American Tamraz going to prison, if caught
Lebanon, Politics, 7/24/1997

The Lebanese military court sentenced fugitive Lebanese-American Roger Tamraz and three accomplices to various prison terms after pronouncing them guilty of stealing blank Lebanese passports and official stamps from the general security department in 1978.

Presiding judge Brig. Zeid Halawi sentenced Tamraz and businessman Mario Simonedes, both at large, to eight years each of masterminding the theft and sale of 1,000 passports.

General security inspector Antoine Ayoub, who is also at large, received a five-year sentence for stealing the passports, while inspector Peshara Dager, the only defendant in custody, was sentenced to one month's jail for neglecting his duties as a gatekeeper at the general security department at the time of the theft.

In a closing session Halawi Heard arguments by military prosecutor Joseph Maarawi and defense lawyer Nabil Boustani for Dager. He requested a prison sentence of between three and ten years for Dager. The defendant had confessed during questioning that he had received 200 US dollars at the time from Ayoub to facilitate his entry to the room where the passports were stored.

Halawi said the escape of the three other defendants proved that the charges filed against them were valid.

Boustani said Dager had been unjustly blamed for the whole crime, saying that the passports were in a box, not a safe as they should have been, "which proves that they were ready to be taken ."

He argued that the only offense Dager should be blamed for was the negligence of duties.

Tamraz is also sought in connection with a 200 million US dollar bank embezzlement case and is a figure in the current US probe into election campaign donations to US President Bill Clinton.

Lebanon has issued two international arrest warrants against Tamraz on charges of fraud, embezzlement and fraudulent bankruptcy since 1989.

Tamraz was briefly placed under home arrest in a hotel he was staying at in the former Soviet republic of Georgia last month in accordance with the two Lebanese warrants.

However, US diplomatic intervention secured his release three days later in spite of an extradition treaty with Georgia.

A US federal grand jury is investigating whether Tamraz offered to make donations to the Democratic party in return for a Clinton administration review of his pipeline project in the Caucasus region.

Tamraz, who paid out more than 170,000 US dollars in 1995 and 1996, visited the White House six times last year, despite concerns raised by the National Security Council.

The CIA's inspector general is also investigating whether Donald Fowler, then co-chairman of the Democratic National Committee, pressured the agency to revise a report about Tamraz it sent to the NSC.

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