Follow the Mosque Money...from $18,000 One Year Ago to $100,000,000.00

Last years tax return for the Cordoba Project listed its net assets at $18,000. So where did a waiter who purchased one of the first buildings for the project get his money?



According to Melvin Pomerantz, whose family originally owned the property at 45-47 Park Place, a partner in SoHo Properties, Sharrif El-Gamal, raised $4.8 million in cash to purchase the property from the Pomerantz family. El-Gamal first made the proposal in 2006 and raised the money over the next two years. El-Gamal also paid an extra $700,000 in cash to take over a lease from Con Ed for the building next door at 49-51 Park Place. That lease expires in 2071. It costs SoHo Properties $33,000 dollars a year to maintain the lease. The Cordoba Initiative is listed as one of the investors but the source of its funding remains a mystery.

As recently as 2003 Sharrif El-Gamal and his brother Sammy El-Gamal, were both waiters in New York City's Serafina’s Restaurant and Tao Restaurant respectively. That same year the brothers formed SoHo Properties primarily to lease apartments on a commission basis. They weren't selling real estate but they must have been very successful at leasing real estate because by 2007 they were purchasing Real Estate properties worth millions with cash. Not bad for commissioned leasing agents.

In 2007, Sharrif El-Gamal and his wife purchased an apartment on the upper west side of New York City for $1,000,000. In 2009 SoHo Properties bought a 12 story office building on the upper west side for more than $45 million dollars. This company is now spending millions in cash but is being investigated by the state of New York's Licensing Dept. for failure to maintain an escrow account for lease deposits and failure to return deposits to leasing customers.

Sharrif El-Gamal and Sammy El-Gamal may be related to a big supporter of President Barak Obama's election, Dr. Mohamed Z. El-Gamal, CEO of ATI Wave (Applied Technologies). “Moe” El-Gamal is a businessman who was just charged and arrested by the Justice Dept. last May on charges of shipping computers and technology to Lybia. Could he be the mysterious source of funds for SoHo Properties?

The funding for the Ground Zero mosque is murky. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the person fronting the mosque is a a director with The Perdana Organization based in Malaysia who donated more than $366,000 dollars along with $500,000 from Qutar to fund the future "Audacity of Hope" Flotilla, the followup to the "Freedom Flotilla" where Israeli soldiers were murdered and 10-19 (actual number disputed) flotilla participants lost their lives.

Questions must be answered about the source of funding for the Community Center, Mosque or whatever they are trying to build. All I know is, if Cordoba House is allowed to be built, then five times a day Americans would have thousands of Islamic men, facing toward Mecca, on their knees, with their butts in the face of America's 9/11 Graveyard. This is hallowed ground and should be treated with dignity and reverence.

There should be NO Mosque anywhere near the Ground Zero site or any other site that was attacked on that day. The design of the Pennsylvania Flight 93 Memorial should not be crescent shaped. I only hope that the room in the Pentagon used for Muslim prayer will be removed. I don't care how long its been there. If we truly have separation of the church from government then remove it. "Separate but equal" died with the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. If Muslims are allowed accommodation on these issues, how long before we have Sharia?

Source information from these excellent websites:

http://pibillwarner.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/proposed-911-mosque-at-45-park-place-and-the-money-men-behind-the-deal-sharif-el-gamal-and-sammy-el-gamal/

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/07/grond-zero-imam-rauf-tied-to-charity-state-department-mulls-terror-designation.html