Results 1 to 4 of 4

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Location
    PARADISE (San Diego)
    Posts
    99,040

    Plane spotted in Iran is registered to Utah bank

    Plane spotted in Iran is registered to Utah bank

    AP 8:14 p.m. EDT April 18, 2014

    SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — An airplane that mysteriously ended up in Iran is registered to a Utah bank under an arrangement for aviation ownership that has prompted two warnings from a government watchdog in the past year.

    The Bombardier CL-600 became the subject of international intrigue after the New York Times revealed its presence in Iran at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran, along with a picture of the jet, its tail number and a small American flag affixed to the side.


    Government officials are not saying how and why the plane traveled to Iran.


    Except for some approved activities by the U.S. Department of Treasury, federal regulations generally prohibit economic activity between the U.S. and Iran, according to the U.S. Department of State.


    Aviation records show the plane is registered to the Bank of Utah through an arrangement in which the bank serves as a trustee for aircraft owners.


    Scott Parkinson, senior vice president for marketing and communication with the Ogden-based bank, said the financial institution is aware of the plane in Iran but is not investigating at this point.


    "As far as the legality of that, flying into that country, that's really between the beneficiary and the Department of State, and maybe the FAA," Parkinson said. "Not us."


    But the practice has drawn scrutiny from the federal government recently.


    A government watchdog warned last June and again in January that non-U.S. citizens have registered 5,600 planes with the Federal Aviation Administration through trustees, concealing the owners' identities.


    Under FAA regulations, this can be done by the owner creating an agreement to transfer the plane's title to a trustee that is a U.S. citizen.

    The trustee then registers the plane. The agreements provide little information on the identity of the owner or who uses the plane, according to a memorandum by the Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General.


    In 47 registrations closely examined by the inspector general, the non-U.S. citizen who created the trust had complete authority to remove the trustee, and thus control over the plane.


    Just five trustees accounted for 3,283 of the planes registered on behalf of non-U.S. citizens,
    the memorandum said. One trustee required the inspector general to obtain a subpoena before complying with a request for information.


    Parkinson stressed that his bank performs due diligence that is required by regulators in terms of aircraft ownership. "Our trust agreements are very clearly outlined that we don't allow any illegal activity, obviously, with these assets."


    "It's a piece of business that we've carved out, very legitimate piece of business, that our corporate trust people specialize in and have the talent for," he said.


    FAA regulations don't require trustees to identify aircraft owners or operators as a condition of registration. The FAA recently updated its policies to require trustees to produce this information, but only within 48 hours of an FAA request, the memorandum said.


    The FAA has at times experienced problems identifying owners and operators of U.S. registered planes involved in accidents or incidents, the memo said.


    "We found several cases in which aircraft were operating or registered under questionable and possibly illegal circumstances and the FAA did not have sufficient information to conduct its safety oversight," the memorandum said.


    Another plane tied to the Utah bank was in the news recently. A plane from Mexico that went off the runway, flipped over and burst into flames at the Aspen airport was also registered to the bank.


    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...-bank/7892191/
    NO AMNESTY

    Don't reward the criminal actions of millions of illegal aliens by giving them citizenship.


    Sign in and post comments here.

    Please support our fight against illegal immigration by joining ALIPAC's email alerts here https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  2. #2
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Location
    PARADISE (San Diego)
    Posts
    99,040

    Mystery solved? US-registered plane in Iran used by Ghana

    Mystery solved? US-registered plane in Iran used by Ghana

    Posted on April 18, 2014 by Laura Rozen


    The mystery of a US-registered plane spotted at a Tehran airport this week and reported on by the New York Times has apparently been solved.


    The US-registered Bombardier corporate jet, carrying the registration number N604EP, is owned and operated by a Ghana-based engineering firm, an aviation expert said Friday. The visitors it bought to Iran last week were senior Ghanaian officials, an Iranian foreign ministry spokeswoman said Friday.


    The plane was chartered by Ghanaian officials, no American was on board, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told Iranian media Friday, journalist Mojtaba Mousavi and Shargh newspaper reported.


    Tyler Bowron, an aviation expert at Cerretanni Aviation group in Boulder, Colorado, told Al-Monitor that the company that in fact owns and operates the plane is called Engineers and Planners, based in Accra, Ghana.


    The Ghana firm “owns and operates” the plane, Bowron told Al-Monitor.

    Bank of Utah, which is listed on Federal Aviation Agency records as the trustee for the 22-seat corporate jet, “is just the trustee,” Bowron said. “They have nothing to do with it.”


    The New York Times first reported Thursday on the mystery of the US “N-registered” plane seen by the paper at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport on Tuesday. The Blaze first reported Bowron’s identification of the Ghana firm that owns and operates the plane.


    A Bank of Utah spokesperson said the bank was solely acting as a trustee for the airplane’s real owner.


    “Bank of Utah… acts as trustee for aircraft of behalf of the beneficiary,” Scott H. Parkinson, senior vice president for marketing at the Bank of Utah, told Al-Monitor by email Friday. “The Bank has no operational control, financial exposure and is not a lender for this transaction.”


    “The Bank’s trust agreements do not allow aircraft be used in any illegal activity,” Parkinson said.


    International law experts said the US-registered plane, even if owned by a foreign entity, would have probably required a temporary sojourn license from the US Treasury Department Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) to legally visit Iran. US officials declined to comment Friday on the specific facts of this case.


    “We can’t comment on license applications or requests,” a Treasury Department spokesperson told Al-Monitor Friday.


    U.S. Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (“ITSR”) prohibit the exportation of goods, services or technology directly or indirectly from the United States or by a U.S. person to Iran, and would generally prevent U.S.-registered aircraft from flying to Iran.


    “A determination as to whether a violation of the ITSR has occurred is fact specific,” a source familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity, said.


    The Ghana firm said to own the plane, Engineers and Planners, “was formed in 1997 to provide mining, construction and engineering services to the many mining companies that were setting up in Ghana at the time,” the firm said in a 2012 statement concerning a plane it had acquired and would offer for lease.


    “Recently, the company has entered into an agreement with an American Company to provide it with air services using a challenger 600 aircraft,” the company statement continued. “The arrangement makes the aircraft commercially available for rental by mining companies, oil service companies and other corporate institutions when not in use by Engineers and Planners.”


    The company press statement identified its CEO as Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, the younger brother of Ghana’s then-Vice President H.E. John Dramani Mahama, who became Ghana’s president in July, 2012.


    Engineers and Planner’s listed executive director, Adi Ayitevie, previously served as procurement manager at a Maryland-based firm, MNM Communications, that received several U.S. government contracts to provide construction services at US embassies abroad and domestic government and private facilities, including the FBI academy at Quantico, according to his Linkedin bio and the firm’s client list.


    Iranian and Ghanaian officials have in meetings over the past year proclaimed mutual interest in cooperating on mining and other economic development projects, media reports show.


    It is common for foreign entities to acquire US “N-registered” aircraft, using trusteeships such as those provided by the Bank of Utah, that conceal the owner’s identity, aviation and legal experts said.


    http://backchannel.al-monitor.com/in...#ixzz2zHyB4aSd
    NO AMNESTY

    Don't reward the criminal actions of millions of illegal aliens by giving them citizenship.


    Sign in and post comments here.

    Please support our fight against illegal immigration by joining ALIPAC's email alerts here https://eepurl.com/cktGTn

  3. #3
    Banned
    Join Date
    Jun 2013
    Posts
    8,546
    Iran Refuses to Pull Terrorist U.N. Pick

    Forced issue at closed-door U.N. meeting





    Hamid Aboutalebi / AP



    BY: Adam Kredo
    April 22, 2014 3:45 pm
    Iran is insisting that the United States accept its decision to appoint a former terrorist as it representative to the United Nations, which held a closed-door meeting on Tuesday to address Tehran’s concerns over the matter.
    President Barack Obama signed into law last week a widely supported bill preventing countries from appointing terrorists as their U.N. ambassadors.
    The bill came in response to Iran’s selection of Hamid Aboutalebi as its next envoy to the United Nations. The pick drew outrage on Capitol Hill and elsewhere after Aboutalibi was identified as having played a key role in the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, as well as other terror activities.
    The Obama administration announced last week that it would reject Aboutalibi’s visa, sparking outrage in Tehranand leading the country to force the issue at Tuesday’s closed-door U.N. session.
    Iran lashed out over the decision, calling it a blow to international diplomacy. Tehran is now threatening to take legal action to ensure that Aboutalibi is stationed in New York City.
    “Iran is persisting in attempts to somehow ram through a terrorist as its U.N. ambassador,” U.N. expert and human rights activist Anne Bayefsky told the Washington Free Beacon. “It makes sense for Iran, the lead state-sponsor of terrorism. It may even make sense for the U.N., which to this day has no definition of terrorism because of the chokehold of Islamic states on the organization.”
    Bayefsky, who serves as director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust (IHRH), recommended that Congress take “the next step—taking a much closer look at the many NGOs that the U.N. accredits and for which it generates passes, and that encourage terrorism and violence against the United States and its allies.”

    Reports emerging from the U.N. indicate that Iran is poised to employ legal action and other maneuvers to ensure that Aboutalibi is appointed as its representative.
    “The Iranian government ruled out to make a new appointment, and predicted that it will have resort to diplomatic and legal means to guarantee the admission of the ambassador they have named,” the publication Prensa Latina reported on Tuesday.
    U.N. officials are said to have “listened to the statements of Iran, who rejects Washington’s decision of denying visa to the Persian ambassador under the pretext of Aboutalebi’s alleged participation in the storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979,” according to the report.
    Aboutalebi, Iran’s former ambassador to Australia, continues to maintain that he played only a minor role in the hostage situation.
    The U.N. Committee on Relations with the Host Country took up the issue during a closed session Tuesday. The meeting is scheduled to run from 3:00 p.m. until 6:00 p.m.
    The relations committee was established in 1971 to deal with conflicts between the U.N.’s host nation and other countries. It is comprised of 19 nations, including the United States, China, Iraq, Libya, and Russia, among others.
    The relations committee is not bound by U.S. law and can advise the United States on issues. It also can make recommendations on resolutions that should be taken up by the General Assembly.
    While U.S. law, such as the new bill banning terrorist ambassadors, governs the United States, the U.N. can instruct the United States on some visa issues, according to the committee’s mandate.
    A spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the U.N. did not respond to a request for comment on the meeting.
    However, U.S. officials are expected to maintain their opposition to Aboutalibi.

    http://freebeacon.com/national-secur...rist-u-n-pick/

    Maybe this is connected!!!

  4. #4
    Banned
    Join Date
    Jun 2013
    Posts
    8,546
    Iran Wins Top Spots on U.N. Human Rights Committees


    Iran in charge of women’s rights, human rights





    Public execution in Iran / AP



    BY: Adam Kredo
    April 24, 2014 12:00 pm
    Iran has been appointed to several key United Nations committees that oversee the protection of women’s rights and global human rights.
    Iran—which leads the world in executions and recently ordered the hanging a 26-year-old rape victim—was voted late Wednesday into a coveted spot on the U.N. Economic and Social Council’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).
    Tehran’s representative at the United Nations will now serve a four-year term on the committee, which is tasked with protecting women’s rights across the globe.
    Iran also won a spot on the leading U.N. committee that oversees the work of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), a move that has sparked fear among advocacy groups that are worried Iran will now be in a position to silence their work.
    The NGO committee in particular is “a coveted position because it allows governments to silence criticism by acting as the gatekeeper and overseer of all human rights groups that seek to work inside the world body,” according to U.N. Watch, which tracks oppressive regimes at the U.N.
    A number of other repressive regimes were also voted onto the committee, including Azerbaijan, China, Cuba, Russia, and Sudan, among others.
    “Today is a black day for human rights,” Hillel Neuer, U.N. Watch’s executive director, said in a statement. “By empowering the perpetrators over the victims, the U.N. harms the cause of human rights, betrays its founding principles, and undermines its own credibility.”
    Iran’s new role on the women’s rights commission elicited shock from human rights observers who have long criticized Tehran for its oppressive policies and lackluster human rights record.
    “This election farce has real consequences,” said Anne Bayefsky, director of The Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust (IHRH). “At its annual session in March 2014, the CSW adopted only one resolution critical of only one country on earth for violating women’s rights—Israel, violating the rights of Palestinian women.”
    Iran first got into the CSW in 2013.
    “So the question is, why do Western democracies like the United States legitimize these elections and their inevitable consequences, and then pay for their operations year-round?” asked Bayefsky.
    The Commission on the Status of Women is the U.N.’s “principal global policy-making body dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women,” according to the commission’s website.
    Iran will now have a role in evaluating “progress on gender equality, identify challenges, set global standards and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment worldwide.”
    Iran executed more than 500 people last year and is on pace to top that number this year. The regime recently upheld the execution order for a 26-year-old Iranian woman who stabbed a man while he was trying to rape her.
    Iran’s ascent to these top roles on critical human rights committee’s has already provoked outrage.
    “Tragically, the U.N.’s election today of regimes such as Iran, Sudan and Mauritania—governments that rape and torture political prisoners, subjugate women, and commit crimes against humanity from slavery to genocide—sends a message that crass politics trumps basic human rights,” Neur said. “The U.N. is letting down millions of victims around the globe who look to the world body for vital protection.”
    The addition of Iran and China to the committee overseeing NGOs is likely to spark a crackdown on the advocacy work these groups do.
    U.N. Watch, for instance, has been subject to spying by Chinese groups posing as NGOs. Neuer expects these types of incidents to increase.
    “The very U.N. committee that is meant to judge our complaint against this dangerous [Chinese] front group is now stacked more than ever before by China, Sudan, and their non-democratic allies, who control some 70 percent of the seats,” he said in a statement. “When the criminals are made the judges—the arsonists named as fire-fighters—it’s a travesty of justice. The crucial role of civil society within the world body is being eroded, its voice at risk of being silenced.”
    Iran also won slots on the Commission on Population and Development, Commission on Science and Technology for Development, and the Committee for Programme Coordination.
    This entry was posted in National Security and tagged Human Rights, Iran, United Nations. Bookmark the permalink.

    http://freebeacon.com/national-secur...ts-committees/



Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •