The originator and sustainer of memogate, Mansoor Ijaz, had the Pakistani government, establishment, media and society searching for clues for the last two months and in fact, brought the future of the Pakistani political system into question with the five most powerful men of Pakistan trying to steal a part in its final episode.
Pakistan’s president is allegedly on the ropes, the prime minister’s staying put, the generals, Kayani and Pasha, insist on calling a spade a spade and the chief justice is hovering near the lights, waiting for his cue to deliver “suspected” justice.It took all of eight weeks, a non-issue and a non-paper to reveal how strong the Pakistani Constitution and its power centres are.Lets get to know the man who did it all. He was called Musawer by his parents.
Musawer Manoour Ijaz is a conman of absolute excellence and no one in the local and international media received a hint of the man behind the skin during the last two decades of his public life.He reportedly rubs shoulders with American generals, funds American presidential candidates, brokers regional peace, analyses terrorism and fiddles around as he pleases with people around the world. Haqqani and Zardari are his latest victims.He reportedly lives in Manhattan, owns a French Riveria mansion, private yachts and flies private jets. All this has been reported by multiple global media brand names like Newsweek and others.
He has written over 170 op-eds in leading American and British dailies and has given over 200 TV appearances.The estimates of his personal wealth vary from few hundred million dollars to about 2.5 billion dollars as per a senior Pakistani diplomat living in Washington.No one in the world can imagine someone with a more successful and luxurious lifestyle than his.
The fact, however, remains that he may not have enough personal credit to buy a first class air ticket to give testimony in the Pakistani Supreme Court as recommended by our top spy and ultimate guardian, General Shuja Pasha.After an MS in mechanical engineering, Musawer stepped into an active practical life around 1990 by setting up a firm called Crescent Investment Management Inc in USA.
According to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the US “this firm never filed a return to SEC since 1999 when the filing in USA went Edgar/electronic based”. Prior to that, this firm reportedly had only 3 employees and reportedly had an annual turnover of less than one million dollars. This parent firm doesn’t exist anymore, as confirmed by SEC officials in America.In year 2000, Mansoor Ijaz broke it to an Indian Journalist Ramananda SenGupta at Rediff the following startling facts.“
Our business, built around my proprietary CARAT, TRACK and CALOP Systems, today invests across a broad cross-section of industries including oil and gas projects, high technology, infrastructure development and commercial real estate. Crescent Investment Management and its affiliates, Crescent Equity Partners and The Crescent Investment Group, have partners in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East.”
However, SEC, which tracks and secures regular filings from American firms, confirms that the above three companies are “neither listed in the USA, nor are authorised issuers nor can extend any investment advice”. Musawer claims to run global businesses while not having any listed company of significance even in his home country.
Musawer M Ijaz, with more startling revelations, claimed that the Clintons missed at least three self-styled diplomatic overtures by him to nab Osama Bin Laden from Sudan. This revelation bagged him his only job as an analyst at Fox TV for an undisclosed sum. This all happened post-9/11.
Having secured a public face through the Fox News deal, Musawer apparently succeeded in convincing at least two retired US Air Force Generals and an ex-CIA director into setting up at least two companies at AIM, London Stock Exchange. These were public limited companies registered with the London Stock exchange and Isle of Man.One of them, a company called Crescent Technology Ventures PLC (of which Gen Abranmson was a chairman and Mansoorr its CEO) reportedly traded in the London Stock Exchange’s minor arm, AIM, for about four years and was finally suspended around 2007. This company never reportedly achieved a market cap of only 1.1 Million pounds and it is not clear how many of its shares Mansoor Ijaz owned, if any. This shady trading got Musawer the title of “ Professional Penny Stock Con Artiste” by one of his critics.
Apparently, Mansoor was a paid CEO of this firm for around four years and the carry home salary of such penny companies in AIM Exchange is generally limited to around 5000 pounds per month. The Financial Ombudsman office in London Stock Exchange confirmed that the “Crescent Technology Ventures PLC doesn’t exist in their database”.The maverick and “successful billionaire” didn’t stop at that and came out with the wonderful idea of building underwater hotels and resorts in Dubai, Monaco and four other cities. To raise money for this company, called Crescent Hydropolis PLC, it was incorporated in Isle of Man. Reputed British papers like the Daily Guardian reported that this company was undertaking a $344 million resort submerged in the sea in Dubai in 2006.
This resort was never even initiated and the sponsors raised some cheap pennies selling this imagination to a few goofs around the world. How much money this company ever made is anybody’s guess, but it would not be more than a million dollars in its lifetime.This wonderful and smartly conceived company doesn’t even have a website and is also delisted from trading since 2007.Having failed at setting up any gainful business in the world, this self-styled millionaire came back to the USA and incorporated a company by the name Crescent Investment Partnership Limited along with four other directors/shareholders in Michigan in 2007.The total bought out equity of this firm as reported to the SEC was $450,000 (four crore rupees only) in August 2007.
The total reported salaries of this firm are $50,000 per year, which someone with the initials IMM apparently shares with four other directors. That comes to less than $1000 per month per director. That is the only business currently listed anywhere in the world under Mansur Ijaz’s ownership. The conman now primarily survives on pay checks from Fox News and perhaps some other mirky deals with power brokers in Washington DC.The most interesting fact is that all correspondence to this firm, as per SEC records (Form 13F-NT filings in SEC), is limited to “C/O IMM”, as if the director/CEO of this firm is shy to reveal his actual name. This seems to be American initials for Musawer Mansoor Ijaz in reverse order.
Why would such a successful American businessman, who self-professedly runs an international business empire, hide his own name behind reverse initials for the only existing company he owns a stake with four other directors and not maintain even one website for any of his six reported companies in USA, London, Isle of Man and Mauritius, is anybody’s guess. If this reputed “investment banker cum hedge fund manager” doesn’t have the legal standing to raise any securities, or even give investment advice to anyone in the world as per American law, then how and why does he flash his business achievements across the world?
This guy snubbed the Clintons over OBL post-9/11, was a state guest of the government of India in 2000 and has shaken an elected government in Pakistan. These are all crude facts. Hats off to this conman par excellence for achieving so much in his lifetime.The most interesting part in the memogate scandal is the fact, that the chief of the dreaded ISI, Gen Shuja Pasha actually went all the way to London to meet him for four long hours.
Pakistan’s spy chief apparently took this guy as seriously as he is being taken by the world media as per his apparent international clout. There were two full weeks between the October 10 op-ed article and the October 22nd meeting at Park Lane between Gen Pasha and Musawer. General Pasha should have run some initial security check on his guest before compromising the “morale of the Pakistani Armed Forces”, as per General Kayani’s statement in the Supreme Court of Pakistan over the memogate issue.
One of five siblings, Musawer claims to have been raised in prejudiced neighbourhoods in Virginia, USA, as a young boy as per his Rediff interview in 2000.Having claimed to have had a difficult childhood, Mansoor went on to square it out in his lifetime.He ensured that he ended up rubbing shoulders with the who’s who of America and the world, which was the psychological unwinding of the prejudice part in his personality.He then became the architect of the destablisation of a belatedly-settled government in ISD – that was his counter punch.
The most revealing fact of the matter is how one person, and a perfect conman at that, can send shivers through the Pakistani establishment at the highest national levels sends clear signals to the sandy foundations Pakistan is sitting on. Are we complacent or simply dumb goofs??? Who are we, does anyone know?All eyes are now on the sane eyes of the Supreme Court.The same Senior judiciary, whose august member Khawaja Sharif, the ex-chief justice of Pakistan, had the mettle to defend Governor Salmaan Taseer’s murderer in an open court on a voluntary and matter of conviction basis.The memogate petitions assume special significance as the defendants in this case have publicly and openly shown reservations about the neutrality of the Supreme Court.
