Armies of Liberation

According to research, the American company which is partnering with Yemen to produce *five nuclear reactors* has no experience building nuclear reactors, very low operating capital, and is headed by a Yemeni-American who attended the same school at the same time as the Minister of Electricity who inked the deal. Its a USD 15 billion dollar deal. More to come.

Yemen’s nuclear partner: Powered Corp

Mr. Alghani is the Founder and Chairman of Adin Investment Company in Yemen . Mr. Alghani served as Vice Chairman and CFO of Adair International Oil & Gas Inc. from 1990 to 2002.

In 2002, Mr. Alghani was voted out of his position as Vice Chairman as a result of a hostile proxy contest led by a group of stockholders and former members of management, who called themselves the Score Group. Subsequent to the election, Mr. Alghani was terminated by Adair from his position as CFO by the newly-elected board.

During the course of the hostile proxy contest, the Score Group made numerous allegations that Mr. Alghani and other members of management had committed fraud, had mismanaged Adair and had misrepresented management’s ability to raise funds for Adair’s business plan. They also made numerous personal attacks against Mr. Alghani, including that he had misstated his academic credentials and that various governmental agencies were investigating Mr. Alghani for criminal activities. Subsequent to the proxy contest, Adair, renamed EnDevCo, filed charges against Mr. Alghani, the other members of management and various parties seeking to recover damages that Mr. Alghani and the other defendants had allegedly caused EnDevCo. Mr. Alghani and the other defendants denied the charges, and Mr. Alghani and certain members of management countersued for defamation, slander and libel.

The only allegation the Score Group made that Mr. Alghani agrees with was that he misstated his academic credentials. He did attend USC for approximately four years and would have needed to complete about eight to ten credits in order to graduate.

Just ten credits short, thats just like graduating.

Hat tip: The Empty Quarter.

Ok more on Alghani:

CFO magazine, 2002:

But it’s unlikely any will top the sob story that Chris A. Dittmar, CFO of Adair International Oil and Gas Inc., told in his deadline-extension request last quarter. According to the company’s explanation in its Form 12b-25, the newly appointed Dittmar arrived at work the day after Adair shareholders ousted the former CEO and CFO to find that the company’s financial records had all but vanished. “Key computers containing the financial records of the corporation had been stolen and all data on any other computer left behind had been deleted,” with backup tapes gone as well, the filing explains. Further, as a result of the theft, the entire staff had been dismissed.

What the filing didn’t say was that a corporate surveillance camera allegedly caught two direct reports of former CEO John Adair and former CFO Jalal Alghani carting off the computers. “These were evidently not the smartest crooks in the world,” says Dittmar. He claims the two took the information to cover up an alleged securities-fraud scheme.

After reconstructing its financials with information from one former accountant, along with documents gathered from its vendors, customers, and banks, Adair submitted its 10-Q within the extended deadline. It intends to press securities-fraud charges against the two former officers, while the shareholder group that overthrew them has submitted reports to the SEC, the Justice Department, and the IRS, among other federal agencies.

The company seems to have a lot of lawyers and the one guy with nuclear expertise seems to have been hired in 2007.

Actually Dominic Moran nailed it last week:

In a statement carried by Middle East Online, the minister said: “The overall cost of the project is estimated at $15 billion,” stressing that the new energy source would be “economically competitive, that is, cheaper than the electricity we produce today.”

Critics of nuclear generation debunk such claims, arguing that the costs of nuclear generation are invariably understated and underwritten by the state.

Bahran acknowledged that the government would not be paying for the reactors, saying “Powered Corporation will oversee efforts to secure the financing of the project.”

Perusal of Powered Corporation’s website gives no indications as to the company’s ability to raise the required US$15 billion, or of significant experience in Modular Helium Reactor (MHR) generation, which the company says it is moving into.

The company’s site also provides no details as to the potential or existing partnerships required to fund and conduct the massive undertaking of establishing reactors in Yemen.

It is clear that given the risks of tardy or non-existent government payments, the company will not be able to generate sufficient revenue for the fabrication of the reactors from the private sector and will likely be relying on the US government to bear the bulk of start-up funding and provide ongoing payment guarantees.

Yemen Times

Social Capital is a very new concept to Yemen, it stands alone as an isolated understanding of Yemen limited to several micro-developmental organizations, known also as charities. Although splendid in numbers, according to statistics by the Ministry of Social Affairs, little impact do the people of Yemen see as a result of over 3,000 registered charities, with an exception of a handful charities which have a contribution towards poverty reduction in the Country.

Although poverty in Yemen has been reduced from 41.8 percent in 1998 to 35.5 percent in 2005, according to the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation. Ironically, the key issue is that 41.8 percent of the population in 1998 was 7.5 million people, while 35.5 percent of the population in 2005 was 7.7 million people, considering the annual population growth rate of 3.4 percent.

The Holy month of Ramadhan is an excellent occasion to study the role of charities in building social capital and reducing poverty, Most recently Al-Islah Charitable Society for Social Welfare has proclaimed that its activities directly affect half a million people. Since its establishment in 1990 in Hodieda governorate, which is the most impoverished governorate in the country, Al-Islah charity has grown to become the country’s largest charitable organization, with operations ranging from Orphan care and vocational training to reproductive health and humanitarian assistance. (Read on …)

Yemen Observer:

Samir Rashad al-Yousefi, Editor-in-Chief of the al-Jomhoria newspaper has called for the prosecution of the opposition Islah Party for abandoning Islamic values, which call for unity, brotherhood, and non-discrimination.

Al-Yousefi’s comments come after Islah declared it would start legal proceedings against him and his newspaper after he wrote an opinion article under the title of the Separaist Pretext of Islah in which he said that the main aim of the Islah is to gain power, even if allied with the devil, at the expense of any religious principles or values, whether religious or secular.

“What I wrote in the article is just my viewpoint and Islah should accept that in the context of freedom of opinion and not resort to the courts,” al-Yousefi said. (Read on …)

This is rather comprehensive and the only detail missing is that Fawz al-Reibi was the subject of an FBI national alert in February 2002.

Jamestown:

In mid-September, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh issued a stern warning to the Wa’ilah tribe in northern Yemen: turn over the six al-Qaeda suspects you are sheltering or face serious repercussions (al-Wasat, September 12). The six men that Saleh believes have found refuge with the tribe near the Saudi border are the remnants of a group of 23 prisoners that escaped from a Yemeni political security prison on February 3, 2006. The prisoners escaped by tunneling out of their cell and into a neighboring mosque, which has since been detailed in a lengthy narrative written by one of the escapees and published by the Yemeni paper al-Ghad. The escapees included a number of prominent al-Qaeda militants, among whom were individuals convicted of carrying out attacks on the USS Cole in 2000 and on the French oil tanker Limburg in 2002.

Six of these suspects have since been killed in clashes with Yemeni or U.S. forces, 11 have either turned themselves back in to authorities or have been recaptured and six of the suspects remain at large. Many of these individuals have continued to fight for al-Qaeda since their escape, and one of them, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, has since been named the new head of Al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Despite differences of age and background, the 23 men who were being held in the cell were linked together through shared experiences. Nearly half of the escapees, 11, were born in Saudi Arabia to Yemeni parents. Several of the men were arrested in late 2002 after a series of bombings in Sanaa and Marib. Seven of these men were part of a 15-man cell that was later charged with planning to attack five foreign embassies as well as to assassinate the then U.S. Ambassador Edmund Hull. Three of the men were convicted of being part of an 11-man cell that was charged with plotting to carry out attacks in Yemen and abroad. Among the escapees, there are also two sets of brothers, Hizam and Arif Mujali and Mansur and Zakariya al-Bayhani, who are themselves brothers of Ghalib and Tawfiq al-Bayhani, who are currently in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay. Two other escapees, Qasim al-Raymi and Fawaz al-Rabay’I, also have brothers in Guantanamo.

This two-part series presents a biographical sketch of each escapee, along with his current status. (Read on …)

Oh no! Every time he amends the constitution, the clock goes back to zero? Two more terms for Saleh? It that what the reform is about? Nah, that’s just preposterous. Could he say it with a straight face?

http://www.alsahwa-yemen.net/view_snews.asp?sub_no=401_2007_09_30_58730
al-Sahwa: September 30, 2007 – A senior leader of the Joint Meeting Parties, Mohammad Qahtan, said that the president’s new declared initiative had come to only solve the president’s problems due to the wave of soaring prices, and not to solve the people’s problems.

“The ruling power aims to grant the president new two terms” added Qahtan in a political symposium in Dhamar province.” Qahtan said.

He labeled the authorities as narrow-minded ,affirming that they only think of tribe and family at the expense of the nation.

The Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh had announced a new imitative for constitutional reform .

According to Saleh’s imitative, the new amendments would cut the presidential term from seven to five years, and reduce the parliamentary term to four from six years.

He further said that the expected changes will shift the current parliamentary system into a presidential system in which he would hold the posts of head of state and head of cabinet.

Al-Sahwa:

September 27, 2007 -According to the annual survey prepared by the Berlin-based organization Transparency International, Yemen is ranked 132nd with a score of 2.5 .

The report said that Yemen fell 21 points compared with the last year’s repot when it was ranked 111th .

The report also revealed deterioration of many Arab states in anti-corruption indexes.

The scores range from ten (squeaky clean) to zero (highly corrupt). A score of 5.0 is the number Transparency International considers the borderline figure distinguishing countries that do and do not have a serious corruption problem.

More at the Yemen Times

Yemen Observer:

The September 6th 2007 by-elections in Aden and Ibb were conducted in a generally peaceful and orderly manner with only a few violations, said the national Democratic Institute for International Affairs in a press release after the elections.

The statement congratulated the SCER for successfully administering the elections and noted that although there were some minor violations, they were not enough to jeopardize the overall validity of the election results. (Read on …)

Yemen Observer

The cabinet has approved a budget extension of YR267.8 billion for the remainder of 2007, and referred it to Parliament for final approval. Ali al-Amrani, a member of the finance committee in Parliament, said the government was able to extend the budget without negative effects on the Yemeni economy, and without increasing the budget deficit.

“We had budgeted for oil to sell at around $50 per barrel but the current global price is more than $75 per barrel,” al-Amrani said.

Meanwhile, the Cabinet approved a package of development programs for the al-Dhale’ governorate after a report revealed the urgent need for assistance in the areas of agriculture, water, health, education, culture, electricity, roads, youth and sport, as well as justice and local administration. The assistance package is expected to take up a significant portion of the supplementary budget.

Dr. Mohammed al-Maitami, a professor of economics at Sana’a University said that the government was acting haphazardly in handing out money to development projects without any kind of strategy and said the government promised last year not to offer any supplementary budget.

“Mini-budgets are only normally used in exceptional cases or times of economic crisis,” said al-Maitami, economist at Sana’a University. “I would like to ask how the government proposes to spend this sum of money during the final two months of 2007.”