Daily Archives: October 15, 2004

Enron-related extradition of British bankers approved

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A British judge ruled Friday that three British bankers indicted in the U.S. on Enron-related fraud charges could be extradited to stand trial in Texas. Here is a prior post that reports on the background of this case leading up to the recent extradition hearing.
District Judge Nicholas Evans found that there was a “good and proper basis” for prosecuting David Bermingham, Giles Darby and Gary Mulgrew in the United States and ruled the case should be sent to Home Secretary David Blunkett for a decision on whether to extradite them. Under British law, Home Secretary Blunkett can only halt the extradition if the men might face the death penalty or are likely to face further charges once in the U.S.
Despite the Justice Department’s dubious handling of the Enron-related criminal investigation and prosecutions to date, the Justice Department is likely “only” to seek a prison sentence against each of the bankers that is tantamount to a life sentence, but not the death sentence. ;^)
The three former employees of National Westminster Bank (“Natwest”) were charged in the U.S. in 2002 with bilking the bank of $7.3 million in a Andrew Fastow-designed scheme. Prosecutors allege that Messrs. Mulgrew, Darby and Bermingham conspired with Mr. Fastow and Michael Kopper in 2000 to defraud Natwest of millions of dollars. They allegedly advised the bank to sell its interest in a subsidiary of LJM (one of Fastow’s off balance sheet partnerships) to another Fastow-created entity for $1 million when it was really worth much more. However, based on the way Fastow manipulated Enron and his partnerships, I do not know how the prosecution could know what the interest was really worth.
At any rate, the government says that Fastow arranged for Enron to pay $30 million to unwind the energy company’s transactions with the LJM subsidiary and that Natwest received only $1 million of that amount, while Fastow, Kopper, and the bankers divvied up $19 million between themselves. Of that, the bankers allegedly pocketed $7.3 million and, as a result, each of the bankers has been charged with seven counts of wire fraud.
The bankers’ case has been one of the first tests of the new fast-track British extradition procedures introduced in 2003 to deal primarily with terrorist cases. The Extradition Act lessens the burden of proof in some cases, allowing certain countries such as the U.S. to provide mere information rather than evidence that a crime has been committed.
Inasmuch as Kopper pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy in August 2002 and Fastow pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy in January of this year — and Kopper just finished being one of the prosecution’s main witnesses in the ongoing Nigerian Barge trial — the bankers can expect that both Kopper and Fastow will be witnesses against them in any U.S. trial.

Crossing the line

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Charles Krauthammer thinks John Edwards crossed the line, and he supports his argument with wisdom generated from personal experience:

This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa:

“If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”

In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.
Where does one begin to deconstruct this outrage?
First, the inability of the human spinal cord to regenerate is one of the great mysteries of biology. The answer is not remotely around the corner. It could take a generation to unravel. To imply, as Edwards did, that it is imminent if only you elect the right politicians is scandalous.
Second, if the cure for spinal cord injury comes, we have no idea where it will come from. There are many lines of inquiry. Stem cell research is just one of many possibilities, and a very speculative one at that. For 30 years I have heard promises of miracle cures for paralysis (including my own, suffered as a medical student). The last fad, fetal tissue transplants, was thought to be a sure thing. Nothing came of it.
As a doctor by training, I’ve known better than to believe the hype — and have tried in my own counseling of people with new spinal cord injuries to place the possibility of cure in abeyance. I advise instead to concentrate on making a life (and a very good life it can be) with the hand one is dealt. The greatest enemies of this advice have been the snake-oil salesmen promising a miracle around the corner. I never expected a candidate for vice president to be one of them. . .

Politicians have long promised a chicken in every pot. It is part of the game. It is one thing to promise ethanol subsidies here, dairy price controls there. But to exploit the desperate hopes of desperate people with the promise of Christ-like cures is beyond the pale.
There is no apologizing for Edwards’s remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected.

My sense is that the Kerry-Edwards Campaign staff will be deploying a trap door device for Mr. Edwards if he does this Benny Hinn imitation again before Election Day.

Spitzer is at it again

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New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer cranked up his questionable litigation propaganda machine again yesterday and sued the world’s largest insurance broker — Marsh & McLennan Cos. — on the grounds that it cheated its corporate customers by rigging bids and collecting huge fees from major insurance companies in return for guiding insurance business their way.
The charges were included in the civil lawsuit and in two plea bargains of criminal charges against two insurance executives from American International Group, Inc. (“AIG”). In addition to AIG, Spitzer named Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. and Munich-American Risk Partners in the civil suit as participants with Marsh in the bid rigging and improper fee-paying charges.
This is the latest in Mr. Spitzer’s use of the New York attorney general’s office to sue large companies in an effort to trigger reform in business practices, although some grizzled observers contend that the lawsuits are more about promoting Mr. Spitzer’s political ambitions than reforming business. Earlier posts on Mr. Spitzer’s other lawsuits are here, here and here.
Mr. Spitzer’s latest lawsuit depicts the insurance industry as a corrupt business in which bid rigging and payment of improper fees have become accepted practices. Unlike markets for securities, commodities and other financial products, commercial insurance is bought and sold in private, so most of the business passes through the hands of insurance brokers, who are middlemen who match buyers and sellers in return for a cut of the transaction.
Normally, a company that is shopping to buy insurance advises its insurance broker on the type and amount of coverage that it is seeking and the broker then solicits bids from insurance companies. The broker usually is paid by commission, which is calculated as a percentage of the insurance buyer’s premium payments. It is not unusual for the insurance purchaser to send its premium check to the broker, who then deducts its commission before passing the premium payment on to the insurance company.
Spitzer’s lawsuit does not appear to take direct aim at the system described above. Rather, the lawsuit is going after the brokers from accepting what are called “contingent commissions,” which are payments that insurance companies make directly to brokers based on factors such as the total volume of business a broker does with that insurer or the profitability of that business. Big insurance brokers such as Marsh have been able to demand and receive such contingent commissions in recent years because of the large amount of insurance business that they control.
Spitzer contends that the contingent commissions prompt brokers to book their business where it is most profitable to the broker rather than where it best serves the interest of the customer. client. On the other hand, it’s not like the companies buying such insurance do not know about the contingent commissions and cannot take their business to another broker if they are uncomfortable with such arrangements. Mr. Spitzer’s lawsuit appears to overlook that rather obvious market truth.
As noted in the previous posts, Spitzer has become controversial figure in the financial services industry. This insurance industry lawsuit follows high-profile lawsuits into conflicts of interest that allegedly taint the research of Wall Street analysts and into special trading privileges that big mutual-fund investors enjoy. The probes have tarnished the reputations of some of the country’s best-known and largest corporations, and although the facts differ in each lawsuit, they all have a common theme — the alleged wrongdoing has been going on for years and the corrupt industry is unwilling or incapable of correcting it.
Inasmuch as the state governments handle regulation of insurance, differing regulation standards, controls, and disclosure requirements apply from state to state. Although large insurers and brokers for years have resisted federal regulation of insurance, lawsuits such as Spitzer’s latest may have them rethinking that position.
Wouldn’t that be rich? Big insurers and brokers lobbying with consumer groups for federal regulation of insurance? Politics certainly makes for strange bedfellows!