A little biographical note about Eric Holder

Eric Holder...honest now, did you ever hear of him before he was nominated to be Attorney General of the United States? I knew nothing of him whatsoever.

For your consideration: two articles via Cryptogon—

First, a story from this week:

Courthouse News:

Hostages Say Chiquita Funded Death Squads

By BARBARA LEONARD
(CN) - Three U.S. citizens were held hostage by a Colombian death squad for 5 years, and one was murdered, while Chiquita Brands International gave the terrorists weapons and millions of dollars in "protection payments," the former hostages and their families claim in Tampa Federal Court.
Former hostages of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) say Chiquita owes them treble damages under the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act, because the New Jersey-based company paid FARC up to $200,000 a year for 10 years.
In a March 2007 plea agreement, Chiquita admitted it had paid $25 million and funded the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) - a right-wing, anti-labor death squad - and other terrorist groups, according to the eight plaintiffs' 82-page complaint.
The FARC and the AUC fought for control of land and lucrative cocaine crops for years, through open war, death squads and terror.
A February 2009 report from the Special Litigation Committee of the Chiquita board of directors found that the company began paying FARC "protection money" in the late 1980s.
In 2003 the FARC shot down a plane carrying Keith Stansell, Marc Gosalves, Thomas Howes and Thomas Janis, who were conducting a civilian counternarcotics surveillance mission for their employer, Northrup Grumman.
The plane's five passengers all survived the crash, but FARC members shot to death the U.S. citizen pilot, Janis, and the Colombian host-nation rider, Sgt. Luis Alcides Cruz, within minutes of taking the group hostage, according to the complaint.
Stansell, Gosalves, Howes and Janis' wife and four children demand damages from Chiquita for its giving money, arms and ammunition to FARC - "a foreign terrorist organization that has killed, maimed, injured, kidnapped and held hostage thousands of civilians, including many U.S. citizens," according to the complaint.
The three hostages say they were held captive for 1,967 days, until they were rescued on July 2, 2008.
The FARC publicly took credit for the kidnapping and promised to release the Americans and 250 high-level Colombian citizens in exchange for certain political concessions, territory in a demilitarized zone for FARC's base of operations, and the release of hundreds of FARC combatants apprehended by the Colombian authorities, according to the complaint.
"FARC supports its operations through kidnappings, extortion, drug trafficking and 'war taxes' it collects from residents, businesses and landowners," according to the complaint.
Chiquita made its first "guerrilla payment" of $10,000 to Chiquita in 1989 - when the banana giant opened its Banadex export subsidiary in Colombia - and ultimately paid $100,000 to $200,000 a year through 1999, according to the complaint.
"Over time, the payments were fixed to a percentage of Banadex's gross revenues, with as much as 10 percent being diverted to FARC," the complaint states.
The former hostages say Chiquita knew about FARC's practice of murdering and kidnapping Americans. At least 23 Americans were taken hostage between 1993 and 1997. But Chiquita benefited from its relationship with terrorists and spent years covering it up, according to the complaint.
"During the period relevant to this action, FARC held significant influence over, controlled, or was fighting other terrorist organizations for control of labor unions in Colombia's banana-growing regions," the complaint states.
The former hostages say Chiquita worked with FARC-controlled labor unions, such as Sintrabanano, and helped FARC subvert many local labor unions.
By helping FARC wrest control of local labor unions, Chiquita carved out "a competitive advantage over other banana growers facing less accommodating unions," according to the complaint. Chiquita also allegedly benefited from FARC's harassment of competitors in the region.
"Defendants knew that FARC engaged in acts of terrorism against U.S. interests in Colombia and knew the danger that providing material support to FARC would pose to the safety of other individuals and entities working within Colombia, but defendant ignored these risks in order to further their own narrow business interests in growing and exporting bananas in Colombia," according to the complaint.
The former hostages and Janis' family seek treble damages from Chiquita. They are represented by Newton Porter with Porter & Korvick of Miami.

Now, one from a year and a half ago:

Huffington Post:

Lawyer for Chiquita in Colombia Death Squad Case May be Next U.S. Attorney General

In its recent report entitled, "Breaking the Grip? Obstacles to Justice for Paramilitary Mafias in Colombia," Human Rights Watch (HRW) had specific recommendations for the U.S. Department of Justice. Specifically, HRW recommended that, in order to assist with the process of ending the ties between the Colombian government and paramilitary death squads, the U.S. Department of Justice should, among other things, "[c]reate meaningful legal incentives for paramilitary leaders [a number of whom have already been extradited to the U.S.] to fully disclose information about atrocities and name all Colombian or foreign officials, business or individuals who may have facilitated their criminal activities," and "[c]ollaborate actively with the efforts of Colombian justice officials who are investigating paramilitary networks in Colombia by sharing relevant information possible and granting them access to paramilitary leaders in U.S. custody."

Do not expect these recommendations to be carried forward if Eric Holder decides to forgo his lucrative corporate law practice at Covington & Burling and accept the U.S. Attorney General position for which many believe he is the top contendor. Eric Holder would have a troubling conflict of interest in carrying out this work in light of his current work as defense lawyer for Chiquita Brands international in a case in which Colombian plaintiffs seek damages for the murders carried out by the AUC paramilitaries - a designated terrorist organization. Chiquita has already admitted in a criminal case that it paid the AUC around $1.7 million in a 7-year period and that it further provided the AUC with a cache of machine guns as well.

Indeed, Holder himself, using his influence as former deputy attorney general under the Clinton Administration, helped to negotiate Chiquita's sweeheart deal with the Justice Department in the criminal case against Chiquita. Under this deal, no Chiquita official received any jail time. Indeed, the identity of the key officials involved in the assistance to the paramilitaries were kept under seal and confidential. In the end, Chiquita was fined a mere $25 million which it has been allowed to pay over a 5-year period. This is incredible given the havoc wreaked by Chiquita's aid to these Colombian death squards.

According to Mario Iguaran, the Attorney General of Colombia, Chiquita's payments to the AUC paramilitaries led to the murder of 4000 civilians in the banana region of Colombia and furthered the growth of the paramilitaries throughout Colombia and their violent takeover of numerous Colombian regions. Iguaran, in response to the claims of both Chiquita and Eric Holder himself that Chiquita was somehow forced to pay "protection" to the paramilitaries (see, Washington Post and Conde Nast Portfolio), stated unequivocally that "[t]his was not payment of extortion money. It was support for an illegal armed group whose methods included murder." See, Christian Science Monitor, "Chiquita Case Puts Big Firms on Notice."

One former paramilitary leader who is in federal custody in the U.S., Salvatore Mancuso, has stated that he has more knowledge about Chiquita's relationship with the paramilitary death squads in Colombia. Mancuso further claims that Dole and Del Monte also made payments to the paramilitaries, just as Chiquita did. Yet, Dole and Del Monte remain un-indicted. Query whether, as Human Rights Watch recommends, a Justice Department under Holder would be interested in pursuing this and other similar leads. This is a serious matter given the fact that the Justice Department has already come under great scrutiny for turning a blind eye to what appears to be rampant corporate support for terrorist groups in Colombia. See, L.A. Times, "U.S. accused of bending rules on Colombian Terror."

While Eric Holder is also known to be actively involved in laudable charitable activities, it should be of grave concern to those, like myself, who hope for change from the new Obama Administration, that the new Attorney General would be involved in not only defending corporations against serious corruption and human rights charges, but also publicly apologizing for such abuses. That is not the type of Attorney General we need in the wake of the recent economic collapse created by the unfettered greed of such corporate firms.

Fraud, yells Denninger

Karl Denninger in MarketTicker:

Yoo Hoo! Yes, Mr. Cop - Over THERE! (AIG)

Hmmm..... this is interesting....

"He is the golden boy of the casino," said Rep. Speier. "They basically took peoples' hard earned money and threw it away, gambled it and lost everything. And he must be held accountable for the fraud, for the dereliction of his duty, and for the havoc that he's wrought on America."

Oh, I see. There's that nasty "F" word, and this one you can say on TV!

But let's not be misdirected by bonus payments and "special legislation" eh? After all, anyone who believes this guy acted alone must be smoking something....

After the huge losses became known, Cassano was fired from AIG in early 2008, but he still received a salary of $1 million a month until Congress intervened. AIG has received about a $180 billion in bailout funds so far.

Ah. Let me see if I can grok this. Here's a guy who allegedly "hid" huge losses, was fired for it, but got a $1 million a month "salary" after being "fired", and he acted alone? That's why they paid him $1 million a month after firing him?

You expect The American People to believe that?

It gets better:

An ABC News investigation found that Cassano set up some dozens of separate companies, some off-shore, to handle the transactions, effectively keeping them off the books of AIG and out of sight of regulators in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

"This is the other very important issue underneath the AIG scandal," said Blum. "All of these contracts were moved offshore for the express purpose of getting out from under regulation and tax evasion."

Yes, and again, there was nobody else within the firm that saw something like "Lichtenstein Subsidiary Profit, $10 billion" in the internal accounting of the company and thought that was funny?

Anyone remember the infamous "barge transactions" from the era of ENRON?

Of course AIG's CEO didn't see anything wrong with this.....

Earlier this month, AIG CEO Edward Liddy told Congress Cassano had done nothing wrong.

"I'm not a lawyer but there is no evidence of wrongdoing in any of this," said Liddy.

Really Mr. Liddy?

There's nothing wrong with moving transactions offshore through a series of shell companies to both avoid taxation and regulation, nor with having the accountant assigned to that unit intentionally kept away from the guy who's structuring the transactions so he can't ask "too many" questions? You seem to imply that you knew about it, but that sort of subterfuge (if it is as reported) in a company you are operating is all ok?

I must admit that in my time as a CEO I never ran a company as large as AIG (or anything even close to it) but I did, a couple of times, find people in the company who were intentionally concealing some aspect of what they were doing from me (and by extension, the other shareholders.)

My response? They were immediately fired and no, they didn't continue to be paid their salary or bonus.

Oh, and what about the external auditors? AIG has those, right? After all, it is a public company. Hmmmm....

Again I ask - who's interest does Mr. Liddy represent? Is it the taxpayer (as it should be, since this firm would not exist but for our largesse) or is it Goldman Sachs and other banking interests, given that Mr. Liddy was a director at Goldman before Hank Paulson, Goldman's former chief, tapped him to work for a "mere" $1 salary?

This is what the NY Daily News said back on March 17th (which unfortunately went under my radar at the time):

Company auditor Joseph St. Denis became concerned about the Financial Products unit, but Cassano barred him from checking.

St. Denis later quoted Cassano as saying, "I have deliberately excluded you ... because I was concerned that you would pollute the process."

St. Denis would recall Cassano saying he did not want to be promoted even further up the corporate ladder "because it would separate [him] from the money." St. Denis would remember Cassano telling him "AIG's corporate management was "scared to death" of him."

That's very interesting. What's even more interesting is his written testimony to the House Oversight Committee:

"I have deliberately excluded you from the valuation of the Super Seniors because I was concerned that you would pollute the proces."

My belief is that the "pollution" Mr. Cassano was concerned about was the transparency I brought to AIGFP's accounting policy process.

Ah, so Mr. St. Denis, the accountant, puts in writing (on October 4th 2008, before much in the way of funds were disbursed to AIG) claims that appear to be a "smoking gun" in regards to what has been going on within AIG (read the whole thing; its rather ugly) and yet somehow both Henry Paulson and Tim Geithner agree to transfer nearly $170 billion of taxpayer money to AIG to "bail it out", with full knowledge of this written testimony not only within the administration but also within the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform!

And where did this guy (Cassano) come from?

Joseph Cassano started out at Drexel Burnham Lambert under Michael Milken, "the Junk Bond King." Drexel imploded in 1990 and Milken landed in prison.

AIG promptly hired a team of Drexel people to start a Financial Products unit, Cassano among them. Cassano became the head and began dealing in securities known as "credit default swaps" out of one office in Wilton, Conn., and another in England, dubbed "the London casino."

You can't be serious? Drexel?

How does this sort of thing "fly under the radar" in Washington DC? Why you just make some "campaign contributions" to Chris Dodd and Barack Obama, the latter of whom wins the election and then allows yet another slug of money to be funneled through your former "employer" to hide the bad bets you made that now are being paid down to foreign banks?

Nor does this appear to be "just him" giving those "donations" either:

In March 2009 Cassano was linked to e-mails he authored in 2006 which solicited contributions from AIG executives for Dodd's campaign due to Dodd's position as incoming chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.^[10]

Oh Mr. Cop! Mr. Cop! Mr. ERIC HOLDER!

One has to wonder - is the reason that Mr. Eric Holder, United States Attorney General, is not after this is due to campaign contributions made to his boss?

Has Barack Obama told his employee Eric Holder not to go after this guy?

And how about Chris Dodd? Nothing wrong there either?

Hmmmmm.

And no, I will not be satisfied if the law just goes after Joe here. Every single individual and firm that knew of this and did nothing, if criminal culpability is proved (and it sure looks like this "business" was intentionally structured in an attempt to avoid regulatory oversight and perhaps to unlawfully avoid paying taxes!), needs to hang from the (lawful) yardarm, including the accountants, external auditors and every single person within our government who knew and yet allowed the Treasury to be looted to pay off these "bad bets", including Henry Paulson, Tim Geithner and the entire Federal Reserve Board who approved the AIG transactions with The Fed.

Anyone remember Arthur Anderson?

PS: Mr. Cassano is alleged to have very extensive property holdings in The United States as well as having been paid some $300 million dollars over the last few years. Can we find a cop interested in serving up clawbacks and forfeiture actions for lunch?