Posted on 07/12/2002 9:58:24 PM PDT by RCW2001
Bush's top corporate-crime fighter was director company that paid $400 million to settle fraud charges
LESLIE MILLER, Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 12, 2002
©2002 Associated Press
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/07/12/national0020EDT0401.DTL
(07-12) 21:50 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --
The leader of President Bush's new task force on corporate crime was a director of a credit card company that paid more than $400 million to settle charges of consumer and securities fraud.
Larry Thompson, the deputy attorney general, served on the board of the company, Providian Financial Corp., from June 1997 until he was confirmed by the Senate in May 2001, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents.
During that period, state, local and federal agencies investigated Providian for gouging its customers, who filed class-action lawsuits against the company. Providian paid more than $400 million in 2000 to settle the investigations and lawsuits.
During the first two weeks in 1999 after the government investigations were disclosed, the company's shares plunged from $62.06 to as low as $39.22.
In March, Providian agreed to pay $38 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by shareholders alleging the company inflated its profits through its price-gouging practices.
The settlement covered investors who bought the company's stock between Jan. 21, 1999 and June 4, 1999, when Thompson was a company director.
The Washington Post, which first reported Thompson's connection with the credit card company, said he held 89,651 shares of Providian on March 21. Those shares were valued at more than $4.7 million on the day he took office as deputy attorney general.
Thompson was not questioned about his role at Providian during his Senate confirmation hearings.
Providian's officers and directors, including Thompson, are defendants in a class-action lawsuit brought by company employees who claim they urged large holdings of Providian stock in 401(k) retirement plans while they were employing questionable accounting methods and cashing in on their own shares.
Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said Thompson was proud of his service on Providian's board.
"He only became aware of the (fraud) issues when regulators began to make inquiries," Corallo told the Post. "He then personally took the lead in making the company doing the right thing."
Bush established the white-collar crime task force Tuesday amid mounting corporate scandals. He gave Thompson until July 19 to convene its first meeting. But in a surprise move, he held the first session on Friday at the White House.
At the meeting, Thompson pledged to go after corporate criminals "with vigor and an aggressive manner."
©2002 Associated Press
Why do posters continue to libel my good name? My attorney will be contacting you.
"We're not looking for individuals of any particular religion or from any particular country."
FBI Director Robert Mueller - SOURCE.
LOL.
There's nothing like the sound of a stuck pig.
Larry D. Thompson - U.S. Corporate Watchdog Served At Troubled Firm
LOL! It's another one of those brilliant moves by Bush. It's a strategy only they can comprehend.
This must be Bush's idea of April Fool's Day in July!!!!!
Or maybe Clinton set the standard for in your face public corruption and Bush is trying to surpass Clinton's standard for public corruption in high places.
The United States is much like a ship adrift at sea without a captain.
Enron execs met with govt. immediately before Bush admin said NO to California's request for assistance (picture dubya's smirky grin, the one he gets when he says the word "evil")
Dan Brown: 'It's Time to Appoint a Special Prosecutor' Date: Sunday, January 13 @ 09:14:12 EST
By Dan Brown, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Enron executives have disclosed that they met with the Bush administration just one day before the administration determined not to assist California in its Enron-created energy crisis, by not imposing price caps and allowing Enron to further gouge Californian energy consumers, potentially bankrupting California energy providers and endangering the stability of the government of California.
The White House has disclosed that Enron executives met with at least two Cabinet-level Bush administration officials prior to the Enron collapse and discussed the precarious Enron financial situation. These Bush administration officials have a fiduciary duty to oversee U.S. pension accounts, yet those officials determined to "do nothing."
The White House has further disclosed that President Bush learned of Enron's impending collapse "last fall," in the words of White House spokesman Ari Fleischer -- yet Bush, who now says through spokesmen that he wants to make sure that this "doesn't happen again" to the pension accounts of innocent victims, did nothing to see that it didn't happen the first time.
We already know that more than 29 Bush administration officials are former Enron executives or shareholders. We know that Ken Lay and Enron bankrolled Bush's gubernatorial and presidential campaigns. We know too that Enron was the second largest contributor to John Ashcroft's Senate campaign as well; more than $61,000 came from Enron and Lay.
Further, we now know that Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, to whom the investigation has fallen upon Attorney General Ashcroft's recusal, also has ties to Enron, which makes it impossible for Thompson to lead an investigation of this magnitude. Thompson worked for the law firm of King and Spalding from 1977 to 1982, served as a U.S. Attorney under the Reagan administration, and returned to King and Spalding as a partner in 1986. He stayed at the firm until his appointment as deputy attorney general in 2001.
King and Spalding has represented subsidiaries of Enron, including Enron Global LNG, Enron Global Markets and Enron Energy Services. As a former law partner, Larry Thompson profited from the firm's work for Enron. Even if he did not work directly on Enron matters -- information that is not publicly available -- Thompson cannot avoid the "appearance of impropriety," which is fatal for such an important investigation.
The Enron story is more important than whether Afghan prisoners were drugged on the way to Cuba. It's more important than Donald Rumsfeld's failure to secure the capture of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan -- or whether Yasser Arafat has control over Hamas.
The Enron story is about the spectacular failure of the deregulation nightmare unleashed on us by President Ronald Reagan and resurrected by George W. Bush. Enron was a product of deregulated Texas under then-Gov. Bush.
The Enron story is about control of the government of the United States by the highest bidder. Ken Lay and Enron built Bush.
With unlimited access, Lay and Enron engineered the exit of an unfavorable Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chair and appointment of a sympathetic "watchdog" over his own industry. With unlimited access, Lay and Enron kept the U.S. government from doing what it was supposed to do to assist California in its energy crisis, caused, ironically, by Enron. With unlimited access, Lay and Enron kept the government of the United States from protecting the pension accounts of tens of thousands of Enron employees, while highly paid executives made off with billions of dollars.
Bush is often said to run the government like a "business."
Unfortunately, to see the model upon which that business is based, we need only look as far as Enron.
Enron sacrificed the best interests of all the energy consumers in California to corporate greed. It leveraged deregulation to thrive as an unneeded middleman in the energy trade. It tossed out tens of thousands of employees, broke, while its executives made billions of dollars.
And it kept its puppet government of Bush apprised every step of the way.
Every time Bush had to decide whether to act in the best interests of the nation or the best interests of Enron, Bush chose Enron. Every time Bush faced a decision to act on or report information given to him by Enron that affected the public trust he has undertaken, Bush chose to keep quiet.
Bush and his administration have been complicit in every action that Enron has taken to thrive at the expense of the United States of America.
It's time to appoint a special prosecutor and hold Bush accountable.
It's what the shareholders would want. -- Dan Brown, St. Paul. Data analyst. www.truthout.com/01.14B.Appoint.SP.htm add your comments
Sounds like sound advice. Should I go for the short or long model?
Unfortunately it'll be followed very shortly by an even MORE corrupt Democrat Crime Wave. IF somebody doesn't declare an end to elections (temporarily of course) because there's a WAR ON. ;-)
Ethical people often don't rise to the very top, and when they do, why would they want to enter the cesspool known as Washington D.C.? So we get nominees like this no matter if it is a democrat or republican in charge.
Shakespeare had it right about lawyers 500 years ago. Lawyer/businessman= ethics problems. It just does.
The short models are more for the Spec. Forces type guys, the long models for more of the Sniper types. I'm going long. :-)
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