Martha got sent to the federal pen for lying about a stock transaction.
George W Bush did that and more, but his Poppy ordered the Feds to cover-up for him. In return, Richard Breeden, the guy who did the dirty work protecting Smirko also helped scotch WorldCom case. Oh yeah, Robert Jordan, the schmuck who repped Bush got made ambassador to Gas Field One.
Harken Hypocrisy
Bush's corporate ethics: Do as I say, not as I do.By William Saletan
Posted Tuesday, July 9, 2002, at 4:11 PM PT
"A new ethic of personal responsibility" for who?On Monday, President Bush defended his stewardship of Harken Energy, a company on whose board of directors he served more than a decade ago. On Tuesday, Bush called for corporate responsibility in a speech on Wall Street. There are standards and assumptions under which the explanations Bush gave Monday can be defended, and there are company directors whose conduct can be defended under the standards and assumptions Bush outlined Tuesday. But there's no way to square the rules Bush applied to himself on Monday with the rules he applied to others on Tuesday.
The key facts in the Harken case are these: Bush sold more than $800,000 worth of stock in Harken in June 1990, two months before the company reported a far larger quarterly loss than investors had anticipated. Millions more in Harken losses had been concealed by suspect accounting of the sale of its subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum, in 1989. The SEC challenged the propriety of this accounting, and in January 1991, seven months after Bush sold his stock, Harken revised its books accordingly, nearly quadrupling the net loss it had reported. A form on which Bush was supposed to report his stock sale wasn't filed until eight months after it was due. However, he did file on time a form reporting his intent to sell the stock.
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http://slate.msn.com/?id=2067870Investigator Who Cleared Bush Gets WorldCom Job
Thursday, 4 July 2002, 3:07 pmAlastair 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.
SNIP...
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.
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http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0207/S00033.htmTODAY’S JOLT
G.W. Bush = Ken LayBY SETH GITELL
THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2002 — Today’s papers are filled with the news of the resignation of Ken Lay, the chairman and chief executive of Enron. The reporters in Washington all want to know about President George W. Bush’s long-standing relationship with Lay and whether Lay parlayed that relationship into government help in keeping his complex energy-trading firm alive. This is, without doubt, an important question. Yet it neglects an essential fact about our president (one that nobody is talking about these days): George W. Bush is Ken Lay — or at least he was. Both profited by selling stock in their Texas-based energy companies shortly before those collapsed.
SNIP...
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.
SOURCE...
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/daily/documents/02133528.htmSo. What happened to Martha Stewart seems a bit harsh when compared to what didn't happen to the smirking psycho.