Pernendu Chatterjee
He made millions advising and investing with George Soros at Soros Fund Management, then went out on his own with The Chatterjee Group, a venture capital firm with $2.5 billion in assets. He’s partnered with Marvin Bush, brother of President George W. Bush, and his firm, Winston Partners. Winston Partners owns several companies that have prospered under the Bush Administration, and has a stake in a firm with ties to the Chinese military.Winston Partners owns more than 5 million shares of a California internet services company called Critical Path, which has twice received cash infusions from Cheung Kong Holdings, which invested $95 million in Critical Path in 2001 and $43 million in 2003. Cheung Kong is owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, who has in the past allowed the autocratic Chinese government to use his companies for espionage, and who the U.S. military has cited as a risk for smuggling “illegal shipments of technology or prohibited items from the West to the People's Republic of China, or … the movement of arms and other items to the Americas.”
Winston Partners and the Chatterjee Group also own 5.5 million shares in Sybase Inc., which created the software program to bring banks into compliance with the Patriot Act. Sybase began selling the software shortly before President Bush signed the Patriot Act into law in 2001.
Several Winston Partners have won lucrative contracts in the military and specifically in the Iraq war. For example, Amsec Corp. won Navy contracts worth $37,722,000 in 2001. (Amsec’s CEO at the time was Michael Braham, former aide to Paul Bremer, head of Iraq’s Coalition Provisional Authority. ) Another Winston Partners investment, Indigo Systems Corp., received $2,629,000 in contracts from Defense and NASA, is substantially backed by The Carlyle Group, the global finance company where former President George H.W. Bush is an investor and senior adviser.
Chatterjee worked at the Stanford Research Institute until 1976, when he joined McKinsey and Co., a high-tech management consulting firm. He joined George Soros’s Soros Fund Management (SFM) in the 1980s, investing in public and private companies. SFM helped him launch the Chatterjee Group and is now an affiliate.
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Sources
- The Global Indian, Indian Express, May 9, 2005: http://www.indianexpress.com/india-news/full_story.php?content_id=70009
- Tangled Tug of War, Business Today, October 3, 2007: http://businesstoday.digitaltoday.in/index.php?option=com_content&;task=view& id=1912&issueid=24
- Purnendu Chatterjee, bio, The Milken Institute, April 24, 2006: http://www.milkeninstitute.org/events/gcprogram.taf?function=bio&;EventID=GC06&am p;SPID=2282
- Partners, TCGgivega.com: http://tcgivega.com/company_partners.htm
- Critical Path Schedule 13G, Securities and Exchange Commission, June 1, 2001: http://www.secinfo.com/dS3tw.4f8bf.htm
- United Airlines, Chatterjee form 50:50 Joint Venture, Indian Express, March 11, 1999: http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/ie/daily/19990311/ibu11060.html