Geez Mitt! SERIOUSLY???!!?
All jokes aside it is not a secret that I dislike Mitt Romney and that I do not want him in the White House BUT this information is beyond the pale. This is flat-out appalling.
The Huffington Post piece is very well researched and long as hell. It also references a LA Times article published last month which provides a brief mention of the suspect ties but does not go into depth.
Below are a few excerpts from the article but you should take the time to read the entire piece.
“In 1983, Bill Bain asked Mitt Romney to launch Bain Capital, a private equity offshoot of the successful consulting firm Bain & Company. After some initial reluctance, Romney agreed. The new job came with a stipulation: Romney couldn’t raise money from any current clients, Bain said, because if the private equity venture failed, he didn’t want it taking the consulting firm down with it.
When Romney struggled to raise funds from other traditional sources, he and his partners started thinking outside the box. Bain executive Harry Strachan suggested that Romney meet with a group of Central American oligarchs who were looking for new investment vehicles as turmoil engulfed their region.
Romney was worried that the oligarchs might be tied to “illegal drug money, right-wing death squads, or left-wing terrorism,” Strachan later told a Boston Globe reporter, as quoted in the 2012 book “The Real Romney.” But, pressed for capital, Romney pushed his concerns aside and flew to Miami in mid-1984 to meet with the Salvadorans at a local bank.”
This is worth repeating and noting, Romney isn’t an entirely stupid fella and had enough presence of mind to initially express his concern that “the oligarchs might be tied to ‘illegal drug money, right-wing death squads, or left-wing terrorism,’….” That sounds like a legitimate concern Mitt, an extremely legitimate and relevant concern. So what did you do? You did a “cursory” background investigation and decided since the specific individuals you were going to take money from did not appear to be directly connected to death squads and drug money then it was okay to move forward with investing their money in your new company? Wow.
It was a lucrative trip. The Central Americans provided roughly $9 million — 40 percent — of Bain Capital’s initial outside funding, the Los Angeles Times reported recently. And they became valued clients.
Wonderful Mitt, clearly a very smart move on your part. Don’t look too deeply into what other family members are doing, just focus on the individuals who don’t appear to be directly participating in the drug game or ordering death squads because getting $9 million to assist with getting your business venture off the ground was paramount.
“I owe a great deal to Americans of Latin American descent,” [Romney] said at a dinner in Miami in 2007. “When I was starting my business, I came to Miami to find partners that would believe in me and that would finance my enterprise. My partners were Ricardo Poma, Miguel Dueñas, Pancho Soler, Frank Kardonski, and Diego Ribadeneira.”
Romney could also have thanked investors from two other wealthy and powerful Central American clans — the de Sola and Salaverria families, who the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe have reported were founding investors in Bain Capital.
While they were on the lookout for investments in the United States, members of some of these prominent families — including the Salaverria, Poma, de Sola and Dueñas clans — were also at the time financing, either directly or through political parties, death squads in El Salvador. The ruling classes were deploying the death squads to beat back left-wing guerrillas and reformers during El Salvador’s civil war.”
Of course, the reporters of this piece went straight to the source for a comment:
“When The Huffington Post asked the Romney campaign about Bain Capital accepting funds from families tied to death squads, a spokeswoman forwarded a 1999 Salt Lake Tribune article to explain the campaign’s position on the matter. She declined to comment further.
“Romney confirms Bain had investors in El Salvador. But, as was Bain’s policy with any big investor, they had the families checked out as diligently as possible,” the Tribune wrote. “They uncovered no unsavory links to drugs or other criminal activity.”
Nobody with a basic understanding of the region’s history could believe that assertion.”
So either he deliberately turned a blind eye to the highly problematic association OR he really is a stupid man after all? Neither of those conclusions are a good look.
Again, the source of some of Bain Capital’s initial investment money isn’t new news:
“The connection between the families involved with Bain’s founding and those who financed death squads was made by the Boston Globe in 1994 and the Salt Lake Tribune in 1999. This election cycle, Salon first raised the issue in January, and the Los Angeles Times filled out more of the record earlier this month.
There is no shortage of unsavory links. Even the Tribune article referred to by the Romney campaign reports that “about $6.5 million of $37 million that established the company came from wealthy El Salvadoran families linked to right-wing death squads.”
But I do believe the Huffington Post piece takes a much deeper look into the political climate in El Salvador and the United States during those years when Romney was seeking investment money and seems to thoroughly make the case that Romney’s initial concerns were entirely well-founded. He took money from families who had associations to drug money and death squads to launch his new company. Period.
It doesn’t seem as if anything illegal was done but that doesn’t mean it was a good decision either.
Funny, I never saw any connection to Romney and the hip hop industry until now. I mean more than a few artists have used illicit funds to pay for their initial studio time and mixed cd production and eventually “dirty” money becomes “clean” money and everyone just keeps it moving. It’s the music industry and no one is really going to raise a ruckus regarding how someone paid for their first demo but then again none of them are running for the highest office in the land are they? Right.
So what’s his plan for shoring up America’s coffers? Taking money from Colombian drug lords? No, even worse, the Koch Brothers. You think Bush was a nightmare? HA! Do you know how many people Romney will be beholden to if he “wins” (and by “win” I mean disenfranchise enough voters and literally pay enough people to vote for you and viola you “win”)??
Read the article and judge for yourself but in my opinion the whole thing straight up STINKS and further undermines Romney’s already shaky credibility. Bleh.
Source: Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital With Money From Families Tied To Death Squads
