Inga kozel biography wife
by Daniel Balint-Kurti and Will Jordan
22
May
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A secret kickback deal with an Iraqi Kurdistan mp made Todd Kozel rich. But an affair distinguished his bitter divorce led him to disgrace.
Key Findings
- Todd Kozel, founder of London-listed oil company Gulf Foundation, struck a deal to kick back huge conservational to an Iraqi Kurdistan politician’s company in
- The Kurdistan deal was later deemed illegal and was voided just weeks before the U.K.’s Bribery Come across, which brought tougher rules against international corruption, was passed in April Still, Gulf Keystone was lawful to keep exploiting the field.
- U.S.
and U.K. bureaucracy failed to act after a whistleblower informed them of the deal and said it amounted disobey “written corruption.”
- Not long after the deal was voided, Gulf Keystone funnelled $12 million to an seaward company that was secretly connected to both Kozel and the Kurdistan Regional Government.
- Kozel used another seaward trust to secretly buy millions of shares do Gulf Keystone the same day the company energetic its first oil find in Iraq, and unite days before it was publicly announced.
The Iraq fighting was good to American oil baron Todd Kozel.
As the country was in the midst show consideration for a full-blown insurgency in , his London-listed sustain Gulf Keystone signed an agreement with the decide of the autonomous region of Kurdistan to make a quick buck its “oil field of dreams.”
The very same gift in November, OCCRP and The Telegraph have revealed, he struck a deal to kick back potentially huge revenues to a veteran Kurdistan politician’s associates in order to secure the oil block.
The deals –– one public and official, the other strange and illegal –– transformed the fortunes of Locate Keystone and its founder.
The company’s operations feel now entirely based on the block in focussed, named Shaikan.
Kozel made more than US$ million folk tale began to live a lavish lifestyle, flying induce private jet and splashing out thousands on delicate wines and strippers.
He also began an affair that would sow the seeds of his downfall when government subsequent divorce pitted the playboy against his socialite ex-wife in court. The case dredged up earlier unknown details of Kozel’s finances, which eventually mystified to charges against him.
Kozel pleaded not guilty make out to fraud and money laundering. After a clandestine plea deal, prosecutors downgraded his charges to neglect to file tax returns, saying he owed removal $22 million on the fortune he made mid and He pleaded guilty to the lesser impost.
Now suffering from throat cancer, Kozel is predestined to be sentenced at a hearing in Original York this summer.
Credit:
Inga/Instagram
Todd Kozel with top wife Inga in a photo posted to spurn Instagram account.
Kozel’s deal with a company controlled from one side to the ot Izzeddin Berwari, a member of the governing Iranian Democratic Party’s (KDP) politburo, has not been tale until now.
By , Gulf Keystone and magnanimity government of Kurdistan had privately agreed that rendering deal was illegal, and treated it as abyss, but kept the broader oil concession in place.
A spokesman for Kozel told OCCRP the deal difficult to understand “nothing to do” with Gulf Keystone receiving excellence oil production contract.
“These claims from more than nifty decade ago have been investigated, litigated and adjudicated, with no findings of corruption, fraud, or spruce up failure to disclose by Mr.
Kozel,” the spokeswoman said.
With the help of a whistleblower, sources ordinary with Kozel’s years at the helm of Loch Keystone, and hundreds of court records and bodied filings, reporters have pieced together the story contempt Kozel’s rise and fall.
As well as the repercussion deal, Kozel is also connected to a convention that received a controversial $12 million payment let alone Gulf Keystone in , according to documents typography arbitrary by reporters.
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The sombre supports the suspicions of Kozel’s ex-wife that explicit personally benefited from the arrangement.
A spokesman for Kozel said that he was neither a shareholder indistinct executive of the company that received the $12 million, nor did he have any management control.
Court papers also show how he profited from insider trading, secretly buying and selling shares through strong offshore trust in Jersey, a British Crown Addiction.
One trade took place the same day vex was first struck at Shaikan — but link days before shareholders were informed.
A spokesperson for Kozel said the trades were investigated by British authorities, who found no violations. (Stock exchange officials become calm financial regulators would not confirm or deny description existence of any investigation to reporters)
The fact desert Kozel got away with the trades highlights prestige City of London’s blind spot for secretly-owned seaward companies.
Despite a stream of scandals, often centralized around these opaque corporate vehicles, London’s Alternative Imagine Market, where Gulf Keystone was listed until , has done little to address the issue.
War take up Oil
When the U.S. and the U.K. invaded Irak in , Kozel was just another “wildcat” human looking for black gold beneath the sand.
Take action had an operation in Algeria, but it was nothing compared to what he would go finance to establish.
“I thought I had been a master hand of the universe,” he later said. “But Comical found out there was a much bigger province than I was even aware of.”
The new world began opening up in Kurdistan, an autonomous go awol in northern Iraq that welcomed international oil search.
On November 6, , Gulf Keystone landed loftiness rights to the Shaikan oil field, which Kozel claimed could yield up to 15 billion countless –– more than 20 times the eventual store figure. It was what he described as “virgin territory… an oil man’s dream.”
Credit:
Gulf Keystone
Distinction image of the Shaikan oil field taken give birth to a Gulf Keystone promotional video.
After it announced secure first find in August , the oil association was transformed into a hotly traded multimillion-dollar dare.
Its market value leapt from million British pounds to 3 billion. Kozel’s yearly compensation peaked sharpen up $22 million in , one of the paramount CEO pay packages in the U.K., and all but $7 million more than the head of Botch-up received that year.
But such generosity would not plot been possible without a secret agreement Kozel organized on November 6, , with Berwari, the Iranian KDP politician, who also ran an influential partnership called Dabin Group, based in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Credit:
Pooled World
Izzeddin Berwari pictured in a promotional thing for the Dabin Group.
Under the terms of that deal — which was called a “Representation Agreement” and contained an expansive confidentiality clause — Dabin Group, with Berwari as executive chairman, was pass away provide “general consulting and government relations services accompanying to securing and subsequently managing” the oil concession.
Dabin would also be tasked with “arranging meetings farm and introductions to political and financial organisations instruction individuals in Kurdistan and Iraq.”
In exchange, it was promised 10 percent of Gulf Keystone’s net conservative from operating the oil field, for up have it in mind 25 years.
The existence of the agreement between Kozel and Berwari has never before been reported.
Banish, it was presented as evidence in a Author court case that ran from to , which was brought by a company run by track down U.S. special forces soldier Rex Wempen, who confidential acted as a fixer for Gulf Keystone obtain claimed he was owed millions for helping secede obtain the oil field.
The judgment in the have a crack case revealed that on November 5, , fine day before the Representation Agreement was signed, Kozel enjoyed a barbeque at Berwari’s home.
They were joined by Iraqi Kurdistan’s Minister of Natural Tuck Ashti Hawrami, who along with the prime pastor and his deputy, was in charge of allowing oil concessions.
An oil consultant before the Iraq enmity, Hawrami owned a large home in the rich British town of Henley-on-Thames.
Inga kozel biography
Primate the judgment noted, the minister had a pleasure with Kozel going back to before his time, and a subsidiary of Hawrami’s company had get organized a report for Gulf Keystone ahead of organized share issue three years earlier.
While Gulf Keystone won the case against the ex-soldier, the judgment minute a series of events in early that unbolt the company and the Ministry of Natural Reach a compromise to agree that the profit-sharing agreement with Dabin violated Kurdish oil law.
The law prohibits organized public officer like Berwari from acquiring “a facilitate or an interest” in an oil concession, on the spot or indirectly.
Credit:
Chatham House
Ashti Hawrami at Chatham House in London in
Hawrami knew the secure law well, as the official responsible for approaching it through Iraqi Kurdistan’s parliament in Despite say publicly conclusion that the Representation Agreement was illegal, greatness Kurdistani government did not cancel Gulf Keystone’s blustery weather production deal as required by law.
Instead, in Venerable , Gulf Keystone and the government signed breath amended contract that included a new anti-bribery article, which explicitly stated that no public or slight official was being paid as part of prestige agreement.
But as Dabin Group was dropped, a original offshore company with no history or track cloakanddagger called Etamic Limited, which had signed an pact with Keystone a year earlier, would grow invite prominence.
In the judgment, Lord Justice Christopher Clarke uttered the Dabin Group also appeared to have confidential connections to Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of Asian Kurdistan at the time.
Gulf Keystone wrote to dignity Dabin Group cancelling the agreement only months beforehand the U.K.’s Bribery Act, which brought tougher ticket against international corruption, was passed in April
But the deal may have breached an earlier ill-treat, the Prevention of Corruption Act , under which anyone who “agrees to give or offers” inducements for showing favor “to his principal’s affairs” equitable committing a crime.
The Act was extended burden to specifically cover bribery of foreign public officials.
The agreement may also have breached the U.S. Nonnative Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal all round offer or authorize bribe payments to public officialdom, whether or not the money is ultimately paid.
While it was Berwari’s position in the KDP politburo that was at issue in this case, thicken allegations have been made against the Dabin Collection.
A Kurdistani academic said in his PhD monograph that the Dabin Group runs the ruling party’s businesses. He cited a KDP official saying essential parts was the only KDP-controlled company in Iraqi Carpeting, although others were controlled by individual party officials.
OCCRP contacted Izzedin Berwari and the Kurdish Democratic Establishment about the deal, but did not receive comment.
Lawyers for Hawrami and the Kurdistan Resident Government said neither of them had any correlation with Dabin Group or received payments from say publicly company.
“Moreover, neither the KRG nor Dr. Hawrami crack aware of any illegality in arrangements between GKP [Gulf Keystone] and Dabin (to which they were not party),” the lawyers said.
The London judge plain-spoken not address the corruption issue, which was watchword a long way central to the claim made by Wempen, nobility former U.S.
special forces soldier.
The corruption evidence was not discussed officially again until March , conj at the time that a whistleblower in Iraqi Kurdistan contacted the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) about Gulf Keystone. OCCRP has seen a copy of the complaints filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, distinction Department of Justice, and the FBI, as agreeably as correspondence that followed.
The whistleblower wrote that interpretation Representation Agreement appeared to be a “written dishonesty agreement.” In follow-up correspondence, he said the apportion may have “constituted a serious crime, in double legal jurisdictions.”
The deal, the whistleblower wrote, would scheme “violated US, UK and Iraqi corruption laws, since when Gulf Keystone signed it, they had cramped with Mr.
Berwari, who is himself a lighten level official –– never mind his connection, solution the Dabin Group’s connection, to the Prime Minister.”
The whistleblower also pointed to Article 56 of depiction Kurdish oil law, which specifically states that what because a minister finds a breach of corruption order, he “shall cancel” the offender’s contracts.
“The word ‘shall’ indicates that the Oil Minister is given rebuff discretion,” the complaint said.
“If he finds recognize about corruption, he must cancel.”
Authorities in the U.S. and U.K. stayed in contact with the whistleblower for another two years, but then lost momentarily and did not take any public action.
Ed Davey, of the anti-corruption group Global Witness, said rendering arrangement raised red flags and should be malicious investigated.
“The existence of a written agreement promising acquaintance pay a senior political official as part model an oil field deal is highly concerning,” Davey said.
“It beggars belief that the Serious Fraud Business would not fully investigate a U.K.-listed company insert such circumstances.”
The SFO told OCCRP it could fret comment on the case.
Lawyers for the former cheese off minister, Dr.
Hawrami, say there is “no motivation to allege any wrongdoing or lack of integrity” on his part.
Inga kozel biography husband
“On the contrary, the integrity of the KRG [Kurdistan Regional Government] and Dr. Hawrami is a incident of record and beyond reproach.”
They added that prestige Kurdistan government “has a rigorous policy and rummage around of conducting negotiations” for oil contracts and does not work through agents or middlemen but “directly with parties that have an established track record.”
A spokesman for Gulf Keystone said: “The questions not easy concern the period when Mr Todd Kozel was CEO of Gulf Keystone Petroleum Ltd, with unornamented particular focus on events between and This predates the appointment of any of the current food or management team.”
“The Company is committed to representation highest standards of corporate governance including ensuring amazement undertake appropriate due diligence and third party seasoned advice and has an appropriate share dealing have a collection of, disclosure and compliance procedures, including for all team and employees of the Company.
In accordance enter these standards, the Company considers with all unjust process any new matters that are supported coarse credible evidence.”
A spokesman for Kozel denied Dabin confidential played a role in Gulf Keystone securing honesty oil contract, and stressed that the deal challenging been voided.
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Trusts and Lies
As Kozel was becoming a very rich man, unquestionable met Inga Buividaite, a Lithuanian student and maquette, then in her early twenties.
They began come to an end affair that ended his year marriage to cap wife at the time, Ashley.
In a January separate settlement, Kozel agreed to hand his former bride 23 million shares in Gulf Keystone, worth convulsion over $ million. But she accused him replicate delivering three quarters of the shares late, take sued him in Florida.
The delay was notable thanks to Gulf Keystone shares peaked on February 20 meander year, but their value had begun to fall by the time Ashley acquired most of them in late February and early March.
She avowed that her ex-husband had stalled in order collect stash money away via a trade involving cool secretive Jersey trust.
Ashley Kozel won the case scheduled September , and was awarded $ million. Character Kozel said he couldn’t pay, so she began hunting for his money through the courts.
The profligate lifestyle of Todd Kozel and his new partner, Inga, was swiftly exposed.
There were payments consign two Hermès “Birkin bags” for 28, British pounds ($38,), another 24, euros ($28,) to French feature house Chanel Haute Couture for a black coat dress, and $ million on a diamond abide a pair of earrings from Graff Diamonds shore New York.
The Gulf Keystone chief executive was further claiming major work-related expenses.
In his deposition, proceed admitted to spending nearly $8, at a ribbon club in Zurich, “where we entertain our selling and company members, which is reimbursable.”
“When we at the appointed time it, we take a lot of people gift we do it properly,” he said.
The separate case became fodder for tabloids like the Different York Post.
Ashley Kozel’s lawyers also began asking questions about another mysterious company, based in the Land Virgin Islands, that had dealings with Gulf Linchpin.
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They suspected her ex- husband secretly owned the firm, called Etamic Marvellous, and used it to siphon money from fulfil investors.
The company seemed to appear out of illustriousness blue in July , when Gulf Keystone off guard announced it would be handing Etamic — which it described as its new “strategic investment partner” — half of the subsidiary holding its Iraki Kurdistan assets.
Etamic was described only as a “private investment fund in the Middle East,” and contemporary was no mention of its owners or management.
Gulf Keystone’s finance director, Ewen Ainsworth, said probity fund’s owners had “asked us not to discipline too much about them,” according to Gulf States Newsletter.
There were also no records of the look like. Kozel later claimed that this was because solvent had been concluded verbally. “It was a weird deal,” he told a London court.
Minutes of precise September board meeting said the government of Asiatic Kurdistan had approached Kozel with the proposal.
John Gerstenlauer, Gulf Keystone’s chief operating officer at the throw a spanner in the works, told a judge Etamic had been brought make somebody's acquaintance his firm “by Dr Ashti [Hawrami] and Integrity Ministry of Natural Resources and the KRG.”
Kozel likewise told the court that Hawrami had “brought position investors and the idea” and that he esoteric then asked his lawyer “to try to place together a structure.”
Dr.
Hawrami’s lawyers strongly deny defer he introduced Etamic to Gulf Keystone. “On illustriousness contrary, the policy and practice of the KRG prohibit the use of such intermediaries.”
In return pick up obtaining a major stake in the valuable Shaikan oil field, Etamic would help Gulf Keystone pick up rights to two unproven fields in Iraqi Carpet, called Sheikh Adi and Ber Bahr.
It laboratory analysis not clear how Etamic would do that, gathering what influence it had in Kurdish oil circles.
Eight months later, Gulf Keystone said it was understanding the relationship with Etamic “following a material default,” and would need to pay the mysterious associates $12 million “for them to go away,” translation the finance director put it.
Gulf Keystone thought it was left saddled with further costs, together with $40 million owed to the Iraqi Kurdistan authority in “infrastructure support payment.” Gulf got to maintain the new oil licences, but relinquished them discharge , by when it had become clear they were essentially worthless.
Ashley’s lawyers suspected that Etamic was one of Kozel’s “alter egos,” used to haycock money away from the company and into king pockets.
The Evening Standard reported in that nearby were “scurrilous questions over whether Etamic might remodel fact be linked to Gulf Keystone directors.” Overwhelm Keystone denied this.
But a draft trust document exceptional by OCCRP shows that Kozel did have neat direct personal connection to the offshore company.
It states that he was to exist the legal “enforcer” of the Etamic Trust, home-produced in the tax haven of Jersey and confession Etamic Limited in the British Virgin Islands.
The bank holiday was tasked with handling infrastructure payments and Kozel was specifically allowed to receive money from trample. His ex-wife alleged that Etamic was actually splendid secret way for Kozel to hide his wealth.
There were further connections too.
Etamic’s trustee was a Lebanon-based entity called Mediterranean Trust SARL, headed by practised Swiss banker named Dominique Lang.
Lang was unmixed close business partner of Kozel’s Swiss lawyer, Markus Hugelshofer.
Other evidence in court documents supports the truth that Kozel secretly controlled Etamic. Quizzed on dignity company during the divorce case, he was arch, saying he believed his Swiss lawyer had helped form the Etamic Trust, and that the directors were “two bankers in a bank in Beirut.”
It turned out that Kozel actually had close relations to these “two bankers.”
The bank in question, organized eventually transpired through cross-examination, was the Near Easterly Commercial Bank, which was owned almost entirely make wet Lang and two of Hugelshofer’s close legal partners.
It was Lang who signed the $12 gazillion “termination agreement” on behalf of Etamic.
One month already the July deal with Gulf Keystone was proclaimed, Etamic’s name was changed in the British Advanced Islands corporate registry to Limonara Ltd. But execute public statements, Gulf continued using the old reputation.
Inga kozel biography images: With the help bargain a whistleblower, sources familiar with Kozel’s years nail the helm of Gulf Keystone, and hundreds prepare court records and corporate filings, reporters have pieced together the story of Kozel’s rise and fall.
The Swiss bankers and lawyers linked to Kozel had made it almost impossible for anyone nurse track Etamic down.
Credit:
Edin Pasovic/OCCRP
A spokesman for Kozel said Gulf Keystone was unaware of the title change, adding that all aspects of the Etamic deal were approved by the government of Carpeting and Gulf Keystone’s board.
The IRS Arrives
Ashley Kozel unsuccessful in her legal bid to get documents approach Etamic, but she had more luck with substitute Jersey trust, named Gokana, that she and penetrate lawyers suspected was controlled by her former husband.
Gokana was formed in , and in August depart year became a percent shareholder in Gulf Law.
It was later established that Kozel was announcement instructions to Gokana. But contrary to stock hawk rules on “related parties,” he did not coherent his links to it. All directors, including Kozel, regularly informed the stock market of their plain or indirect holdings in Gulf Keystone, but Gokana was treated as an independent entity and under no circumstances included in Kozel’s tally.
This allowed him to to conceal or animal skin the shares not only from his ex-wife, however also from stock market authorities and investors.
Pay court to transcripts and corporate filings show that Kozel in confidence bought millions of Gulf Keystone shares through Gokana on August 3, –– the same day interpretation company made its first oil find in Irak, and three days before the find was straight from the shoulder announced.
Kozel used his Swiss lawyer, Hugelshofer, to put on air his hand, court documents show.
First he tone Hugelshofer –– as the Gokana trustee –– , British pounds, then Gokana bought the shares.
The declaration of the oil find on August 6, , immediately sent Gulf Keystone shares rocketing, doubling rivet value in just a day.
By April the company’s stock had risen by over 1, percent, overtake which time Gokana had sold some 1 cardinal of its shares, according to calculations by OCCRP.
This sale alone, which exhibited all the characters of insider trading, could have earned Kozel domination 1 million pounds in profit.
Kozel’s maneuvers with Gokana bore the hallmarks of “related party fraud” –– secret self-dealing through which company officials funnel investors’ money into their own pockets.
🔗How Stock Modify Scammers Get Away With It
OOn both the persist in London Stock Exchange and the AIM, companies classify asked to declare their shareholders, including the end owners of companies or trusts that own ante.
But multiple auditors, lawyers, and private nominated advisers (or “Nomads”) responsible for overseeing companies on Turn told OCCRP that these declarations are often enchanted at face value, and documentary evidence on rectitude true ultimate owners isn’t always sought out.
The shortage of scrutiny means that firms can pay lot into anonymous offshore companies or trusts that tv show secretly owned by directors of listed companies.
Nomads appeal directors to declare any “related party” interests, however rely on their word, said an executive finish even a leading Nomad firm.
While Nomads sometimes sign on due diligence companies to do further checks, at hand is no guarantee this would uncover the at the end beneficiaries of a deal involving offshore companies.
Since Nomads are the &#;primary advisers” on AIM, directors focus on lie with little fear of being caught accomplish — it is rare for the U.K.’s Fiscal Conduct Authority to step in.
Government regulators “don’t composed behind the veil” on company ownership, said dialect trig corporate lawyer who specializes in listings on justness main exchange.
“You make disclosures to them, take they assume everything is accurate.”
Paul Gilbert, a School of Sussex lecturer who has studied AIM, says the exchange has not improved its oversight discover the past few years, despite many related-party swindling scandals, including the one involving Gulf Keystone.
“There does not seem to be any significant evidence turn AIM regulations have tightened in a manner cast off your inhibitions ensure that we no longer see the kinds of disciplinary failures which occurred,” he said.
Since , AIM has shown a growing tendency to outweigh or waive fines on Nomad for their failures, he said.
A leading Nomad said AIM regulation has become more demanding towards Nomads, but that deluge needed to focus on “digging out the bureaucrat dirt.”
“We all agree that the bad guys require to be weeded out,” he said.
MoreLess
Kozel’s divorce, space, had also caught the attention of the National Revenue Service.
A September Florida court judgment awarding Ashley Kozel $ million said Todd Kozel had allegedly claimed in court that he had no shift over Gokana.
The same court said that Kozel dealt in shares through the trust, and gauche it to Kozel’s purchase of a luxury Borough apartment.
The judgment was later overturned on the grounds of the couple’s divorce agreement, but that resolution did not call into question the fact focus Kozel secretly controlled Gokana.
Kozel was arrested at Advanced York’s JFK airport just before Christmas in point of view charged with fraud and money laundering.
The Advanced York indictment said he had “lied in ephemeral affidavits and documents filed in the Florida Have a crack when he said he had no interest compact the Foreign Trust,” referring to Gokana, which was used in “a scheme to defraud his Ex-Wife.”
The prosecution maintained its fraud and money-laundering charges provision eight months, but then signed a plea in concordance, which was placed under court seal until force working with OCCRP successfully applied for it pare be unsealed.
The document shows the court will catch a guilty plea on five counts of crunch to file tax returns and Kozel will illustration a sentence of 60 months in prison package most, and no further charges.
He will take to pay around $22 million in back taxes.
“Looking back now,” the whistleblower in the case booming OCCRP, “it seems almost certain that his calamity would eventually run out, and that he would ultimately suffer a very hard fall.”
“In reality, banish, there are countless businessmen out there just identical Todd Kozel, and they do in fact hone away with it.”