Update: Feds Probing Rezko Iraq Contract

December 3, 2006

Federal authorities are investigating an Iraqi power plant deal involving Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a former top fund-raiser for Gov. Blagojevich charged with defrauding Illinois taxpayers.

Investigators want to talk to Iraq's jailed former electricity minister, Aiham Alsammarae, about how Rezko landed the potentially lucrative contract, a source familiar with the probe told the Chicago Sun-Times. Alsammarae, who holds dual U.S.-Iraqi citizenship and has a house in Oak Brook, helped Rezko get the deal, another source said.

Rezko and others in the venture were to own the plant and sell electricity back to the Iraqis, but the Iraqi government still was to pay a substantial portion of construction costs, that source added.

The contract, negotiated in 2004, no longer is in effect. It is unknown how much money, if any, Rezko made.

Alsammarae, 55, attended the Illinois Institute of Technology with Rezko in the late 1970s and early 1980s and went on to own an engineering firm in Downers Grove.

From Oak Brook to Iraqi Cabinet to prison.
Since leaving Oak Brook in 2003 to become Iraq's minister of electricity, Aiham Alsammarae has seen his fortunes rise and fall.
- September 2004: Electrical power systems improve from pre-war days, the New York Times reports, but renewed violence wipes out those gains.
- June 2005: Now out of the Iraqi Cabinet, Alsammarae, a Sunni, announces he's forming a group to bridge the political gap between Sunni insurgents and Iraq's Shiite-led government. He claims to have talked to insurgent groups.
- February 2006: One of the groups Alsammarae said he'd talked to takes credit for trying to kill him in a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad. He's OK, but two bodyguards in his convoy are wounded.
- August 2006: Alsammarae turns himself in to fight corruption charges. His family says he's detained for political reasons.
- October 2006: Iraqi news outlets report that U.S. forces are trying to help Alsammarae escape Iraqi custody. The U.S. State Department declines to comment.
SOURCE: News reports.

--- In other news, vultures for TPTB continue circling over the carcass of Iraq.