my life to it and I'm proud of its work. About being fired, all I can say is it wasn't my decision and I wish the center the best."[^2] The center announced "an immediate, top-to-bottom external review of our workplace culture and our past practices and policies," and less than two weeks after the firing Cohen stepped down, saying, "We've heard from our staff that we need to do a better job of making sure that our workplace embodies the values we espouse," and that the center had brought in [[Tina Tchen]], formerly chief of staff to [[Michelle Obama]], to conduct the review. The board chairman, Bryan Fair, said that "the walk towards justice must sometimes start at your own front door."[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Southern Poverty Law Center, "About." https://www.splcenter.org/about
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Southern Poverty Law Center dismisses co-founder," Associated Press, *PBS NewsHour,* March 14, 2019. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/southern-poverty-law-center-dismisses-co-founder
|
||||||
|
[^3]: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, "Southern Poverty Law Center Inc," EIN 63-0598743, Form 990 for the fiscal year ending October 2025. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/630598743
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Southern Poverty Law Center, "Pioneer Fund," extremist file. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/pioneer-fund/
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Hayden, Michael Edison. "Mysterious Neo-Nazi Advocated Terrorism for Six Years Before Disappearance," Southern Poverty Law Center Hatewatch, May 21, 2019. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/mysterious-neo-nazi-advocated-terrorism-six-years-disappearance/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: U.S. House Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Military Personnel, hearing of February 11, 2020, CHRG-116hhrg42962. https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/CHRG-116hhrg42962
|
||||||
|
[^7]: U.S. House Committee on Armed Services, "Extremism in the Armed Forces," H.A.S.C. No. 117-14, March 24, 2021, CHRG-117hhrg45011. https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/CHRG-117hhrg45011
|
||||||
|
[^8]: "Southern Poverty Law Center president Richard Cohen resigns after a co-founder was fired," *CNN,* March 24, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/24/us/southern-poverty-law-center-splc-dees-cohen
|
||||||
|
|
@ -28,8 +28,17 @@ relations:
|
||||||
reverse: true
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
role: "executive director"
|
role: "executive director"
|
||||||
fn: 1
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Survival and Flourishing Fund]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "between 100,000 and 1 million dollars"
|
||||||
|
fn: 10
|
||||||
|
- type: funded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[EA Infrastructure Fund]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
fn: 10
|
||||||
created: 2026-09-22
|
created: 2026-09-22
|
||||||
updated: 2026-09-22
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The Tarbell Center for AI Journalism was launched in 2022 and funds work by early-career technology journalists, in its words to help society "navigate the emergence of increasingly advanced AI."[^1] Its ethics policy of 2026 covers "all Tarbell staff, fellows, and grantees, including our in-house publication [[Transformer]]," and states: "As of 2025, the majority of our funding originates with a single funder, [[Coefficient Giving]] (formerly known as Open Philanthropy)." Donors, it says, "have no role in reviewing, vetting, or approving our staff, fellows, or grantees," and fellows must disclose their Tarbell association on their author pages. Tarbell staff may not own individual shares of companies that develop or deploy advanced AI.[^2]
|
The Tarbell Center for AI Journalism was launched in 2022 and funds work by early-career technology journalists, in its words to help society "navigate the emergence of increasingly advanced AI."[^1] Its ethics policy of 2026 covers "all Tarbell staff, fellows, and grantees, including our in-house publication [[Transformer]]," and states: "As of 2025, the majority of our funding originates with a single funder, [[Coefficient Giving]] (formerly known as Open Philanthropy)." Donors, it says, "have no role in reviewing, vetting, or approving our staff, fellows, or grantees," and fellows must disclose their Tarbell association on their author pages. Tarbell staff may not own individual shares of companies that develop or deploy advanced AI.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
@ -48,6 +57,14 @@ On May 23, 2024, *Transformer*, edited by [[Shakeel Hashim]], published an artic
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
On September 2, 2026, *Effort*, a publication founded by Chau, published an unsigned investigation titled "How [[Effective Altruism]] Bought the Media." It stated that all six participants in a *Guardian* article on the forecast "[[AI 2027]]," including the journalist and the publisher, were paid by three donors: Coefficient Giving, [[Jaan Tallinn]]'s [[Survival and Flourishing Fund]] and [[Effective Ventures]]. It wrote that Coefficient paid the journalist's salary through the Tarbell Fellowship and had given the *Guardian* more than 3 million dollars, that "Coefficient pays the salaries of two dozen journalists at major news outlets," and that "58/100" of the *Time 100* profiles were written by Tarbell-paid journalists. It also tabulated grants from Open Philanthropy, [[EA Funds]], the Future of Life Institute, the [[Long-Term Future Fund]] and the [[Center for AI Safety]] to YouTube channels, among them [[Rational Animations]] and [[Robert Miles AI Safety]].[^4][^5] Chau promoted it the same day on X: "BREAKING: AI Doomers Are Buying Potemkin Articles."[^6]
|
On September 2, 2026, *Effort*, a publication founded by Chau, published an unsigned investigation titled "How [[Effective Altruism]] Bought the Media." It stated that all six participants in a *Guardian* article on the forecast "[[AI 2027]]," including the journalist and the publisher, were paid by three donors: Coefficient Giving, [[Jaan Tallinn]]'s [[Survival and Flourishing Fund]] and [[Effective Ventures]]. It wrote that Coefficient paid the journalist's salary through the Tarbell Fellowship and had given the *Guardian* more than 3 million dollars, that "Coefficient pays the salaries of two dozen journalists at major news outlets," and that "58/100" of the *Time 100* profiles were written by Tarbell-paid journalists. It also tabulated grants from Open Philanthropy, [[EA Funds]], the Future of Life Institute, the [[Long-Term Future Fund]] and the [[Center for AI Safety]] to YouTube channels, among them [[Rational Animations]] and [[Robert Miles AI Safety]].[^4][^5] Chau promoted it the same day on X: "BREAKING: AI Doomers Are Buying Potemkin Articles."[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Funding
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The fellowship began as a project of [[Training for Good]], to which Open Philanthropy recommended a grant of 575,000 dollars in September 2023 "to support the Tarbell Fellowship, a one-year program for early-career journalists interested in covering emerging technologies (especially artificial intelligence)," including general operating support and an extension for a current fellow. Open Philanthropy then gave the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism 816,000 dollars in general support in November 2024, noting that this "follows our September 2023 support for the Tarbell Fellowship (the project which later became Tarbell)," and 2,888,000 dollars for operating costs in August 2025, the three grants totalling 4,279,000 dollars. The first two grants were filed under Open Philanthropy's focus area "Navigating Transformative AI" and the third under "Global Catastrophic Risks Capacity Building."[^7][^8][^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In November 2025 the *Washington Examiner* reporter [[Robert Schmad]] listed Tarbell's funders as Open Philanthropy, the [[EA Infrastructure Fund]], the Future of Life Institute and the Survival and Flourishing Fund, and reported that Tarbell disclosed receiving between 100,000 and 1 million dollars each from the Future of Life Institute, which is itself funded by Open Philanthropy, and from the Survival and Flourishing Fund, one of whose co-founders, [[Andrew Critch]], posts about AI risk and grant opportunities on the main effective altruism forum. The Future of Life Institute's donation did not appear on its most recent tax filing, which covered activities through the end of 2023. The fellowship grew from seven fellows in 2024 to sixteen in 2025, placed at *Bloomberg*, *Time*, *The Information*, *The Guardian*, NBC News, *The Verge* and the *Los Angeles Times*; NBC News took on its fellow in September 2025, a month before announcing large layoffs. Crosson told the paper: "The Tarbell Center maintains strict editorial independence from all funders and donors... Our fellows and their host newsrooms maintain complete autonomy from Tarbell, and we're proud of the role we play in supporting independent journalism from a wide range of perspectives."[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Will Henshall]], a Tarbell fellow placed at *Time* in 2023 and 2024, joined Coefficient Giving, as Open Philanthropy was later renamed, as a program officer for AI governance and policy in July 2024.[^11][^12]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Footnotes
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[^1]: Tani, Max. "AI critics funded AI coverage at top newsrooms." *Semafor,* December 7, 2025. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/07/2025/ai-critics-funded-ai-coverage-at-top-newsrooms
|
[^1]: Tani, Max. "AI critics funded AI coverage at top newsrooms." *Semafor,* December 7, 2025. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/07/2025/ai-critics-funded-ai-coverage-at-top-newsrooms
|
||||||
|
|
@ -56,3 +73,9 @@ On September 2, 2026, *Effort*, a publication founded by Chau, published an unsi
|
||||||
[^4]: Effort Investigations Desk. "How Effective Altruism Bought the Media." *Effort,* September 2, 2026. https://www.effort.news/tarbell
|
[^4]: Effort Investigations Desk. "How Effective Altruism Bought the Media." *Effort,* September 2, 2026. https://www.effort.news/tarbell
|
||||||
[^5]: Effort News, "About." https://www.effort.news/about
|
[^5]: Effort News, "About." https://www.effort.news/about
|
||||||
[^6]: Chau, Brian (@brianchau57). Post on X, September 2, 2026. https://x.com/brianchau57/status/2095128785955987698
|
[^6]: Chau, Brian (@brianchau57). Post on X, September 2, 2026. https://x.com/brianchau57/status/2095128785955987698
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Open Philanthropy, "Training for Good, Operating Costs and Tarbell Fellowship," September 2023, archived. http://web.archive.org/web/20240225122410id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/training-for-good-operating-costs-and-tarbell-fellowship/
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Open Philanthropy, "Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, General Support," November 2024, archived. http://web.archive.org/web/20251030212332id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/tarbell-center-for-ai-journalism-general-support/
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Open Philanthropy, "Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, Operating Costs," August 2025, archived. http://web.archive.org/web/20251007113445id_/https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/tarbell-center-for-ai-journalism-operating-costs/
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Schmad, Robert. "Tech donors fund media fellowship shaping coverage of their pet issue." *Washington Examiner,* November 14, 2025. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/3884823/tech-donors-fund-media-fellowship-shaping-coverage-pet-issue/
|
||||||
|
[^11]: Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, "Will Henshall." https://www.tarbellcenter.org/fellows/will-henshall
|
||||||
|
[^12]: Coefficient Giving, "Will Henshall," team page, archived May 23, 2026. http://web.archive.org/web/20260523181838id_/https://coefficientgiving.org/team/will-henshall/
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
79
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/The Wall Street Journal.md
Normal file
79
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/The Wall Street Journal.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,79 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- Media
|
||||||
|
- Newspaper
|
||||||
|
- DowJones
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- UnitedStates
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Wall Street Journal
|
||||||
|
- WSJ
|
||||||
|
summary: "Dow Jones & Company's New York financial daily, launched by Charles Dow and Edward Jones in 1889, whose 1991 and 1992 BCCI reporting the Senate cited repeatedly."
|
||||||
|
start: 1889
|
||||||
|
location: "New York City, USA"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Charles Dow]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 1889
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: founded
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Edward Jones]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 1889
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Dow Jones & Company]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
start: 1889
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Clarence Barron]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "bought Dow, Jones & Company, including the Journal, for $130,000"
|
||||||
|
start: 1902-03
|
||||||
|
end: 1921
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*The Wall Street Journal* is a daily financial newspaper published in [[New York City]] by [[Dow Jones & Company]]. [[Charles Dow]] launched it with [[Edward Jones]] in the summer of 1889, seven years after the two founded Dow, Jones & Company with [[Charles Bergstresser]]. In 1991 and 1992 its reporters covered the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI), and the Senate report on the bank cited the paper's articles on BCCI's founding, its American lawyers, its commodities affiliate [[Capcom]] and [[Abu Dhabi]]'s American investments.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Dow Jones and the Founding
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Dow and Jones arrived in New York from [[Rhode Island]] in 1879, "with a liking for journalism and an ear for financial gossip." Dow had worked for several newspapers before teaming up with Jones and Bergstresser to found Dow, Jones & Company in 1882. In 1885 Dow became a member of the [[New York Stock Exchange]], where he formulated what became known as the Dow theory of stock market movements. Jones left the *Journal* in January 1899.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In March 1902 [[Clarence Barron]] bought Dow, Jones & Company, including its news agencies in Boston and New York and the *Wall Street Journal*, for 130,000 dollars; there was no public announcement, and Dow and Bergstresser resigned their directorships. Dow died of a heart attack at 51 at his Brooklyn home in December of that year. [[Hugh Bancroft]] joined the board and in 1907 married Barron's daughter Jane. When Barron died in 1921 he left an estate of 1.5 million dollars to [[Jane Bancroft]], who had inherited the majority shares on her mother's death in 1918; Hugh Bancroft became president.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The paper's circulation fell to a low of 28,000 in 1938, and about that time its editor [[Casey Hogate]] broadened it from strictly financial reports to general news; by 1961 circulation approached 800,000. In the 1980s electronic publishing replaced the *Journal* as the company's principal growth business, and Dow Jones acquired the quotation service [[Telerate]]. The Bancroft family long followed a policy of noninterference in Dow Jones's operations, in part to protect the editorial independence of its publications.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI Coverage
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The report of Senators [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]] opened its chapter on the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] by noting that the department's handling of BCCI had "been criticized in numerous editorials in major newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times."[^3] Among the *Journal* pieces the report cited were:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- [[Najam Sethi]], "BCCI Founder: These Things Happen," July 29, 1991, cited for the account that [[Agha Hasan Abedi]] flew to Abu Dhabi in 1966 with one assistant and an oriental rug and secured [[Zayed bin Sultan AL-Nahayan|Sheikh Zayed]]'s permission for the [[United Bank Limited|United Bank]] to open a branch there.[^4]
|
||||||
|
- [[Jill Abramson]], "Clark Clifford and a Legal Armada Gave BCCI a Patina of Respectability," August 1, 1991.[^5]
|
||||||
|
- A report that the former senator [[Charles Mathias]], chairman of the audit committee of [[First American Bank|First American]], wrote to [[Clark Clifford]] on August 2, 1991, urging him and [[Robert Altman]] to resign: "In recent weeks, there has been a worrisome outflow of deposits which continues to this day," and "you and Bob are perceived as the link between BCCI ...and First American."[^5]
|
||||||
|
- A report of October 23, 1991, quoting a member of the late [[Zia ul-Haq|General Zia]]'s cabinet: "It was Arab money that was pouring through BCCI."[^6]
|
||||||
|
- [[Peter Truell]]'s front-page article of November 22, 1991, on Capcom, cited for the account of "mirror image" trading by [[Syed Ziauddin Ali Akbar]].[^7]
|
||||||
|
- An article on payments of 100,000 dollars made in July and August 1988 by Capcom to [[Richard Fear]], formerly of [[Price Waterhouse]] in London, which Price Waterhouse told the Senate it first learned of in September 1991.[^8]
|
||||||
|
- A "lengthy article" of May 20, 1992, on the Washington law firm of [[Patton, Boggs & Blow]], which it said had "served as headquarters for a billion-dollar enterprise called Real Estate Operations, Inc., owned by Sheikh Zayed's Abu Dhabi government," holding nearly one billion dollars in American investments through 22 real estate investment companies, 10 partnerships and three shell corporations.[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The report also recorded, citing an aide to former Treasury Secretary [[Donald Regan]], that Regan told a *Journal* reporter who reached him at home in August 1991 that he had not been shown a 1985 [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] memorandum on BCCI, and that Mulholland, the CIA's liaison officer in the Treasury, later advised him that CIA records showed Mulholland had provided it to him.[^6] It cited the *Journal* for the statement of [[Charles W. Hostler]], [[United States]] ambassador to [[Bahrain]], that he had from time to time given financial advice to [[Mohammed Hammoud]].[^10] Its account of the 1978 attempt by [[Bert Lance]] and BCCI clients to take over [[Financial General Bankshares]] cited the *Journal* of February 14, 1978.[^11]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Dow Jones & Company, Inc.," *International Directory of Company Histories* (St. James Press), reproduced at company-histories.com, accessed September 23, 2026. https://www.company-histories.com/Dow-Jones-Company-Inc-Company-History.html
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 8, "BCCI and Law Enforcement: The Justice Department and the US Customs Service." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/08just.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 3, "The Origin and Early Years of BCCI," n. 16. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 17, "BCCI's Lawyers and Lobbyists." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/17law.htm
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 11, "BCCI, The CIA and Foreign Intelligence." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 21, "Capcom," n. 28. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/21capcom.htm
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 10, "BCCI and Its Accountants." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/10accounta.htm
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 14, "Abu Dhabi: BCCI's Founding and Majority Shareholders." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/14abudhabi.htm
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 15, "Mohammed Hammoud: BCCI's Flexible Front-Man." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/15hammoud.htm
|
||||||
|
[^11]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 6, "BCCI in the United States: Initial Entry and FGB and NBG Takeovers," n. 50. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/06early.htm
|
||||||
58
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Touche Ross.md
Normal file
58
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Touche Ross.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- Accountancy
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- Liquidation
|
||||||
|
summary: "British accountancy firm appointed provisional liquidator of BCCI in the United Kingdom after the bank's closure on July 5, 1991, and described in Parliament as lead liquidator of its Luxembourg holding company."
|
||||||
|
location: "London, United Kingdom"
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: investigated
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]]"
|
||||||
|
role: "provisional liquidator in the United Kingdom; lead liquidator"
|
||||||
|
start: 1991-07
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Michael Crystal]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "Queen's Counsel for the English court-appointed liquidators"
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: represented
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Nussbaum and Wald]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "Washington counsel to the BCCI liquidators"
|
||||||
|
start: 1992
|
||||||
|
fn: 5
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Touche Ross was a British firm of accountants. After the [[Bank of England]] and regulators in other jurisdictions closed the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) on Friday, July 5, 1991, the [[United Kingdom]] courts, on a petition by the Bank of England, appointed Touche Ross provisional liquidator of the bank.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Appointment
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury, [[John Maples]], told the [[House of Commons]] on July 8, 1991: "In the United Kingdom, following a petition made by the Bank of England, the United Kingdom courts have appointed Touche Ross as provisional liquidator. The effect of this action is that deposits with the United Kingdom branches of BCCI SA are frozen." The action followed "prima facia evidence, contained in a report commissioned by the Bank of England and recently received, of widespread fraud in a number of jurisdictions stretching back over a number of years." The Bank of England met the main high street banks and the liquidator that morning to arrange help for small businesses that had banked with BCCI, and Maples announced that "Touche Ross is willing for six weeks to give free advice to any small business affected by the BCCI winding-up." Answering a member, he stated that "The lead liquidator is the liquidator of the holding company in Luxembourg," naming Touche Ross, and described the liquidators in the other countries as its agents, adding that this was "perhaps" not "a proper, technical, legal description."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Senate report of Senators [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]] recorded that liquidators were appointed by the District Court of [[Luxembourg]], where BCCI was incorporated, and quoted the chief liquidator, [[Brian Smouha]], whom its list of witnesses described as "Court Appointed Fiduciary for BCCI Holdings (Luxembourg) SA and Bank of Credit and Commerce International, S.A., London, England."[^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Findings
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Senate report stated that the findings of BCCI's former auditors, [[Price Waterhouse]], "were later affirmed by its successor accountants, Touche Ross, who handled the liquidation of BCCI. A year after becoming liquidator, Touche Ross noted that the true picture of BCCI's activities was distorted by such practices as 'loan parking,' 'artificial fund transfers,' the provision of multiple loans to a customer, each secured by the same property, and many similar improper practices." Its source was the firm's *Report on the Activities Undertaken in Luxembourg and the UK Covering the Liquidation Period Up to 15 April 1992*.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Abu Dhabi
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Smouha testified that the liquidators' "responsibility is to use the resources in the liquidation estates to maximize recoveries to be made available to creditors and depositors. [A]s far as we are able consistent with that responsibility, we endeavor to cooperate with numerous investigative authorities in a number of countries." The Senate report drew the conclusion that where investigation threatened recoveries, the liquidators were bound "to sacrifice the investigation and uncovering the truth about what happened to the goal of maximizing funds to return to the creditors."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Smouha testified that after initially being denied access, the liquidators had since late summer 1991 seen documents of BCCI's Central Credit Division in [[Abu Dhabi]] for loan recovery only, that a court-appointed receiver there would not let them remove documents, and that key former employees under arrest in Abu Dhabi were in the control of its public prosecutor. Under the settlement the liquidators negotiated with the government of Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi was to contribute 1.7 billion dollars and would pursue claims against BCCI's former auditors, certain former solicitors and certain individuals formerly responsible for its management, with the liquidators sharing in half of any recovery. The liquidators' barrister, [[Michael Crystal]], testified that the arrangements "will not prevent regulators in jurisdictions who have access to international treaties . . . from continuing to pursue criminals and bring them to justice." The report called this testimony "technically correct, but as a practical matter, misleading."[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The liquidators' communications with the subcommittee in June 1992 went through the Washington law firm [[Nussbaum and Wald]].[^5] The English liquidators of BCCI SA were the claimants in [[Three Rivers District Council v Bank of England]], an action alleging dishonest supervision by the Bank of England, which they abandoned on November 2, 2005, the 256th day of trial, after twelve years of litigation.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: "Bank of Credit and Commerce International." House of Commons Debates (Hansard), vol. 194, July 8, 1991 (statement of the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, John Maples). https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1991/jul/08/bank-of-credit-and-commerce-international
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 14, "Abu Dhabi: BCCI's Founding and Majority Stockholders" (citing testimony of Brian Smouha and Michael Crystal, S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 5). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/14abudhabi.htm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* Appendices. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/24appendic.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 4, "BCCI's Criminality." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 11, "BCCI, the CIA and Foreign Intelligence," note 98. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm
|
||||||
|
[^6]: *Three Rivers District Council and Others v. The Governor and Company of the Bank of England* [2006] EWHC 816 (Comm), judgment of Mr Justice Tomlinson, April 12, 2006. https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Comm/2006/816.html (archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20260203100053/https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Comm/2006/816.html)
|
||||||
81
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/United Bank Limited.md
Normal file
81
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/United Bank Limited.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Organization
|
||||||
|
- FinancialInstitution
|
||||||
|
- Pakistan
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- Nationalization
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- United Bank
|
||||||
|
- UBL
|
||||||
|
summary: "Pakistani bank founded by Agha Hasan Abedi in 1959, nationalized under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1974, and sold in 2002 to the Abu Dhabi Group and Bestway."
|
||||||
|
start: 1959
|
||||||
|
location: "Pakistan"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
relations:
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Agha Hasan Abedi]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "president and chairman"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: head_of
|
||||||
|
with: "[[I. I. Chundrigar]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "chairman of the board"
|
||||||
|
start: 1959
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Saigol family]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "principal shareholders"
|
||||||
|
fn: 1
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Pakistan]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "nationalized under the Banks (Nationalization) Act, 1974"
|
||||||
|
start: 1974-01-01
|
||||||
|
fn: 2
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Abu Dhabi Group]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "51 percent, jointly with Bestway Holdings"
|
||||||
|
start: 2002-09
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
- type: owned
|
||||||
|
with: "[[Bestway Holdings]]"
|
||||||
|
reverse: true
|
||||||
|
role: "51 percent, jointly with the Abu Dhabi Group"
|
||||||
|
start: 2002-09
|
||||||
|
fn: 3
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
United Bank Limited is a [[Pakistan|Pakistani]] commercial bank founded by [[Agha Hasan Abedi]], who built it into the second largest bank in Pakistan before founding the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) in 1972. The government of [[Zulfikar Ali Bhutto]] nationalized it under the Banks (Nationalization) Act, 1974, and in 2002 the government sold a controlling stake to the [[Abu Dhabi Group]] and Bestway Holdings.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Founding
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A 1982 internal BCCI history by Khusro Karamat Elley recorded that "in 1958 he left Habib Bank and was able to get together Investors to form a new bank to be known as United Bank," and that the central bank, which licensed it, "was quite happy with Mr. Abedi's statements that he wanted to make this the largest bank in Pakistan." The [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate report]] dated its formation to 1959. According to Elley, "within ten years, United Bank became the second largest bank in Pakistan," with branches overseas "in quite a few countries including the Middle East."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
When the bank was formed, Abedi appointed as chairman of its board [[I. I. Chundrigar]], a former prime minister of Pakistan and a close confidant of [[Ayub Khan]], and he later hired Ayub Khan's minister of information as "publisher" of a BCCI promotional magazine, *South*.[^1] Abedi had secured the account of the [[Saigol family]], one of Pakistan's leading industrial groups, at [[Habib Bank]], and took it with him to United Bank, "making the Saigol's United's principal shareholders." [[Price Waterhouse]] later attributed the family's loyalty to "Abedi's willingness to reschedule millions in loans to the Saigols whenever they found it inconvenient to repay them." The report found that through such relationships Abedi built United Bank into the second largest bank in the country, "complete with a protocol department responsible for taking care of the personal needs of VIPs," and that he served as its founder, president and chairman.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Abu Dhabi
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
By one account, reported by Najam Sethi in *[[The Wall Street Journal]]*, Abedi flew to [[Abu Dhabi]] in 1966 with one assistant and an oriental rug to seek the right to take deposits from the Pakistani workers employed there, and obtained Sheikh [[Zayed bin Sultan AL-Nahayan|Zayed]]'s permission for United Bank to open a branch. By a second account, from Kochan and Whittington's *Bankrupt: The BCCI Fraud*, Abedi won over Zayed by arranging his first bustard hunting and falconry trip in Pakistan, waiting outside the government guest house while the Sheikh napped. By 1967, according to the Senate report, Abedi was running the Sheikh's financial life.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The report also found that BCCI's handling of prostitution for the Al-Nahyan family "was carried over from practices originally instituted by Abedi at the United Bank," working with Begum Asghari Rahim, and that BCCI's protocol department operated "first at the United Bank and later at BCCI."[^1][^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Nationalization
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
According to the Senate report, from the time Bhutto took power he threatened to nationalize the banks, and when he learned that Abedi had begun forming BCCI outside Pakistan, "he not only went ahead with plans for nationalizing the United Bank, but promptly placed Abedi under house arrest."[^1] The Banks (Nationalization) Act, 1974 (Act XIX of 1974), "shall be deemed to have taken effect on the 1st day of January, 1974," and overrode any contrary law, contract or articles of association. Its schedule of fourteen nationalized banks listed United Bank Limited as item ten, with Habib Bank, the [[National Bank of Pakistan]] and [[Muslim Commercial Bank]].[^2] The Senate report found that nationalization supplied BCCI with "a group of like-minded Pakistanis to operate the bank."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Privatization
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On September 5, 2002, the Abu Dhabi Group and Bestway Holdings bought a 51 percent stake in the state-run bank for 12.35 billion rupees (208 million dollars), as the only bidders in the final stage of an auction held by the government's Privatisation Commission; Muslim Commercial Bank and Union Bank, which had taken part earlier, made no new offers. The government had rejected the Abu Dhabi Group's earlier offer of 12.30 billion rupees. Reuters described United Bank as Pakistan's fourth-largest bank, with 1,101 branches and a nine percent market share; non-performing loans stood at 13 to 14 percent of its 88 billion rupees in loans on December 31, 2001, after government injections of 29 billion rupees over three years. Privatisation Minister Altaf Saleem said the process had yielded 350 million rupees more than Muslim Commercial Bank's earlier offer of 12 billion rupees. Pervez Shahid, the Abu Dhabi Group's executive in charge, said: "We believe it's a profitable business." The group also owned a small commercial bank in Pakistan, [[Bank Alfalah|Alfalah Bank]].[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 3, "The Origin and Early Years of BCCI" (citing Khusro Karamat Elley, "Growth of International Banking: Case Study of Bank of Credit and Commerce Intl," October 27, 1982, Senate Document 385; testimony of Masihur Rahman, S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 1, pp. 489-491, 540; Price Waterhouse reports to BCCI on "Problem Loans," February 14, 1990; Najam Sethi, "BCCI Founder: These Things Happen," *Wall Street Journal*, July 29, 1991; and Kochan and Whittington, *Bankrupt: The BCCI Fraud*, p. 23). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
|
||||||
|
[^2]: The Banks' (Nationalization) Act, 1974 (Act XIX of 1974), sections 1 and 2 and Schedule. http://nasirlawsite.com/laws/bna.htm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: "Abu Dhabi Group buys United Bank," Reuters, *Gulf News*, September 6, 2002. https://gulfnews.com/uae/abu-dhabi-group-buys-united-bank-1.397971
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 4, "BCCI's Criminality," section "Prostitution." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
|
||||||
|
|
@ -14,14 +14,14 @@ created: 2026-05-22
|
||||||
updated: 2026-09-23
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
start: 2002
|
start: 2002
|
||||||
location: "St. Petersburg, Russia"
|
location: "St. Petersburg, Russia"
|
||||||
summary: "Russian Imperial Movement is a St. Petersburg-based ultranationalist paramilitary organization, designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity by the U.S. State Department in April 2020, that operated the Partizan training camp and provided weapons and explosives training to Western neo-Nazis including members of Atomwaffen Division."
|
summary: "St. Petersburg ultranationalist paramilitary group, designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in April 2020, whose Partizan camp trained Swedish and American neo-Nazis."
|
||||||
---
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Russian Imperial Movement (RIM, in Russian: Ruskoye Imperatorskoe Dvizhenie) is a [[Russia|Russian]] ultranationalist and white supremacist paramilitary organization headquartered in [[St. Petersburg]]. It was founded in approximately 2002 and operates an ideology combining Orthodox Christian monarchism, Russian imperial nationalism, and white supremacist pan-Europeanism. Its paramilitary wing, the [[Imperial Legion]], runs a training program called [[Partizan]] that has provided weapons handling, explosives, and tactical instruction to neo-Nazis from Sweden, Germany, the United States, and Finland. On April 7, 2020, the [[U.S. Department of State]] designated RIM and three of its leaders as [[Specially Designated Global Terrorist]] (SDGT) entities under [[Executive Order 13224]], the first time the United States had ever applied a terrorist designation to a white supremacist organization.[^1]
|
Russian Imperial Movement (RIM, in Russian: Ruskoye Imperatorskoe Dvizhenie) is a [[Russia|Russian]] ultranationalist and white supremacist paramilitary organization headquartered in [[St. Petersburg]]. It was founded in approximately 2002 and operates an ideology combining Orthodox Christian monarchism, Russian imperial nationalism, and white supremacist pan-Europeanism. Its paramilitary wing, the [[Imperial Legion]], runs a training program called [[Partizan]] that has provided weapons handling, explosives, and tactical instruction to neo-Nazis from Sweden, Germany, the [[United States]], and Finland. On April 7, 2020, the [[U.S. Department of State]] designated RIM and three of its leaders as [[Specially Designated Global Terrorist]] (SDGT) entities under [[Executive Order 13224]], the first time the United States had ever applied a terrorist designation to a white supremacist organization.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Organization and Leadership
|
### Organization and Leadership
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
RIM was founded by [[Stanislav Anatolyevich Vorobyev]], who serves as its overall leader. The organization's paramilitary infrastructure was built by [[Denis Valiullovich Gariev]] (also transliterated as "Gariyev"), who created the Imperial Legion in 2008 and directs it as its head. [[Nikolay Nikolayevich Trushchalov]] serves as RIM's coordinator for external relations, managing recruitment of and networking with foreign white supremacist organizations. All three were designated SDGTs in the April 2020 State Department action alongside the organization itself.[^1]
|
RIM was founded by [[Stanislav Anatolyevich Vorobyev]], who serves as its overall leader. The organization's paramilitary infrastructure was built by [[Denis Valiullovich Gariev]] (also transliterated as "Gariyev"), who created the Imperial Legion in 2008 and directs it as its head. [[Nikolay Nikolayevich Trushchalov]] serves as RIM's coordinator for external relations, managing recruitment of and networking with foreign white supremacist organizations. All three were designated SDGTs in the April 2020 [[State Department]] action alongside the organization itself.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The organization describes its aims as re-establishing Russia as a "mono-ethnic state" and restoring the Russian empire, preferably under a restored Romanov dynasty. Although RIM thus formally opposes Putin's government as insufficiently monarchist, the organization has been allowed to operate freely in Russia, to maintain paramilitary training facilities, and to recruit internationally, without Russian government interference. This tolerance is what a 2026 peer-reviewed case study (published in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, drawing on eleven expert interviews and three years of open-source collection) describes as "tacit home-state toleration" that allowed paramilitary infrastructure to function as an international training hub.[^2]
|
The organization describes its aims as re-establishing Russia as a "mono-ethnic state" and restoring the Russian empire, preferably under a restored Romanov dynasty. Although RIM thus formally opposes Putin's government as insufficiently monarchist, the organization has been allowed to operate freely in Russia, to maintain paramilitary training facilities, and to recruit internationally, without Russian government interference. This tolerance is what a 2026 peer-reviewed case study (published in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, drawing on eleven expert interviews and three years of open-source collection) describes as "tacit home-state toleration" that allowed paramilitary infrastructure to function as an international training hub.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
@ -47,6 +47,8 @@ Bruce-Umbaugh was arrested and charged in the Northern District of Texas. He ple
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Cole was separately prosecuted in the [[Western District of Washington]] (case 2:20-cr-00032) for the [[Operation Erste Saule]] harassment campaign. He was convicted on five counts including civil rights conspiracy and sentenced to 84 months. The Russia trip appeared in government submissions in his case as background on AWD's transnational connections.[^6]
|
Cole was separately prosecuted in the [[Western District of Washington]] (case 2:20-cr-00032) for the [[Operation Erste Saule]] harassment campaign. He was convicted on five counts including civil rights conspiracy and sentenced to 84 months. The Russia trip appeared in government submissions in his case as background on AWD's transnational connections.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On May 31, 2020, Atomwaffen Division announced a new branch in Russia and released Russian translations of its ideological texts. In June 2020 the Argentine outlet *Infobae* reported that members of this Russian affiliate had trained with RIM in St. Petersburg around 2020; the Stanford Mapping Militants Project recorded the report as not independently confirmed.[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### German Training Operations
|
### German Training Operations
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
In 2020, RIM provided training at Partizan to members of the youth wings of two German far-right political parties: the [[National Democratic Party of Germany]] (NPD) and [[Der dritte Weg]] (The Third Path). Participants received instruction in firearms, explosives, and close combat. The training was documented by German investigative reporting and confirmed by [[Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty]]. Several graduates of the Partizan training, including German and Finnish participants, subsequently joined [[Russian-backed separatist militias]] fighting in eastern Ukraine.[^3]
|
In 2020, RIM provided training at Partizan to members of the youth wings of two German far-right political parties: the [[National Democratic Party of Germany]] (NPD) and [[Der dritte Weg]] (The Third Path). Participants received instruction in firearms, explosives, and close combat. The training was documented by German investigative reporting and confirmed by [[Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty]]. Several graduates of the Partizan training, including German and Finnish participants, subsequently joined [[Russian-backed separatist militias]] fighting in eastern Ukraine.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
@ -55,11 +57,11 @@ In 2020, RIM provided training at Partizan to members of the youth wings of two
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
On April 7, 2020, the State Department designated RIM, Vorobyev, Gariev, and Trushchalov as SDGTs under Executive Order 13224. This was the first white supremacist terrorist designation in U.S. history. Counterterrorism Coordinator [[Ambassador Nathan Sales]] explained at a press briefing that the designation was grounded in RIM providing training "for acts of terrorism" specifically through Partizan, citing the Gothenburg bombings as the documented case. The designation triggers asset-blocking and transactional prohibitions under U.S. law for anyone who deals with these individuals or the organization.[^1]
|
On April 7, 2020, the State Department designated RIM, Vorobyev, Gariev, and Trushchalov as SDGTs under Executive Order 13224. This was the first white supremacist terrorist designation in U.S. history. Counterterrorism Coordinator [[Ambassador Nathan Sales]] explained at a press briefing that the designation was grounded in RIM providing training "for acts of terrorism" specifically through Partizan, citing the Gothenburg bombings as the documented case. The designation triggers asset-blocking and transactional prohibitions under U.S. law for anyone who deals with these individuals or the organization.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
On June 15, 2022, the [[U.S. Treasury Department]]'s [[Office of Foreign Assets Control]] (OFAC) designated two additional supporters of RIM as SDGTs, pursuant to Executive Order 13224. Treasury's press release (jy0817) documented this supplemental designation. The identity of the two individuals named in the June 2022 action was not reproduced in available open-source summaries consulted for this entry; the OFAC SDN list entry and Treasury press release contain the authoritative names.[^8]
|
On June 15, 2022, the [[U.S. Treasury Department]]'s [[Office of Foreign Assets Control]] (OFAC) designated two additional supporters of RIM as SDGTs, pursuant to Executive Order 13224. Treasury's press release (jy0817) documented this supplemental designation. The identity of the two individuals named in the June 2022 action was not reproduced in available open-source summaries consulted for this entry; the OFAC SDN list entry and Treasury press release contain the authoritative names.[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### UK Proscription
|
### UK Proscription
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The [[United Kingdom]] proscribed RIM as a terrorist organization in 2025, following a multi-year debate in which parliamentary questions in the Commons had raised the matter. [[Searchlight Magazine]] reported on the UK Home Office proscription order, which extended to RIM the same legal framework applied to other proscribed organizations under the [[Terrorism Act 2000]]. The exact Statutory Instrument number and date of the UK proscription are not confirmed in materials reviewed for this entry; see open thread in _NOTES.md.[^9]
|
The [[United Kingdom]] proscribed RIM as a terrorist organization in 2025, following a multi-year debate in which parliamentary questions in the Commons had raised the matter. [[Searchlight Magazine]] reported on the UK Home Office proscription order, which extended to RIM the same legal framework applied to other proscribed organizations under the [[Terrorism Act 2000]]. The exact Statutory Instrument number and date of the UK proscription are not confirmed in materials reviewed for this entry; see open thread in _NOTES.md.[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
### Russian State Tolerance and the Non-Prosecution Pattern
|
### Russian State Tolerance and the Non-Prosecution Pattern
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
@ -69,7 +71,7 @@ First, RIM operated Partizan as an international training hub for years while Ru
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Second, RIM participated in the conflict in the Donbas by sending its Imperial Legion volunteer fighters to eastern Ukraine in 2014, fighting alongside Russian-backed separatists. This participation was not prosecuted.
|
Second, RIM participated in the conflict in the Donbas by sending its Imperial Legion volunteer fighters to eastern Ukraine in 2014, fighting alongside Russian-backed separatists. This participation was not prosecuted.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Third, RIM is based in St. Petersburg, where [[Rinaldo Nazzaro]] (The Base founder) also relocated in 2017-2018. The co-location of two designated terrorist organizations with Western recruitment mandates in the same city, with neither facing Russian prosecution, describes an environment of consistent state tolerance.
|
Third, RIM is based in St. Petersburg, where [[Rinaldo Nazzaro]] ([[The Base]] founder) also relocated in 2017-2018. The co-location of two designated terrorist organizations with Western recruitment mandates in the same city, with neither facing Russian prosecution, describes an environment of consistent state tolerance.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The 2026 peer-reviewed article in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism concludes that RIM's transnational expansion was enabled by the convergence of permissive conflict arenas, shared ideology as a substitute for ethnic kinship in recruiting, and "tacit home-state toleration" enabling Partizan to function as an international terrorism-training hub. The article stops short of asserting direct state direction.[^2]
|
The 2026 peer-reviewed article in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism concludes that RIM's transnational expansion was enabled by the convergence of permissive conflict arenas, shared ideology as a substitute for ethnic kinship in recruiting, and "tacit home-state toleration" enabling Partizan to function as an international terrorism-training hub. The article stops short of asserting direct state direction.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
@ -82,5 +84,6 @@ The 2026 peer-reviewed article in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism concludes th
|
||||||
[^5]: BuzzFeed News (Lester Feder). "These Swedish Nazis Trained In Russia Before Bombing A Center For Asylum Seekers." https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/lesterfeder/these-swedish-nazis-trained-in-russia; The Daily Beast. "Russian Extremists Are Training Right-Wing Terrorists From Western Europe." https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-extremists-are-training-right-wing-terrorists-from-western-europe/
|
[^5]: BuzzFeed News (Lester Feder). "These Swedish Nazis Trained In Russia Before Bombing A Center For Asylum Seekers." https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/lesterfeder/these-swedish-nazis-trained-in-russia; The Daily Beast. "Russian Extremists Are Training Right-Wing Terrorists From Western Europe." https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-extremists-are-training-right-wing-terrorists-from-western-europe/
|
||||||
[^6]: Malcontent News. "Washington's Defunct Atomwaffen Division had Deep Ties to the Terrorist Org, Russia Imperialist Movement." July 4, 2022. https://malcontentment.com/washingtons-defunct-atomwaffen-division-had-deep-ties-to-the-terrorist-org-russia-imperialist-movement/; Cipher Brief. "Examining Atomwaffen Division's Transnational Linkages." https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/examining-atomwaffen-divisions-transnational-linkages
|
[^6]: Malcontent News. "Washington's Defunct Atomwaffen Division had Deep Ties to the Terrorist Org, Russia Imperialist Movement." July 4, 2022. https://malcontentment.com/washingtons-defunct-atomwaffen-division-had-deep-ties-to-the-terrorist-org-russia-imperialist-movement/; Cipher Brief. "Examining Atomwaffen Division's Transnational Linkages." https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/examining-atomwaffen-divisions-transnational-linkages
|
||||||
[^7]: GovInfo. USA v. Bruce-Umbaugh, Case 5:19-cr-00130 (N.D. Tex.). https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-txnd-5_19-cr-00130/USCOURTS-txnd-5_19-cr-00130-0
|
[^7]: GovInfo. USA v. Bruce-Umbaugh, Case 5:19-cr-00130 (N.D. Tex.). https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCOURTS-txnd-5_19-cr-00130/USCOURTS-txnd-5_19-cr-00130-0
|
||||||
[^8]: U.S. Department of the Treasury, OFAC. "U.S. Sanctions Members of Russian Violent Extremist Group." Press release jy0817. June 15, 2022. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0817; OFAC Counter Terrorism Designations, April 6, 2020 action: https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20200406
|
[^8]: Mapping Militants Project, Stanford University, "Russian Imperial Movement." https://mappingmilitants.org/profiles/russian-imperial-movement
|
||||||
[^9]: Searchlight Magazine. "UK bans far-right Russian terror group." July 2025. https://searchlightmagazine.com/2025/07/uk-bans-far-right-russian-terror-group/
|
[^9]: U.S. Department of the Treasury, OFAC. "U.S. Sanctions Members of Russian Violent Extremist Group." Press release jy0817. June 15, 2022. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0817; OFAC Counter Terrorism Designations, April 6, 2020 action: https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20200406
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Searchlight Magazine. "UK bans far-right Russian terror group." July 2025. https://searchlightmagazine.com/2025/07/uk-bans-far-right-russian-terror-group/
|
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
39
60 - PLACES/CITIES/Dubai.md
Normal file
39
60 - PLACES/CITIES/Dubai.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "City"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- City
|
||||||
|
- UAE
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- PersianGulf
|
||||||
|
- IranContra
|
||||||
|
- Arms
|
||||||
|
summary: "Trading emirate of the United Arab Emirates whose ruling family was among BCCI's ostensible Arab owners, and through which a 1985 BCCI-backed TOW missile deal with Iran was channeled."
|
||||||
|
location: "Dubai, United Arab Emirates"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Dubai is one of the seven emirates of the [[United Arab Emirates]] and its principal trading city, on the coast of the [[Persian Gulf]]. Its ruler, [[Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum]], joined [[Zayed bin Sultan AL-Nahayan|Sheikh Zayed]] of [[Abu Dhabi]] in founding the federation in 1971. The ruling family of Dubai was among the Gulf families named as owners of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) in its early years, and the bank's protocol department in [[Karachi]] served visiting rulers from Dubai and Abu Dhabi.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Oil and the Federation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the 19th century Dubai was one of the Trucial States that signed agreements with Britain under which they undertook not to cede territory except to the [[United Kingdom]] and not to deal with foreign governments without British consent, in return for British protection. Pearling sustained the coast into the early 20th century, until the depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s and the Japanese cultured pearl ruined the industry. Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, de facto ruler of Dubai from 1939, replaced pearling revenue by entering the shipping business, and in 1969 Dubai began exporting oil.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After Britain announced in early 1968 that it would withdraw from the Gulf by the end of 1971, Zayed and Rashid met on February 18, 1968, at Al Samha, near the south-western boundary of Dubai, and from February 25 to 27, 1968, the rulers of nine Gulf states met in Dubai in a constitutional conference that agreed eleven points as the basis for a "Federation of the Arab Emirates." On July 18, 1971, the rulers of six of the seven Trucial States decided to form a union, and the United Arab Emirates was formally established on December 2, 1971, with Dubai among its six founding emirates.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A record of BCCI's shareholders drawn from [[Bank of America]] files as of September 30, 1977, listed [[ICIC]] as majority owner with 50.1 percent, Bank of America with 30 percent, and as the largest Arab owner "Majid Al-Futaim of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates at just 4 percent," with members of the Abu Dhabi ruling family holding 3.4 percent. The Senate report of [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]] concluded that the list showed that "the Pakistanis actually owned BCCI at a time when to the outside world, the bank was ostensibly owned by oil-rich Middle Eastern Arabs, including the ruling families of Bahrain, Sharjah, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, as well as that of Abu Dhabi."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Nazir Chinoy]], who served with BCCI in Pakistan from 1978 to 1982, told the Senate that the protocol department run by [[Sani Ahmed]] employed about 120 people in 1978, whose job was "to establish and further the rapport with the sheiks of and ruling families of Dubai and Abu Dhabi." He said: "Ninety-percent of the time, the guests were from Abu Dhabi and Dubai; occasionally, Oman, and the other emirates. They would come for shooting at the Game Reserves." Cash for the visits, 5 million rupees at a time, "would be carried out in steel trunks."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The TOW Missile Invoice
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Documents obtained by the Senate subcommittee included a pro forma invoice of November 21, 1985, for 1,250 American-made TOW missiles, described as "lift trucks" for bank and customs purposes, supplied by [[B.R. & W. Industries]] and signed by [[Ben Banerjee]], together with BCCI telexes and letters showing the bank providing counter guarantees and letters of credit for the transaction in November and December 1985. The deal involved the government of [[Iran]] and its bank, [[Bank Melli]], and was "channeled through the Arabian Gate General Trading Co. of Dubai, United Arab Emirates." Chinoy confirmed to Senate staff that Banerjee banked with BCCI in London and was involved in "large dealings with Iran." At the trial of [[Michael Aspin]], his brother [[Leslie Aspin]] testified that the TOW sale was a legitimate sale authorized by the [[United States]] government as part of a 1984 to 1985 effort to ransom the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] officer [[William Buckley]], with the weapons to be moved from [[Portugal]] to Iran.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: United Arab Emirates, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "History," archived copy. https://web.archive.org/web/2024/https://www.mofa.gov.ae/en/the-uae/history
|
||||||
|
[^2]: United Arab Emirates Government, "History," The Official Portal of the UAE Government, accessed September 23, 2026. https://u.ae/en/about-the-uae/history
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 3, "The Origin and Early Years of BCCI." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 11, "BCCI, The CIA and Foreign Intelligence." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm
|
||||||
28
60 - PLACES/CITIES/Frankfurt.md
Normal file
28
60 - PLACES/CITIES/Frankfurt.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "City"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- City
|
||||||
|
- Germany
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- SeriousFraudOffice
|
||||||
|
- Extradition
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Frankfurt, Germany
|
||||||
|
- Frankfurt am Main
|
||||||
|
summary: "German city where Abbas Gokal, principal of the Gulf Group and chief defendant in the Serious Fraud Office's BCCI prosecution, was arrested aboard a New York flight in July 1994."
|
||||||
|
location: "Frankfurt am Main, Germany"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Frankfurt is a city in [[Germany]]. On July 18, 1994, [[Abbas Gokal]], the principal of the Geneva-based [[Gulf Group]] and the main target of the [[Serious Fraud Office]]'s investigation of the Gulf Group's loans from the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI), was arrested aboard an aircraft at Frankfurt during a refuelling stop on a flight from [[Pakistan]] to [[New York City|New York]].[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Arrest of Abbas Gokal
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Serious Fraud Office had opened its inquiry into BCCI's loans to the Gulf Group in September 1992. During the early part of the investigation only one or two of the potential defendants occasionally visited countries that had extradition treaties with Britain, and the investigating team prepared papers detailing the conspiracy to be used if any of them did. On July 14, 1994, the [[City of London Police]] received information that Gokal was about to fly to New York; according to the account published in *Accountancy Age*, he "hoped to cut a deal there to gain immunity from prosecution in exchange for information about US nationals." Over the next day the police confirmed the flight details and planned to intercept the aircraft when it landed at Frankfurt to refuel, and the SFO asked the German police to arrest him.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
When the aircraft landed on Monday, July 18, passengers were asked to disembark, but no one matching Gokal's description appeared. Detective Sergeant [[Doug Reeman]], who had flown to Germany for the arrest, went aboard and found Gokal sitting in first class with his wife. He was arrested and held in a German prison pending extradition. After his extradition he was remanded to [[HM Prison Brixton|Brixton prison]], and in February 1995 he was charged with conspiracy to account falsely and conspiracy to defraud. His trial at the [[Old Bailey]] began in September 1996 and lasted 122 days; on May 8, 1997, he was sentenced to fourteen years for his part in a 1.2 billion dollar fraud, then the heaviest sentence obtained by the Serious Fraud Office.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Workman, Rik. "On the trail of Gokal," *Accountancy Age,* May 23, 1997. https://accountancyage.com/1997/05/23/on-the-trail-of-gokal/
|
||||||
46
60 - PLACES/CITIES/Geneva.md
Normal file
46
60 - PLACES/CITIES/Geneva.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "City"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- City
|
||||||
|
- Switzerland
|
||||||
|
- Banking
|
||||||
|
- BankingSecrecy
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- MoneyLaundering
|
||||||
|
summary: "Swiss banking city, seat of BCCI's secretly held affiliate Banque de Commerce et de Placements and of the Gokal brothers' Gulf Group, whose BCCI loans led to a fourteen-year sentence for Abbas Gokal."
|
||||||
|
location: "Geneva, Switzerland"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Geneva is a city in western [[Switzerland]] and one of the country's banking centers. It was the seat of the [[Banque de Commerce et de Placements]] (BCP), an affiliate the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) held in secret, and of the [[Gulf Group]] of the [[Gokal brothers]], a shipping group whose borrowing from BCCI was the subject of a 1.2 billion dollar fraud prosecution in [[London]]. The report of Senators [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]] listed the sale of BCP after BCCI's closure among the matters that required further investigation.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Swiss Bank Regulation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The first attempt at federal regulation of Swiss banks, a bill drafted in 1916, was set aside until the Depression. The collapse of the Banque de Genève in 1931 and the crisis of the Schweizerische Volksbank, which received a government bailout of 100 million francs in 1933, led to the Federal Banking Act, which came into force on March 1, 1935, and which a later finance minister called "a child of necessity."[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Banque de Commerce et de Placements
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Senate report described BCP as one of the "affiliated and related entities" that BCCI used as its losses grew, alongside [[ICIC]] in [[Grand Cayman]], the [[National Bank of Oman]] and the [[Kuwait International Finance Company|Kuwaiti Investment Finance Corporation]].[^5] BCP was headed by [[Alfred Hartmann]], whom the report called one of BCCI's key "rent-a-faces." [[Bruce Rappaport]], an Israeli-born Swiss businessman investigated in 1987 by an independent counsel, whom the report named as Robert McKay, over activities on behalf of the former [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] director [[William J. Casey]], a frequent golfing partner, placed Hartmann on the board of his [[Intermaritime Bank]] of Geneva and New York.[^6] Aijaz Afridi, one of two long-time BCCI officials placed at [[First American Bank|First American]] New York who continued to draw benefits from BCCI while employed there, "had previously worked for another secretly-controlled BCCI entity in Switzerland, Banque de Commerce et de Placement of Geneva," and "was placed at the First American through [[Agha Hasan Abedi|Abedi]]'s intervention," according to the report.[^7]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
BCP was sold to the [[Cukorova Group]] of [[Turkey]] within weeks of BCCI's closure in July 1991. The Senate report stated that Cukorova, through its subsidiary [[Entrade]], had been involved with the [[BNL Scandal|Banca Nazionale del Lavoro]] in sales to [[Iraq]], and that the sale, made "just weeks after BCCI's closure" and "prior to due diligence being conducted," "raises questions as to whether a prior relationship existed between BCCI and Cukorova, and Cukorova's intentions in making the purchase." It noted that Cukorova had also applied within the past year to buy a New York bank. It recommended further investigation by Swiss authorities and the [[Federal Reserve Bank of New York|Federal Reserve New York]].[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Capcom and Paten Holdings
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the laundering of funds deposited at BCCI by [[Manuel Noriega]] through the commodities firm [[Capcom]], 2.6 million dollars "was paid to a coded account at the [[Trade Development Bank]] in Geneva, Switzerland." [[Paten Holdings]], a Panamanian company that made loans to the Capcom directors Magness and Romrell and was used on May 23, 1985, to raise Capcom's capital base from 10 million to 25 million pounds, was "operated out of Geneva by Mme. Cecile Ringenberg, and again, secretly owned by" Capcom's managing director, [[Syed Ziauddin Ali Akbar]].[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Gulf Group and Mohammed Hammoud
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The [[Serious Fraud Office]] opened its inquiry into BCCI's loans to the Geneva-based Gulf Group in September 1992; its team examined and compiled documents at a police warehouse in Geneva. Its principal defendant, [[Abbas Gokal]], was arrested at [[Frankfurt]] in July 1994 and sentenced to fourteen years in May 1997.[^2] The Lebanese businessman [[Mohammed Hammoud]], a BCCI front man who bought the shares in First American held by [[Clark Clifford]] and [[Robert Altman]], allegedly died in Geneva in 1990 while visiting his doctor, and was buried in [[Beirut]]; the Senate report recorded that insurance companies reportedly refused to pay on his life policy "because Hammoud's corpse was found to be several inches shorter than the height recorded at his last medical examination."[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 1, "Executive Summary." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/01exec.htm
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Workman, Rik. "On the trail of Gokal," *Accountancy Age,* May 23, 1997. https://accountancyage.com/1997/05/23/on-the-trail-of-gokal/
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* appendices, "Matters for Further Investigation," item 13. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/24appendic.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: "A brief history of Swiss banking oversight and its scandals," SWI swissinfo.ch, accessed September 23, 2026. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-position/a-brief-history-of-swiss-banking-oversight-and-its-scandals/91762180
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 4, "BCCI's Criminality." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 11, "BCCI, The CIA and Foreign Intelligence." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 7, "BCCI in the United States, Part Two: Acquisition, Consolidation, and Consequences." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/07later.htm
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 21, "Capcom." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/21capcom.htm
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 15, "Mohammed Hammoud: BCCI's Flexible Front-Man." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/15hammoud.htm
|
||||||
44
60 - PLACES/CITIES/Karachi.md
Normal file
44
60 - PLACES/CITIES/Karachi.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "City"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- City
|
||||||
|
- Pakistan
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- Sindh
|
||||||
|
summary: "Southern port city of Pakistan and capital of Sindh province, where Agha Hasan Abedi lived and BCCI kept its Pakistani branch, files and protocol department."
|
||||||
|
location: "Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Karachi is the southern port city of [[Pakistan]] and the provincial capital of [[Sindh]].[^1][^2] After partition in 1947 it was one of the growing cities, with [[Lahore]], in which Muslim professionals from northern [[India]] settled and formed what the [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate report]] called "a clannish class of Muslim professionals who kept themselves apart from other Pakistanis." The report placed [[Agha Hasan Abedi]], founder of [[United Bank Limited]] and the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI), within that class.[^3] BCCI's internal correspondence reached Abedi in Karachi in the 1970s, and he died there, at the [[Aga Khan University Hospital|Aga Khan Hospital]], on August 5, 1995.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI in Karachi
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
BCCI's protocol department, which served the ruling family of [[Abu Dhabi]] and other Gulf visitors, was run by [[Sani Ahmed]] under Abedi's direction and was housed in Karachi in a separate building opposite Abedi's house. [[Nazir Chinoy]], who arrived at BCCI Pakistan in 1978, told Senate staff that it then employed about 120 people, whose job was "to establish and further the rapport with the sheiks of and ruling families of Dubai and Abu Dhabi."[^3] Begum Asghari Rahim, who according to BCCI officials in Pakistan had recruited young women from villages for the Al-Nahyan family since Abedi's United Bank years, took 50 to 60 of them at a time to department stores in Lahore and Karachi to be outfitted, spending as much as 100,000 dollars at a time.[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On January 30, 1978, the BCCI officer [[Abdus Sami]] wrote a memorandum in Washington to Abedi in Karachi on the "situation of acquisition of FGB," reporting that the BCCI group had bought 17.5 percent of [[Financial General Bankshares]] and had commitments or control over 23 to 24 percent, and that a meeting was needed between "our friend," [[Bert Lance]], and the Middendorf group. The [[Federal Reserve Board|Federal Reserve]] later found the memorandum in BCCI files in Abu Dhabi, to which it had been moved from BCCI's files in Karachi. The Senate report cited it against the account of [[Clark Clifford]] that he had not been involved in the takeover plan in January 1978.[^4][^7] On February 12, 1978, *[[Washington Post|The Washington Post]]* reported: "In recent weeks, Lance was in Karachi, Pakistan, and sources say the trip was in connection with his dealings with Abedi." Lance, no longer in government, made the trip on an official [[United States]] diplomatic passport.[^8]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1979, with Pakistan's commercial bank lending capped by [[World Bank]] credit ceilings, Abedi and [[Swaleh Naqvi]] arranged, according to Chinoy, for 50 million dollars to be placed with BCCI Pakistan through BCCI's Kuwaiti affiliate [[Kuwait International Finance Company|KIFCO]]: "I have a feeling that KIFCO got the money from Caymans. In any case, Kifco placed the money with BCCI Karachi." BCCI reported the deposit to the central bank, which reported a 50 million dollar increase in Pakistan's dollar reserves to the World Bank. A New York indictment of July 29, 1992, put the total at 100 million dollars.[^9] The report also found that BCCI paid for years the personal expenses in [[London]] of Jam Sadiq Ali, the highest-ranking official of Sindh, who defended BCCI and Abedi after its collapse.[^9]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The [[Chicago Mercantile Exchange]] found that on October 29, 1987, six receipts totaling 4.84 million dollars arrived in the account at [[Capcom]] Futures of Mohammed Zaheer, brother of Capcom Futures president M. Saghir, and that 4.80 million dollars was paid out the next day. An investigative firm retained by the exchange found that Zaheer "worked in a service station in Karachi, Pakistan" in a position "not very high"; Capcom described him to the exchange as "a self-employed auto dealer with a dealership in Karachi, Pakistan." Gerald Beyer, a vice president of the exchange, told the Senate subcommittee: "I was certain that it involved drug money and laundering of money. But there was no way we could prove that."[^10]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Later Events
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1986 and 1987 the buyer [[Arshad Pervez]], seeking maraging steel for Pakistan's nuclear program, gave a research project of Karachi University's engineering program as one of its possible end uses.[^11] When [[Zia ul-Haq]] was killed on August 17, 1988, the army was deployed at government installations in the capital and in Karachi.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On the day [[Benazir Bhutto]] returned to Pakistan in October 2007, a double suicide attack on her motorcade through Karachi killed about 130 people. After her assassination on December 27, 2007, four people died in protests in Karachi and more than 100 cars were burned.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Barnetson, Denholm. "President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel and...," United Press International, August 17, 1988. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1988/08/17/President-Mohammad-Zia-ul-Haq-US-Ambassador-Arnold-Raphel-and/3467587793600/
|
||||||
|
[^2]: "Benazir Bhutto killed in attack," BBC News, December 27, 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7161590.stm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 3, "The Origin and Early Years of BCCI" (citing staff interviews with Nazir Chinoy, March 1992). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 6, "BCCI in the United States: Initial Entry and FGB and NBG Takeovers." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/06early.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: "Key Figure In International Bank Scandal Dies At 74," Associated Press, *The Spokesman-Review,* August 6, 1995. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1995/aug/06/key-figure-in-international-bank-scandal-dies-at/
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 4, "BCCI's Criminality," section "Prostitution" (citing staff interview with Nazir Chinoy). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/04crime.htm
|
||||||
|
[^7]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 13, "Clark Clifford and Robert Altman." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/13clifford.htm
|
||||||
|
[^8]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 16, "BCCI and Georgia Politicians" (citing John Berry, "Lance Tied to Bank's Takeover," *The Washington Post*, February 12, 1978, and Michael Sniffen, Associated Press, March 27, 1978). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/16ga.htm
|
||||||
|
[^9]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 5, "BCCI's Relationship with Foreign Governments, Central Banks, and International Organizations," section "Pakistan" (citing staff interview with Nazir Chinoy, March 9, 1992, and Chinoy testimony, S. Hrg. 102-350, pt. 4, pp. 368-369). https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/05foreign.htm
|
||||||
|
[^10]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 21, "Capcom." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/21capcom.htm
|
||||||
|
[^11]: *United States v. Pervez*, 871 F.2d 310 (3d Cir. 1989), No. 88-1109, decided March 6, 1989. https://static.case.law/f2d/871/cases/0310-01.json
|
||||||
47
60 - PLACES/CITIES/Tampa, Florida.md
Normal file
47
60 - PLACES/CITIES/Tampa, Florida.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "City"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- City
|
||||||
|
- Florida
|
||||||
|
- UnitedStates
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- MoneyLaundering
|
||||||
|
- USCustoms
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- Tampa
|
||||||
|
summary: "Gulf coast city in Florida where the 1988 Operation C-Chase indictment of BCCI was brought, and whose federal prosecutors the Senate found had missed the bank's wider crimes."
|
||||||
|
location: "Tampa, Florida, United States"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Tampa is a city on [[Tampa Bay]] in [[Hillsborough County, Florida|Hillsborough County]], [[Florida]]. Its federal prosecutors brought the October 1988 indictment that followed [[Operation C-Chase]], the [[U.S. Customs]] undercover money laundering operation against officers of the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI), and in January 1990 accepted the bank's guilty plea. The Senate report of [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]] later found that the prosecutors in Tampa had failed to recognize evidence of BCCI's other crimes.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Early History
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A local account published in *The Florida Review* in 1911 by [[W. B. Powell]] recorded that the first permanent white families in Tampa were soldiers and their families brought by the Indian wars, and that in 1843 a town site a mile square, "known as the Fort Brooke Reservation," was laid off and Congress asked to designate it. Saw mills were built in 1845 and 1847. Tampa was incorporated in 1857 and Capt. [[James McKay (Tampa)|James McKay]] was elected mayor; Powell wrote that ninety-seven votes were cast although "there were not ninety-seven voters in Tampa at that time," and that there were "charges of fraud and ballot-box-stuffing." After the Civil War, according to the same account, only three new houses were built in Tampa between 1873 and 1876. During the [[Spanish-American War]] of 1898 Tampa was the point of embarkation of the army for [[Cuba]], and 30,000 men passed through the city. Powell put its population in 1911 at 51,000.[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Operation C-Chase and the BCCI Prosecution
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Customs Special Agent [[Robert Mazur]], working undercover as "Robert Musella," testified that he opened an account at BCCI because it was the only bank with which he was familiar that had international branches. The Senate report recorded that "After Mazur checked with local prosecutors in Tampa and discovered that the bank showed up in another drug-related investigation, his suspicions were heightened." On April 6, 1988, a Customs memorandum stated that it was the opinion of the United States Attorney's office in Tampa that "probative evidence exists to establish corporate criminality against BCCI as an institution," and that current plans were "to indict BCCI as an institution under the provisions of the RICO statutes"; a second memorandum repeated the recommendation on May 10, 1988. The [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] did not approve a racketeering prosecution. The United States Attorney for Tampa, [[Robert Genzman]], told the Senate subcommittee: "we believed that RICO charges would have added nothing, and would have greatly complicated the case ... There was simply insufficient evidence to support such a sweeping international forfeiture."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Senate report concluded that "it is clear now, and should have been clear as of the date of the C-Chase indictment against BCCI in October 1988, that BCCI represented much more than a drug money laundering case," and that the office in Tampa "then made its second strategic mistake as it allowed the bank to plead out while prosecuting the individual bankers." BCCI "mounted a $20 million defense in Florida and provided for the legal costs and living expenses of its former employees throughout their trials," a strategy the report described as designed to prevent the government from getting defendants to "flip." At one pretrial hearing Assistant United States Attorney [[Mark Jackowski]] appeared alone for the government against 23 lawyers for BCCI. In January 1990 the bank pleaded guilty and paid "what was then the largest fine ever imposed on a financial institution in a money-laundering case," 14 million dollars.[^1] The report found that the plea agreement "kept BCCI alive, and had the effect of discouraging BCCI's officials from telling the U.S. what they knew about BCCI's larger criminality, including its ownership of First American," and that in 1988 and 1989 the public relations firm [[Hill and Knowlton]] ran a campaign for BCCI designed "to put the best face possible on the Tampa drug money laundering indictments."[^2] After the plea, several members of Congress criticized it as too lenient; the Senate report recorded that the BCCI lawyer [[E. Lawrence Barcella Jr.|Lawrence Barcella]] met Senator [[Dennis DeConcini]], one of the critics, to persuade him that BCCI was not a corrupt institution.[^4]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Mazur told the subcommittee that after the arrests records had been "seized from BCCI in Miami, from the homes of several officers in Miami, from the BCCI offices in London and Paris, from the homes of traffickers," but that "very little resources of those that were available could be used to deal with those matters because of the tremendous resources that were needed just to attend to pretrial motions and the upcoming trial in Tampa." Jackowski told the subcommittee that the grand jury investigation of BCCI had been suspended "due to a lack of available leads and the press of the upcoming trial." In April 1991 Mazur resigned from the Customs Service in a letter to Commissioner [[Carol Hallett]] that referred to "the deplorable conditions in Tampa"; a memorandum by Jackowski attached to the letter, expressing his own unhappiness with the handling of the case, was withheld from the subcommittee by the Justice Department.[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
*[[Time]]* reported on July 29, 1991, that the Justice Department's main probe of BCCI was "being handled by a sole Assistant U.S. Attorney in Tampa, who has recently been assigned another major case."[^5] Among its findings, the Senate report stated:[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- "Federal prosecutors in Tampa handling the 1988 drug money laundering indictment of BCCI failed to recognize the importance of information they received concerning BCCI's other crimes, including its apparent secret ownership of First American."
|
||||||
|
- "Justice Department personnel in Washington, Miami, and Tampa actively obstructed and impeded Congressional attempts to investigate BCCI in 1990, and this practice continued to some extent until William P. Barr became Attorney General in late October, 1991."
|
||||||
|
- "Justice Department personnel in Washington, Miami and Tampa obstructed and impeded attempts by New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau to obtain critical information concerning BCCI in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and in one case, a federal prosecutor lied to Morgenthau's office concerning the existence of such material."
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In the House of Commons debate on the [[Bingham Report]] on November 6, 1992, [[Alistair Darling]] said that "Alarm bells should also have rung in respect of the Tampa indictment," and quoted Bingham's finding that involvement in drug money "could scarcely have eluded a competent and diligent banker ... particularly if he had branches in Panama and agencies in Florida."[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 8, "BCCI and Law Enforcement: The Justice Department and the US Customs Service." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/08just.htm
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 1, "Executive Summary." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/01exec.htm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Powell, W. B. "Tampa: 'Split Wood for Quick Fires,'" *The Florida Review,* 1911, excerpted in "Tampa, Florida," *Exploring Florida,* Florida Center for Instructional Technology, University of South Florida. https://fcit.usf.edu/florida/docs/t/tampa.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 17, "BCCI's Lawyers and Lobbyists." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/17law.htm
|
||||||
|
[^5]: Beaty, Jonathan, and S. C. Gwynne. "B.C.C.I.: The Dirtiest Bank of All," *Time,* July 29, 1991, p. 8 of the online edition. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,973481-8,00.html
|
||||||
|
[^6]: House of Commons, "BCCI (Bingham Report)," *Hansard,* November 6, 1992, vol. 213, cc. 523-594. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1992/nov/06/bcci-bingham-report
|
||||||
49
60 - PLACES/COUNTRIES/Bahrain.md
Normal file
49
60 - PLACES/COUNTRIES/Bahrain.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Country"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Country
|
||||||
|
- Bahrain
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- PersianGulf
|
||||||
|
- OffshoreFinance
|
||||||
|
- MiddleEast
|
||||||
|
summary: "Persian Gulf island state, one of BCCI's earliest growth markets, whose ruling family was among the bank's ostensible owners and where Ghaith Pharaon's defaulted BCCI loans were booked."
|
||||||
|
location: "Bahrain"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Bahrain is an island state in the [[Persian Gulf]]. It was one of the markets in which the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) grew fastest in its first years, its ruling family was among the Gulf families presented to the outside world as the bank's owners, and BCCI's offices there carried loans to the Saudi businessman [[Ghaith R. Pharaon]] and to the [[Saigol family]] that auditors later found to be in default or misrepresented.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Federation Talks
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In 1968, after Britain announced its withdrawal from the Gulf, [[Zayed bin Sultan AL-Nahayan|Sheikh Zayed]] of [[Abu Dhabi]] and [[Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum|Sheikh Rashid]] of [[Dubai]] called for a federation that would include the seven Trucial States and also [[Qatar]] and Bahrain; the rulers of the nine states held a constitutional conference in Dubai from February 25 to 27, 1968. The federation formally established on December 2, 1971, as the [[United Arab Emirates]] was formed by six of the Trucial States, with the seventh joining the following year; Bahrain was not among them.[^4][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
"Fueled in part by infusions of petrodollar deposits from Gulf State rulers during the hey-day of the OPEC years," the Senate report of [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]] stated, "BCCI's early growth was exponential, especially in the United Arab Emirates, the Sultanate of Oman, Yemen, and Bahrain." It gave the bank's growth over its first five years:[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
| Year | Branches | Countries | Assets | Growth |
|
||||||
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||||
|
| 1973 | 19 | 5 | $200 million | |
|
||||||
|
| 1974 | 27 | 7 | $610 million | 204% |
|
||||||
|
| 1975 | 64 | 13 | $1.2 billion | 98% |
|
||||||
|
| 1976 | 108 | 21 | $1.6 billion | 37% |
|
||||||
|
| 1977 | 146 | 43 | $2.2 billion | 33% |
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A 1977 record of BCCI's shareholders from [[Bank of America]] files showed, in the report's words, that "the Pakistanis actually owned BCCI at a time when to the outside world, the bank was ostensibly owned by oil-rich Middle Eastern Arabs, including the ruling families of Bahrain, Sharjah, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, as well as that of Abu Dhabi."[^1]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Nazir Chinoy]], manager of BCCI in [[Paris]], told the Senate that the "profits" Pharaon made on his interest in [[CenTrust Savings Bank|CenTrust]] of [[Miami]], a transaction financed through BCCI Paris, "were transferred to BCCI's offices in Bahrain as a means of reducing Pharaon's defaults to BCCI there, and demonstrating to auditors that Pharaon's loans from BCCI were being serviced."[^2] In its audit reports of 1990, [[Price Waterhouse]] found no evidence that the Saigol family, which owed BCCI 44 million dollars, was repaying loans or interest, and reported: "Representations previously given about the beneficial ownership of companies to which new loans were extended in Bahrain in 1989 have been false. The loans have been given, in part, to repay delinquent loans in other locations."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Ambassador Hostler
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[[Charles W. Hostler]], United States ambassador to Bahrain at the time of the Senate inquiry, had met the Lebanese businessman [[Mohammed Hammoud]] in [[Beirut]] in the 1960s as a young Air Force officer, when Hammoud's wife taught him Arabic; he later managed [[Douglas Aircraft Company|Douglas Aircraft]]'s office in [[Lebanon]] from 1965 to 1967 and worked for [[McDonnell Douglas]]. Hammoud, a front man for BCCI, bought the shares in [[First American Bank|First American]] held by [[Clark Clifford]] and [[Robert Altman]]. Hostler managed Hammoud's real estate investments in the [[United States]], and told the subcommittee he had advised Hammoud on three properties: "vacant land" in Sherman, Connecticut, an "old building" in Boston and a "tear-down" in [[New York City]].[^6]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 3, "The Origin and Early Years of BCCI." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
|
||||||
|
[^2]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 7, "BCCI in the United States, Part Two: Acquisition, Consolidation, and Consequences." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/07later.htm
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 10, "BCCI and Its Accountants." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/10accounta.htm
|
||||||
|
[^4]: United Arab Emirates, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "History," archived copy. https://web.archive.org/web/2024/https://www.mofa.gov.ae/en/the-uae/history
|
||||||
|
[^5]: United Arab Emirates Government, "History," The Official Portal of the UAE Government, accessed September 23, 2026. https://u.ae/en/about-the-uae/history
|
||||||
|
[^6]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 15, "Mohammed Hammoud: BCCI's Flexible Front-Man." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/15hammoud.htm
|
||||||
45
60 - PLACES/COUNTRIES/United Arab Emirates.md
Normal file
45
60 - PLACES/COUNTRIES/United Arab Emirates.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
category: "Country"
|
||||||
|
tags:
|
||||||
|
- Country
|
||||||
|
- UAE
|
||||||
|
- BCCI
|
||||||
|
- PersianGulf
|
||||||
|
- AbuDhabi
|
||||||
|
- MiddleEast
|
||||||
|
alias:
|
||||||
|
- UAE
|
||||||
|
summary: "Gulf federation formed on December 2, 1971, whose president Sheikh Zayed and Abu Dhabi government held 77 percent of BCCI at its closure and kept its top officers out of foreign investigators' reach."
|
||||||
|
start: 1971-12-02
|
||||||
|
location: "United Arab Emirates"
|
||||||
|
created: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
updated: 2026-09-23
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a federation of seven emirates on the [[Persian Gulf]]: [[Abu Dhabi]], [[Dubai]], [[Sharjah]], Umm al-Quwain, Fujairah, Ajman and Ras al-Khaimah. It was formally established on December 2, 1971, under the leadership of [[Zayed bin Sultan AL-Nahayan|Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan]], ruler of Abu Dhabi, who became its president. Abu Dhabi's government and ruling family were among the founding providers of capital to the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] (BCCI) and, when the bank was closed in July 1991, its majority owners.[^1][^2][^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### The Trucial States
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Portuguese reached the Gulf in 1498 and were driven from Julfar, Dibba, Sohar and Muscat between 1633 and 1650; the Dutch entered Gulf trade after the Portuguese lost Hormuz in 1622. After defeating the Qawasim in 1820, the British signed a series of agreements with the sheikhs of the individual emirates from 1820 to 1853, under which the sheikhs undertook to keep the peace at sea and not to build large ships or fortify the coast. In 1892 the Exclusive Agreements bound the Trucial States not to dispose of any territory except to the [[United Kingdom]] and not to enter into relations with any foreign government without British consent, in return for British defense.[^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Pearling provided income through the 19th and early 20th centuries, until the depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s and the Japanese cultured pearl destroyed the industry. Oil company teams began geological surveys in the early 1930s, and in 1962 the first cargo of crude oil was exported from Abu Dhabi. Zayed became ruler of Abu Dhabi on August 6, 1966, and increased Abu Dhabi's contributions to the Trucial States Development Fund, of which it became the largest donor. [[Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum]], de facto ruler of Dubai since 1939, turned to shipping, and Dubai began exporting oil in 1969.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Federation
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In early 1968 Britain announced that it would withdraw from the Gulf by the end of 1971. Zayed and Rashid met on February 18, 1968, at Al Samha, and called for a federation that would include the seven Trucial States as well as [[Qatar]] and [[Bahrain]]; the rulers of the nine states held a constitutional conference in Dubai from February 25 to 27, 1968, agreeing eleven points as the basis for a "Federation of the Arab Emirates." On July 18, 1971, the rulers of six of the Trucial States, all but Ras al-Khaimah, decided to form a union and declared "the United Arab Emirates as an independent sovereign state being a part of the Arab World." The federation was formally established on December 2, 1971, and Ras al-Khaimah joined it the following year.[^1][^2]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### BCCI
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The Senate report of [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]] stated that "Abu Dhabi was present at BCCI's creation as one of two providers of BCCI's capital. It was BCCI's largest depositor, and its largest borrower, and for most of BCCI's existence, its largest shareholder." BCCI's early growth was fastest "in the United Arab Emirates, the Sultanate of Oman, Yemen, and Bahrain." A 1977 record of BCCI's shareholders listed "Majid Al-Futaim of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates at just 4 percent" as its largest Arab owner.[^3][^4] In 1990, after auditors and regulators in Britain found fraud at the bank, the Abu Dhabi ruling family and government agreed "to formally buy the bank, assert control, guarantee its losses, replace BCCI's head with the head of its own BCCI affiliate, the Bank of Credit and Commerce Emirates (BCCE), move BCCI's operations and records from London to Abu Dhabi." When BCCI was closed on July 5, 1991, the government of Abu Dhabi, its ruling family and their investment company owned 77 percent of the bank, and "since the remaining 23 percent was actually held by nominees and by BCCI's alter-ego ICIC, Abu Dhabi was in fact BCCI's sole owner."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After the closure, "it was in Abu Dhabi that most of BCCI's top officials remained, where they remain under the control of the Abu Dhabi government, under conditions said to be luxurious, which the Abu Dhabi government refuses to discuss," the report stated, adding that they had "remained incommunicado, and out of the reach of foreign investigators." Abu Dhabi presented itself as the bank's largest victim, having lost "some $6 billion in all," and maintained that it had never known that most of BCCI's shareholders were nominees, "including the heads of state of several of the smaller sheikhdoms of the United Arab Emirates of which Sheikh Zayed is president," or that [[Kamal Adham]] and [[A. R. (Abdul Raouf) Khalil|A. R. Khalil]], "two successive heads of Saudi intelligence," were also nominees. Its witness before the Senate subcommittee, [[Ahmed Al Sayegh]], testified: "We didn't know anything about the bank [BCCI] because of our passive role in the past."[^3]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The report also recorded that the Washington law firm [[Patton, Boggs & Blow]] had "served as headquarters for a billion-dollar enterprise called Real Estate Operations, Inc., owned by Sheikh Zayed's Abu Dhabi government," as described in *[[The Wall Street Journal]]* of May 20, 1992. A pro forma invoice of November 1985 for 1,250 TOW missiles bound for [[Iran]], backed by BCCI letters of credit, was "channeled through the Arabian Gate General Trading Co. of Dubai, United Arab Emirates."[^3][^5]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
### Footnotes
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^1]: United Arab Emirates, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "History," archived copy. https://web.archive.org/web/2024/https://www.mofa.gov.ae/en/the-uae/history
|
||||||
|
[^2]: United Arab Emirates Government, "History," The Official Portal of the UAE Government, accessed September 23, 2026. https://u.ae/en/about-the-uae/history
|
||||||
|
[^3]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 14, "Abu Dhabi: BCCI's Founding and Majority Shareholders." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/14abudhabi.htm
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[^4]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 3, "The Origin and Early Years of BCCI." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm
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[^5]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair,* ch. 11, "BCCI, The CIA and Foreign Intelligence." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm
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