Was SEIGLEMAN PROSECUTION linked to HEALTH SOUTH FRAUD and BLAGOVITCH?

http://www.alternet.org/democracy/79645/new_evidence_in_siegelman_case_points_to_republican_cabal/



New Evidence in Siegelman Case Points to Republican Cabal

By Sam Stein, Huffington Post. Posted March 13, 2008.



A group of Republicans were seeking to profit from the trial of former Alabama Gov. .








A new review of evidence suggests that an aligned group of Republican interests were pressing for -- and seeking to profit financially from -- the trial of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman on charges of bribery.

According to court documents and official testimony, months before Siegelman was charged, Rob Riley, the son of the state's governor, expressed confidence that an indictment would occur and that Siegelman's political financier, Richard Scrushy, would be drawn into case.

Around the same time, moreover, Riley managed to maneuver himself into an extremely profitable position: lead local counsel on a separate, massive civil suit against Scrushy and his company, HealthSouth.

How he received the assignment aroused some suspicion.

Riley had limited experience in securities litigation. And, for critics, his appointment gave of the appearance of legal-political insider trading: the governor's son, cognizant that Scrushy would be dragged into Siegelman's case, saw the benefits to be had from the civil suit against Scrushy's company, and positioned himself to profit.

Riley denied these charges in an interview with the Huffington Post, saying that he had no prior knowledge of Siegelman's forthcoming indictment and arguing that he had been recruited to come on board the HealthSouth case, not the other way around.

What is agreed upon, however, is that Riley earned big money from his work. Ten months after he signed onto the HealthSouth suit, Siegelman was indicted. Less than a year after that, the former governor was convicted of bribery along with Scrushy. And months later, Health South settled for $445 million one of the largest settlements in securities litigation history.

In the early days of 2005, HealthSouth and Scrushy were in the midst of a long-waged battle over whether the company had "perpetrated an elaborate scheme to deceive HealthSouth's investors." The case alleged that the company, and its financial supporters, had "committed deceptive acts whose primary purpose and effect was to create a false appearance" of good financial results and future prospects. There were no connections to Siegelman.

On January 13, Rob Riley, a lawyer for the firm Riley & Jackson P.C. and the son of the state's governor, was abruptly added as local counsel to the New Mexico State Investment Council, a relatively new plaintiff in the case against HealthSouth.


It was an interesting move.


Riley, who specialized in medical malpractice law, had little history in complex securities litigation. Co-plaintiffs complained, as they often do, that his presence would simply drive up the cost of the case and cut into the pot of any settlement. But their appeal was denied.

Why did Riley come on board?

According to him, it was a product of local stature and a bit of luck.


"A guy in New Mexico said, 'Hey, we are trying to get involved in this case,'" Riley recalled. "At that point, it was pretty well out in the papers that there had been fraud at HealthSouth. So I felt like it was probably a good case. I didn't know what chance we had at being lead counsel."

Another official with knowledge of the case said Riley was chosen primarily for his political connections.

But around that time, Jill Simpson, an Alabama Republican official and opposition researcher, told the House Judiciary Committee that Riley called her and said the state's legal apparatus was gearing up to re-investigate Don Siegelman. Moreover, Simpson recalled Riley as saying that Republicans would tie the former governor with Scrushy, "a reviled figure in Alabama."

Less than a year earlier, Siegelman had been indicted for conspiracy and Medicaid fraud but his trial -- which seemed politically motivated -- fell apart within a day in court.

On this new go-around, the prosecution had a more favorable judge. Mark Fuller, who had been appointed by President Bush to the U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Alabama, was well connected in Republican circles and, according to local Alabama journalist Glynn Wilson, had personal ties to Rob Riley.

Ten months after Riley signed onto the HealthSouth case, Siegelman and Scrushy were indicted on charges of political bribery. At the center of the charge was a $500,000 donation Scrushy made to the former governor's 1999 campaign. The money had gone to the state's education lottery and in exchange Scrushy got a position on a hospital regulatory board.


The connection, critics claim, was weak and prejudiced. Scrushy had been appointed to the board under several governors and his firm had no interests under the board's purview. But the trial, which began ion April 2006, reverberated throughout Alabama's political and legal circles. Siegelman's bid to become governor again was snuffed out. And the civil trial against HealthSouth was altered.

"[Riley] very aggressively he thrust himself into that suit as a late comer," said Scott Horton, a law professor at Columbia University who has written extensively on these issues for Harper's magazine. "He knew that Fuller had made statements suggesting that he felt he had once been a target of a politically motivated attack by Siegelman. He knew that this would make someone predisposed against Siegelman and perfect hanging judge. And he would reap the benefit of the class action suit on the side."

As the criminal case against Siegelman proceeded, so too did the suit against HealthSouth. And in the spring and summer of 2006, the two cases intersected.

According to the Associated Press, in May 2006, William McGahan, an official at UBS, one of HealthSouth's investment bankers, testified in the Siegelman case that he had been pressured to pony up $250,000 for the donations to the state's education lottery. The testimony had limited relevance to the class action suit.


But, over objections, it found its way into the court record. McGahan, the document read, was eager to please Scrushy and "arranged for UBS to be the source of the funds for the bribe."



What affect this, and Scrushy's ongoing criminal trial, had on the proceedings is a subject of debate. Riley, pointing to earlier HealthSouth executives who had pleaded guilty to fraud, said he saw no tangible cross-over between the two cases.

"I don't believe that had anything to do with the settlement," he said. "I don't think that it aided it at all."

Two other lawyers who served with other plaintiffs on the class action suit against HealthSouth, however, offered different opinions.

"It is not common that you have criminal trials of corporate executive at the same time that a class action suit is taking place involving the same individual," said Louis Mallone, an attorney for O'Donoghue & O'Donoghue LLP and liaison counsel on the case. "It certainly didn't hurt the prospects of the [class action case]."

A second official, who declined to speak on the record, said that while the HealthSouth case was a "slam dunk" even before the Scrushy-Siegelman trial began, having Scrushy as a convicted felon "obviously helped" the suit against HealthSouth.

In June 2006, both Siegelman and Scrushy were convicted on charges of bribery. Siegelman was sentenced to seven years and four months in federal prison. Scrushy was given six years and ten months.

Months later the HealthSouth case, after years of trial, was finally settled. The company announced that it would pay a whopping $445 million. It was, said Malone, "one of the top fifteen or twenty [settlements] of all time."

Riley declined to reveal what he made from the case, saying that the amount was "evolving." But he did acknowledge that it was substantial. "It was a very good settlement," he said. "But at the same time there was a lot of work that went into it.

For critics, however, the message was clear. Riley knew Scrushy going down in the criminal trial and saw a way to reap the benefits on the separate civil suit. In other words: Good work, if you can get it.

"Rob Riley approved of the strategy of the dragging Scrushy into the [criminal] case because it would have benefits for him in the class action suit," said Horton. "It was clear that he was intently following what was going on in Fuller's court and knew that the conviction of Scrushy in that case would have strong benefits in the class action suit."

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http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=147509065&blogId=489449923


It is the 9/11 TREASON, stupid, not the torture! Matt Drudge dying of AIDS


by Tom Heneghan

International Intelligence Expert

Saturday May 16, 2009





On Wednesday, May 13, 2009, the former head of the North American Israeli Mossad, Rahm Emanuel, barged into the office of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and demanded that U. S. Attorney General Holder have the Obama Justice Department grant former Federal Reserve Bank of New York Chairman Stephen Friedman immunity from prosecution in regards to Friedman's role with former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and noted convicted Ponzi Scheme artist, Bernard Madoff, in the looting of the U.S. Treasury and the transfer of TRILLIONS of dollars to Bush-Clinton Crime Family Syndicate offshore secret CIA proprietary accounts in Pakistan.


This was Emanuel's spitting in the face of the Joints Chief of Staff who have warned him on many occasions that if he crossed the line one more time there would be severe consequences.


Question: Does Emanuel now face severe consequences from the U.S. Military?



Note: Israel was used as the middleman in the transfer of funds.

All of this dovetails to a new escalating investigation of former BushFRAUD White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove's firing of U.S. Attorneys with a specific emphasis on the U.S. Attorney case involving the frame up of former Democratic Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.



Siegelman, a former FBI informant and Bush-Clinton-Mena, Arkansas-Iran/Contra whistleblower, had also uncovered evidence that the Bush-Clinton Crime Family Syndicate laundered proceeds from the old Iran-Contra money laundry through a medical supply and rehabilitative health company called HealthSouth with evidence linking Stephen Friedman's Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Bernard Madoff Ponzi Scheme, the General Electric Corporation and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

The proceeds from this money laundry were then used, not only to transfer funds to secret offshore CIA proprietary accounts, but to BRIBE both Republican and Democratic elected officials in the state of Illinois with massive General Electric Medical Systems campaign contributions that would effectively prevent cheaper prescription Canadian drugs from reaching the United States and, accordingly, competing with the General Electric-HealthSouth medical supply Ponzi Scheme....

______________________________




http://worldreports.org/news/203_wheels_coming_off_white_house_corruption_engine


.......

STANFORD OPERATIONS AND THE OCTOPUS



.....a photograph of Mr Obama and Stanford published by Wayne Madsen’s service on 19th February, and public domain intelligence to the effect that Stanford’s island base of Antigua has featured prominently as a center of operations for the Israeli-Russian mafiya, make it clear

(a) that President Obama knew about Stanford before he came to office and

(b) that Stanford’s activities, in which many governments have taken an interest for years, were unsavoury.


Stanford, who has been exposed as a long-time associate of the Bush Crime Family, has his Houston offices, Madsen reported, ‘directly across Westheimer Road in the part of the Galleria complex where the Carlyle Group offices are located. Coincidence? Not with the Bush criminal cartel’.


• On 18th March it was reported that Madsen was arrested while he was meeting a source with knowledge of Stanford’s connections, but both were later released.



According to ABC TV, in 2008 Mexican authorities seized one of Stanford’s private jets as part of an investigation into the Gulf Cartel by both the Mexican authorities and the FBI. Inside the cabin of the Gulfstream jet, police found cheques connected to drug cartel recipients. On 1st January 2009, the one-man-band accountant based in Antigua who had provided Stanford with ‘auditing’ and related services, died mysteriously just one day after the expiry of his contract with Stanford.



STANFORD ‘TOOK OVER’ FROM NORIEGA AGAINST WHOM LEHDER TESTIFIED



As previously reported, R. Allen Stanford ‘took over’ from Noriega, after Bush Sr. had double-crossed the Panamanian operative; and indeed, drug-running connections to Stanford are widely accessible in the public domain. Which brings in the covert DVD operative, Carlos Lehder Rivas, born in the United States of a Colombian mother and a German father.


Carlos Lehder began his life of crime as a low-level drug dealer in Michigan, and after doing time in jail for a drug-related car theft, Lehder ‘decided’ to seek his fortune in Colombia, according to the open ‘legend’. In reality, he was targeted and then recruited by or on behalf of the German ‘Black’ counterintelligence agency which is the heir of the Nazi Abwehr, Deutsche Verteidigungs Dienst (DVD), based in Dachau, near Munich, almost certainly with the knowledge or on the instructions of George H. W. Bush Sr., the top Godfather implementing long-range DVD criminalism strategy in the Americas.


As we have repeatedly mentioned, the headquarters building of the Central Intelligence Agency is named the George Bush Center for Intelligence, a simple fact which itself confirms the pinpoint accuracy of Congressman Dan Burton’s revealing admission above.

Lehder was so well-placed that when housed in a two-cell unit at the US Penitentiary in Marion, IL, he was given a telephone, which he used to contact aides to the then-Vice President George H. W. Bush, who had been in charge of the CIA during the early years of the Medellín Cartel. The Editor’s book The New Underworld Order develops intelligence to reveal that the Colombian drug cartels were in fact established with the close assistance of the CIA and that foreign operations inside the CIA (which turned out to be German and Soviet) were instrumental in their evolution....



....LEHDER EXFILTRATED TO GERMANY UNDER CORRUPT 2000 ELECTION PAYOFF DEAL


When the time came for the 2000 US Presidential election to be stolen, ready money was needed to pay off the Democratic National Committee (which received a $32 million payoff) plus the judicial, law enforcement and legal parties whose cooperation suddenly became necessary and who were to be paid $8 million: whereupon Lehder was tapped in jail for the necessary $40 million in bribes.


The deal was that the top representative of the Bush Crime Family who required the ready cash (because of course the Bush Crime Family could not be expected to part with a single rotten cent of their own ill-gotten gains) would arrange for Lehder’s immediate exfiltration to GERMANY in exchange for Carlos Lehder Rivas extracting $40 million from a bank account on demand.....

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http://www.hereinreality.com/insidertrading.html


Suppressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading Lead Directly into the CIA’s Highest Ranks


CIA Executive Director “Buzzy” Krongard managed firm that handled “PUT” options on United Airline Stock


by Michael C. Ruppert

Update: Krongard on Blackwater Advisory Board




FTW - October 9, 2001 – Although uniformly ignored by the mainstream U.S. media, there is abundant and clear evidence that a number of transactions in financial markets indicated specific (criminal) foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the case of at least one of these trades -- which has left a $2.5 million prize unclaimed -- the firm used to place the “put options” on United Airlines stock was, until 1998, managed by the man who is now in the number three Executive Director position at the Central Intelligence Agency.


Until 1997 A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard had been Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown.

A.B. Brown was acquired by Banker’s Trust in 1997.

Krongard then became, as part of the merger, Vice Chairman of Banker’s Trust-AB Brown, one of 20 major U.S. banks named by Senator Carl Levin this year as being connected to money laundering.

Krongard’s last position at Banker’s Trust (BT) was to oversee “private client relations.” In this capacity he had direct hands-on relations with some of the wealthiest people in the world in a kind of specialized banking operation that has been identified by the U.S. Senate and other investigators as being closely connected to the laundering of drug money.


Krongard joined the CIA in 1998 as counsel to CIA Director George Tenet.

He was promoted to CIA Executive Director by President Bush in March of this year.


BT was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999.

The combined firm is the single largest bank in Europe.


And, as we shall see, Deutsche Bank played several key roles in events connected to the September 11 attacks.



THE SCOPE OF KNOWN INSIDER TRADING


Before looking further into these relationships it is necessary to look at the insider trading information that is being ignored by Reuters, The New York Times and other mass media. It is well documented that the CIA has long monitored such trades – in real time – as potential warnings of terrorist attacks and other economic moves contrary to U.S. interests. Previous stories in FTW have specifically highlighted the use of Promis software to monitor such trades.....

....A September 21 story by the Israeli Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, entitled “Black Tuesday: The World’s Largest Insider Trading Scam?” documented the following trades connected to the September 11 attacks:



- Between September 6 and 7, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call options… Assuming that 4,000 of the options were bought by people with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these “insiders” would have profited by almost $5 million.



- On September 10, 4,516 put options on American Airlines were bought on the Chicago exchange, compared to only 748 calls. Again, there was no news at that point to justify this imbalance;… Again, assuming that 4,000 of these options trades represent “insiders,” they would represent a gain of about $4 million.



- [The levels of put options purchased above were more than six times higher than normal.]



- No similar trading in other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday.



- Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 2,157 of its October $45 put options bought in the three trading days before Black Tuesday; this compares to an average of 27 contracts per day before September 6. Morgan Stanley’s share price fell from $48.90 to $42.50 in the aftermath of the attacks.



Assuming that 2,000 of these options contracts were bought based upon knowledge of the approaching attacks, their purchasers could have profited by at least $1.2 million. Merrill Lynch & Co., with headquarters near the Twin Towers, saw 12,215 October $45 put options bought in the four trading days before the attacks; the previous average volume in those shares had been 252 contracts per day [a 1200% increase!].

When trading resumed, Merrill’s shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50; assuming that 11,000 option contracts were bought by “insiders,” their profit would have been about $5.5 million.



- European regulators are examining trades in Germany’s Munich Re, Switzerland’s Swiss Re, and AXA of France, all major reinsurers with exposure to the Black Tuesday disaster. [FTW Note: AXA also owns more than 25% of American Airlines stock making the attacks a “double whammy” for them.]


On September 29, 2001 – in a vital story that has gone unnoticed by the major media –the San Francisco Chronicle reported, “Investors have yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept. 11, terrorist attacks, according to a source familiar with the trades and market data.


“The uncollected money raises suspicions that the investors – whose identities and nationalities have not been made public – had advance knowledge of the strikes.” They don’t dare show up now. The suspension of trading for four days after the attacks made it impossible to cash-out quickly and claim the prize before investigators started looking.


“… October series options for UAL Corp. were purchased in highly unusual volumes three trading days before the terrorist attacks for a total outlay of $2,070; investors bought the option contracts, each representing 100 shares, for 90 cents each. [This represents 230,000 shares]. Those options are now selling at more than $12 each. There are still 2,313 so-called “put” options outstanding [valued at $2.77 million and representing 231,300 shares] according to the Options Clearinghouse Corp.”



“…The source familiar with the United trades identified Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase at least some of these options…” This was the operation managed by Krongard until as recently as 1998.

As reported in other news stories, Deutsche Bank was also the hub of insider trading activity connected to Munich Re. just before the attacks. .....




....Maurice “Hank” Greenburg – The CEO of AIG insurance, manager of the third largest capital investment pool in the world, was floated as a possible CIA Director in 1995. FTW exposed Greenberg’s and AIG’s long connection to CIA drug trafficking and covert operations in a two-part series that was interrupted just prior to the attacks of September 11. AIG’s stock has bounced back remarkably well since the attacks.

To read that story, please go to http://www.copvcia.com/stories/part_2.html. ....





[© COPYRIGHT, 2001, Michael C. Ruppert and FTW Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. – May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.]