Currently, Li Ka-shing (who we mentioned earlier) made a bid to purchase control of global communication network giant, Global Crossing (which was also mentioned earlier), via a joint venture of Ka-shing’s Hutchison Whampoa and Singapore Technologies Telemedia. Representing Ka-Shing’s bid to take control of Global Crossing was the powerful neo-conservative attorney, Richard Perle, who sought a nod of approval from the Pentagon for the deal. Perle, who is one of the present Bush Administration “think-masters” is close to Bush senior, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and others on the Defense Policy Board, which he chaired.
On this occasion Ka-shing was unsuccessful and this led to the government owned Singapore Technologies, having to go it alone. Singapore is the home of the almost legendary former Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, who has been in government office since the late 1960’s. He also remains a powerhouse in the Singapore business community and presently heads the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation. His son, Lee Hsien Loong, is the present minister of finance and deputy prime minister. Loong’s wife, Ho Ching, is the former CEO of Singapore Technologies who, by coincidence, resigned as CEO, just a few weeks prior to the announcement of the joint venture with Li Ka-shing to acquire Global Crossing. However, she was the incumbent CEO of the firm in Spring 2001, when it took a controlling interest in Global Crossing Asia.
However, there are further, less well-known and far more shadowy, aspects about Lee Kuan Yew that the general public is not cognisant of. For some while now I have been in possession of a copy of a Certificate of Deposit for 792,000 kilograms of Platinum that is dated July 2, 1972 and bears the passport sized photograph, thumbprint and name of – yes, you guessed – Mr. Lee Kuan Yew. The certificate and accompanying documents - which run to several dozen pages - contain some of the usual spelling and typographical mistakes (for example, “Jhonson & Mathew” instead of Johnson & Mathey) that have become the trademark of these “deniable” bullion certificates that bear the names of famous people, heads of state and politicians etc.[75]
Clearly, Lee Kuan Yew has been part of the Black Eagle gold story for the past thirty years and the phenomenal growth of Singapore as a model and powerhouse of new business ventures - and as an enduring Asian success story – may well be predicated on metal plundered during WWII? Interestingly, some of the bullion and other assets plundered by the Japanese during the war came from Singapore. But a secret transfer of this wealth from private ownership to the public purse may not have been what the previous owners of this metal had in mind?