Tag Archives: contractor fraud

Guy Cannady: Sanctions-Busting Teflon-Coated Double Agent

So George Guyton “Guy” Cannady was indicted and sentenced for 3 counts (22 counts were dismissed) on November 25, 2014. He got 3 years of supervised release and was fined, but he should have cash saved up from his previous, unpunished covert aviation ventures. While the trial was taking place, he was rehired by Dynamic Airways as their “Chief Strategic Officer” – a remarkable act of faith in a fellow standing trial on bribery and fraud charges.

But even before all of that took place, Cannady was a busy businessman in other suspicious enterprises. Following the release of the Panama Papers, we learned that a company named FlyGeorgia was being used as a conduit to circumvent economic sanctions against Iran. An Iranian national named Hosshang (or Houshang) Hosseinpour has been targeted by the U.S. Treasury Department as part of a broader effort to enforce the sanctions. Hosseinpour and two others set up a number of front companies, some based in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, to facilitate their plan. To quote from the Irish Times article cited above:

The files show that [Farhad] Azima and Hosseinpour appeared on corporate documents of a company that planned to buy a hotel in the nation of Georgia in 2011. That was the same year treasury officials asserted that Hosseinpour, who co-founded the private airline FlyGeorgia, and two others first began to send millions of dollars into Iran, which led to sanctions being taken against him three years later.

Farhad Azima is one of the infamous middlemen involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, the Savings and Loan scandal, and other weapons trafficking incidents. Unnamed in any of the Panama Papers reporting on FlyGeorgia is George Cannady. But he is right there lurking in the shadows of Azima and Hosseinpour.

An entry in the Business Registry of Georgia shows that Cannady was a partner in Georgia Transport Management with Levan Tskhadadze. Tskhadadze had formerly been a manager at manager at Hosseinpour’s front company FlyGeorgia. Other people who list FlyGeorgia as an employer are Ursula Freseman, Lalit Dang, and Iranian former intelligence officer General Ali Asgari Reza. Freseman and Dang also list Heavylift International Airlines as a former employer. Heavylift is one of Farhad Azima’s many companies with which notorious weapons trafficker Viktor Bout was at one time affiliated.

One has to wonder why Cannady was partnering with someone like Tskhadadze. Was he simply going for the big profit? Was he opposed to the sanctions and attempting to express his stance by circumventing them? There have to be less risky ways of pursuing those goals. Or was he a variety of double-agent who wanted to get inside information on the sanctions-busters with whom he dealt? If so, on who’s behalf was he working?

We would hazard a guess here: It’s possible that Georgia Transport Management in the country of Georgia is connected to the one in the state of Georgia. Actually, it has to be since George Cannady is intimately connected to both of them. The company in the U.S. was Atlanta Air Service Inc from 2002 until 2006 when it became Atlanta Air Service LLC and became Georgia Transport Management LLC in 2015. Cannady was the owner of AAS where he partnered with Ronnie B. Powers. And now we are connecting back into previous stories which shed some light on their covert activities. To restate our question: For whom has George Guyton Cannady been working?

One journalistic investigation into this operation only piles on more question marks. Emanuele Ottolenghi did some good gumshoe work for his in-depth piece in Tablet magazine on the sanctions evaders. Ottolenghi is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and has advocated for regime change in Iran. Ironically, the FDD’s Long War Journal has promoted Gryphon Airlines, another business in which Cannady had a management role and a business which has also produced a terror suspect.

So, what’s going on here?


Is Ronnie Powers related to Austin Powers?

Maybe not, but both have been on-screen stars and “Men of Mystery”…

One of the co-conspirators in the USAF contracting fraud case that was mentioned in an earlier post was Ronald B. Powers, also known as “Ronnie.” Ronnie has an interesting past. You could say that he’s been very lucky. For one in 2005 he found himself in possession of Frank Sinatra’s Lear jet and apparently sold it to an “anonymous” owner. This is supposedly the jet that Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu used when they eloped. And we won’t mention the statements from Sinatra’s daughter that her dad was CIA-connected

Ronnie has also been lucky enough to have a few TV appearances. In 2005 he appeared on Discovery’s “Monster Garage” in the episode where they built a flying car. Discovery even did a short interview with Ronnie. Later in 2010, Ronnie and his crew at Atlanta Air Recovery were featured on “Ultimate Car Build Off” in a contest to build an underwater vehicle.

Back in 1998 Ronnie was listed as a Manager for SunAir, LLC in Scottsdale, Arizona. The managers of SunAir (renamed to Sunrise Airlines) “managed” to bankrupt it in 2000 ((see pages 5, 12ff), and it’s operations were taken over by Wally Hilliard and Dekkers Aviation Group in Venice, Florida. Dekkers Aviation Group is named after Rudi Dekkers who ran the flight school where two of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers trained. The school—Huffman Aviation—was owned by Hilliard. The Dekkers-Hilliard duo have gotten into trouble for the type of cargo they have moved. Hilliard’s Lear jet was busted with 43 pounds of heroin on board in 2000, and in 2012 Dekkers was arrested in Houston on drug trafficking charges.

Another connection between Dekkers and Ronnie is N208BB, a Cessna Caravan 208B that flew for Florida Air (another Dekkers business) in 2001. In November 2001, it’s ownership was transferred to Global Aircraft Leasing, a Ronald B. Powers company. A few years later it went to Worldwide Aviation Service, a company linked to the CIA’s rendition program.

Ronnie is even listed as the incorporator for a former Blackwater subsidiary called Air Quest. Who is this guy? More importantly, who did he work for? Or maybe our “man of mystery” was just lucky and involved in things that coincidentally appear to be covert.

Keep repeating that word: “coincidence, coincidence, coincidence.”


Former Dynamic Airways Executive Charged in Contracting Fraud Case

George Guyton Cannady of North Carolina has been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice along with two other U.S. Air Force contractors for 34 counts including “conspiracy, bribery, theft of government funds, disclosing or obtaining contractor bid and proposal information, honest services mail fraud, money laundering conspiracy, and making false statements.” In 2010 after selling Prescott Support Company (an air cargo company contracted by the U.S. Government to fly “extraordinary renditions” – see here and here) and Atlanta Air Services, Cannady was hired by Dynamic Aviation as the Vice President of Operations for their Dynamic Airways subsidiary. A few months later, he was promoted to Chief Operating Officer. In late 2011, Cannady left employment at Dynamic Airways.

 

Two other contractors were also indicted – John Norman Sims and Ronald Benton Powers. Powers was an associate of Cannady at Atlanta Air Services. Sims was the “inside man” at the Pentagon who allegedly took bribes from Cannady and Powers “so that he would continue to steer valuable USAF contracts to [their] companies.”

 

A trial date will be set soon so stay tuned…