More on REFCO scam - by Bob O'Brien
Speaking of lying, cheating scumbags, the latest bomb to drop in the REFCO scandal is the news that Austrian bank Bawag owned 27% of the broker at one point.
That would be the same broker who was caught, on tape, participating in the only naked short selling case ever pursued by the SEC. Caught red-handed, and negotiating a penalty with the SEC for participating in the stock manipulation scheme even as the Commission was approving them to go public.
I still wonder what genius at the SEC approved that, even as known scumbags who were trying to buy a workout for being stock manipulators were running the company. You really can’t make that up. And now it turns out that their bank partial-owners are also lying through their teeth as to the level of complicity they had in their dealings.
And still no transparency on how much of their funny book-keeping is concealing naked short selling liabilities. That, apparently, must be kept from the prying eyes of the public, who doesn’t deserve to know the truth.
And now Bawag wants to negotiate with creditors directly, thereby ensuring that any real culpability doesn’t ever become part of the public record.
Wonder how Badian is doing over in Austria? You know, the guy caught on tape who was advising his REFCO contact to naked short sell the shares of Sedona, “With unbridled levels of aggression…”?
Austria appears, as Dr. Byrne said months ago in his great “Dark Side of the Looking Glass” slideshows, to be a hotbed of money laundering and dirty deeds, including stock manipulations of all flavors.
Huh.
There’s another data point that “crazy” Dr. Byrne had 100% correct.
Is it me, or does it seem increasingly that every aspect of Wall Street’s behavior involves insistence that all is well and legitimate, and then, when the onion gets peeled, evidence of massive misconduct surfaces? Milberg, REFCO, the Citi broker a few days ago, lawsuits against hedge funds alleging manipulation, lawsuits by hedge funds against brokers alleging naked short selling, icon Spitzer exposed to getting large dollars for his campaign from Wall Street…I mean, where does it stop?
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