Bob Ney's high-rolling gambling partner Fouad al Zayat, a.k.a. the Fat Man, wins a court case against Iran over a jet he was apparently asked by Iran to help purchase for them, but never delivered:

... The case centres on a deal that Mr al-Zayat brokered during 2002 with intermediaries acting for Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Iranian President.

The Iranian leader had ordered a £49 million passenger jet through Mr al-Zayat’s companies in Britain, Cyprus and the Middle East.

The deal became [stuck] in a dispute about payments. During a trip to Lebanon in 2004, Mr al-Zayat claims, he was kidnapped at gunpoint by members of the Iranian Revolutionary guard in Beirut. According to reports, he was held in the Iranian Embassy for a week and released only after signing a document agreeing to pay back the money that the Iranians claimed that he owed them. ...

Zayat had been cultivating Ney to try to win US government permission to sell export-controlled civilian airplane parts to Iran. According to one source, Zayat had at one time served as a kind of rep for McDonnell Douglas in the Gulf, while serving more generally as a defense equipment middleman.

Posted by Laura at May 12, 2007 05:01 PM