From the first lady’s former communications director now the vice president of Siemens corporate affairs, to individual consulting deals for Obama campaign operatives like Stephanie Cutter and David Plouffe, there is a new generation of “Obama millionaires.”

For instance, Scheiber notes, former UBS president Robert Wolf has opened shop with a new firm called 32 Advisors, which advises domestic and foreign business clients:

The firm opened its doors in February after signing up several prominent Obama alumni, including former White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, who will provide “economic intelligence” as a “strategic partner,” and Kevin Varney, the former chief of staff of the government’s export-import bank (the very same agency clients will hit up for loans). Wolf hopes to keep the roster of companies he works with small and the interactions intimate. “We’re very exclusive,” he says. “The clients want to be serviced.” Goolsbee, for example, hosts a weekly conference call with roughly a dozen hedge funds and private-equity firms to opine on the topic of the day. He occasionally dines with one of the fund managers. [...]

Though Wolf promises that his firm won’t lobby—anyone who asks will be referred to Washington fixer (and strategic partner) Heather Podesta—the text of the website advertises a “broad network of relationships” to help clients“open and sustain the lines of communication with political, business and financial leaders.” None of this has gone unnoticed in Obamaworld. “There are those of us who e-mailed it to each other to laugh about it,” says a former White House official. “It’s stunning.”

Wolf raised more than half a million dollars for the president’s reelection campaign, and is a fairly frequent Obama golf partner. In 2009, Obama appointed Wolf to the Economic Recovery Advisory Board; he also served on the Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Scheiber also writes of a rift between a contingency of former advisers linked to SKDKnickerbocker managing director Anita Dunn, and advisers close to David Axelrod, Bob Gibbs, and Plouffe:

Members of the Axelrod-Gibbs-Plouffe axis chafe at the work Dunn’s firm, SKDKnickerbocker, has done for ex–Republican governor Charlie Crist andfor a coalition of junk-food manufacturers. “We’re very sensitive about not working for anyone that … might reflect poorly on the president,” says one former Obama adviser. “Other firms haven’t concerned themselves with that. Anita Dunn and SKDK worked on the sugar campaign in direct competition with the first lady’s anti-obesity campaign.”

In response, those close to Dunn cry double standard. Plouffe, after all, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars advising corporate clients like Boeing and G.E., and he once gave a speech in Azerbaijan underwritten by a group closely aligned with the country’s dictator. Gibbs served as a semi-official spokesman for the Obama campaign last year while commanding jaw-dropping speaking fees from corporations no doubt keen to influence the White House. (Gibbs says there’s a difference between handicapping the presidential race and “advising groups who oppose the president and first lady’s top priorities.”) Dunn’s defenders also note that she was successful for decades before advising Obama, unlike some of the newly minted “Obama millionaires.”

Plouffe’s Azerbijan-underwritten speech was not his only engagement with questionable backers; the adviser was paid to speak in 2010 by a South African company with ties to the Assad regime. He has also earned up to $20,000 investing in Standard Charter Bank, a British bank that broke sanctions to do business with Iranian clients.

The former advisers also have been much cosier with hedge funds in their private sector ventures.

Gibbs was paid to speak last year at the SALT Conference, an annual meeting of some of the world’s most powerful hedge fund managers, investors, and political figures. Axelrod spoke at the event the year before, as well.

As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, an email proposal circulated last year among hedge fund managers last year by a PR firm touted Dunn as a consultant to improve the industry’s image.

The British bank ignored sanctions against the terrorist state and collected expensive fees on 60,000 financial transactions worth $250 billion for Iranian clients. New York regulators pounced on the bank in August for breaking the trade embargo Western nations imposed on Iran for pursuing nuclear weapons technology.

The bank settled the matter with state authorities quickly, handing more than $340 million to the government—the largest money laundering fine in history—just eight days after the Department of Financial Services filed charges.

Federal authorities launched an investigation into the bank in 2010 and began negotiating penalties with the company in 2011. It is unclear how much Plouffe knew about the investigation when he sold a substantial portion of his holdings in the bank—valued at up to $15,000—in January 2011.

The White House did not return an e-mail for comment.

The bank is not Plouffe’s only financial connection to the rogue nation. The senior White House adviser pocketed $200,000 for giving two speeches to MTN, a South African telecommunications firm that has ties to Iran’s radical regime. The firm won a lucrative contract with the Iranian military after allegedly bribing officials and pledging to provide it with weapons and favorable United Nations votes.

Critics of Obama, including conservative advocacy group Secure America Now, have ramped up criticisms of Plouffe’s speaking gig. The organization is running an advertisement on the Internet calling for Plouffe’s resignation.

“[Plouffe] got rich off of the only real asset he has: his influence in and access to the Obama White House,” the ad says in reference to the speeches. “If this is who Obama trusts, can you trust Obama?”

Standard Chartered Bank’s woes are far from settled.

The New York settlement does not absolve it from federal penalties. The Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, Department of Justice, and Manhattan District Attorney’s Office continue to negotiate fines with the bank.

Relatives of the 241 Marines killed in the 1983 Beirut bombing are also suing Standard Chartered Bank to recover portions of the $2.6 billion judgment issued against Iran for its role in the terrorist attack. Iran never contested the charges and has yet to pay a dime to the victims and their families.

Plouffe has faced mounting criticism in recent days for profiting from a speaking gig with an affiliate of the MTN Group, a telecommunications firm that has friendly ties to a host of controversial regimes and state sponsors of terrorism, such as Iran, Syria, and Sudan.

Plouffe’s MTN talk occurred in December 2010, just a month before he became a senior White House official but after the appointment had been announced.

While the Obama administration quickly defended Plouffe, explaining that White House lawyers cleared the deal, foreign policy observers maintain that even cursory research would have exposed MTN’s controversial ties.

“It’s quite obvious to everyone but the White House that MTN has no soul, no morals, and will serve any client—war criminals, genocidal maniacs, terror sponsoring regimes, all of the above,” said one D.C.-based foreign policy official.

Sources said Plouffe should return the tainted money, just as he did in 2009, after he was awarded $50,000 to speak before a front group for the government of Azerbaijan.

“Even if you didn’t know at the time how bad these guys are, why aren’t you giving the money back or to charity?” asked the foreign policy official.

MTN’s ties to Liberian warlord Taylor extend back several years to when the firm entered the beleaguered African country via its affiliate, Lonestar Cell MTN, according to a report by the South African City Press.

War criminal Taylor is reported to have as much as a 40 percent stake in PLC Investment Limited, which jointly owns Lonestar Cell MTN along with the Investcom group, a Lebanese investment firm now owned by the MTN Group. Lebanon’s prime minister is MTN’s largest individual shareholder.

Taylor’s former vice president, Moses Blah, has alleged in court testimony that the warlord became a “secret part owner in Lonestar,” and helped the company maintain a monopoly on the Liberian marketplace, according to a New York Times report on the matter.

It is also suspected that Taylor is the largest shareholder in MTN’s Liberian subsidiary. From 2000 to 2004 alone, Taylor amassed $40 million from Lonestar, according to some estimates.

The U.N. additionally listed PLC Investment Limited’s chairman, Benoni Urey, as a Taylor confidante and accomplice. Urey’s assets have been frozen and he is banned from travelling, City Press reported.

Urey is said to have helped Taylor’s Lonestar Communications group retain control of the Liberian cell phone sector and also assisted him in an illegal purchase weapons from a Russian arms dealer, according to a report by the Coalition for International Justice (CIJ).

PLC shareholder Emmanuel Shaw also has been listed as a Taylor accomplice, though the U.N. recently lifted his travel ban and unfroze his assets, the report stated.

Shaw helped bring weapons into Liberia and invested Taylor’s money, according to the CIJ report.

The partnership between PLC and Lonestar continues to be a source of income for Taylor as he lives in exile in Nigeria, according to U.N. investigators, who have petitioned the Liberian courts for more information about the warlord’s assets, the New York Times reported.

MTN Group became concerned late last year that its Liberian associates may be a liability for the company.

“We would like to express our concern on recent developments which are causing fundamental reputational damage to Lonestar Communications Corporation, or Lonestar Company,” MTN officials wrote in a letter dated November 2011. “All directors of Lonestar have a ­fiduciary duty to act in the interests of the company (and accordingly not cause reputational damage to the company).”

It was reported Monday that Plouffe profited from a speaking engagement before a subsidiary of the MTN Group, a telecommunications firm that has close ties to the Iranian government and stands accused of bribing its officials. The talk occurred in December 2010, just a month before Plouffe became a senior White House official but after the appointment had been announced.

MTN also has been engaged in a long-term business deal with the Syrian government, which has blossomed as embattled President Bashar al-Assad’s violent crackdown on Syrian opposition groups has broadened into what amounts to a civil war.

MTN’s profitable entanglements with Iran and Syria has raised eyebrows among foreign policy experts, many of whom are concerned that the telecommunications firm is helping these oppressive governments disrupt opposition movements.

“MTN is the quintessential ‘do business with anyone’ company,” said one senior foreign policy official who agreed to speak on background. “It’s who you call if you’re a terror-sponsoring dictatorship and nobody else will talk to you.”

In 2001, the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment (STE) awarded a 15-year deal to a company that is now MTN Syria. The contract stipulates that as of 2009, MTN and the government-owned STE would split revenues evenly.

The relationship has brought senior MTN officials into close proximity with the Assad government’s highest-ranking officials.

In February, as Assad ordered the systematic murder of his own citizens, MTN CEO Sifiso Dabengwa was in Syria at the time for a two-day powwow with Adel Safar, Syria’s prime minister. He also met with Syria’s minister of communications and technology, as well as with South Africa’s Syrian ambassador, according to a MTN press release translated from Arabic.

The meetings were held to discuss “the ways to develop the communications’ services, operating systems and settle some administrative aspects which allow the company to expand its activities, investments and contribute to the local development process,” according to the press release.

As MTN and Syrian officials were meeting, pro-Assad forces murdered as many as 100 people in the besieged city of Homs, according to Associated Press.

MTN Syria has utilized message-filtering technology to disrupt communication between anti-Assad insurgents, according to a Bloomberg report.

Syrian intelligence organizations are reported to have directed MTN Syria and other telecommunications firms operating in the country to block specific words such as “revolution,” “strike,” and “dignity.”

During a pro-democracy demonstration in April of 2011, Internet and cell phone communications mysteriously went dark, according to reports. Syrian officials later said that the outage was “due to an overload of connections,” according to AFP, though no further details were provided to the news organization.

MTN Syria has also awarded pro-Assad supporters with free phone calls, Ahram online reported last year:

Syriatel and MTN, Syria’s two phone companies, offered customers one hour of free calls valid between April 2 and 6 “in recognition of the people who stood with the President (Bashar) al-Assad during the day of dignity.” They were referring to pro-regime demonstrations in the capital Tuesday.

In May of this year, MTN CEO Dabengwa promised that his company would commit nearly $107 million of its capital in Syria, despite a decrease in growth in that country due to its ongoing conflict.

In addition to its ties to Iran and Syria, MTN also operates in Sudan, a country that the U.S. has designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.

The governor of Khartoum, a major Sudanese town, hosted a delegation from MTN in January, according to the Sudanese press. During the meeting, government officials promised to help MTN gain foreign investors.

“The delegation presented a detailed and explanatory presentation to the Governor on MTN group and success it has been achieving in Africa, Europe and the Middle East as well as the company’s operations in Sudan, its commercial activities, future expansion plans by engineer Abdallah Al-Fadil Ali Fayit, Manager of Department of the institution services,” the report in Sudan Vision stated.

In February, MTN hosted a gathering in Khartoum that included representatives from Syria, Yemen, Cyprus, Iran, and Afghanistan, according to an MTN press release. The event honored “distinct employees of the company in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region.”

In July, MTN’s Sudanese affiliate hosted a conference attended by a host of Sudanese and Arab country officials, according to a Sudanese Vision report.

Plouffe should not have accepted payment from a firm with such dubious dealings, the foreign policy source said.

“David Plouffe seems like a smart man and the Obama team is supposed to do vetting on folks—it’s just not credible this was some kind of oversight,” said the source. “For MTN, money talks no matter where you are—Tehran, Damascus and apparently the White House.”

Plouffe came under scrutiny Monday for agreeing to speak before a subsidiary of the MTN Group, a telecommunications firm that has close ties to the Iranian government. The speech occurred in December 2010—one month after Plouffe’s appointment was announced and one month before Plouffe officially joined the White House staff.

Plouffe’s association with MTN has raised concerns on Capitol Hill and elsewhere where elected officials and political observers are worried that the White House adviser has acted recklessly in pursuit of personal profits.

As negotiations over a recent round of Iran sanctions took place behind closed doors in Congress, the Obama administration pushed its Democratic allies to oppose a measure that would have made it illegal for telecom companies such as MTN to do business in Iran, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

That measure, sponsored by Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), was not included in the most recent round of sanctions.

“It’s still technically legal what MTN is doing and the administration worked against” the Kirk measure, explained one source.

“Companies looking to profit from Iran will find it very difficult to avoid associating with IRGC entities which are helping the regime develop nuclear weapons, are implicated in terrorist activities and the killing of American troops, and which have set up a vast apparatus to repress the Iranian people,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

“Clearly there’s no due diligence going on,” said one GOP advisor. “There’s a complete separation of policy and principal and if the price is right that gun is for hire.”

Plouffe accepted a $100,000 speaking engagement from MTN Group in December 2010.

At the time, MTN Group appeared to be engaged in discussions with the Obama administration over its business dealings in Iran, raising questions about whether Plouffe’s substantial speaking fee may have influenced his later dealings with the firm on behalf of the White House.

“It appears based on the evidence that MTN should be designated under U.S. sanctions [against Iran] and today they are not,” said the GOP source.

The extent to which MTN Group is alleged to have engaged in corrupt and illegal practices came to light in late March, when a competing telecom firm named Turkcell sued MTN for unethically poaching its Iranian business license.

MTN Group is alleged to have engaged in an elaborate conspiracy to woo its Iranian benefactors in a bid to maintain a monopoly on the nation’s telecom market.

The firm allegedly promised the Iranians that it could convince South Africa to vote against sanctions on its disputed nuclear program when the issue went before the International Atomic Energy Association, according to a copy of the complaint.

MTN Group additionally stands accused of trying to facilitate the delivery of a “wish list” of embargoed weapons to Iran and of bribing both Iranian and South African government officials.

Earlier this year, Turkcell acquired the sworn videotaped testimony of Christian Kilowan, a senior MTN employee who ran its Iran operations from 2004 to 2007, the lawsuit states. Kilowan is said to have corroborated and expanded upon all of the allegations leveled against MTN, including never-before-revealed details about the firm’s alleged attempts to bribe Iranian officials.

Kilowan further testified that certain bribes to Iranian Interior Ministry officials were enacted through a “sham consulting contract” with one of the official’s relatives. Regular cash payments were doled out to at least six other government officials, the complaint states.

MTN is said to have paid $400,000 to Javid Gorbanoghli, the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister via a bogus contract with a Dubai front company. Also, a sum of $15,000 a month was allegedly paid to an Iranian Interior Ministry official named “Mr. Riahi,” according to the testimony.

Furthermore, the South African ambassador to Iran, Yusuf Saloojee, is alleged to have been paid nearly $200,000 to assist MTN’s business dealings in Iran, according to the complaint. An additional $2,000 was paid to multiple Iranian government officials for similar services.

Faced with these charges, MTN Group allegedly attempted to cover up its illicit behavior by intimidating Kilowan the day before he was scheduled to deliver his testimony on Turkcell’s behalf.

Plouffe’s relationship with both MTN and Turkcell—which paid him $48,000 in 2009—should have raised red flags for a White House that claims to be the “the most transparent administration ever,” insiders said.

“The hypocrisy is more in doing this in full knowledge of multiple press reports expressing concern over what Iran is doing in the telecoms sector to oppress its own people,” said the GOP adviser quoted above.

The administration defended Plouffe’s talks by telling the Washington Post that White House lawyers reviewed and cleared the deal before the invitation was accepted.

However, a cursory Internet search for MTN Group returns multiple articles reporting on the firm’s alleged collusion with the Iranian government.

Plouffe’s association with MTN is not the only cause for concern, observers say.

He also has received speaking fees from the Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan (ACSDA), a front for the Azeri government, as well as from the Norwegian postal service, which has been criticized for being sympathetic to the Tamil Tigers.

“I’m not sure I understand the nature of your question,” Carney said, when asked about the President Obama’s promise of a “higher standard” when he came into office. “This was prior to David Plouffe coming to work in the White House. It was before the watchdog group had even made an issue of this particular holding company.”

The Washington Post reported Monday that Plouffe had received $100,000 in speaking fees from a subsidiary of the MTN Group, a South African telecommunications firm with ties to Iran and Syria.

Plouffe joined the White House staff in January 2011. While the speeches were given in December 2010, the White House announced in November 2010 that Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, would assume a position in the administration.

“I don’t recall similar criticism from the RNC when senior members of the George W. Bush administration, prior to taking office, had given paid speeches to companies, in the case of Credit Suisse and UBS, were cited for violations regarding the financing in Iran,” he said.

Plouffe was also paid by Credit Suisse for a speaking engagement, according to financial disclosures. Additionally, Turkcell, a Turkish telecommunications firm with ties to Iran, paid Plouffe $48,000 in speaking fees.

In 2009, Plouffe donated approximately $50,000 in speaking fees from the Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan (ACSDA), a front for the Azeri government, to pro-democracy groups after controversy over the speech.

Plouffe was paid approximately $50,000 to speak to the Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan (ACSDA), a front for the Azeri government. He was later forced to donate the money to pro-democracy groups:

Mr. Plouffe now intends to donate his speaking fee, which the associate said is in the range of $50,000, to groups that advocate democratization in the turbulent post-Soviet states of the region around the Caspian and Caucasus mountain range. Mr. Plouffe also plans to share the contents of the speech with opposition groups.

U.S. officials said Mr. Plouffe coordinated his talks with American officials in the region and that his message about the uses of the Internet for democratic organizing advances longstanding U.S. policy. But they added that the Azerbaijan government has long sought to legitimize itself by hosting prominent Americans, often with the help of Washington lobbyists.

The Washington Post reported Monday Plouffe had received $100,000 from a subsidiary of the MTN Group, a South African telecommunications firm with ties to Syrian and Iran.

Plouffe was also paid $48,000 in speaking fees by Turkcell, a Turkish company with ties to Iran.

Plouffe spoke to a subsidiary of the MTN Group, a telecommunications firm, in Lagos, Nigeria, in December 2010–a month before he joined the White House staff.

In a comment to the Washington Post, the White House downplayed the speech, saying the company’s connections to Iran were not well known at the time.

“At the time, not even the most zealous watchdog group on this issue had targeted the Iranian business interests of the host’s holding company. Criticism of Mr. Plouffe now for issues and controversies that developed only years later is simply misplaced,” a White House spokesman told the  Post.

A person close to Plouffe also downplayed the speech, in a comment to Politico’s Playbook:

“The biggest point that Post largely ignores is that there’s nothing remarkable about this. For example, Colin Powell spoke to Credit Suisse before he was Sec. State (one May 2000 speech to Credit Suisse Financial Services for $127,500, one September 2000 speech to Credit Suisse First Boston for $59,500). Lawrence Lindsey spoke to UBS before joining Bush Administration. … UBS and Credit Suisse were later cited for violations re: financing Iran … Powell was confirmed as SECRETARY OF STATE … There was never any mention of recusal, returning the honoraria, nor did the Post work itself into a lather … MTN’s main competitor, Turkcell, was initially awarded this same contract in Iran. And Mitt Romney is an investor in the company.”

Politico reporter James Hohmann noted Monday that, according to Plouffe’s financial disclosure, he also spoke to Credit Suisse.

In video of roughly seven minutes of one of the speeches first posted by Buzzfeed, Plouffe discusses the impact of technology on the Obama campaign.

Update: Responding to the Plouffe report, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt criticized Mitt Romney’s former financial interest in Turkcell, a Turkish company that also has ties to Iran.

But Plouffe was also paid $48,000 by the company in speaking fees, Buzzfeed reports: