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Congress Finally Ready to Investigate Global Crossing
NewsMax ^
| 3/15/02
| Wes Vernon
Posted on 03/14/2002 11:55:05 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
WASHINGTON – After a series of NewsMax exposés on the Global Crossing scandal and the lack of media attention to it, Congress is now preparing to investigate the bankruptcy of the telecom giant.
The House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, chaired by Rep. Sue Kelly, R-N.Y., plans to hold a hearing March 21.
The panel, in announcing the session, outlines the reasons for its concern. And they reflect very badly on the company.
The committee’s press release says Global Crossing’s demise, "the fourth largest bankruptcy in American history, resulted in the loss of 9,000 jobs,” closed 71 offices and resulted in "a meltdown in the value of the employees’ 401(k) plans as the stock fell from a high of $64 a share to 30 cents before the company filed for bankruptcy.”
Heard all this before? That’s precisely what the uproar over Enron is all about.
And here’s another Enron-like replay: The committee notes that "top executives sold over $1.3 billion in company stock from 1999 through last year, and the company made last-minute lump-sum executive pension payouts totaling $15 million.”
But get this (again from the committee’s release): "the company also moved up its last payday by a week, so executives and others still employed could get paid before the company declared bankruptcy, while severance checks to employees already laid off weren’t paid or bounced.”
The top brass made off with $15 million while employees didn’t even get their severance pay!
Says the committee: "Questions have now arisen whether the company, applying accounting principles used in the telecommunications sector, falsely inflated revenues and its stock price when it swapped fiber-optic capacity with other networks.”
There are two other angles to this scandal that the committee does not mention in its announcement.
Democrat national chairman Terry McAuliffe is widely reported to have made an $18 million killing on a Global Crossing investment of $100,000. He did not contradict that figure when asked about it on national television. But now his spokeswoman is saying that it wasn’t really that big but that he did do very well.
McAuliffe took his money off the table before the firm went under and just before he introduced Global Crossing CEO Gary Winnick to then-President Bill Clinton and before Winnick donated $1 million dollars to the Clinton library.
Does the committee intend to look into that?
"We don’t rule it in or out,” subcommittee spokeswoman Peggy Peterson told NewsMax.com. One of the panel’s 20 members may decide to bring it up either in questioning witnesses or in their opening statements, she said.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., has fired off a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld noting that the Chinese communist-linked company Hutchison Whampoa is eager to buy all of part of Global Crossing, which serves much of our military communications. That has national security ramifications.
If the California lawmaker doesn’t get satisfaction there, you can look for him to take his case to the International Relations Committee, of which he is a member. That phase of the scandal may not come up Thursday because the Financial Services panel’s jurisdiction is the financial markets.
The witness list will be announced later.
It will be interesting to see what kind of coverage the mainstream media gives the hearing. They have been very aggressive in covering other corporate scandals.
Democrats seem to have given up trying to tie the Enron mess around President Bush’s neck, especially after being embarrassed by revelations of Enron connections with the Clinton administration.
Global Crossing covered bases in both parties. But its heaviest weight was on the Democrat side of the aisle, of which the McAuliffe bonanza is a mere tip of the iceberg.
And the story doesn’t end there. Published reports indicate members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have written Global Crossing asking for a long laundry list of information and documents.
TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: alert; congress; globalcrossing; mcaulliffe
To: Tumbleweed_Connection
The only reason they are investigating is to smear George Bush Sr. So long as it doesn't turn out like Enron, we will see a lot of this crap in the coming days.
To: MadRobotArtist
OFFER TO BUY GC
Smear Bush Sr on what? What about taken care of themselves?
To: Tumbleweed_Connection
Interesting. Let's see how much the pubbies can soften the blow towards the Dems. Will the pubbies be apoligists for the dems? Stay tuned.....and the beat goes on.
4
posted on
03/14/2002 12:23:37 PM PST
by
Digger
To: Grampa Dave
Maybe you will find this.
To: Tumbleweed_Connection
Find what TC? Should I call Madame Clara, the clarivoyant, to find out what!
To: Tumbleweed_Connection
If you recall, Bush Sr. was invested in Global Crossing, and made a few bucks, not as much as McAuliffe, but quite a bit with a small investment. That was the only thing I could think of that would make this newsworthy.
To: Ernest_at_the_Beach;Black Jade;Bayou City;d14truth
GC
To: Tumbleweed_Connection;GlobalCrossing
GlobalCrossing :
| To find all articles tagged or indexed using GlobalCrossing , click below: |
| |
click here >>> |
GlobalCrossing |
<<< click here |
|
| (To view all FR Bump Lists, click here) |
To: Tumbleweed_Connection
Thanks for the ping!
To: MadRobotArtist
Bush Sr. is clean, he filed public documents when he sold GC in Nov. 99 and March 2000. Terry Mcauliffe refuses to make pulic his trading documents for GC.
To: MadRobotArtist
Actually, he received stock as payment for a speech he gave. It has not been disclosed how much he made because no one knows if he sold it. The amount disclosed is just what its worth was at its height.
12
posted on
03/14/2002 6:59:06 PM PST
by
Wphile
To: Wphile;MadRobotArtist
You can see it here
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To: Bayou City
Oh I know! The thing of it is, that even the appearance of impropriety is enough to get the media to salivate and misconstrue things. When you look at what's being done to somehow implicate either Bush in a scandal of some kind, you know that the libs and the media have a lot to account for with the Clinton years.
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