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US regulators sued hedge fund billionaire Philip Falcone for fraud Wednesday, accusing him of taking $113 million from a fund to pay his taxes. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Falcone, who raked in billions betting against packaged mortgage securities ahead of the US real-estate crash, took clients' money from funds run by his Harbinger Capital Partners to pay his personal taxes.It also said Falcone illegally manipulated bond prices, traded preferential treatment to investors who backed a controversial board initiative, and broke restricted period trading rules in three initial public offerings to make money on short sales.

A top official at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) told a Republican congressman that the agency is still considering ways to save LightSquared's plan for a high-speed wireless network. The company invested billions of dollars in plans for a nationwide 4G network, but the FCC moved to block the network earlier this year over concerns it would interfere with GPS devices. In a letter sent last month that was obtained by The Hill, Mindel De La Torre, the chief of the FCC's International Bureau, told Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.) the agency is "continuing to consider all options for addressing this...

Former Bush administration solicitor general Ted Olson and Eugene Scalia, Justice Scalia's son, will represent LightSquared. Wireless startup LightSquared has hired prominent conservative lawyers Ted Olson, a former U.S. solicitor general, and Eugene Scalia, a son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, as it tries to save its multibillion-dollar plan to build a nationwide 4G wireless network, the company confirmed Tuesday. Although the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted LightSquared a conditional waiver to move forward last year, the commission is now moving to block the company's network over concerns that it would interfere with GPS devices. The hiring of two...

Wireless start-up LightSquared plans to fight the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) move to reject its proposed nationwide 4G network, a company official told The Hill. Jeff Carlisle, LightSquared's vice president for regulatory affairs, said the company will file a formal comment with the FCC urging the agency not to follow through on its proposal to "indefinitely suspend" LightSquared's authority to operate cell towers. The FCC announced the decision Tuesday night after the president's top adviser on telecom issues concluded there is "no practical way" to prevent LightSquared's network from disrupting GPS devices, including those used in flight safety. When...

In a major victory for the National Legal and Policy Center, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) yesterday reversed itself and revoked a controversial waiver it had granted LightSquared, which would have allowed the company to deploy a national wireless network. The reversal is not only a major setback for LightSquared's billionaire owner Phil Falcone, but puts a harsh spotlight on the role of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. According to Cecelia Kang of the Washington Post Tech blog : The FCC's decision is expected to all but end LightSquared's aspirations to provide mobile broadband services via satellite airwaves -- a...

The Federal Communications Commission announced it had revoked its conditional approval for the controversial LightSquared national broadband network. The proposed network was to use airwaves once reserved for satellite-telephone transmissions and had been given a conditional approval by the FCC last year. The FCC’s move follows a statement by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which held that “there is no practical way to mitigate the potential interference [with GPS] at this time.” LightSquared’s plans have been strongly opposed by users of GPS systems, which include the military and the aviation industry. The NTIA tests demonstrated that the company’s network,...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today asked the principal behind the LightSquared 4G wireless project to explain a questionable contact to Grassley’s office that intimated benefits for Grassley if he softened his inquiry of government approval of the project. Since last April, Grassley has been reviewing the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of the LightSquared project and the concerns of interference with the Global Positioning System. According to a press release issued from Grassley’s office today, the Senator wrote to Philip Falcone of Harbinger Capital Partners, expressing concern that two separate incidents implied a desire to have Grassley “pull punches” in his...

On Friday, two Deputy Secretaries, one at the Department of Transportation and the other at Defense, in their capacities as co-chairs of the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Executive Committee, released a one page letter concluding that the modified broadband deployment plan of LightSquared could not coexist with current GPS devices and their spectrum. That's because: a) LightSquared's deployment "would cause harmful interference to many GPS receivers"; b) It would not be "compatible with several GPS-dependent aircraft safety-of-flight systems," and c)"there appear to be no practical solutions" to the problems. Stories about the release, to the extent they...

Top government officials said Friday that there are "no practical solutions" to GPS interference problems caused by LightSquared's planned mobile broadband network, signaling that the venture-backed company may have to abandon its plans to deploy LTE service in spectrum near to GPS bands. "There appear to be no practical solutions or mitigations that would permit the LightSquared broadband service, as proposed, to operate in the next few months or year without significantly interfering with GPS," Defense Department Deputy Secretary Ashton Carter and Transportation Department Deputy Secretary John Porcari said in a letter to NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling. "As a result,...

The upstart wireless company that is being bankrolled by Philip Falcone's $5 billion Harbinger Capital Partners hedge fund could run out of money during the second quarter of 2012, according to the company's financial statement. LightSquared, which registered a $427 million net loss during the first nine months of this year, may not be able to "continue as a going concern" unless it can raise additional capital and financing, the statement reviewed by Reuters said. "There is a need to raise substantial capital beyond the beginning of the second quarter of 2012 in order to have sufficient liquidity," the company's...

Philip Falcone’s proposed LightSquared Inc. wireless service caused interference to 75 percent of global-positioning system receivers examined in a U.S. government test, according to a draft summary of results. The results from testing conducted Oct. 31 to Nov. 4 show that “millions of fielded GPS units are not compatible” with the planned nationwide wholesale service, according to the draft seen by Bloomberg News. “LightSquared signals caused harmful interference to majority of GPS receivers tested,” according to the draft prepared for a meeting next week of U.S. officials reviewing the LightSquared proposal. “No additional testing is required to confirm harmful interference...

Billionaire Phil Falcone, whose cozy relationship with the Obama Administration was first exposed by NLPC, may face civil fraud charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). According to a filing yesterday by Harbinger Group Inc., Falcone and two other directors have received "Wells Notices," meaning that they are under investigation. Falcone is the Chairman, CEO and primary investor in Harbinger Group Inc., a hedge fund. Reportedly, other Harbinger investors include Soros Fund Management. Harbinger owns LightSquared, which has received an unusual waiver from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deploy a national 4G wireless network. Media reports have...

Has Julius Genachowski, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), met his match in Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa)? Genachowski, a buddy of President Obama from Harvard Law School, has brought a culture of wheeling and dealing to the FCC, on whose decisions billions of telecom dollars often ride. Grassley says that he will hold up two nominations for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) until the Commission provides documents that he has requested relating to LightSquared, a broadband company owned by the Harbinger Capital hedge fund. LightSquared is at the center of a scandal involving accusations made first by...

If you thought the half-billion-dollar, stimulus-funded Solyndra solar company bust was a taxpayer nightmare, just wait. If you thought the botched Fast and Furious border gun-smuggling surveillance operation was a national security nightmare, hold on. Right on the heels of those two blood-boilers comes yet another alleged pay-for-play racket from the most ethical administration ever. Welcome to LightSquared. It's a toxic mix of venture socialism (to borrow GOP Sen. Jim DeMint's apt phrase), campaign finance influence-peddling and perilous corner-cutting all rolled into one. The company is building "a state-of-the-art open wireless broadband network." Competition in the industry is a good...

The billionaire backer of a wireless company accused of using White House connections to interfere with a Pentagon commander’s congressional testimony last week emphatically rejected that and other charges relating to the embattled firm on Monday. In an exclusive interview with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, private equity titan Phil Falcone – the chief investor in LightSquared, a Virginia-based firm aiming to establish a new wireless broadband network – rejected as “absolutely false” allegations that LightSquared had obtained in advance the written testimony of Air Force Gen. William Shelton.

“GPS receivers were quite purposefully designed to operate in a portion of the radio frequency spectrum deliberately maintained as a “quiet neighborhood,” with neighboring frequencies primarily occupied by signals of comparable power levels, all based on widely accepted understanding of previous FCC rules and intent. The proposed LightSquared transmitters will produce received signal strengths five billion times stronger than the GPS received signal.” "Some have suggested GPS equipment can be redesigned for greater filtering to mitigate the interference, but even if this is possible, we believe it would involve substantial financial cost and likely degrade the accuracy of high performance...

There’s a White House scandal involving favoritism towards a specific company high on President Obama’s political agenda — and it’s not Solyndra. In this case, the company owner happens to be a big Democratic Party donor. And in the pursuit of giving preference to a specific company, the White House undercut a legendary four-star general and potentially undermined U.S. national security. Adding fuel to the explosive story: at one time President Obama was a personal investor, with $50,000 of his own money. A report by Eli Lake at the Daily Beast charges that the White House pressured U.S. Air Force...

7 minute Video and footnotes at link. Last night, NLPC Chairman Ken Boehm appeared on Fox Business Network to describe political favoritism by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) that benefited Harbinger Capital, a hedge fund headed by billionaire Phil Falcone. NLPC first accused the FCC of favoritism in a February 2 request for an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA). We pointed to large donations to Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, made the day after Falcone visited the White House, that appeared to be related to the FCC's fast track approval...

In Palermo, Sicily hundreds of Italians gathered today "to commemorate murdered anti-Mafia judge Paolo Borsellino 18 years after his death" as reported by David Willey for BBC News: "He was killed by a car bomb in one the most brutal attacks on Italian justice. * * * After several trials, the truth about who organised the murder of Borsellino, and fellow judge Giovanni Falcone the same year, remains elusive."

US hedge fund bosses threaten to move to Britain • Billionaires battle against threat of regulation • Soros says he would happily pay income tax America's top hedge fund managers staunchly defended the conduct of their secretive, high-risk industry yesterday and warned Congress that knee-jerk regulation could push financial jobs across the Atlantic to London. In a rare day of public scrutiny, the billionaire bosses of five leading hedge funds appeared before the house oversight committee to answer charges that their unregulated bets on financial markets have destabilised the global economy. George Soros, Kenneth Griffin, Philip Falcone, Jim Simons and...