The fugitives and the banker

[Frank S.]

I got interested in Boxwood Inc. after Chalabi and some associates "fell out of favor" with parts of the US administration. Boxwood received funding from the Pentagon. Found this:

http://www.warandpiece.com/

revolution in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Among Boxwood's directors are fugitive INC intelligence chief Aras Habib Karim and Margaret Bartel.

[For the sake of having it from first hand sources, here's a list of the company's principals, from the Commonwealth of Virginia's State Corporate Commission:

DATE 12/12/03
CORPORATE NAME: Boxwood Inc.

OFFICERS/DIRECTORS:
FRANCIS BROOKE PRESIDENT
MARGARET BARTEL DIRECTOR
ARAS KAREEM DIRECTOR


Here's the corporate registry info:

Name: BOXWOOD INC.
Corporate ID Number: 589920
Filing State: VA
Type: DOMESTIC CORPORATION
Status: ACTIVE
Date of Incorporation: 01-16-2003

Address Type: REG. AGENT ADDRESS
Name: MARGARET BARTEL
Address: 911 DUKE ST
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22314

===================================================

Name: BOXWOOD INC.
Corporate ID Number: R145444
Filing State: VA
Type: NAME RESERVATION - CORPORATE
Status: ACTIVE
Corporation Dissolved: 05-13-2003

Address Type: REG. AGENT ADDRESS
Name: BOXWOOD INC
Address: 3743 WINFIELD LANE NW
WASHINGTON, DC 20007


A few notes here:

The Winfield Lane address appears to be Brooke's Georgetown residence. Jane Mayer reports in a recent New Yorker that "Brooke, his wife, Sharon, and their children live for free in the [Georgetown] town house, which is owned by Levantine Holdings, a Chalabi family corporation based in Luxembourg."

In addition to Mayer's report, property records for 3743 Winfield Lane show that it is indeed owned by Levantine Holdings:

Address: 3743 WINFIELD LA NW...
Owner and Sales Information
Owner Name: LEVANTINE HOLDINGS SA

A search for Levantine Holdings shows that it is registered at:

LEVANTINE HOLDINGS SA
Mailing Address: 2544 28TH ST NW;
WASHINGTON, DC 20008-2744

in the Woodley Park/Mass Ave neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

A search for who owns the property at 2544 28th Street NW turns up someone named Mohsen A. Khalil "et al."

Owner Name: MOHSEN A KHALIL ET AL
Mailing Address: 2544 28TH ST NW
WASHINGTON, DC 20008-2744

Who is Mohsen Khalil?

Mohsen Khalil is a joint Director at the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the Global Information and Communication Technologies Department, one of the first Global Product Groups formed out of the integration of the World Bank and IFC. In this capacity, Mr. Khalil is in charge of all the World Bank Group’s activities in the area of telecommunications and information technologies world wide. This would involve advisory work to governments on sector reforms, regulatory frameworks and institutional capacity building, in addition to supporting private investments in developing countries.

Prior to this appointment, he was Director of IFC's Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa Department. He has also served IFC as Chief Investment Officer in the Telecommunications, Transport, and Utilities Department . . .

Before joining the World Bank Group, while also serving as Professor of Business at the American University of Beirut, Mr. Khalil served as Chief Advisor to the Lebanese Minister of Post and Telecommunications, Board Director of Lebanon's Autonomous Fund for Housing, and advisor to various governments and major corporations in the Gulf. He also worked with McKinsey & Co. Management Consultants, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and MITRE Corporation.

Mr. Khalil holds a M.Sc. from MIT Sloan School of Management, a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California . . . and a B.Sc. in physics from the American University of Beirut.


Very interesting. Among other interesting things, Dr. Khalil appears to be among the most important people at the World Bank and the supreme leader of the Bank's global telecommunications work. My my, Dr. Chalabi appears to have friends in high places all over the place.

Dr. Khalil also appears to originally be from Lebanon, where Chalabi is reported to have lived with his family after fleeing Iraq in the 1950s, and where he reportedly married a Lebanese woman. [Indeed, a recent UPI article alleges that one of Chalabi's brothers works in Beirut as an agent of the Iranian Ministry of Information and Security (MOIS), for what it's worth.]

It's also worth noting that, according to property records, Dr. Khalil is enjoying a "homestead deduction" tax benefit for people who reside in the homes they purchase. In other words, according to the tax benefits he has claimed, Dr. Khalil is not renting the property to someone else [such as the Chalabi-linked Levantine Holdings SA], but is living there as his primary residence himself.

What is Khalil's relationship to Ahmad Chalabi and his family, who are presumably the "et al"?

[Frank S.]

From the same website, an interesting comment from Margaret Bartel [emphasis added]:

I also spoke with Margaret Bartel, for whom Maliqi has also issued an arrest warrant for allegedly obstructing the investigation of Chalabi's compound. I asked her about her and Brooke's business partner in Boxwood Inc., the fugitive INC intel chief Aras Habib Kareem. She told me she didn't want to know where he was. [Some reports say he has fled to Iran.] I asked her if it troubled her that here she and Brooke were, speaking to the press, but that he had gone into hiding, that the allegations might be true. She said, he went into hiding because if he had been arrested he would have been killed. I said, why does she think that? And she cited the Nick Berg arrest and al Qaeda operating in Iraq, etc.

Note: I find this last exchange particularly interesting as I said. Bartel implies that getting arrested by Iraqi police is a death sentence. Why?
Is this just paranoia, or does she know something about the Berg killing which the public doesn't?
Does she have specifics?