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A multimillion-dollar lawsuit has been quietly making its way through the New York State court system over the last three years, pitting a private equity manager named David Storper against his former boss: Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross.
The pair worked side by side for more than a decade, eventually at the firm, WL Ross & Co.—where, Storper later alleged, Ross stole his interests in a private equity fund, transferred them to himself, then tried to cover it up with bogus paperwork.
Two weeks ago, just before the start of a trial with $4 million on the line, Ross and Storper agreed to a confidential settlement...
It is difficult to imagine the possibility that a man like Ross, who Forbes estimates is worth some $700 million, might steal a few million from one of his business partners. Unless you have heard enough stories about Ross.
Two former WL Ross colleagues remember the commerce secretary taking handfuls of Sweet’N Low packets from a nearby restaurant, so he didn’t have to go out and buy some for himself.
One says workers at his house in the Hamptons used to call the office, claiming Ross had not paid them for their work.
Another two people said Ross once pledged $1 million to a charity, then never paid. A commerce official called the tales “petty nonsense,” and added that Ross does not put sweetener in his coffee.
There are bigger allegations.
Over several months, in speaking with 21 people who know Ross, Forbes uncovered a pattern:
Many of those who worked directly with him claim that Ross wrongly siphoned or outright stole a few million here and a few million there ...
But all told, these allegations—which sparked lawsuits, reimbursements and an SEC fine—come to more than $120 million.
If even half of the accusations are legitimate, the current United States secretary of commerce could rank among the biggest grifters in American history.
… In a presidential cabinet plagued by ethical problems, it can be easy to forget about Wilbur Ross.
Most of the attention tends to center around obvious abuses, like Scott Pruitt getting a $43,000 sound-proof booth in his office or Tom Price wasting $341,000 on jet travel. But while Ross’ antics are more complicated, they involve far more money.
On November 1, 2017, Ross signed a sworn document, attesting that he had divested all the assets he promised he would. That was not true...
By falsely claiming he gotten rid of the shares earlier, Ross also put himself in legal jeopardy, since it is a crime to lie to federal officials. Representatives for Ross, a sophisticated investor, claimed the commerce secretary did not lie but instead failed to realize he owned the shares.
Ross also said he did not know he had a $73,000 stake in a company named Air Lease...“For any head of any private equity firm that I know of...these guys know what they own. It’s their whole business. It’s their whole life,” says an investor in WL Ross’ funds, terming the commerce secretary’s explanation “ridiculous.”
A top official in the federal Office of Government Ethics scolded Ross in a letter last month, saying that his failure to divest corroded public trust. ...
After the report, Senator John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, asked the inspector general of the Commerce Department to take a second look.
Thune is not the only senator making noise about Ross’ finances. In June, two senators and a congressman asked the Securities & Exchange Commission to launch an insider trading investigation of Ross, based on revelations that Ross shorted at least $100,000 in Putin-linked Navigator Holdings ...
Fourteen Democratic Congressmen have also called on the inspector general to investigate Ross’ potential conflicts of interest.
After assuring senators during his confirmation hearing that he would be overly cautious on ethical matters, Ross spent the majority of his first year in office as a business partner to the Chinese government, while he negotiated U.S.-China trade relations. He also waited to get rid of a stake in a Cypriot bank reportedly tied up in the Robert Mueller investigation. And he took months to divest an interest in a foreign car parts manufacturer whose industry he is now investigating.
The central matter in all of Ross’ legal issues is his own credibility.
“Lying on an ethics disclosure form, to Congressional and Senate committees, and falsely reporting compliance with an ethics plan, is neither ‘commonplace’ nor part of the accepted rough-and-tumble world of politics,” David Storper, Ross’ former right-hand man, argued in a court filing.
“They are just lies.” Adds another onetime colleague: “This is a public servant who can’t tell the truth.”
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Among many other things,
former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was
noted to be the driving force behind the
creation of The Universal Declaration
of Human Rights.
former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was
noted to be the driving force behind the
creation of The Universal Declaration
of Human Rights.
"... By 1948, the United Nations’ new Human Rights Commission had captured the attention of the world. Under the dynamic chairmanship of Eleanor Roosevelt—President Franklin Roosevelt’s widow, a human rights champion in her own right and the United States delegate to the UN—the Commission set out to draft the document that became the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Roosevelt, credited with its inspiration, referred to the Declaration as the “international Magna Carta for all mankind.” It was adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948.
In its preamble and in Article 1, the Declaration unequivocally proclaims the inherent rights of all human beings: “Disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people....All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
The Member States of the United Nations pledged to work together to promote the thirty Articles of human rights that, for the first time in history, had been assembled and codified into a single document. In consequence, many of these rights, in various forms, are today part of the constitutional laws of democratic nations. ... "
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⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ US Intelligence | Author | Navy Senior Chief | NBC/MSNBC
⭐⭐⭐ Federal Government Operations | Vanity Fair | Newsweek | MSNBC Contributor | Author
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Voting Rights/Voter Suppression | Author | Mother Jones
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📰📰📰 Mother Jones
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✅✅✅✅ Joan Walsh national affairs correspondent for The Nation; CNN political contributor
✅✅✅ Heidi Przybyla USA TODAY Senior Political Reporter
✅✅✅ Heidi Przybyla USA TODAY Senior Political Reporter
✅✅✅ Jennifer Rubin Conservative blogger at @ WashingtonPost's Right Turn,MSNBC contributor
✅✅✅ Natasha Bertrand Staff writer @ TheAtlantic covering national security & the I
ontel community. @ NBCNews/@ MSNBC contributor
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