Investigator Who Cleared Bush Gets WorldCom Job

Thursday, 4 July 2002, 3:07 pm
Article: Alastair Thompson

A former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman appointed court monitor of WorldCom Inc. on Wednesday was previously responsible for clearing U.S. President George W. Bush of insider trading concerning his involvement in Harken Energy during the lead up to the 1991 Gulf War.

Bush’s involvement in Harken Energy in 1990 during the presidency of his father resulted just a wrist slapping for George Junior. George Bush had failed to file share sales declarations to the SEC for eight months during a period when the company's shares tanked.

The 1990 investigation into Harken has been receiving considerable coverage in US media in recent days. (For a very thorough analysis of the Harken transaction and the subsequent SEC investigation see... Harken Energy - Bush’s No Good Trade )

Interestingly few of the media covering the matter however have yet made the connection between Harken Energy and the father of the World's Most Wanted Terrorist (For more detail see... The GW Bush - Osama Bin Laden Connection)

And now it seems more than ironic that a man appointed by George Bush Senior as the SEC chairman, and who cleared George Bush of any impropriety over Harken (in spite of considerable evidence to the contrary) has now been appointed to oversee the largest corporate fraud in US history.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan selected Richard Breeden, who headed the SEC from 1989-1993, to act as the court-appointed monitor in the SEC's civil fraud suit against WorldCom.

WorldCom is fighting bankruptcy after announcing last week that it improperly accounted for nearly (NZD)$8 billion in expenses.

The appointment appears to beg some questions regarding what standards will be followed during Breeden's WorldCom investigation.

Already the pressure has been coming on the President over Harken - and the connection to WorldCom has not yet been made by major US media.

Yesterday, Bush was door-stopped about a column on Harken that appeared in the New York Times.

Reporter: Do you have any response, there's this columnist in the New York Times today who says that your role on the Board of Harken Energy back in the 1980s and its sale of Aloha Petroleum, your sale of stock, that amounts to the same kind of corporate misbehavior you're now criticizing.

President Bush: Everything I do is fully disclosed, it's been fully vetted.

(See also… Bush Denies Harken Energy SEC Filing Breaches)

On June 19th in his weekly Radio Address President Bush vowed that he would fight corporate malfeasance.

“We must have rules and laws that restore faith in the integrity of American business. The government will fully investigate reports of corporate fraud, and hold the guilty parties accountable for misleading shareholders and employees. Executives who commit fraud will face financial penalties, and, when they are guilty of criminal wrongdoing, they will face jail time,” the President said.

(See also… President Bush's Radio Address - WorldCom Scandal and Corrupt Corporate Executives To be Held To Account)

Bush’s Dirty Energy Trading Secret

The following account of the Harken Energy Scandal says it all far better than Scoop can.

It comes from The Daily Enron an independent media website. Numerous more references to Breeden’s involvement in the apparent George W Bush Harken Energy insider trading cover-up can be found on the Google Search Engine.

[Its 1990] Harken's Smith Barney financial advisors had just delivered a hand wringing report voicing alarm at the company's rapidly deteriorating financial condition and mounting debts. The company established a restructuring board to which [George W.] Bush was appointed. But, the only restructuring Bush did involved his own finances.

In June 1990 Bush pulled a Skilling. Claiming ignorance of the Harken's financial difficulties or the Smith Barney report, he sold his 212,140 shares of Harken Energy banking $848,560.00.

Even though the sale fell squarely under the SEC's insider stock sale rule requiring almost immediate formal notice, Bush did not report the sale until seven months later - after US troops had finished fighting Desert Storm. At the time the SEC was headed by George H. Bush appointee, Richard Breeden and no action was taken against the President's son for his tardiness in reporting his insider trades.

Of course, reporting such a sale at the time it occurred could have been both revealing and embarrassing. Bush sold his Harken stock less than thirty days after his father's National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft sent the President a secret memo warning that hostilities between Iraq and Kuwait were likely. Did dad share this information with his son? If so, W. Bush traded on "non-public" information of an extraordinary nature indeed.

Less than two months after Bush sold his shares hostilities broke out in Gulf and Harken's stock dropped like a stone. The shares lost 25% of their value alone on the day Iraq invaded Kuwait. Had Bush held his shares until then he would have lost nearly a quarter of million dollars. Harken's stock fell to as low as .25 a share. Today it trades under a dollar.

- From… Bush Does Not Measure Up to Own Standards - January 24th

Links To Other Source Material

Washington Post Reports Breeden’s Appointment
By Devlin Barrett
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, July 3, 2002;
5:04 PM

NEW YORK -- A former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman was appointed court monitor of WorldCom Inc. on Wednesday to ensure that documents aren't destroyed and executives don't receive outsize payouts from the faltering communications giant. [PARA]U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan selected Richard Breeden, who headed the SEC from 1989-1993, to act as the court-appointed monitor in the SEC's civil fraud suit against WorldCom for accounting improprieties

Full Story Click Here

More Background On Harken Energy and Richard Breeden

NOTES ALL THIS MATERIAL WAS FOUND VIA GOOGLE…

Click Here To Search For Yourself

TODAY’S JOLT: G.W. Bush = Ken Lay
BY SETH GITELL THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2002

But both used and attempted to use their political connections to financial advantage. Bush had friends in high places during the SEC inquiry. His father was president during much of it, and Richard Breeden, a Bush family ally chaired the commission during that period as well. There’s more. When it came time for Bush to pick an ambassador to oil-rich Saudi Arabia last summer, he picked not an expert in terrorism or in Islam, but Robert Jordan, an expert in oil. Jordan’s main qualification? He represented Bush in the Harken Energy dispute.

Full Story – Click Here

BUSHWHACKED: HUD Fraud, Spooks and the Slumlords of Harvard
by Uri Dowbenko
Part 3

“In 1987 when creditors were threatening to foreclose, the Junior Bush himself made a trip to Arkansas to meet criminal-banking kingpin Jackson Stephens, whose Stephens Inc. arranged financing for the faltering Harken Energy from a subsidiary of the Unon Bank of Switzerland (UBS). Stephens Inc, of course, had ties to the notorious CIA money laundry bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), where drug trafficking and arms-smuggling profits mingled freely with looted S&L and fraud-scam proceeds.

Then 1990 Bahrain awarded an exclusive drilling rights contract to Harken and the Bass brothers added more equity to the deal. Six months later George Bush Jr. sold off 212,140 shares grossing him $848,560.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait the Harken stock dropped suddenly. The SEC was not notified, and no action for insider trading was taken against the Junior Bush. Why? SEC chairman Richard Breeden was a faithful Bush loyalist.”

Full Story – Click Here

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Alastair Thompson

Scoop Publisher

Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

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