Yesterday, Josh pointed out that the business model for Neil Bush’s education company Ignite! seems to be that “Neil goes around the world finding international statesmen, bigwigs and criminals who want to ‘invest’ in Ignite! as a way to curry favor with the brother in the White House.”
But just who are those statesmen, bigwigs and criminals?
The company declines to name private investors, but documents filed with the SEC show that it raised $7.1 million from 53 investors. There are a number of unnamed investors from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the British Virgin Islands.
Here are the ones we do know about. It’s quite an international grab bag:
— Hamza El Khouli, an associate of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and chairman of First Arabian Development and Investment Company (Lawrence Journal World)
— Les and Anne Csorba, Bush contributors who worked in the first Bush White House in the White House Personnel Office and the Office of Personnel Management (Houston Chronicle).
— Former Iranian Ambassador Hushang Ansary, a Houston businessman (Houston Chronicle).
— Sofidiv Inc., a division of the Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton luxury goods company (Houston Chronicle)
— Mohammed Al Saddah of the Ultra Horizon Co. in Kuwait (Houston Chronicle).
— Winston Wong (alternately, Winston Wang), a Taiwan businessman who started the Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. with the eldest son of China’s president, Jiang Zemin (Washington Post)
— Joseph Peacock, company secretary at Crest Investment, where Neil Bush was co-chairman; they specialize in the energy sector. Peacock is also involved with many companies owned by Jamal Daniel – Daniel is a Syrian-American businessman with business ties to the Bush family (St. Petersburg Times)
— Boris Berezovky, a Russian billionaire living in London with ties to many Russian politicians, including Boris Yeltsin. He is sought by Russian prosecutors and Interpol for fraud (Moscow Times, Washington Post)
— Knowledge Universe, a company chaired by former junk bond king Michael Milken (Philadelphia Inquirer, AP)
— The Nagase Brothers education company in Japan (AP, NY Times)
— Timothy Bridgewater, the chief executive of Interlink Management, the venture capital firm he and Neil started, also one of the Republican âPioneersâ who helped raise $100,000 for George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign (Philadelphia Inquirer)
and finally,
— Bush’s parents
