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Banned
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Originally Posted by SteelyLoins
Bush was cleared. Get over it.
While you're at it, get over the election results as well. Bush won.
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I am offended by your tone, SteelyLoins....all the more because you brought nothing to the table to back your claim that "Bush was cleared". The "record" indicates that this is a legitimate and timely topic to discuss. Enron's Mr. Skilling has been convicted, by a jury of a crime that mulitple news reports, appearing in the nations newspaper "of record", over a pan of time from at least 1999 to 2002, indicate is very similar to allegations that Mr. Bush has....contrary to your claims....never been officially cleared of doing.
Bush has never been "cleared" after any official investigation into whether or not he made illegal "insider trades" of his Harken stock when he served on that company's BOD and audit committee.......
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...bush073099.htm
Bush Name Helps Fuel Oil Dealings
Bush's Texas building
The old Petroleum Building in Midland, where George W. Bush had his oil company offices.
(By Susan Biddle – The Post)
By George Lardner Jr. and Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 30, 1999; Page A1
Sixth of seven articles
As world oil prices plummeted in the winter of 1985-86, George W. Bush faced the most serious crisis of his 11-year career as a West Texas oilman..........
....... Full-Time Oil Days Over, Son Turns to Dad's Campaign
With the sale complete, Bush's days as a full-time oilman were over. He spent most of his time in the next two years working for his father's election campaign. He remained on the Harken board, and former board member Stuart Watson describes him as "a straight-arrow type ... very able and capable."
But four years later, his sale of his Harken stock prompted an SEC probe into whether he had engaged in insider trading. The probe centered on Bush's sale of all of his 212,140 shares of Harken stock for $4 a share on June 22, 1990, just before the conclusion of a second quarter that produced huge losses. The transaction was to net Bush $835,307, according to the "notice of proposed sale," signed and dated June 22, that Bush was required to send to the SEC as a member of Harken's board.
Bush said he made the move because he wanted to pay off a $500,000 bank loan he had obtained in 1989 to buy his slice of the Texas Rangers. "I didn't need to pay it off," he said in an interview. "I did it because I just don't like to carry debt."
Eight days after Bush's stock sale, Harken wound up its second quarter with operating losses from day-to-day activities of $6.7 million, almost three times the losses it reported for the second quarter of 1989.
The public didn't learn of this until Aug. 20, when the company, now known as Harken Energy, announced in a press release that its overall losses for the quarter, including non-recurring expenses as well as operating losses, totaled $23.2 million. Harken's stock had slipped to $3 a share earlier that month when Iraq's invasion of Kuwait stirred fears that it would endanger a potentially lucrative offshore drilling contract with Bahrain. On Aug. 20, the stock dropped to $2.37.
Did Bush know of the impending losses when he sold his stock in June? Federal securities law prohibits corporate "insiders" from trading "on the basis of" material information that is not publicly known.
Bush says he did not know, even though he had a seat on Harken's three-member audit committee as well as its eight-member board of directors. He said he had no idea Harken was going to get an audit report full of red ink until weeks after he had made the sale.
"I wouldn't have sold if I had," Bush said. "I got clearance by the lawyer [Harken general counsel Larry E. Cummings] to sell this stock. I was mindful that this transaction would be completely scrutinized. I knew the law and I sold at a time that I was cleared to sell."
Bush said he didn't seek a buyer, but was approached by a Los Angeles broker, Ralph D. Smith. Now retired, Smith said he had an institutional client who wanted a large bloc of Harken stock. Smith said he called other Harken officials before calling Bush on June 9, 1990.
"I had no takers until I got to him," Smith said. "It was just like a shot out of the blue."
Bush's lawyer, Robert Jordan, who also represented Harken in the SEC inquiry, said Bush and other board members were not informed until July 13, 1990, in a communication from Harken president Mikel Faulkner that "operating losses were incurred in the second quarter, which will be further quantified and explained." Even then, Jordan said, Faulkner did not provide details. Many companies project and announce expected profits and losses before the end of a quarter, but Jordan said this was not done at Harken.
Asked for a copy of the July 13 communique, or permission to inspect it, Jordan checked with company officials and said they would not allow it. He said Harken has "a policy of keeping internal documents private."
Before Bush's stock sale, Harken's audit committee – Bush, Watson and another Harken director, Talat Othman – met on June 11 with Faulkner and auditors from Arthur Andersen & Co., Harken's accountants. Jordan, however, said the committee "did not discuss operating losses that might be coming up, because that would be in the realm of conjecture and speculation." The minutes of the meeting, Jordan said, "show that."
Asked for a copy of the June 11 minutes or permission to inspect them, the company, through Jordan, again declined to make the records available. Jordan said company officials felt that granting the requests would put them on "a slippery slope."
Before giving Bush clearance to sell his stock, Jordan said that company counsel Cummings "checked with Mr. Faulkner at least and maybe others" to see if there was "any material, undisclosed information out there that would prevent the sale." The answer was no, Jordan said.
Faulkner, a certified public accountant who used to work at Arthur Andersen and who has spoken frequently with reporters over the years, declined through Jordan to be interviewed. So did Cummings.
<b>The SEC investigation was launched in April 1991 when it found that Bush apparently failed to submit notice of actual sale of the stock (as distinct from the separate "notice of proposed sale") until eight months after the deadline. Bush said he is sure he did, but the filing couldn't be found.
The inquiry became an issue in the 1994 governor's race when Richards, the incumbent Democrat, challenged its thoroughness, calling it "at best, incomplete, and at worst, a coverup."
Bush was prepared, having obtained a letter from a top SEC official, associate director for enforcement Bruce A. Hiler, a year earlier.
Dated Oct. 18, 1993, three weeks before Bush announced his candidacy for governor, the carefully worded letter was addressed to Jordan and said that "the investigation has been terminated as to the conduct of Mr. Bush, and that, at this time, no enforcement action is contemplated with respect to him."
Bush took that as vindication. "The SEC fully investigated the stock deal," he said in October 1994. "I was exonerated." Supporting Bush, the head of the SEC's enforcement division, William McLucas, went beyond the letter and stated publicly that "there was no case there."
Hiler, however, was more cautious. His statement said it "must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result from the staff's investigation."</b>
How thorough the SEC inquiry was remains unclear. Jordan said Harken provided investigators with "thousands of pages" of documents, including the June 11 minutes and Faulkner's July 13 communique. Investigators interviewed Cummings, stockbroker Smith and a member of the Arthur Andersen auditing team, but they did not talk to Faulkner or any other officers or directors of Harken.
In an interview, McLucas said the investigation was handled "the same way we would handle any inquiry as to [insider] trading or delinquency in reports," but such matters are usually not accorded high priority.
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...¬Found=true
Bush Sold Stock After Lawyers' Warning
SEC Closed Probe Before Receiving Letter From Harken's Outside Attorneys
By Peter Behr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 1, 2002; Page A04
<b>A week before George W. Bush's 1990 sale of stock in Harken Energy Co., the firm's outside lawyers cautioned Bush and other directors against selling shares if they had significant negative information about the company's prospects.
The sale came a few months before Harken reported significant losses, leading to an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The June 15, 1990, letter from the Haynes and Boone law firm wasn't sent to the SEC by Bush's attorney Robert W. Jordan until Aug. 22, 1991, according to a letter by Jordan. That was one day after SEC staff members investigating the stock sale concluded there was insufficient evidence to recommend an enforcement action against Bush for insider trading.
The president's sale of his oil company shares has become tied to a broader political debate about business ethics in the wake of the Enron Corp. scandal and other cases of corporate wrongdoing.
The delay in delivering the law firm's report to the SEC -- Harken executives had previously withheld it citing attorney-client privilege -- indicates that regulators did not have a full picture of the Bush transaction when they finished their investigation, said Michael Aguirre, a securities lawyer in San Diego, who obtained the documents in the case last summer after filing a Freedom of Information request.</b>
"There was a failure to deal with the most important piece of evidence," he said.
Dan Bartlett, White House communications director, said the timing of the letter's delivery should not have had an impact on the investigation.
"It has been made very clear that the SEC had the right to reopen the case" after August 1991, he said. "Whether it was a day after, or a week after, if career prosecutors received information that was material and relevant, it's safe to say they would follow up on it."
The Boston Globe, which reported Wednesday on the late delivery of the law firm memo, said four former SEC officials who worked on the case did not recall receiving it. Several of those former officials did not return telephone calls yesterday about the 1991 inquiry.
Bush sold 212,140 shares of Harken on June 22, 1990, for $848,560, using the funds to pay off a bank loan that financed his investment in the Texas Rangers baseball team.
The SEC memo closing the case in August 1991 reported that Bush had been given approval to sell the shares by Harken's general counsel Larry E. Cummings and Harken's chairman Mikel D. Faulkner. Cummings told the investigators that he had also checked with Haynes and Boone attorneys, who said they saw no reason why Bush should not sell. In light of the approvals Bush received, it would be difficult to establish that he acted with fraudulent intent, the SEC memo concluded. The SEC memo does not mention the Haynes and Boone letter.
Bartlett said the attorneys' letter was not specifically addressed to the stock sale that Bush was considering at the time. "It was a very general, broad set of guidelines to board members," he said. Bartlett said President Bush does not recall receiving the lawyers' warning but does specifically recall seeking and receiving approval to sell.
In their letter, the Haynes and Boone attorneys noted they had been asked for advice on whether Harken directors and executives who sold company stock could be accused of securities law violations. At the time, Harken, a small, Dallas-based energy company, was in dire need of funds to avoid bankruptcy and had decided to sell shares in two subsidiaries that would be split off from the parent company in what is called a "rights offering."
The offering had been announced publicly, but the price of shares Harken would sell had not been set. Thus, the potential value of the deal could not be immediately assessed.
The lawyers' memo said that if directors had any unfavorable information about the company's outlook, their sale of Harken shares would be viewed critically if the stock price dropped following the rights offering. "Unless the favorable facts clearly are more important than the unfavorable, the insider should be advised not to sell."
Bush and two other directors attended a June 11, 1990, meeting of Harken's audit committee, where Harken's outside auditor, Arthur Andersen, reviewed the proposed rights offering. An Andersen partner told the Harken directors that the offering might lead to a potentially significant reduction in the market value of the subsidiaries, although the amount could not be determined right away.
The attorneys' letter did not conclude whether directors' information about the rights offering was favorable.
Bush has said that his decision to sell his shares was based on good news -- the January 1990 announcement of Harken's deal to drill for oil in Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf region.
Bush received $4 a share for his stock in June 1990. The price dropped sharply following the October 1990 disclosure of the rights offering price, to a low of $1.25 a share in December 1990, but then recovered.
Harken Energy shares now trade at 20 cents a share -- equivalent to 2 cents a share in 1990, before a reverse stock-split in 2000 in which investors received one new share of Harken for each 10 held previously.
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The record indicates, that....at the least, Mr. Bush is ethically challenged. Is it better...on a political forum, to simply "let it pass", when a senior executive of a prominent company that had close political ties to Mr. Bush, is convicted of a crime that seems remarkably similar to something that Mr. Bush himself was reported to have been investigated for doing, and, according to the SEC official who investigated, made a determination that, <b>"must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result from the staff's investigation."</b>
This thread sits on much more solid ground than much of what you watch on foxnews....if the reported record in my posts, is any indication! |