Toricelli, Gohd and the Whale
May 20, 2001, Sunday, BC cycle
SECTION: Washington Dateline
LENGTH: 1050 words
HEADLINE: Lawmaker taps friends, supporters for moneymaking ventures
BYLINE: By LAURENCE ARNOLD, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
It's not for lack of trying that Robert Torricelli has yet to join the ranks of millionaires in the U.S. Senate.
During nearly two decades in Congress, the New Jersey Democrat has earned money giving speeches and writing
books, dabbling in real estate, and trading volatile high-tech stocks. He participated in some investments not open
to the general public and others made possible by friends and political supporters.
The FBI took interest in one investment; government watchdog groups howled at others. Now, a federal investigation
is raising new questions about Torricelli's pursuit of private wealth during his time in public office.
A former donor, David Chang, reportedly claims he gave the lawmaker tens of thousands of dollars in cash, clothing
and jewelry. Torricelli denies receiving any illegal gifts.
Gary Ruskin, director of the Congressional Accountability Project, said questions about Torricelli's past investments
are "part of the backdrop he has to live with" during the current federal investigation into his political and personal finances.
Torricelli declined to respond to questions last week about his finances. He has said he will limit his public comments
until the investigation is over.
In an interview last year, Torricelli defended his investment record.
"I have operated in my life to high ethical standards," he said. "I have watched my friends make money, watched them
live good and profitable lives, and I've never had a moment of regret."
Torricelli ran for the House in 1982 with no investments to his name other than his home. In 1999, his third year in the
Senate, he held a portfolio worth $320,000 to $990,000, according to public records.
By contrast, some 21 senators had $3 million or more in 1999, according to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.
Members of Congress disclose assets in broad categories, and homes are excluded. The next disclosure report,
covering 2000, will be released next month.
Torricelli has supplemented his congressional salary outside the stock market as well. He gave more than a dozen
speeches in 1990, earning $26,850 - the most allowed by House rules that year - and donating the rest, $2,900, to charity.
In 1999 he received $15,000 for a book on great speeches and $9,000 for a book on quotations.
But a review of his annual disclosure forms shows that Torricelli, for all his best efforts, has relied on friends for his
most fruitful investments.
In a 1992 deal made possible by Grover Connell, a New Jersey businessman and Democratic donor, Torricelli
borrowed $100,000 and bought preferred stock in a savings and loan owned by other friends. Eighteen months later,
Torricelli had a profit of $144,000.
The FBI opened a preliminary inquiry into whether Connell's involvement constituted an illegal gift but closed the
case after interviewing Torricelli.
Criticized for that deal, Torricelli established a blind trust in 1993 and said he would no longer personally invest in
the stock market.
By design, the blind trust separated Torricelli from decisions about his investments. But his money and his politics
remained intertwined.
To head the trust, Torricelli chose his campaign treasurer, Stephen Moses. And when Torricelli dissolved the trust
in April, 1994, almost all the money - $101,210 - was invested in Flex Holding Corp., whose chairman, Arnold Amster,
was a Torricelli contributor.
Torricelli again set up a blind trust in September 1994. It was put in the hands of another political ally: Matthew Gohd,
an investment banker who has raised money for Democrats and played golf with then-President Bill Clinton.
As Torricelli was running for Senate in 1996, the trust earned him a one-day, $52,000 profit on shares of Compare
Generiks. A supporter of Torricelli, investment banker Lawrence Penna, was involved in the deal and later admitted
he illegally inflated the price of the stock. He also pleaded guilty to making illegal contributions to Torricelli's 1996 campaign.
Torricelli denied having any knowledge about the manipulation of the stock. A Torricelli spokesman said both blind trusts
were reviewed by attorneys and approved by the Senate Ethics Committee.
In 1997, Torricelli tried trading for himself. He bought and sold nine stocks, making a profit on six and taking a loss on
three, for an overall gain of $1,692.
He liked the experience enough to abandon the blind trust in 1998. He became one of the most active traders in
Congress, making 112 stock transactions in 1999 alone. He reported earning $135,100 in capital gains that year
on top of his Senate salary of $126,700.
Some of his 1999 investments were in initial public offerings, despite his earlier renunciation of such deals. Other
investments involved companies with business on Capitol Hill.
Two weeks after writing a letter advocating United Parcel Service's application to begin service to China, Torricelli
bought $1,000 to $15,000 worth of UPS stock.
He also invested $15,000 to $50,000 in Global Crossing, a telecommunications company. The next year, still holding
some of the stock, Torricelli tried without success to aid NextWave, a bankrupt wireless company in which Global Crossing
has invested heavily.
Torricelli said he had no idea that Global Crossing had a stake in NextWave.
For a time, it appeared that a 1999 investment might propel Torricelli into millionaire territory.
For $5,000, Torricelli bought two shares of e.Volve Technology Group, a privately held Internet company. Torricelli
was one of 15 people invited to buy the stock after a former financial adviser, Steven Loglisci, became chief executive
of e.Volve.
Torricelli ended up with 8,333 shares of publicly traded eVentures Group when it bought e.Volve. Shares in eVentures
were trading at $26 in January 2000, making Torricelli's stake worth about $220,000.
But Torricelli cannot sell his shares until Sept. 21, 2001. And the company, now called Novo Networks, has been
buffeted by the market.
With shares now selling for about 80 cents, Torricelli's initial $5,000 investment is worth about $6,700.
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Copyright 1999 The Providence Journal Company
The Providence Journal-Bulletin
August 24, 1999, Tuesday, All EDITIONS
SECTION: NEWS, Pg. 1B
LENGTH: 695 words
HEADLINE: 13th hole unlucky for Clinton sighting
BYLINE: KAREN LEE ZINER; Journal Staff Writer
BODY:
About 75 people wait behind a stretch of yellow police tape for four hours to catch a glimpse of the president's golf game.
* *
EDGARTOWN, Mass. - The presidential vacation watch comes down to this: a disadvantaged vista in a weedy patch
of grass 50 yards or more off the 13th hole of the Farm Neck Golf Club, in melting heat.
Somewhere out there, between the pitch pine and the poison ivy, on a green manicured during the past 15 minutes, it is
expected that Bill Clinton will soon appear, in his only public sighting of the day. A line of yellow police tape stretches
behind the media, holding 75 people Q with bikes and cameras and binoculars Q at bay.
The president is golfing with Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and friends Tom Lee, a Boston investment banker, and
Matthew Gohd, a New York investment banker.
For some, it has been quite a long wait.
"I've been here two and a half hours," moans Denyse Bardouille, of Boston. "I don't have a high-powered camera. My
camera broke. What I've been doing, for five years," she explains, "is making a scrapbook for my daughter" of presidential
sightings on Martha's Vineyard.
Bardouille proudly mentions she's even got a picture of herself with President Clinton: "an official White House photo
of myself and him." It hangs on her wall here on the island at her family's Oak Bluffs cottage. "I love the president and
his family! Absolutely love them!" she gushes. "You can't tell me your heart doesn't pound" at the sight of "this great
world leader."
But now, suddenly, Bardouille's previous vantage point along the beach-road bike path has been preempted by the
police and Secret Service, who have cordoned the media and the public at this more secure location.
Bardouille doesn't like it. "How am I going to see him here?" she says, looking off toward the distant treeline. "I'm going
to tell them," she adds, and hastens toward the police.
Suddenly, there's a sighting.
"Here we go!" a cameraman announces.
"Nope. Nobody," another one says.
"Here we go!" (again).
Nope. Nobody. "Just people in pastel shorts," getting in and out of golf carts.
Suddenly, an older man with a blueberry basket steps into the clear, from somewhere in the bushes. "Stop him! He's got
berries!" someone yells. "We're going to have to confiscate those berries . . ."
The time is now 2:57 p.m.
Many in the crowd say they've been waiting since 11 a.m.
"Is that him? I think he's behind the tree!"
False alarm. "Looks like a troop of ants," someone observes.
Oh, but now, at 3 p.m., it's the president.
White shorts. Black shirt. "White legs," says a TV cameraman as he fixes a long lens on the scene. From here, the president
of the United States appears to be a speck in the distance, moving between the trees.
One minute later, it's over.
Reports filtering back to the media later that afternoon indicate that the president wasn't exactly on his game.
HOURS LATER, in the only real news of the day, Mr. Clinton was set to return to Farm Neck Golf Club and make remarks at
a community fundraiser for Martha's Vineyard Hospital.
Clinton was to be among three speakers, including Mike Wallace, correspondent for 60 Minutes, and Louis Sullivan,
president of the Morehouse College of Medicine.
At least 400 people, including summer residents and other friends of the hospital, were expected to attend to help raise
funds to finance operating costs of the hospital emergency room, and the purchase of additional hospital medical equipment.
As Clinton headed out to the first tee at 11 a.m., Press Secretary Joe Lockhart conducted the first news briefing during this,
the first family's fifth vacation to the island.
In other matters of import, Lockhart gave a rundown of the president's summer reading list, and a party the first family attended
last night.
Asked where and when the president gets a chance to read while on vacation, Lockhart said, "He generally is a reader into
the evening and late, but also, when he's on vacation, he has time in the day and the afternoon, for instance, when he doesn't
want to play golf. That's what you can often find him doing."
LOAD-DATE: August 25, 1999
Document 8 of 18
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Copyright 2001 N.Y.P. Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
The New York Post
May 31, 2001, Thursday
SECTION: All Editions; Pg. 020
LENGTH: 368 words
HEADLINE: EX-TORRICELLI FUND BOSS BACK$ GREEN
BYLINE: Robert Hardt Jr.
BODY:
The former manager of Sen. Robert Torricelli's controversial blind trust - which once earned $50,000 overnight - has ponied
up $4,500 to Mark Green's campaign, The Post has learned.
Matthew Gohd, of Bluestone Capital, and his ex-wife, Frann, each contributed the maximum $4,500 to the public advocate's
war chest last year, campaign-finance records show.
The money manager also gave Green $6,000 for his successful re-election run for public advocate in 1997 and $2,000 for his
failed bid for the Senate in 1998. Gohd oversaw Torricelli's blind trust before it was closed down. While still a congressman,
Torricelli created the trust in 1994 after he was criticized for profiting from a stock deal in a New Jersey savings bank.
A Crain's New York Business investigation of Gohd in 1999 found the banker got preferential treatment for Torricelli when the
politician invested in companies underwritten by Whale Securities, the former name of Gohd's firm.
In another deal engineered by Gohd, Torricelli made a one-day profit of $52,446 from an initial public offering of a company
whose underwriters were later shut down by New Jersey regulators.
After receiving more bad press about his investments, Torricelli shut down Gohd's blind trust in 1998.
Gohd, who was suspended from dealing securities from 1981 to 1983 for making unauthorized transactions, has two
securities arbitration cases pending against him alleging stock fraud.
He was also on the guest list to one of the infamous White House coffee fund-raisers with then-Vice President Al Gore in 1995.
Reached yesterday at his Fifth Avenue offices, Gohd told The Post he was a "big fan" of Green.
"I have met him several times, and I think he will be a fantastic mayor," said Gohd, who has donated tens of thousands of
dollars to Democrats across the country.
Joe DePlasco, a spokesman for Green, said there was nothing wrong with the public advocate taking money from Gohd.
DePlasco said Gohd "thought very highly of what Mark had to say about educating children and protecting families and
wanted to be one of 5,000 people who have given contributions to Mark's campaign."
GRAPHIC: ROBERT TORRICELLI Shut down blind trust.
LOAD-DATE: May 31, 2001 |
