From Barry Seal to Donald Trump II

Part II of a brief primer about Donald Trump’s connections in the U.S. with transnational organized crime.

In addition to his casino deal with Donald Trump, Leslie Greyling— Donald Trump’s multi-million-dollar benefactor in the sale of a Palm Beach mansion to Trump for half its true value—was working on two other casino deals.

On the off chance the identities of his partners in those deals “might could” shed light on Greyling’s involvement with Trump, I decided to take a look. 

In the first of his other two casino deals, Leslie Greyling, along with Adnan Khashoggi—both Trump business associates— were vying with another group in 2003-2004 to build a casino on Rum Cay, a remote island on the backside of the Bahamas.

“Vying’ may be too weak a word for the fierce contest that ensued, which involved death threats as well as the fire-bombing of a private plane belonging to one of the participants in the struggle. 

Greyling and Khashoggi were muscling in to take advantage of Rum Cay’s newly installed 5000-foot runway, long enough to handle medium range airliners and twin-engine planes.

Pirates of the Caribbean

Located 375 miles southeast of Ft. Lauderdale, in the remote southeastern corner of the Bahamas, Rum Cay is the very definition of ‘secluded.’ 

But it has an extremely colorful history.

The island once served as a refuge for pirates. It became a  center of Confederate gunrunning during the Civil War. Later it was an important port used for bootlegging during Prohibition.

To assist their efforts, Greyling and Khashoggi enlisted the by-now infamous Wally Hilliard, owner of the Florida flight school where Mohamed Atta supposedly learned to fly.

One of Hilliard’s Learjet’s (N35NK) began making regular trips to the island.  As a result, a year later the FAA charged Hilliard with running illegal charter flights for Saudi clients. Also, according to an official European Union inquiry, the same Lear  jet was flying extraordinary renditions for the CIA. 

Enter… F. Lee Bailey?

Two groups were contending over a large chunk of the island’s real estate. One was led by Billy Davis, a preacher, former Republican state senator from Arizona, and real estate developer, who contacted me in frustration when the battle began going against him. 

 “I believe that some of these people are connected with those you write about,” Davis told me. “At least their aircraft are involved, flying weekly to Rum Cay.”

“My plane had a fuel line sliced, after which the cockpit filled with gas,” Davis said. “Thankfully we were able to land in Nassau, and get the hose fixed. But then, several weeks later, one of our planes was firebombed while on the ground in Rum Cay.”

Bob Little Jr was the owner of the plane that was destroyed. “Rum Cay was the largest privateering island back in the 1700’s,” he said.  “Some say the pirates never left.”

“The original conspiracy was put together in Tallahassee at the Federal Prison,” according to Davis. “Those involved included Leslie Greyling and F. Lee Bailey.”

It made a certain sense. F. Lee Bailey was at the same time defending Greyling on fraud and money laundering charges.

And Wally Hilliard, who’d lent the effort a Lear jet, had “business interests,” including a winery, in South Africa, Leslie Greyling’s home country, at the time.

Rustling Walter’s feathers was a mistake

Brief backstory: The Bahamas have long been used as a staging area to smuggle cocaine and marijuana into the US, the most visible effort being that of  Carlos Lehder, whose takeover of Norman Cay is remembered because a sailboat piloted by CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite was fired on for straying too close.

DEA officials said that at one time as much as two-thirds of all cocaine entering the US transited the Bahamas.

Rum Cay was in the middle of the action. Even travel writers knew about it.

According to a yachting guide to the region around Rum Cay, “Today the islands serve as airstrips to refuel light aircraft flying in from Colombia en route for southern Florida, or as transshipment points from aircraft to high-speed motorboats.”

“The operation is swift and simple. All the drug-traffickers need are a few willing hands to work for as little as 15 minutes, and for someone in authority to look the other way.”

While investigating Hilliard’s involvement, I came across a  newspaper headline about Rum Cay with the headline “COPS SEIZE $50 MILLION IN DRUGS.”

“Bahamian and U.S. drug-enforcement officials confiscated $50 million in cocaine that was being smuggled aboard an unlicensed catamaran in Bahamian waters, “officials said.

“Acting on police intelligence, authorities seized the 2,190 pounds of the drug aboard an unnamed 44-foot catamaran less than two miles off Rum Cay.”

The drug trade always has a grisly side. There are regular murders. About the discovery  of one poor unfortunate found floating in the wayer just offshore, the local paper reported:

“Mr. Thompson’s body was found in ignominious circumstances, dumped in the ocean after having been missing for three or so days. The head and much of the body was wrapped in duct tape which strapped the arms to the sides;  the legs were bound together with a chain fastened by a large lock and weighted by a cement block.”

“Once it was retrieved, dog bites were discovered all over the body. It appears that the person was killed by attack dogs and then dumped.”

The casino project died after the feud drew unwanted attention. 

“For a South African, Leslie Greyling was really well-connected”

The question always asked about Wallace J. Hilliard is always the same. But it’s never been officially answered. How did a retired Green Bay insurance executive from Green Bay get involved with elements usually found only in spy novels? 

A little-known fact may be responsible. 

Just three weeks after Mohamed Atta arrived to attend his flight school, one of Hilliard’s Lear jets was busted on a runway at Orlando Executive Airport.

The plane was carrying forty-three pounds of heroin, which I later learned is what’s known in the trade as ‘heavy weight.”

However thanks to the viligence of the FBI, none of this was in any way connected, or of any interest, during the 9/11 investigation. 

Two years later, in 2006, an Adnan Khashoggi-affiliated pump-and-dump company called SkyWay Communications of St. Petersburg Florida owned a DC-9 that was busted in the Yucatan carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine. It was the largest-ever  cocaine seizure on an airplane in Mexico, a record that stands to this day.

At the time Skyway was leasing a 70,000 square foot “repair” facility at DFW Airport in Dallas for more than $20,000 a month. The owner of the facility was in business with  Leslie Greyling in his second casino project. 

His name is Richard Rainwater,a Texas billionaire known as “the power behind the throne” during George W. Bush’s first Presidential campaign.

For no easily discernible reason, the registered owner of the DC-9 caught with more than five tons of cocaine had been leasing an expensive airport property owned by Bush’s biggest backer.

Go figure.  “We were told we were going to use the facility to service monitors and video equipment which airline’s use to provide onboard entertainment,” one ex-employee of the facility told me.

“But when you think about it, fixing TV monitors on planes in a facility costing more than 20 grand a month doesn’t seem really economic, does it?”

“Some enchanted evening”

Greyling’s other casino deal, underway at the same time as his mansion deal in Palm Beach with Trump, was located more than 7000 miles away in the South Pacific.  The island of Tinian became famous as the launching pad for the planes that dropped atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II. 

Greyling was involved in a casino deal there with Richard Rainwater, the Texas billionaire who was George W. Bush’s biggest financial backer in his rise to become Texas governor and the U.S. president.

Rainwater’s Lone Star Casinos had been first with a foot in the door, and became the first land-based casino company on the island. Rainwater ended up with a casino on Tinian, while Greyling was left holding the bag, as evidenced in an April 7, 1994 story in the Palm Beach Post headlined “LITIGATION DOGS 2 PB BUSINESSMEN”

“Two businessmen who breezed into Palm Beach with big plans, South African Leslie S. Greyling and lawyer Daniel M. Boyar of West Palm Beach, owe almost $ 2.9 million as part of a busted deal to acquire a Las Vegas casino, after conspiring to cheat the company as part of a deal, according to court records.”

“The multi-million-dollar judgment is the latest legal hassle for Greyling and Boyar, who came to Palm Beach with plans to build a gaming and resort empire.”

Omerta on the Vancouver Stock Exchange

“Greyling planned to buy the Chesterfield Hotel in Palm Beach and said he might hire Donald Trump to run it. But the deal to buy the hotel fell through and the Chesterfield’s owner sued Greyling.”Leslie Greyling was a very busy fraudster. He was also running a stock swindle out of Vancouver, Canada, dubbed the “scam capital of the world” by Forbes magazine.

“The white-collar translation of omerta” — the mafia code of silence — is the description of Vancouver Stock Exchange offered by a securities analyst who testified in a recent case there,” read one typical account.

“The Vancouver Stock Exchange checkered past has seen stock offerings floated for everything from cone-shaped headpieces designed to cure baldness to archeological expeditions to find King Solomon’s mines.”

While planning to hire Trump to run a hotel he didn’t own, Leslie Greyling was sitting under what one newspaper called “A Mafia Cloud.”

“Mafia cloud over web domain operator,”  headlined London’s MAIL ON SUNDAY on August 26, 2001.

“An international financier charged by police in America in connection with a Mafia-related extortion scheme on Wall Street has emerged as the key figure behind Britain’s biggest web domain name business.”

“Leslie Greyling has managed to avoid extradition to America on charges filed against him last year alleging that he participated in a Mafia scheme to extort money from investors.”

Even if you’re tooling around town in a Yellow Rolls Royce, as Greyling was, it has to hurt when you’re the subject of snarky headlines in your local paper — as Greyling was, in the June 17, 2000 Palm Beach Post:

“FAMILIAR NAMES IN SECURITIES FRAUD BUST.”

Remember ‘Casino Jack?’

Several years later, two more Republicans—not yet lofty kingmakers, like Rainwater, but getting there—also began looking to become major players on Tinian.

 “Casino Jack” Abramoff was in the middle of his rise to the top of the lobbyist heap. His partner Tom DeLay, the Majority leader in the House of Representatives was already there. 

Both men’s careers would end in disgrace, Abramoff in prison, a fate which Delay avoided, but barely.  After being convicted of campaign violations and sentenced to three years in prison, his conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Appeals.

The idea was to turn the tiny island of Tinian in the Mariana’s, a three-hour flight from most major Asian population centers, into a Mecca of glittering casinos and gambling cruise ships.

“Tinian, some three hours flying time from half the world’s population, has been the Lone Star Casino Corp.’s great adventure,” read a company press release in 1995.

“Guam has an annual tourism base of more than a million people… a jaunt to Tinian beats a tiring trip to Las Vegas of 20-plus hours from South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan or Tokyo.”

Lone Star had tapped Texas-based Pacific Island Aviation, a company partially funded by the Lockheed Martin Corporation, to fly junketeers to the island’s casino.

The air charter company was also flying some ‘sensitive’ international assignments at the time. During the American expansion of influence in the oil-rich former Soviet Republics of Central Asia, the company operated flights into and out of the Georgian capital of Tbilisi and the Azerbaijan capital Baku.

“Round up the usual suspects”

What did all these movers and shakers see in Tinian? Clearly, none of the major players in the push for gambling on Tinian appear to have wandered in off the street.

For his part, Jack Abramoff wanted t0 bring casino cruise ships to Tinian.

He had already acquired SunCruz Casino Cruise Line in Florida— along with his hapless partner Adam Kidan, a New York native whose Israeli stepfather was the victim of a Mob hit—through the simple expedient of having Gus Boulis, the cruise line’s owner, murdered gangland style.

Despite having confessions from several men involved in the hit—and even though Adam Kidan had paid for it with a check for $200,000 to a Gambino family Mobster in Brooklyn— neither Abramoff nor Kidan was ever charged with a crime. For certain defendants, Fort Lauderdale Florida can be a tough place to get convicted.

Rainwater’s casino gambits caused a bit of grief for one man.

In George W. Bush’s run to become Governor of Texas in 1996, Democratic Gov. Ann Richard’s campaign tried to score points by highlighting Bush’s financial ties to Rainwater, citing his casino investments as well as his lobbying efforts to expand gambling in Texas.

Her campaign spokesman accused Bush of being “owned” by Rainwater, saying their financial relationship would compromise Bush if he became governor.

Bush responded by saying he was “insulted.’ “I am against casino gambling. I don’t think it is good economic development and I will veto any bill except one that has a referendum attached to it,” he said.

Bush went on to win the race. Four years later he became president.

Tell us again, what does being connected mean?

In 2002, Jack Abramoff was the subject of a Guam grand jury probe which was thwarted by President Bush, who intervened to remove the supervising federal prosecutor.

Abramoff spokesman Andrew Blum said the lobbyist “has no recollection of his being investigated in Guam in 2002.”

While Lone Star’s casino deal was playing itself out, a US government report was issued with this headline: “Gangs from China, Russia, Japan, Korea flock to the Pacific”

The report’s first paragraph read:

“Chinese Triad gangs, Japanese Yakuza, Russian Mafia, and Korean Mafia organizations are engaged in criminal activities in the Northern Mariana Islands, including prostitution and smuggling of persons, drug trafficking, money laundering, and gambling.”

There’s one final connection that’s never been made before, to my knowledge, between Jack Abramoff and Leslie Greyling.

Abramoff, who grew up in Beverly Hills, produced several Hollywood movies, like “The KGB Connection.”

The actor Carmen Argenziano, who played the villainous Cuban colonel in the film, said many of the men playing Russian and Cuban soldiers were from the South African Defense Forces.

“There were rumors going around the set that some of the funding for the film was coming from South Africa’s military intelligence agency,” Argenziano said.

“We were pretty upset about the source of the money. We heard that very right-wing South African money was helping fund the movie. We thought we were misled. We were shocked that these guys we thought were showbiz liberals—Beverly Hills Jewish kids— were doing this.”

The film was produced by the Coalition for Freedom based in Raleigh, N.C., and contained clips from a documentary produced by the Reverend Moon-backed Freedom Leadership Foundation.

While it may be a stretch to call Moonies anything like traditional Christians, Leslie Greyling had made it known during this time that he was raising $100 million to launch a “Christian movie production studio” in North Carolina.

But wait. There’s more.