For once, a bit of widely-circulated anonymous e-mail is accurate — what's described in the example quoted above is the actual way of things. A holding company named Montana Management owns about two percent of French media giant, Lagardere SCA, whose Hachette subsidiary includes magazines such as Elle, Woman's Day, Road & Track and Car and Driver. Montana Management, in turn, is owned by Saddam Hussein.
Snopes article
I never got that email. And don't take that as a desire to get any more of those urban legend emails. Anyway, this article continues...
Hachette reacted to the 1991 news of Montana's true ownership by freezing the block of its shares owned by that holding company, so neither Saddam Hussein nor anyone else involved with Montana Management has profited from sales of Hachette-published magazines for well over a decade.
But it's kind of fun to think of all those Nascar Dads who were supporting Hussein's regime. Just one more reminder that in this day and age of corporate rule, none of us knows what we're really contributing to. (Remember the long list of all those other French-owned companies the Freedom Fries people were patronizing without knowing it?)
Forget it. Go shopping.
