I have to say this would all make for a great movie–thriller, farce, comedy?–if the plot lines didn’t actually mean that millions of people have been screwed by crooks, greedy elites and incompetent CEOs. Today, there is just a plethora of news on the "free market" scam front, all courtesy of The Wall Street Journal. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
Let’s start with our friends at Bank of America:
Bank of America Chairman and Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis was issued a subpoena by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who is investigating whether the bank withheld information from investors in violation of state law, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Lewis, who received the subpoena late last week, is the highest-profile subject of Mr. Cuomo’s investigation into the Charlotte, N.C., bank’s purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co. on Jan. 1. Mr. Cuomo’s office is trying to determine if investors were misled about the depth of Merrill’s losses in late 2008 and whether details of the bonuses to Merrill employees, contained in a nonpublic document, should have been disclosed to investors.
A BofA spokesman declined to comment on the subpoena.
Investigators also took testimony from former Merrill CEO John Thain on Thursday. Mr. Thain was questioned all day, say the people familiar with the matter. They asked Mr. Thain about the nature of some $4 billion in bonuses to employees.
Let us recap briefly: among other things, even though Merrill was collapsing, four executives pocketed $121 million, including one exec who walked away with a $24.9 million bonus for three months of work, which figures to about $249,000 a day. Nice.
A tip of the hat, by the way, to our attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, for continuing to pursue these miscreants.
Then, over to our most recent fraud, which now turns out to be yet another potential Ponzi scheme:
Federal prosecutors are investigating whether Texas businessman R. Allen Stanford was operating a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors around the globe, people familiar with the matter said.
These people said the Justice Department is investigating Mr. Stanford, who was hit with civil charges Tuesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with an alleged $8 billion investment fraud.
On Thursday, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents served Mr. Stanford with the SEC civil lawsuit in Fredericksburg, Va., the FBI and SEC said. SEC officials had said this week that Mr. Stanford’s whereabouts were unknown.
And to top it off–it’s the secret bank accounts in UBS:
The Justice Department sued UBS AG to obtain access to 52,000 accounts belonging to U.S. clients — some 30,000 more than previously known — a day after reaching an agreement to settle a criminal investigation that called for the Swiss bank to turn over 250 accounts in a wide-ranging tax-evasion probe.
While the court filing in Miami was expected, the increased number of accounts being sought in a parallel civil inquiry was a surprise to UBS, said a person familiar with the situation.
The Justice Department complaint asks the court to force UBS to turn over the identities of 52,000 account holders that U.S. authorities say hid their accounts from the U.S. government in violation of tax laws. If authorities find evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the account holders, they are likely to bring fraud cases against them.
Boy, forget about the list of the 103 unnamed steroid users: I’d love to get a look at the list of those accounts. How much do you want to bet that that list will include a "who’s who" of the American business and social elites? Good for the Obama Justice Department for filing suit–and here is hoping that once that list is obtained (if the suit is successful), the full list is published on the DOJ’s website.
The thread that connects all these cases: the elites were scamming, stealing, hiding their wealth and paying each other obscene bonuses, while the rest of the people were suffering. I wonder: do each of these folks have a portrait of Marie Antoinette to bow down to?
