July 12, 2002
Who Secretly Bought Bush's Harken Stock?
Dear Buzz:
Who is Investor X, the person or persons who bought George's Harken shares? According to the New York Times article www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/business/11HARK.html this mystery investor bought Bush's $848,560 block of Harken shares that no one else wanted. In essence, this investor bought G.W. Bush. Who was it? Enron? Carlyle? The bin Laden Group? Some other Saudi Arabians?
Aren't public records kept of these transactions? Who was Investor X????????????
From the New York Times:
"At the time, Mr. Bush wanted to pay off the loan he had taken to finance his stake in the Rangers, and the Harken stock was his biggest asset. But Harken stock was thinly traded; its average daily volume on the New York Stock Exchange was only about 10,000 shares. Until he contacted Mr. Bush on behalf of an anonymous buyer, Mr. Smith said in an interview this week, he could not find anyone willing to sell, either.
"So it was in many ways a perfect match of buyer and seller, and two weeks later, after checking with lawyers at Harken, where he was a consultant as well as a director, Mr. Bush completed the deal.
"A dozen years later, it is still not known who bought Mr. Bush's shares, or why the buyer made the offer at that time. Mr. Smith said he would not disclose the buyer's identity except to say that it was an institutional investor. Mr. Smith also said that he was unaware of the pending Bass deal.
"The White House said today that Mr. Bush never knew the identity of the buyer. Mr. Bartlett said it was 'very far fetched' to assume that the buyer was knowingly helping Mr. Bush at a financially convenient moment for him."
Oh yeah, Mr. Bartlett, the man who helped scrub Bush's National Guard records. If he says something is "very far fetched" take that to mean "it's dead-on accurate."
RA
in LA
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