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This summer, I was tipped off about a Delaware shell company, Delta Crescent Energy, with deep connections to State Department leadership and the Trump administration that had been granted special permission to deal in Syrian oil.
This is part of Trump's policy to take the oil in Syria. American troops guard the wells and Delta Crescent, through its unique position as the only company allowed by the U.S. government to deal in Syrian oil, holds a monopoly.
Al Monitor broke the news in late July that Delta Crescent had reached a deal with Kurdish Syrian leadership to export Syrian petroleum. (It's not like they had much choice.)
The plan was a stupid one. The oil would be smuggled through Iraqi Kurdistan into Turkey, at best causing a region wide diplomatic crisis. Worse, to pull this off would require wild corruption.
There is no way this could be done without the consent of Kurdistan's ruling family, the Barzanis, who would have to take a cut of the proceeds. The State Department stepped in to help bring the Barzanis on board. This was confirmed in a House Foreign Affairs Hearing yesterday
That was covered by @matthew_petti yesterday https://twitter.com/matthew_petti/status/1336792913221726208?s=20
And I wrote about the plan in the New Republic https://newrepublic.com/article/158841/pompeo-trump-steal-oil-kurds-syria-iraq
But I also filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit as soon as I got ahold of the sanctions waiver license number for Delta Crescent.
Treasury told our judge that they would release records to me last week. But, coincidentally, they held off until 15 minutes after the House Foreign Affairs committee hearing started yesterday.
The records are redacted to shit, but let's go through them, because there's still things to be learned from them. A full copy is available on my documentcloud. https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20422318-2020-06-162_finresp_docs
First off, the license can be terminated for willful misrepresentation or at any time. That gives the new administration plenty of freedom to shut Delta Crescent down
Next, it appears that Delta Crescent has secret beneficial owners. Notice the second section here is half blanked out. Cain, Reese and Dorrier, but what is the missing half of the sentence? Who else is involved?
Here it is again, notice this outlines the people receiving the license, and again, half of it is blanked out. This looks like the Treasury is redacting something legitimate and more like it's hiding potentially embarrassing information
Here's another hint that Delta Crescent's real beneficial owners have been concealed. The report contains information about Delta Crescent's *parent companies.* Doesn't the public deserve to know who really owns this company?
Another interesting footnote slipped Treasury's notice. There are about 80 pages of fully redacted supplements, but several of them appear to be Iraqi or Syrian rebel government documents. Pretty sure those don't count as trade secrets.
And that's it. Everything else, I mean everything, out of these 134 pages of documents is classified as a trade secret. Let's be clear, this is not legitimate. The @GovAcctProj is calling for Treasury to undo these redactions and come clean. https://whistleblower.org/press/press-release-congress-questions-administration-officials-about-government-accountability-projects-investigation-into-corrupt-syrian-oil-company-but-key-records-withheld/
But, it's easy to see why the administration didn't even want to release these limited documents before the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing. If they had, the special envoy to Syria might have had a few questions about beneficial ownership of Delta Crescent.
Congressman Joaquin Castro was already asking about the State Department's lobbying of Kurdish President Nechirvan Barzani on Delta Crescent's behalf. The State Dept. confirmed meeting with Barzani about the company, and it's only a small step to asking if he holds shares
For shits and giggles, here's some photos that should raise questions about what the hell Delta Crescent was up to. Look, it's the Kurdish President and Jim Reese, a military contractor and Delta Crescent official https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7012798-Screen-Shot-2020-08-03-at-12-33-25-PM.html
And here's Delta Crescent with Fawzi Hariri, Barzani's Chief of Staff, in the *checks notes* Saudi consulate in Erbil. Uh, are the Saudis involved in this too? https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7012795-Screen-Shot-2020-08-03-at-12-28-37-PM.html
While asking questions about the dirty money trail, a lot of the suggestions were that Delta Crescent would sell to, or use, Iraqi Kurdistan's Lanaz refinery.
http://lanaz.com
http://lanaz.com
Lanaz is owned by a shell company called Rainfloods. Guess who owns Rainfloods? Mansour Barzani, the brother of the Prime Minister and cousin of the President of Kurdistan. Doing business at Lanaz would be a kickback.
Oh, and on the topic of Rainfloods, it was used to rip the Pentagon off for hundreds of millions, including $50 million which appears to have been funneled into luxury Beverly Hills mansions for the Barzani family. https://newrepublic.com/article/158609/iraq-barzani-pentagon-oil-beverly-hills-mansion
The Pentagon was paying these guys $10 a gallon for gasoline, which, if you've been to a gas station recently (and international fuel prices roughly track), is wildly overpriced. https://newrepublic.com/article/157605/pentagon-still-paying-10-gallon-gas
Also, if someone finds me the full Pompeo personal connection to Delta Crescent, I'll give you a prize.
Also, just to reinforce that this appears to have been held back until Congress already had its hearing, here's the date that Treasury told a judge they'd provide the records. Note, it is not currently the first week of December.
The HFAC meeting started at 9 AM Central, look when the records arrived
Oh, and if anyone is interested in the redaction justification. The company asked Treasury not to release the records, and so Treasury just called it all trade secrets and confidential business information. In reality, this is actually U.S. foreign policy
It was pointed out that I should mention the photo of Hariri and Delta Crescent at the Saudi consulate doesn't prove they met there or the Saudis were involved. They could have just been meeting at the Barzani connected hotel that hosts it and stopped to snap a photo there.
@iraqoilreport with a good summary here in their newsletter https://www.iraqoilreport.com/this-week/oil-sector-impact-of-krg-protests-iraqs-f-16-woes-continue-43396/
