It has all the hallmarks of a Third world banana republic. The economic hitmen have truly come home.
MF Global is a prime example of crony capitalism at work, and the capture of the political process by the easy money of the Fed supported financial system.
Perhaps capture is not the right word anymore. It is more like a marriage of corruption, sealed with a credibility trap of mutual self-destruction should the naked truth appear.
MFGFacts
Just Between Friends
By Nick Knight
July 7th, 2012
When facts, data and information are gathered, dots can be connected to reveal relationships and new information as patterns emerge.
There is a pattern. Scratch just below the surface of who is who and we find the intricate network of power players and patterns of events circling the MF Global crimes. I am not talking about Governor-Senator Jon Corzine, but Eric Holder, Edith O’Brien and Reid Weingarten. Who is Reid Weingarten? “Defense attorney Reid H. Weingarten is a Washington fixture,” Brook Masters of The Washington Post writes.
Weingarten, a long time close freind of Eric Holder is also Edith O’Brien’s defense attorney. O’Brien is apparently seeking immunity from Holder’s Department of Justice because she, and she alone, holds the threads in the investigation of the illegal use of customer funds at MF Global, Inc. and Holdings. To date, after eight months, she has not received immunity. (Yet notably the DOJ has already granted Barclay’s Bank immunity from prosecution for cooperating in its Libor-gate investigation.)With time, evidence becomes stale to a prosecution. The longer she is kept off any witness stand and the longer DOJ waits to uncover all evidence, the weaker discovery becomes. Putrefying the evidence through delays and time decay is a tried and true practice. So it is reasonable to ask if there even a desire by the DOJ to uncover all the facts of the plundering of over 1.6 billion of private funds and build a case of wrong doing?
O’Brien can blow open the investigation
It was Edith who clarified to CFO Christine Serwinski that a shortfall of over $1 billion (depending on how it is counted) resulted from messy and hastily carried out transactions in the days before the bankruptcy filing. O’Brien made the transactions, she knew where the money came from and where it went. Very early on, it was known that an-mail from O’Brien noted that one major transfer was done “Per JC’s [Jon Corzine's] direct instructions.” Yet to date, we hear nothing from her, nor are there charges against her.
It was Edith O’Brien who was asked by MF Global general counsel, Laurie Ferber, to sign a letter to JP Morgan confirming that no customer funds were being sent to the bank. Even under pressure of Executive staff, she refused to sign the overly-broad, bogus statement Ferber asked her to sign. It is of note to remember that JP Morgan’s chief risk officer, Barry Zubrow personally called Jon Corzine asking him to verify that no funds transferred belonged to customers. Barry did not call Edith O’Brien.
Recall that under oath, Corzine pinned O’Brien by name as the one who provided assurances to him that all transfers were legal.
Eric Holder’s friendship with Edith’s attorney is very close, goes back years
When the DOJ is on your back, friendships and access goes a long way.
The personal and professional relationship between Holder and Weingarten go back decades: As young attorneys, they worked together in the Public Integrity section of the DOJ in the late 1970’s. There, as reported in Main Justice, they became “best friends.” In the 1980’s, Reid left the DOJ for the rich pastures of partnership with Steptoe & Johnson.
In 1997, Weingarten and Holder raised money together to launch a non profit foundation in the District of Columbia. Weingarten’s bio states that “He is the chairman and co-founder, along with US Attorney General Eric Holder, of a non-profit program, See Forever Foundation, which is designed to assist juvenile offenders in rehabilitation to prevent recidivism.”
As Weingarten was in the private sector, Holder remained with the DOJ only to come under investigation in 2001 for what was determined to be his inappropriate influence on the final approval to pardon fugitive, Marc Rich. Here, it is agreed by many that Holder massively blundered when he overstepped White House legal counsel opposition and gave a DOJ seal of support for the pardon. This was said to have “significant impact” for the final green light on the Marc Rich pardon fiasco.
When Holder came under investigation for his heavy hand in the Rich’s pardon, Reid Weingarten was his personal and strong-armed defense attorney as reported by Eric Lichtblaue and David Johnson of the New York Times in 2008.
More recently, and shortly after Holder took over the reins of the Department of Justice, he hired Weingarten’s son, Ross Weingarten for a job with the DOJ as a press staffer...
Read the rest here.
