Alex Constantine - April 9, 2012
By Alex Constantine
Republican Party financier Paul E. Singer is a member of the board of trustees at the Manhattan Institute, chairman of Elliot Associates and a director of Commentary magazine
With Western-style journalistic aplomb, Romania’s Business Review reported in June that the East European state's Property Fund (Fondul Proprietatea ) boosted its net income by 20 percent y/y to EUR 128 million in 2011, and sought a second listing on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. “The heirs of Nicolae Malaxa, the Romanian industrialist, whose stake in the fund is close to 7 percent, have already expressed their agreement with the move.”*
The article glossed over the bloody history of military-industrialist Nicolae Malaxa, the pre-WWII chairman of the Ford Motor Company’s Romania division.
Time reports that in the 1930s, Malaxa, the "Krupp of Romania," parlayed modest invesments into a combine of arms factories, and forged a partnership with the country's largest iron works. The Malaxa industrial plants ranked among the largest in Eastern Europe, key suppliers to the Romanian railways. They built, among other things, state-of-the-art steam and diesel locomotives, and made Malaxa one of the wealthiest men in Romania.
His Wiki entry is a descent into Holocaust Hell:
" ... Unlike most other large industries in the country, Malaxa's was not tied to British, French or Czechoslovak interests. Instead, Nicolae Malaxa maintained business links with Nazi Germany as early as 1935. At a time when Nazi Germany was gaining more influence in Romania, Nicolae Malaxa collaborated with Hermann Goering in confiscating the assets of the Jewish Auschnitt (who had been arrested and prosecuted on false charges in September 1939), and subsequently placed his industrial empire in the service of the Reichswerke during World War II. ... "
Malaxa, Richard Nixon & the GOP
Nicolae Malaxa
Malaxa is reasonably well-known for his sponsorship of the Romanian Iron Guard death squad ... and postwar ties to America's Republican Party:
" ... Probably sympathizing with Nazi ideology, he had financed the activities of the Romanian far-right Iron Guard organization as early as the mid-1930s, and especially throughout the National Legionary State the latter established. During the Rebellion and Pogrom it provoked in January 1941, the Guard made use of arms manufactured by Malaxa, as well of his house (turned into a citadel and attacked by the Romanian Army). ... Alongside accusations involving his endorsement of the Iron Guard, it was alleged that he had been collaborating with the Romanian Communist Party during his last years in Romania. In 1955, while Malaxa was visiting Argentina, the Immigration and Naturalization Service briefly revoked his reentry permit. Both charges were again voiced by Democratic Party politicians during Richard Nixon's 1962 electoral campaign for Governor in California, after focus was placed on the friendship and business connections between Nixon and Malaxa. A government investigation dismissed the accusations, but, in 1979, his pro-Nazi past was again investigated by The Washington Post (which claimed that high-ranking American officials close to Malaxa had been involved in a cover-up). ... "
The Iron Guard badge
After Hitler's forces were defeated militarily, the Waffen SS collaborator fled to the U.S. where he was protected by Richard Nixon and the Republican Party. The family wealth was confiscated by the Communist Party, and Malaxa sentenced to death for war crimes in absentia.
The military-industrialist's daughter, Irina Malaxa, married George Emil Palade, a scientist, in 1946. Palade was a recipient of the Nobel prize in 1974. Their children, Georgia Palade Van Dusen, Philip Palade, and Loreen Ellen Malaxa, sought the return of some USD 310 million from the Property Fund, a financial pool established to compensate victims of Communist nationalization. The three Malaxa heirs - who reside in the U.S. - own a seven percent share in Fondul Proprietatea, according to Romania Business Insider.
Since its listing in 2011, at least three major investors, including the hedge fund Elliott Associates - guided by board chairman Paul E. Singer, who also chairs the far-right Manhattan Institute - have invested in the Romanian Property Fund. Elliot Associates owns a 13 percent share.
That is, Singer has mixed Elliot Associates capital with the Hoilocaust-tainted Malaxa fortune, and heirs who seek “restitution” of genocidal assets from the government.
So much for the family values and “conservative principles” at the Manhattan Insitute.
In the global investment sector, Singer himself operates with the ruthlessnessness of any Third World potentate His strategy, according to SourceWatch, is to “find some forgotten tiny debt owed by a very poor nation.” He then “waits for the US and European taxpayers to forgive the poor nations' debts; as well as offers of food aid, medicine and investment loans. At this point Singer grabs at every resource and all the money going to the desperate country.” As a result, trade is severely limited, funds are frozen, and “an entire economy is effectively held hostage. Singer then demands aid-giving nations pay monstrous ransoms to let trade resume.” For example, Singer demanded $400 million dollars from the Congo for a debt acquired for less than $10 million. “If Singer doesn't get his 4,000% profit, he can effectively starve the nation. In Congo-Brazzaville last year, one-fourth of all deaths of children under five were caused by malnutrition.”
Back to the GOP. In 2007, the Democratic National Committee published a report on Republican Party money laundering and manipulation of the electoral process by the Rudy Giuliani campaign. The Wizbang Blue website notes that Singer, then chairman of the Giuliani Northeast fundraising apparat, was implicated in the illicit trail of campaign donations “to manipulate the 2008 election vote results.”
He was accused of laundering $175,000 through the account of another key Giuliani donor, Charles A. Hurth III. Hurth is the leader of Take Initiative America, an ultra-conservative organization based in Missouri that launched a proposal to split California’s electoral votes - despite the fact that Take Initiative America had no political ties to California: “This was intended to manipulate the overall electoral college vote and make it more difficult for a Democrat to win the national election in 2008 … and further bias the electoral college towards the Republicans.”
Singer is a generous donor to far-right causes. Recipients of his genocidal largesse, according to the New York Times, "include Progress for America ($1.5 million in contributions), a political advocacy group set up to advance the policies of the Bush administration; Swift Vets and P.O.W.’s for Truth; and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which includes Vice President Dick Cheney and Richard N. Perle, an adviser to the former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, among its past and current advisory directors." ...
"Hedge fund money, which now exceeds $1 trillion, has emerged in the last several years as a potentially powerful force in politics, as underscored by the significant role it is playing in the presidential aspirations of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Giuliani. During the 2006 election cycle, executives who work at the 30 biggest hedge funds made $2.8 million in contributions to political candidates or party committees, almost double the amount in 2000."
Some candidates consider hedge funds to be a smart alternative to the public financing of elections, for dubious reasons. "Money from Wall Street has long been a factor in Washington and has tended to flow, with a policy agenda, to the ascendant political party," reports the Times:
" ... Yet it is not just the money they donate directly that makes people in hedge funds attractive to campaigns. They also offer access to other potential donors in the financial world, which in recent election cycles has become one of the biggest sources of political contributions. ... Top candidates for the 2008 campaign are expected to raise a lot of money quickly — at least $100 million each by the end of this year by some estimates."
Given his macabre business connections and investment strategies, it's not all that surprising that the GOP benefactor "keeps a particularly low profile." Sunger wouldn't want all of the above openly discussed by talk show ferrets and bothersome liberal Op-Editors. That could damage the bottom line and the increasingly "conservative" GOP.
* UPDATE
Malaxa niece took another 4 million shares on FP
Aiarul de Iasi (Romania - Google translation), April 9, 2012
The largest individual shareholder of the Property Fund, Georgia Palade van Düsen, niece of former industrialist Nicolae Malaxa, continued to sell the portfolio in March, for which he received about 17.4 million lei (about 4 million). Georgia Palade van Düsen yielded 0.21% of the titles Property Fund in February after he sold 0.66% stake for about 11 million. Its stake fell in March from 5.62% to 5.4% of the subscribed and paid, according to statistics provided by the Fund Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE). Calculated average price in February of titles FP, 0.58 lei / share, the package up is 17.4 million. Reported the lowest price in March, of 0.56 lei, Georgia Palade van package sold for 16.8 million lei worth Düsen and maximum quotation of 0.599 lei, reaching 17.9 million. Georgia Palade van Düsen in January sold about 3.4 million shares, and in August of last year received 2.6 million euros. Daughter of Nicholas Malaxa Malaxa Irina, married in 1941 with scientist George Emil Palade, the only novel that won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1974. The two left in 1946 in the U.S., where they settled. They had two children, a daughter, Georgia, and a son, Philip. After the fall of the communist regime of Nicolae Malaxa grandchildren, Georgia Palade Van Düsen and Philip Palade and Loreen Malaxa Ellen (wife of a deceased grandchild) - all three living in the U.S. have asked the Romanian state titles over 310 million dollars in property damages Fund in return all confiscated property. National Authority for Property Restitution (NAPR) has been granted compensation securities in September 2006 Nicholas Malaxa industrialist heir, which were converted into shares in the property fund.