Posted on 03/21/2005 8:25:12 PM PST by NormsRevenge
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A bank official testified Monday that he didn't believe it was wrong for his company to have donated tens of thousands of dollars to local politicians who could help the bank get business.
Douglas Pauls, the chief financial officer at Commerce Bancorp, said he considered it to be a "common practice" of big American companies.
"Is there anything improper about that whatsoever?" asked Kevin Marino, a lawyer for a Commerce Bank official being tried on corruption charges.
"No," Pauls said.
Pauls offered his defense of the company as federal prosecutors began introducing evidence designed to portray two other executives at the New Jersey-based bank as participants in a corrupt "pay-to-play" system that traded campaign contributions for government contracts.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Commerce used a collection of political action committees to give at least $173,000 to elected officials in Philadelphia, according to records shown to the jury.
Jurors also saw documents showing that during that same period, the bank hired one of Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street's top campaign fund-raisers as a $10,000-per-month legal consultant. The fund-raiser, Ronald A. White, was paid more than $850,000 by Commerce between 1998 and 2003.
Prosecutors allege that in return for the pay and the campaign dollars, White used his ties to the Street administration to help Commerce subsidiaries get city financial services contracts and millions of dollars in government deposits.
The bank itself has not been charged, but two of its executives are being tried on allegations that they improved their company's chances of winning government business even further by giving the city's treasurer special treatment on a series of loans.
The executives, Glenn Holck and Steve Umbrell, have pleaded innocent.
Their attorneys have argued that there was nothing unusual about the loans given to former treasurer Corey Kemp, and nothing improper about the bank's political giving or its payments to White, who died while awaiting trial.
Sadly, this is not unusual in Philly. Street should be outta there.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.