WIESBADEN, June 22, 2007 (LPAC)--Germany's most famous weapons sale kick-back scandal of the 1990's, the Thyssen sale of Fox (Fuchs) armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia in 1990/91, involved the same London and Geneva networks which were investigated late 2006 by the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office (SFO). Over 43% of the 400 million D-Mark payments to Thyssen flowed back out to Panama bank accounts controlled by the Geneva-based Ojjeh family, Saudis of Syrian descent. On the board of Mansour Ojjeh's Geneva TAG AVIATION corporate jet company is the London-connected Lebanese businessman and current Transport Minister of Lebanon, Mohammad Safadi. The SFO requests for information from Swiss authorities late last year triggered the frantic efforts of Prince Bandar and Vice President Cheney to close the investigation. Geneva bank accounts associated with Safadi were the SFO target. Safadi is invested in TAG.

In discussions today with EIR, the Augsburg Prosecutor handling the still ongoing case stated that, although under German law the kickbacks coming back to Germans were the only objects of their investigation, and not the money to the Ojjehs, the case did obviously have a large political dimension.

Along with Safadi on the TAG AVIATION board is Sydney Gillibrand, who joined TAG in 1995 after having been Vice-Chairman of British Aerospace Plc. Aside from the "pocket change" which went to Germans in the Fox deal, it has never been established what happened with the rest of the money. Ojjeh's TAG company now runs Europe's leading corporate jet airport, the privatized, former military airbase near London, Farnborough. Ojjeh had been brought in by BAE which is headquartered at Farnborough, getting a 99 year lease from the Ministry of Defence. Baroness Symons, in the midst of the Duggan Hoax, hosted in 2004 the VIP guests of the bi-annual Farnborough Airshow, which is largely a sales operation for BAE. Safadi is well-connected among British aristocracy. His Stow Securities company does deals with the property group of the richest Englishman and largest landowner, the Duke of Westminster, Gerald Grosvenor, of the family going back to the Norman conquest. The Duke was private mentor to Prince William, second in line to become King.