SEC opens investigation into Clinton Supporter

The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation into InfoUSA, a Nebraska company that used corporate funds to fly Hillary Rodham Clinton around the country, and one of only two companies to put Bill Clinton on its payroll after he left the White House.

The firm, a major provider of database-processing services, disclosed little about the nature of the probe in a filing to shareholders released yesterday.


The two-sentence filing said only that InfoUSA received a letter last week "informing the Company that the SEC is conducting an informal investigation . . . and is requesting the voluntary production of documents relating to related party transactions, expense reimbursement, other corporate expenditures and certain trading in the Company's securities."

Calls to an InfoUSA spokesman were not returned. Mark C. Hansen, a Washington lawyer for the company's founder, Vinod Gupta, did not return calls late yesterday. Nor did an official in the SEC's Denver office, where the probe was initiated.

Two sources familiar with the company's troubles suggested that investigators would focus their attention on executives' use of company money to feather their own nests. Gupta has been a major financial supporter of the Clintons since he met the president in the mid-1990s. Gupta and his company donated $1 million to help underwrite a lavish year 2000 New Year's Eve celebration at the White House and on the Mall.

He paid the former president $200,000 to deliver a speech to InfoUSA executives in Papillion, Neb., and signed the former president to a $3.3 million consulting deal. For the past four years, both Clintons have used Gupta's corporate plane, flying to Switzerland, Hawaii, Jamaica and Mexico -- about $900,000 worth of travel, The Post reported in May.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/21/AR2007112102280.html


Earlier this year, the company's spending on the Clintons gave rise to a shareholder lawsuit complaining that hiring the former president was a "waste of corporate assets."

The Clintons are not parties to the lawsuit, nor are they accused of any wrongdoing.

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign declined comment last night, referring reporters instead to a Delaware court's ruling in August that allowed the shareholder lawsuit to proceed against InfoUSA on two of the five original allegations. Among the allegations dismissed by the court was one asserting that Clinton's consulting contract was a waste of money.

You'll never geuss what comes up.

















ANSWER: The exact same text & title. Almost as if the OP has copy and pasted...

That's why I said it. That's been my suspicion all along.

If this were about Obama, you'd be gleefully recommending the thread.

ClarkUSA rushes to defend her. What a surprise... not.

And it's Lirwin2 doing the swift boating. What a surprise... not.

And I'm not the only one in this thread who's defending illinoisprogressive:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=3747995&mesg_id=3748021

Because what you're doing is full of Clintonian BS. What a surprise... not.

Why would you say it was copy & pasted direct from Freeperland? :shrug:

Look at the link before you make accusations...

It just makes you look bad...

And I always get flamed when I say Obama and the GOP are using the same tactics...

;-)

But since it's an attempt to smear Clinton, it'll be posted every hours for the next three days.

In a pivotal election year, no less.

Oh boy, I can't wait -- talk about '90's flashbacks. :hangover:

As measured by the total number of convictions and forced resignations within the administration. His was the cleanest Presidential administration of the 20th century.

By this same, fairly objective measure, the Reagan administration was by far the most corrupt administration in U.S. history. Shows you how screwed-up the U.S. news media are.

Now, with wings.

Nevada's own, Sheldon Adelson:

Rudy Giuliani jets to campaign stops using casino kingpin's plane

Rudy Giuliani is jetting around the country wooing Bible-thumping conservatives, but his plane is often provided by a king of Sin City.

The Republican presidential hopeful anted up more than $122,000 last summer alone for jets traceable to casino kingpin Sheldon Adelson, whose Las Vegas Sands empire has made him the third-richest American, a Daily News review of campaign records shows.

Last quarter, The Sands' innocuously named Interface Operations LLC was the top provider of corporate jets to the frequently flying Giuliani, who was whisked around the country on the casino's plush Gulfstream G-IV in late August and early September, records show.

"You have to follow the money and ask, 'Why is Sheldon Adelson partnering with Rudy Giuliani?'" asked Stacey Cargill, an anti-gambling and Republican Party activist in Iowa, where the nation's first presidential caucus is set for Jan. 3.

Cargill, who views even legal gambling as a magnet for crime and vice, said, "If Rudy Giuliani wants to be the crimefighting candidate, why is he partnering with a large and growing gambling empire?"

more...

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2007/11/18/2007-11-18_rudy_giuliani_jets_to_campaign_stops_usi-4.html

Neither Clinton has anything to do with this investigation, as it is entirely centered on certain corporate executives putting company funds towards personal savings. The controversy has nothing to do with the relationship to Clinton nor, even, use of funds for various fundraisers. In fact, there's no reason to involve Clinton in this investigation at all.

Of course, the Post goes onto talk about a derivative lawsuit filed about hiring Bill Clinton as being a waste of money. Neither Clinton is accused of any wrong doing, and the majority of the five claims against the company, including the aleged fiduciary misconduct of hiring Clinton, were dismissed. Again, neither Clinton has any part in the lawsuit, nor are they at fault.

So basically the Post read the filed 8-K about InfoUSA at www.sec.gov (entire text of the 8-K is "infoUSA Inc. (the “Company”) received a letter dated November 14, 2007, from the Denver Regional Office of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) informing the Company that the SEC is conducting an informal investigation into the Company and is requesting the voluntary production of documents relating to related party transactions, expense reimbursement, other corporate expenditures and certain trading in the Company’s securities. The Company intends to fully cooperate with this informal investigation.") and wrote a piece trying to tie the Clintons to this issue.

Horrendous journalism.

Even if they did the same people who BASH Hillary wouldn't post it. I guess we prove again, what the democratic radio stations are saying. DU is the worst site going for Democrats bashing Democrats.

The whole damn site is taken up with the same people bashing Hillary over and over. Some items they post are as much as 20 years old. But that's the way it goes when you candidate is someone people are not interested in voting for. BUT as you can see it only makes their candidate look worst.

July 14, 2007
Clinton Backer’s Ties to Powerful Cut Both Ways
By MIKE McINTIRE

Many wealthy people have raised money for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign. But only Vinod Gupta has named a school building in India after her.

The Hillary Rodham Clinton Mass Communication Center, when it is finished, will complement the William Jefferson Clinton Science and Technology Center, another Gupta project in India. A video of Mr. Clinton visiting there can be found on the Vin Gupta page at YouTube.com — not to be confused with vingupta .com, where until recently one could find photos of Mr. Gupta golfing with the former president in Scotland and socializing with Senator Clinton in Aspen, Colo.

Such images are trophies for Mr. Gupta, an Indian-American entrepreneur who has spent much of his professional life cultivating close ties to politicians, mostly Democrats, that have benefited him in ways large and small. For the Democrats, he became a valued rainmaker, contributing nearly $1 million to the Clintons and other candidates from the 1980s on.

But if he normally wears his friendship with the Clintons on his sleeve, it has been a lot less visible lately. The Clinton campaign began to distance itself from Mr. Gupta after reports that his data-marketing company, infoUSA, sold call lists to unscrupulous telemarketers, and accusations that he wasted millions of dollars on perks for himself and the Clintons. Mr. Gupta, in turn, skipped a Clinton fund-raiser he helped put together last month in New York, and now says he is no longer involved in the campaign.

“With all this publicity,” he said, “to be frank with you, it just isn’t worth it.”

Mr. Gupta says he has done nothing wrong, and it remains to be seen whether he has indeed bowed out of big-time politics for good. But in the modern era of political money, where the race for cash has effectively become a campaign unto itself, Mr. Gupta’s entwinements with the Democrats, and his abrupt step back, illustrate the pitfalls of such relationships, both for the candidates and for the wealthy contributors who hunger for the access and the attention their largess can bring.

Mr. Gupta, who arrived in Nebraska from India in 1967, was unusually successful in working his way into the Democratic fold, to the point where he found himself sleeping in the Clinton White House, vacationing with the former president and appointing the Democratic chairman, Terry McAuliffe, to the board of one of his companies. He gave consulting contracts worth $3 million to Mr. Clinton, and recently hired the son of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Because of those close links with Democrats, he stirred conflict-of-interest questions by buying a company that does presidential polling for CNN.

more...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/14/us/politics/14gupta.html?pagewanted=print

Considering this is the Bush SEC, I think we need to start being skeptical.