Good explanation. Bush keeps stonewalling. He thinks the Harken problem and his refusal to release
minutes of Cheney's meetings with Enron executives will go away. Bush was a member of the
audit committee and Board of Directors at Harken. He would have had to know what was
going on. I didn't know Bush also had
a consulting contract with Harken until I read the article you posted. - Mephisto
>>>>>>>>>>>
" Besides sitting on Harken's board, Bush had a consulting contract
with the company. According to accounting experts, that qualifies him as a
corporate insider."( Excerpt from article by Warren Vieth, Times staff Writer)
Good explanation by Vieth:
"In early 1989, George W.
Bush and his fellow board members at Harken
Energy Corp. were presiding over a company that
was headed south in a hurry. The Dallas-based oil
firm had lost millions of dollars placing bad bets on
commodity futures. Debt was piling up; red ink was
beginning to flow.
Harken's executives came up with a novel plan to
ease the pain. They would sell a small chain of
Hawaiian gas stations called Aloha Petroleum to a
group of investors that included Harken's chairman
and one of its directors. The buyers would pay $1
million up front, but the accountants would record
an immediate $7.9-million profit, enough to erase
most of Harken's losses for the year.
They made a point of seeking the approval of
directors who were not participants in the investor
group. Bush, a member of the board's audit
committee, signed off on the deal, according to
Harken documents. So did the company's outside
auditor, Arthur Andersen & Co." --Excerpt from article by Warren Vieth,
"Based on a review of publicly released Securities and Exchange Commission
filings, meeting minutes, memos and correspondence from that period, there is
no evidence that Bush, or any of the other directors, raised objections or
expressed concern about the Aloha deal.
Experts on corporate governance say that as an independent director and one
of only three members of the audit committee, Bush was in a position to
exercise an important oversight role but apparently failed to do so.
An audit committee's primary responsibility is to ensure that the company's
outside auditors conduct a thorough examination of the financial records
without interference from officers and employees.
The White House on Thursday declined to comment on the SEC documents
pertaining to Bush's actions as a director." --- Excert from article by Warren Vieth
(Chris, From what I head Bush refuses still to release documents releated to Harken
.- Mephisto)
Aloha sale similar to Enron's actions
"The Aloha sale was so similar to what Enron Corp. did to hide its losses that
Harken could have served as a model for the now-disgraced company, one
accounting expert said.
"The people at Enron could have gone to school on this thing," said Alfred
King, former managing director of the Institute of Management Accountants,
vice chairman of Milwaukee-based Valuation Research Corp. and former
advisor to the Financial Accounting Standards Board.
"They sold to themselves and recorded a profit," King said. "That's exactly
what Enron did on a number of those off-balance-sheet transactions. On this
one transaction at least, it's almost identical."---Excerpt from article by Warren Vieth,
"As a Board Member, Bush OKd a Deal Like
Enron's Business: The SEC rejected the 1989 sale of Hawaiian gas stations by Harken Energy
Corp." |
