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MANHATTAN (CN) – Building a 90-story shadow near the United Nations and East River, Trump World Tower once had a unit owned by China Energy Finance Corp. – a company known as CEFC that had major projects for the Russian oil giant.
In this former apartment, told a former Senegalese diplomat during three days of testimony, this company has developed four years ago a plan to corrupt the African energy market via Chad, a country rich in oil.
Former Senegalese Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio, who on Thursday completed three exhausting testimony in the Manhattan Federal Court, is the US government's star witness against Patrick Ho, a representative of the CEFC.
At the initial meeting of the Trump World Tower on September 26, 2014, Gadio said, Ho seemed to want to take advantage of Chad's vast oil reserves.
Mr. Gadio said that he had worked diligently over the next three months to hold multiple meetings with Chad's President Idriss Deby just to see the agreement come to fruition after the CEFC brought in about eight large gift boxes filled with $ 2 million at the presidential palace.
The fact that the CFCC offered the President a gift of this size is indisputable: what happened then gave rise to blows during an exhausting cross-examination, but Gadio insisted that Deby reacts with indignation .
"When I came in, I looked at her face and I knew something was happening," Gadio said, referring to Deby.
In a stark contrast to the usual behavior of the Chadian president, Gadio said, "This time there was no smile."
"Why do people believe that all African leaders are corrupt?" Said Gadio, questioned by Deby.
Gadio repeated this plaintive question throughout his examination-in-chief on Wednesday.
"I feel insulted," said President Gadio. "I feel disrespectful and I really do not understand."
At first, Gadio said Deby was planning to expel his Chinese guests and insisted that they bring back the big money boxes to their country. But Gadio said Deby was facing Ho's delegation the next day.
According to Gadio, Ho reportedly told Deby, "Mr. Mr. Speaker, I am very impressed by your reaction and rejection of the gift. "
Several pieces of evidence corroborate Gadio's protests of innocence. Gadio said the parties had reached an agreement to legitimize the agreement by asking CEFC to send a letter announcing a $ 2 million donation for civic improvements. Ho sent an email with such a letter.
Gadio, who organized the visit through his consulting firm Sarata, also stated that he feared that the CFEC would have tried to reduce it by a percentage of any contract sign. The text messages between the Senegalese diplomat and his son also confirm this statement.
"Their attempt to buy the president to put us aside has not worked," wrote Gadio's son, Bouba, in December 2014. "Big business does not like intermediaries. It's normal, but they have no choice with us.
Gadio, initially indicted in the same corruption ploy, has obtained a non-prosecution agreement in exchange for his cooperation.
Ho's lawyer, Edward Kim, of New York firm Krieger Kim & Lewin, tried to undermine Gadio's claim with clean hands.
During his political career in Senegal, a country in West Africa, Gadio acknowledged having accepted an anonymous donation of 10 million Central African francs from a courier, but denied that this exchange was inconvenient.
The seemingly large sum represents less than US $ 20,000, said Gadio, adding that opposition candidates routinely accepted such stealth donations to help their benefactors not to offend the party in power.
Kim also confronted the witness with a message that Gadio was complaining that another client at his consulting firm had tried to deceive him in 2005.
"In fact, this has been my destiny with several similar situations where 10 to 20 million US dollars have been allocated to the president and 40 to 50% were destined for me and not a dollar has been paid out," he said. Is complaining Gadio to Ho.
Gadio insisted that the message be taken out of context. He stated that he referred to consulting services involving other countries and received inaccurate information regarding dollar amounts.
Although Gadio has completed his testimony on this defensive note, the trial continues against Ho, accused of money laundering and violation of the law on corrupt practices abroad.
This is not the first trial in the Manhattan Federal Court involving corruption at the UN featuring a Chinese businessman in the lead role and an incentive to the empire of Trump's vast business empire.
Six years before his conviction in the same courthouse in July 2017, Chinese billionaire Ng Lap Seng met with Trump to formally request him to obtain a casino license in Macao, a future site of a destroyed American complex. by corruption.
That the CFEC has a unit in the tower adjacent to the UN Trump is more than a coincidence: the tower is a magnet for foreign money, where "a third of the units sold on the floors 76 to 83 in 2004 involved people or limited companies related to Russia and neighbors, "according to a Bloomberg News survey.
The South China Morning Post placed the CEFC owner's notebook at Unit 78B.
Before handing over their Trump World Tower unit to the market this year, CEFC paid $ 9 billion for a minority stake in the Russian energy company Rosneft.
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