Free Republic

NEW YORK - Bonuses at Wall Street firms climbed to a projected record of $21.5 billion last year as revenue grew, according to the New York state comptroller's office. Comptroller Alan Hevesi said Wednesday that 2005's bonus tally was $2 billion more than the old record, which was set in 2000. In 2004, Wall Street bonuses came to an estimated $18.6 billion. Last year's average bonus was pegged at $125,500, also a record, Hevesi said. Revenue at Wall Street firms rose 44.5 percent through the first three quarters of 2005, climbing to the highest level since 2000, the year when...

Tired of constantly rising cable-TV costs but convinced you can’t do anything about them? I know the tug of defeatism. When my bill climbs, I do little more than grumble that I’m a prisoner of Comcast and its chokehold on local sports. Using a loophole in federal law, it refuses to provide Comcast SportsNet to satellite TV, my only alternative. Maybe it’s time for all of us to vent. Last week, close to 12,000 people did so. Prompted by Free Press, a media watchdog group, they complained to the Federal Communications Commission about cable’s rising prices and anti-competitive practices. They...

Former Worldcom Chief Executive Bernard Ebbers was handed a 25-year prison term for directing the biggest accounting fraud in corporate history, leaving thousands of investors empty-handed. Ebbers, who built a small Mississippi-based long distance company into a telecommunications powerhouse, was found guilty on March 15 on all charges — one count of conspiracy, one count of securities fraud and seven counts of false regulatory filings. But he could also be a charming and folksy CEO, who preferred cowboy boots to suits, opened shareholder meetings with a prayer, ate lunch in the cafeteria and ran a company that had become a...

NEW YORK (June 20) - A father and son are both going to prison for one of the largest frauds in corporate history. Adelphia Communications founder John Rigas has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. His son, Timothy, has been given a 20-year sentence. The New York judge says John Rigas' age and health kept him from imposing a stiffer sentence. Rigas is 80 years old. The cable company collapsed into bankruptcy in 2002 after it disclosed a staggering two (b) billion dollars in debt that had been kept off the books. Prosecutors say the Rigas family also stole...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corp. have reached an agreement in principle to buy the cable TV company Adelphia Communications Corp. for nearly $18 billion, according to newspaper reports Friday. The tentative deal must still be approved in bankruptcy court, and a final resolution could be weeks away. Adelphia has been operating under bankruptcy protection since 2002 following an accounting fraud and corporate looting scandal by the Rigas family which used to run the company.If it goes through, the deal would also mark the first significant expansion for Time Warner since its disastrous 2000 merger with...

In his second inaugural, George W. Bush used the words liberty and freedom 42 times. And, indeed, if America is about anything, she is about freedom. But freedom from what, and for what? What brings the old question to mind is the decision by Adelphia Communications, the cable operator that has long refused to carry pornography, to offer triple-X rated programming for the first time in a major media market: Southern California. What is triple-X-rated programming? Sallie Hofmeister of the Los Angeles Times explains: "Single-X-rated movies feature nudity, long-range or medium-range camera shots, simulated sex and sex between women." Her...

Critics Say Politicians Morally Obligated to Refuse Donations While its previous owners considered adult entertainment "immoral," Adelphia Communications Corp., the country's fifth-largest cable television provider, last week became the first to offer hard-core adult films on pay-per-view to its subscribers. (snip) According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Comcast Cable has given millions in political donations since 1998. The national Republican Party committees are its biggest organizational recipient, with donations totaling $851,000. President Bush is its biggest individual recipient with $109,000 in donations. Adelphia has given $166,000 to Republican committees, $17,000 to conservative Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., and $12,000 to...

Read here...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Federal prosecutors extended a string of successes in their pursuit of white-collar crime, winning fraud convictions against Adelphia Communications Corp. founder John Rigas and his son Timothy. A Manhattan jury found the pair guilty Thursday of conspiring to hide $2.3 billion in debt at the cable company -- a crushing burden that drove it into bankruptcy in 2002 -- and loot it for their personal gain. They were also found guilty of securities fraud and bank fraud. Each man faces up to 30 years in prison on the bank fraud counts alone. A second Rigas...

Corporate Scandals and Accounting “Irregularities” (By Rob Klein) ---- www.scoogiespin.com ========================================================= By now you should be familiar with all of the recent corporate scandals, especially the accounting irregularities. Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom, Imclone, Adelphia Communications, and good old Martha Stewart, are just a few names, which come to my mind. I am an investment professional by trade, and I have seen investors’ portfolios devastated by these scandals. Fortunately, I had only a minor exposure to WorldCom, and my clients avoided many of these disasters. A coworker of mine referred to the scandals as corporate suicide bombings. I can not use...

This month's Golf Digest contains remarkable statistics on 270 leading CEO golfers. The amazing thing is not their handicaps, or that better golfers seem to run better-performing companies. It's that so far none of them have been dragged off the course by the U.S. Justice Department under a barrage of flashbulbs. Given the circus atmosphere surrounding alleged corporate malfeasance, Justice officials would surely love to take down a chief executive on the eighteenth, no, make that seventeenth, green. From five irons to leg-irons in one fell swoop. In fact, they had an opportunity with John Rigas, the 78-year-old head of...

Each family member out on 10 million dollars bond each. They lose all of their homes and had to surrender 5,000 acres of land they own surrounding the Adelphia HQ, as well as surrender all passports and travel documents....aka..they should be put on suicide watch.

WASHINGTON, July 1 (UPI) -- "There is nothing new in the world," President Harry S. Truman liked to say, "Except the history you don't already know." He must have been reading United Press International analysis on "The decline and fall of the American economy." Ten months ago, on Aug. 30, 2001 -- less than two weeks before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and mangled the Pentagon -- this column said, "The continued slide of the U.S. economy into serious recession and the failure of the Bush administration to either recognize the fact or...

It is clear to me that the amoral, unethical, and crimial Clintons are a primary reason for the rash of corporate corruption that has come to light during the past year. So many of the skills required for lying and avoiding responsibility were taught by the Clintons to our corporate leadership. Clearly Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia and Tyco managments thought they could adopt the Clintons' technigues --- and they have. Bill and Hillary taught us to commit crimes to achieve power, control or money; to deny and lie about crime roles; to destroy or hide all evidence; to accuse opponents of...

Adelphia Filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection Tuesday By Bill Bergstrom The Associated Press Published: Jun 25, 2002 PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Adelphia Communications was in the process of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday in the midst of financial troubles that have grown ever deeper and more tangled since the company revealed billions of dollars in off-the-books borrowing by the family of founder John J. Rigas, according to a source. A source familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the filing was under way Tuesday evening. The nation's sixth largest cable television company had been scrambling...

PHILADELPHIA -- Adelphia Communications apparently overreported its cable television subscribers by about 358,000 by including all the customers in joint ventures it owns only a portion of, an analyst said. Aryeh Bourkoff, a fixed-income analyst at UBS Warburg, also issued a client update today citing "the very high likelihood of a near-term bankruptcy filing" by the nation's sixth-largest cable company. Adelphia's board met today at attorney David Boies' office in New York, a secretary at the office said. Adelphia officials wouldn't comment on the meeting or a potential bankruptcy filing, said a spokesman, Eric Andrus. Adelphia officials also declined comment...

Adelphia Communications Corp.'s board and auditors have come under fire for the cable concern's self-dealing, but another player is starting to take heat for its role in the company's implosion, Wednesday's Wall Street Journal reported. Salomon Smith Barney acted as Adelphia's lead underwriter for some recent big offerings of Adelphia stock, while its parent Citigroup Inc. was one of the cable firm's primary creditor banks. Salomon has also been hired to help sell the company's cable-TV assets. The intimate involvement of Citigroup's different departments with Adelphia put it in a prime position to know about the co-borrowing arrangements and...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Adelphia Communications Corp.ADLAE.O said on Friday that it is being investigated by grand juries in two states and it missed $44.7 million of debt and dividend payments, signs that a bankruptcy filing is imminent and amid a possible Nasdaq delisting. "Their actions and disclosure are indicative of a company that plans to file for bankruptcy," said Harold Rivkin, president of H. Rivkin & Co. in Princeton, New Jersey, a distressed debt brokerage that trades Adelphia bonds. "Today's announcement confirms everyone's worst fears. It looks like the whole thing is unraveling." The No. 6 U.S. cable TV...