CITICROOK: The New York Times is just now getting around to noticing that Citigroup and Enron were in cahoots. The Times
reports today that Citigroup cooked its books to assist Enron in concealing the energy company's fraudulent, house-of-cards finances. Curiously, the Times makes no mention of the front-and-center role Clinton treasury secretary and
Citigroup snake-in-the-grass Robert Rubin played in the Enron charade, including his calls to the Bush Treasury Department begging for a government bailout of Enron.
The Washington Times, however, mentioned Rubin's complicity. A lot.
And way back in April too. A lawsuit filed by the University of California's pension fund against Enron alleges a buffet o' bad stuff about Rubin and Citigroup. "The lawsuit contends," the Times reports, "that Mr. Rubin and Citigroup, with eight other Wall Street firms and two Enron law firms, had inside knowledge about Enron's questionable finances and colluded with the company to deceive investors to protect their billions of dollars of Enron investments." The lawsuit also claims that in return for greenlighting an Enron partnership which was created "to conceal debt and inflate profits," Citigroup executives were allowed to invest $15 million in that very partnership; and that after loaning Enron $4 billion "in the months before its bankruptcy filing, Citigroup lent Enron $2.4 billion disguised as pre-paid swaps that were channeled through a Citigroup subsidiary in the Cayman Islands . . ." No wonder Rubin made panicked calls to Treasury looking for a bailout — the collapse of Enron stood to expose Citigroup as Enron's enabler.
For more on Rubin's slippery ways,
read this item from two years ago by University of Mexico law professor Timothy A. Canova. According to Canova, Secretary Rubin was seeking a job with Citigroup while also urging President Clinton to sign legislation which would result in saving Citigroup from being forced to sell its insurance underwriting business.
So much for the Democrats' efforts to tie these business scandals to Bush and Cheney.
