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Greenberg Traurig law firm at the center of ‘political intelligence’ case
By Jia Lynn Yang and Jerry Markon
The Washington Post, Published: May 6
A lobbyist hears from “very credible sources” that the White House is going to reverse a major health-care proposal. He tells a client in an e-mail, and that person then tells his own clients in a research note.
It sounds like the game of telephone that lobbyists, government officials and even reporters are drawn into every day in Washington. Except in this case, the chain of information may have triggered a spike in trades on Wall Street — and has now led to a government investigation into possible insider trading.
How the lobbyist, who works at the law firm Greenberg Traurig, stepped into this morass offers a window into what has become a routine and profitable practice at law firms and lobbying shops: In addition to their usual work, lobbyists share with financial firms the latest political tidbits they are gathering from sources, sending an e-mail here and there with the latest “political intelligence.” The financial firms value the information because it can inform their investments.
Recent attention has focused on a new breed of companies that offer political intelligence exclusively for investor clients, but some of the country’s most prominent law firms have gotten into the business, too.
The latest investigation has put an unwelcome spotlight on Greenberg Traurig, one of the country’s biggest law firms — and also known for having weathered the controversy surrounding one of its top lobbyists, Jack Abramoff, who was sentenced to prison for his part in a wide-ranging corruption scandal in 2006.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/greenberg-traurig-law-firm-at-the-center-of-political-intelligence-case/2013/05/06/7e0b01fa-b437-11e2-bbf2-a6f9e9d79e19_singlePage.html?tid=obinsite
Greenberg Traurig also is famous for helping out Ponzi fraudster and until-then successful hedgefund manager
R. Allen Stanford, among others.
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