Corruption in the #Trump Administration Is Spreading: Spotlight turns to Wilbur Ross,Commerce Sec...

Pass time to focus on this little pissant!

Corruption in the Trump Administration Is Spreading

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/wilbur-ross-navigator-trump-pruitt/563441/

While petty scandals like Scott Pruitt’s grab attention, there are more egregious and profitable conflicts of interest elsewhere in Washington.


David A. Graham Jun 22, 2018


You’ve got to at least give credit to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for finding the silver lining—or the gold one, as it were.

It was late October 2017, just days before the so-called Paradise Papers, a tranche of leaked documents, would reveal that when he divested some of his holdings upon taking office, Ross had retained assets in a shipping company enmeshed in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. Ross had not disclosed the investment, and apparently had no legal obligation to do so. Still, the realization that the commerce secretary held a stake in a company tied to Putin at a time of Russo-American tension was likely to be damaging, no two ways about it.


So he apparently decided to make a buck off the bad news. Three days after a New York Times reporter contacted Ross to inquire about the stake in Navigator Holdings, the company, he took a short position on it—in effect, betting the value of his investment would drop. Lo and behold, when reports about Ross’s stake were published, the stock dropped somewhat. Ross then made a profit of between $100,000 and $250,000, according to disclosures. It looks like an ingenious maneuver: He absorbed the public-relations damage, but at least made some cash from it.


Forbes first reported the short sale earlier this week. It appears that Ross was trading on nonpublic information—what’s typically known as insider trading, and which government officials cannot do. Ross denies this, but as Times reporter Mike McIntire writes, Ross’s explanation doesn’t really make sense.

There is more in the Forbes piece. Ross also had assets with ties to the Chinese government and the Russian-tied Bank of Cyprus. His family also appears to retain these and some unsold Navigator assets, Forbes found. Ross says he handed these holdings off to a trust for his family. But that hardly solves the question of conflicts of interest: As commerce secretary, he has the power to make decisions that will affect those investments. In other words, he can wield the federal government to enrich his heirs...............................................

Link to tweet

The Secretary of Commerce is embroiled in scandal — and no one’s talking about it



https://www.salon.com/2018/06/22/the-secretary-of-commerce-is-embroiled-in-scandal-and-no-ones-talking-about-it/
Secretary Wilbur Ross is accused, among other things, of using inside information for a stock trade


Matthew Rozsa June 22, 2018 9:26pm (UTC)

Why isn't a bigger deal being made about the scandals involving President Donald Trump's secretary of commerce, investor Wilbur Ross?

Although Forbes broke a story earlier this week about Ross allegedly betting against a company's stock after being contacted by journalists about his background with that firm, the most comprehensive and succinct summary of the scandals surrounding Ross came from this piece by ProPublica.

There’s a chance you missed it amid the other news, but Forbes had a blockbuster story about Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. It turns out, Ross bet against the stock of a company after journalists had contacted him with questions about his connections to the firm. Using inside information in stock trades is illegal. Ross has denied he profited from the bet against the stock.

And that’s only one of the revelations from Forbes’ story. “Trump, Inc.” spoke to reporter Dan Alexander about what else he found. Ross transferred many of his assets to a family trust last fall. Among those assets: an auto parts firm owned jointly with a Chinese-government-owned entity, and a stake in a shipping company also owned in part by Russian oligarchs.

Fortunately, the ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and Acting Director of the Office of Government Ethics David J. Apol requesting an investigation of Ross's actions, according to The Washington Post. Specifically they want to learn more about whether Ross lied about divesting his stock from Invesco, the firm he ran before becoming Secretary of Commerce, as well as to learn more about the circumstances surrounding Ross's decision to sell shares of the shipping firm Navigator Holdings.

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He also denied that he had any investment-based connections to Russia....................................