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. 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. (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. 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
Washington Post Reports Breeden’s Appointment 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 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 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. BUSHWHACKED: HUD Fraud,
Spooks and the Slumlords of Harvard 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.” ENDS
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.
“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.
[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.
Links To Other Source Material
By
Devlin Barrett
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, July
3, 2002;
5:04 PM
BY SETH GITELL THURSDAY,
JANUARY 24, 2002
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.