Having have just completed a series of extraordinary business deals, but wasting most of the profits on government bribes, Tamraz was left with no choice but to seek the approval of the U.S. again to swing Aliyev towards accepting the pipeline. His return to the United States was marked with a frenzy of campaign finance for the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign. The total sum of donations from the end of 1995 to 1996 is $300,000, all to the Democratic Party. President Bill Clinton finally did give his approval of the pipeline, by now estimated to be a $2.5 billion project.[1]
The tacit approval of Clinton led to a senior White House aide, Thomas McLarty, contacting a U.S. Department of Energy official. Sheila Heslin responded with a formal protest and a request of investigation on Don Fowler, who accepted Tamraz's donations, as well as Robert Baer, a mid-level CIA operative in charge of South Eurasia Group, the man who originally drafted the CIA report on Tamraz.[1]
Robert Baer, in an attempt to clear his name, began an in-depth investigation on the holdings of Tamraz. In the United States Senate Judiciary committee, Tamraz had claimed that the $300,000 given to the Democrats were the liquefied holdings of his company, Aviscapital, based out of New York. Aviscapital proved to be a company run out of a Lawyer's office. Tamraz's additional claim, that a portion of Aviscapital's assets had been transferred to Oil Capital Limited proved to also be untrue after the Panamanian government sued Oil Capital Limited and had their settlement deferred by the verification of three independent finance groups that Oil Capital Limited's holdings were priced at 23 cents.[1]
Wondering where Tamraz had spent all of his money and where he had come up with the money to fund the Democratic Party if he was broke, Baer followed Tamraz's trail of 1995. There he found the Lapis incident, through intelligence at the embassy in Ankara and independent confirmation from the office of Alexander Lebed with whom he was personally acquainted during his tour in Dushanbe. The campaign money had come from two of Boris Yeltsin's aides, whose reasons for funding the Clinton-Gore campaign are unknown.[1]
