August 3, 2011

Prudential says acquisition helped 2Q net income

Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Prudential Financial Inc. said Wednesday that its net income rose slightly in the second quarter, boosted by recent acquisitions.

For the three months ended June 30, the Newark, N.J. company said it earned $831 million, or $1.68 per share for its financial services business. That's compared with $798 million, or $1.70 per share, in the year-ago period. The lower per-share results in the latest quarter reflect an increase in the number of outstanding shares.

Not including one-time charges, such as acquisition costs and claims from the Japan earthquake and tsunami, the company said adjusted operating income was $1.71 per share for the quarter. By that measure, analysts on average expected a profit of $1.55, according to FactSet.

On Feb. 1, the company bought AIG ( AIG - news - people ) Star Life Insurance Co. and AIG Edison Life Insurance Co. Prudential said the acquisitions resulted in adjusted operating income of 5 cents per share in the quarter.

Total revenue in the quarter was $10.15 billion, up 32 percent from $7.68 billion. Revenue from premiums rose to $5.51 billion, up from $3.81 billion. Policy charges and fee income rose to $1.04 billion, from $888 million. Net investment income increased to $2.53 billion, from $2.11 billion. Asset management fees, commissions and other income rose to $1.08 billion, from $871 million.

Total benefits and expenses came to $9 billion, up from $7.1 billion....

CONTINUED AT: https://sites.google.com/site/thecatbirdsnest11/prudential-says-acquisition-helped-2q-income

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November 11, 2010

Prudential Issuing $1 Billion

 In Stock To Fund AIG Buys

MarketNewsVideo.com 

Prudential Financial has begun a public offering of

its common stock to help purchase two AIG subsidiaries.

Prudential Financial has begun a public offering of $1 billion of its common stock to fund a portion of the purchase price for its acquisition of AIG Star Life Insurance and AIG Edison Life Insurance from American International Group .

Prudential said Citi , Bank of America , Merrill Lynch , UBS , and Barclay's Capital  will serve as joint bookrunning managers for the offer. The underwriters will have a 30-day option to buy an additional 15% of the offered amount of common stock from the company... 

CONTINUED AT...

 

PRUDENTIAL - A NEST ON SHAKY GROUND

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U.S. Equities
AIG Names Big Cheese In Asia
07.19.10, 4:23 PM ET

American International Group (AIG) has named a new head of its Asian Insurance unit, American International Assurance. Mark Tucker, formerly head of U.K.-based Prudential PLC, will replace existing chief Mark Wilson. The company is planning to list the unit's shares on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

An IPO became AIG's best option to unlock the value of AIA after a deal with Prudential fell through in recent months. There has been no shortage of headlines from AIG lately. On Friday, AIG agreed to pay $725 million to settle a securities fraud lawsuit with three Ohio pension funds. Also last week, AIG chairman Harvey Golub resigned due to friction between CEO Robert Benmoshe and himself.

Separately, Deutsche Bank is reportedly going to buy the historic AIG building at 72 Wall Street.

Reuters reports Deutsche will pay $60 million to a consortium that owns the building. AIG's lease on the office space has already expired.

Market News Video produces and distributes online videos about stocks and investing.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/19/aig-names-new-head-of-aia-marketnewsvideo_print.html

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The Treasury's AIG Back-up Plan

MarketNewsVideo.com

British papers report government is reviewing plans to float Asian life insurance business, in case Prudential deal falls through.

05/24/2010 3:59PM ET

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Full AIG Chart at  

 

The Treasury department is reportedly taking another look at prior plans to float American International Group's Asian insurance business, AIA, in case the sale to the U.K.'s Prudential ( PUK - news - people ) falls through, British newspapers reported over the weekend.

GOOGLE FOR MORE OF THE AIG GANG

MARSH & McLENNAN

PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE

AIG Gets The Hook From KBW

MarketNewsVideo.com

The valuation is looking a little too plump, and AIG catches a downgrade.

American International Group Inc

 

04/27/2010 4:58PM ET

• $37.50
• -$7.01
• -15.75%

• At A Glance
• Chart
• News
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Full AIG Chart at

 

This morning Keefe Bruyette & Woods downgraded shares of AIG to underperform as the firm sees minimal value in the common shares. KBW feels the current capital structure does not leave much value for the shareholders of common stock and has lowered its price target to $6.

Shares of AIG ( AIG - news - people ) were trading sharply lower Tuesday morning, off about 6.5% so far....

 

Tim Geithner's NY Fed told AIG to keep

quiet about $105bn paid to banks

Tim Geithner's Federal Reserve Bank of New York urged American International Group (AIG) to remain silent on $105bn (£65bn) of payments made to banks including Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank at the height of the financial crisis.

By James Quinn, US Business Editor

The New York Fed, under Mr Geithner's leadership until he was appointed US Treasury Secretary in January 2009, instructed the troubled insurer to withhold details of the payments from the American public, which bailed out AIG by as much as $182bn at its financial nadir.

According to a series of emails obtained and made public by Congressman Darrell Issa, AIG had planned to inform investors in a regulatory filing published on December 24, 2008, that it had paid counter-party banks owed money at a rate of 100 cents on the dollar. The banks were owed the money for credit-default swaps they had entered into, mainly on behalf of clients.

"It appears that the New York Fed deliberately pressured AIG to restrict and delay the disclosure of important information," said Congressman Issa.

Publication of the potentially embarrassing emails comes two months after it emerged that it was the New York Fed that was behind a decision to pay the banks in full, rather than at a discounted rate.

"Our position has always been that if AIG's securities lawyers determine that AIG is legally obligated to make a particular filing or disclosure, then that is what AIG must do," said a spokesman for the New York Fed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/insurance/6948020/AIG-told-to-keep-quiet-about-payments.html

* * *

RELATED STORIES

Tim Geithner comes under fresh pressure over AIG revelations

Geithner called to explain AIG bailout secrecy

AIG continues to be headache for Tim Geithner - Jan. 7, 2010

11-17-09

Geithner Singled Out In TARP Watchdog Neil Barofsky's Scathing Report On AIG Bailout

 

A brutal report issued Monday by a government watchdog holds Timothy Geithner -- then the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now the nation's Treasury Secretary -- responsible for overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs.

The authoritative new narrative describes how, while bailing out insurance giant AIG last fall, a team led by Geithner failed nearly every step of the way.

Instead of bargaining with AIG's numerous counterparties to resolve its billions of dollars in souring derivatives contracts, Geithner's team ended up paying top dollar for toxic assets -- "an amount far above their market value at the time," the report notes.

"There is no question that the effect of FRBNY's decisions -- indeed, the very design of the federal assistance to AIG -- was that tens of billions of dollars of Government money was funneled inexorably and directly to AIG's counterparties," the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said.

Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Wachovia got full value for their derivatives contracts with AIG, and taxpayers got the bill. In total, $27.1 billion of public money was transferred to companies that did business with AIG.

Throughout the bailout of AIG, the report says, the New York Fed failed to develop appropriate contingency plans; failed to properly assess the impact of its decisions; and generally engaged in negotiation strategies that were doomed to fail.

Then, after Geithner's team paid off AIG's counterparties on Wall Street, it imposed "onerous" terms on the troubled insurer, the report says.

"[T]he decision to acquire a controlling interest in one of the world's most complex and most troubled corporations was done with almost no independent consideration of the terms of the transaction or the impact that those terms might have on the future of AIG," the report finds.

Geithner, now the nation's chief financial officer, just didn't bargain hard enough with Wall Street's biggest companies, the report concludes:

[T]he refusal of FRBNY and the Federal Reserve to use their considerable leverage as the primary regulators for several of the counterparties, including the emphasis that their participation in the negotiations was purely "voluntary," made the possibility of obtaining concessions from those counterparties extremely remote. While there can be no doubt that a regulators' inherent leverage over a regulated entity must be used appropriately, and could in certain circumstances be abused, in other instances in this financial crisis regulators (including the Federal Reserve) have used overtly coercive language to convince financial institutions to take or forego certain actions. As SIGTARP reported in its audit of the initial Capital Purchase Program investments, for example, Treasury and the Federal Reserve were fully prepared to use their leverage as regulators to compel the nine largest financial institutions (including some of AIG's counterparties) to accept $125 billion of TARP funding and to pressure Bank of America to conclude its merger with Merrill Lynch. Similarly, it has been widely reported that the Government, while arguably acting on behalf of General Motors and Chrysler, took an active role in negotiating substantial concessions from the creditors of those companies.

Meanwhile, the Fed was attempting to keep the details of AIG's counterparties hidden from public view -- another big mistake, according to the report:

The now familiar argument from Government officials about the dire consequences of basic transparency, as advocated by the Federal Reserve...once again simply does not withstand scrutiny. Federal Reserve officials initially refused to disclose the identities of the counterparties or the details of the payments, warning that disclosure of the names would undermine AIG's stability, the privacy and business interests of the counterparties, and the stability of the markets.

After public and Congressional pressure, AIG disclosed the identities. Notwithstanding the Federal Reserve's warnings, the sky did not fall; there is no indication that AIG's disclosure undermined the stability of AIG or the market or damaged legitimate interests of the counterparties. The lesson that should be learned -- one that has been made apparent time after time in the Government's response to the financial crisis -- is that the default position, whenever Government funds are deployed in a crisis to support markets or institutions, should be that the public is entitled to know what is being done with Government funds.

While SIGTARP acknowledges that there might be circumstances in which the public's right to know what its Government is doing should be circumscribed, those instances should be very few and very far between...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/16/aig-bailout-government-ov_n_359919.html

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 Who Is A.I.G. And Why Should You Care?

Dandelion Salad

An Investigative Series, By Mike Ruppert, 2001

Speaking Truth to Power

Tuesday, 16 September 2008

["It is in our national interest that A.I.G. survive," says former AIG Chairman, Hank Greenberg. But just who and what is AIG? And why is it important to know? This is Part One of Mike Ruppert's 2001 investigative series on an enormous player in Wall Street's drug money laundering scam. Drug money, Ruppert has demonstrated, has kept the markets from crashing for many years. Now however, it appears that "plunge protection" is in over its head, and no amount of laundered cash can prevent the inevitable that is taking place before our eyes, namely, the collapse of A.I.G. and the U.S. financial system itself.--CB]

Reprinted from FROM THE WILDERNESS

Carlos Lehder

[Part One of a Multi-Part Series]

by Michael C. Ruppert

[© Copyright 2001, Michael C. Ruppert and From the Wilderness Publications. All Rights Reserved. Part I ONLY may be copied and redistributed for non-profit purposes only. All subsequent parts may be copied or distributed only with express written consent of the author. ] ...

This series is dedicated to Mark Swaney of the Ozark Gazette for his intellectual courage and tenacity; to John McGlaughlin, the straightest and toughest man who ever honestly carried a badge; to Celerino Castillo III, with a heart bigger than his beloved Texas; to all the young men and women, mostly minority, who are serving up to life in prison for crimes that don’t remotely compare to those of Carlos Lehder, and to all the innocents in Colombia who stand at the brink of the next Vietnam War.

———–

But perhaps most importantly it is about the lies that the American people tell themselves each day as they drown in a sea of denial, worried about their pension plans, investments and careers, needing to deny the fact that the so-called war on drugs is a flimsy house of cards that consumes millions of innocent lives every year. It is a story about the lies told by the major media that chooses to ignore the reality of hard documentation about CIA involvement in the drug trade. If there is a common thread to this story it is the fact that lies make us all hostages of our own fears and failings. Eventually these lies entangle us to the point where even the slightest movement becomes impossible and, being unable to move, we sink and we drown – all the while looking for someone else to blame.

Denial is not a river in Egypt.

Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas, aka Carlos Lehder, is the stuff of which legends are made. Legends are sometimes good, sometimes bad. As is the case with most legends there is a beautiful woman involved. There is also intrigue, crime, violence, corruption and betrayal. But legends, when examined closely, almost always tell more about the civilizations that create them than they do about the one who carries the name. Carlos Lehder is not a Colombian legend. He is an American legend. It is America that created him. America that made him rich. America where he began his criminal life. America where he was imprisoned and America that, it now appears, has set him free. It is America’s shame that Lehder’s freedom, if established, and alleged employment by the U.S. Government, are hidden behind lies told, not by Lehder himself, but by the American government to its own people.

In 1979-80, reportedly with the assistance of the CIA and legendary drug smuggler Barry Seal, Lehder co-founded the Medellin Cartel with Pablo Escobar and brothers Fabio and Jorge Ochoa. As celebrated on CNN and by recent books like Killing Pablo (Mark Bowden, 2001), Pablo Escobar was gunned down in a hail of Colombian bullets directed by U.S. intelligence in December, 1993. The Ochoas have faded into the jungle-like vortex of Latin American lore although an October 1999 Reuters story indicated that Fabio Ochoa had been arrested (again) in Bogota. Word of his promised extradition to the U.S. has been hard to find. Carlos Lehder remains the only cartel head to have ever been extradited to, then tried, convicted and sentenced to life plus 135 years in, the United States. Prosecutors agree that Panamanian strongman General Manuel Antonio Noriega – against whom Lehder testified in return for a reduced sentence of 55 “non-paroleable” years in 1989 – was merely one of Lehder’s employees.

Other new material indicating that Lehder, after his 1987 arrest and extradition, provided information to the DEA that assisted in Escobar’s downfall has been characterized by his prosecutor, former US Attorney Robert Merkle, as nearly worthless. “That’s BS. We didn’t need his help to get Escobar,” says Merkle.

As disclosed in this first of a series of special reports, I have now amassed a sizeable body of documents, records, witness statements and even a tape recording of Lehder’s alleged wife indicating that Carlos Lehder is a free man who has kept his money, who travels the world freely and who makes a mockery of any notion that he might be a federally protected witness – hiding to ensure his safety or the safety of his family. One telling clue to Lehder’s apparent lack of fear is the fact that he is listed by name in 411 directory assistance in La Fayette, California, just outside San Francisco. My researcher, while looking for other information, came across the listing and sent it to me. I was able to confirm it as a listing for the Carlos Lehder – not a coincidence – through confidential sources who know Lehder’s self-professed wife, Coral Marie Talavera Baca Lehder. And I have spoken to Coral by calling her at that number myself. Mrs. Lehder was, until June 22, a manager for the insurance giant AIG in San Francisco.

[Subsequent segments of this special series will focus on investigations into allegations of money laundering by AIG with and through the Arkansas Development Financial Authority in 1987 - the same year Lehder was originally captured].

I had lunch with Coral two days before she resigned. When I called her San Francisco office the following Monday, June 25, a company receptionist told me that she had, “Gone to Cuba.”...

Just hours before this issue needed to be at the printer’s, an e-mail arrived indicating that Lehder’s current attorney (I do not know the name) had just stated that Lehder was definitely in prison, answered the phone promptly when called there, had never been married and had allegedly stated that he had never heard of Coral Baca — by any name. She was a fraud. At the same time I have been told that the attorney may not identify himself to me and probably will not make Lehder available for an interview. This possible attempt by unnamed sources to delay publication of this story will be thoroughly investigated for Part II of this series.

“I’ve been speculating for years that Lehder was free Why am I not surprised? If Lehder is out of jail I would be extremely disappointed. It would send some very bad signals. It’s pretty tragic. There’s a lot of kids in jail for the rest of their lives — I’m talking kids — and a lot of them are minorities for insignificant drug offenses compared to what he did,” says Lehder prosecutor and former US Attorney Robert Merkle. According to various news sources at the time of his arrest in 1987 Lehder, then 37, was reported to be worth between $2.5 and $3 billion. Throughout the early 1980s his airstrip at Norman’s Cay in the Bahamas was receiving cocaine flights from Colombia, every hour on the hour, and transferring the loads to smaller planes for distribution throughout the US.

Pittsburgh-Post Gazette reporter Bill Moushey, who has perhaps spent more time tracking Lehder than any American journalist, wrote in 1996, ” In it [a 1987 federal detention order] the U.S. government says Lehder and others were responsible for assassinating Colombia’s Justice Minister in 1984; for the 1985 armed attack on Colombia’s Supreme Court building that killed 11 justices and 84 other people; for assassinating two newspaper editors in Colombia and 26 other journalists; for shooting the Colombian ambassador to Hungary in 1987; and for a long list of murders of police officers, informants and other government officials.”...

I have since talked nearly a dozen reporters, prosecutors and others connected to the case. At the same time that they protest that they have received Christmas cards, letters and even phone calls from Lehder indicating that he is still in prison they all – every one of them – have confessed their secret suspicions of a charade intended to fool them and hide a very dark secret. And all of them, without exception, agree that if Lehder is walking free it is time to find him and tell the American people about it.

Days of Glory – Days of Shame

I first became aware of Carlos Lehder’s possible freedom in the Spring of 1997, not long after I had confronted CIA Director John Deutch on television and stated that there was direct proof of CIA involvement in the drug trade. Dick Gregory, the comedian, later told me that he had learned first hand that my confrontation with Deutch, and Deutch’s poor handling of the situation, had cost Deutch a certain appointment as Secretary of Defense the following month. I was something of a small-time celebrity afterwards. At that time, however, those of us like retired DEA Agent Celerino Castillo, a Bronze Star recipient from Vietnam who has devoted his life to exposing CIA drug connections in the eighties, stood downstage from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Gary Webb whose August 96 Dark Alliance series in The San Jose Mercury News had inflamed the nation with its allegations of direct CIA connections to the Contras in Nicaragua and drug trafficking in LA....

On June 28, 1998, just about two weeks after Webb’s book Dark Alliance had been released I was invited to attend a fund raiser at the Beverly Hills home of Producer Jamie Otis and organized in part by Patrick Fourmy who did the videography and arranged hotel accommodations. The purpose of the “gala” event featuring Webb as a speaker, was to raise funds for “citizen’s tribunals” to be conducted by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. I had just finished reading Webb’s book and found it to be ground-breaking and well documented. In the first pages of Dark Alliance Webb wrote about his first meeting with Coral Talavera Baca, the woman now known as Mrs. Carlos Lehder.... 

Earlier, on page 4, Webb had written that Coral worked for a law firm. What he did not report was that the law firm was solely devoted to legal work for AIG and that AIG had long standing ties to the CIA. Rather than reporting that Talavera was engaged to Lehder — which he claims he could not establish — Webb wrote in Dark Alliance that she was the “girlfriend” of convicted San Francisco Bay Area drug dealer Rafael Cornejo.

The night of June 28 and the following day can best be described as surreal. Coral and Webb arrived together and she stood by him as he spoke that night. She looked more elegant than Webb had described and she was truly stunning. Fourmy, who was busy with cables and cameras kept pointing her out and saying, “she’s engaged to Carlos Lehder. I introduced them.” Fourmy spent much time that night with crime writer and author Joseph Bosco who made a strange statement to me towards the end of the evening. “Gary Webb should be ashamed of himself for what he did to Coral.” I have been unable to find out what Bosco meant.

Fourmy, Bosco, Castillo and Coral were all staying at the Beverly Garland Howard Johnson’s in North Hollywood California. Although I was briefly introduced to Baca [I use the names Talavera and Baca interchangeably to reflect how she was addressed in various settings] just before she left the event in a taxi cab, and didn’t quite know what to say, it turns out that she was more forthcoming in a conversation with Castillo. Just days after the event Castillo called me and told me what she said that night and the following day. He has since reconfirmed those statements for this story.

“I remember that I was introduced to her by Fourmy,” says the retired DEA agent who has served in Peru and Central America. “She said, straight out, that she was engaged to Carlos Lehder I couldn’t believe it! What was she doing here? I asked her, ‘What’s Carlos doing now?’ and she said, ‘Oh, he’s out of jail and selling drugs to the Russians for the CIA.’...

Robert Merkle — “I know that Lehder, right after he was arrested, tried to cut a deal directly with [then Vice President George H.W.] Bush and the FBI – which conversations I was excluded from There’s a lot of stuff that went on that was questionable I’ve been speculating for years that Lehder was free but I figured he’d be in Germany or some tax haven with his money, which he still has. One of the major things that was a red flag in terms of indicating that he made a deal was that Lehder wasn’t required to turn over his assets. There was essentially nothing seized in that case and the guy made millions of dollars. If I’m a U.S. Attorney or an Attorney General and the only member of the Medellin Cartel to be prosecuted in the US, facing life plus 120 years in jail, wants a deal, the first thing he’s going to talk to me about is money. What banks? Where are they located?”...

~ ~ ~

In June, 2001 I traveled to San Antonio Texas where I met Castillo and obtained a copy of one of his “Baca” tapes. He says there are others he is holding as “insurance against any challenges against me” and that the one he provided me has had certain sections of the conversation removed for the same reason. [Beginning in August 2001 I will place selected excerpts of this tape, converted to MP3 format, on the From The Wilderness web site at www.copvcia.com. -- See Investigation Notes at the end of this story.] Having spoken to her on the phone several times since January 2001 I instantly recognized the voice on the tape. It was definitely the Coral that I had met....

A Paper Trail

Far from being silent about Talavera’s relationship with Lehder I had written about it in January of 1999. I had been puzzled as to why no one in “the anti-CIA drugs movement” seemed to think it noteworthy. It was known to at least a dozen people that I was aware of. It was “sticky” to me, oozing with a kind of dysfunctionality found in families that conceal child abuse.

Information developing around the then pending Clinton impeachment had led me to suspect an alliance between the Medellin Cartel’s genius of transportation and Arkansas’ genius of money and political power, Bill Clinton. [See Parts II and III of this series.] My writing on this subject (available at www.copvcia.com) had drawn an angry January 7, 1999 letter from Talavera’s attorney. I made a correction stating that at the time of the Dark Alliance stories Talavera was probably not married to Lehder when she went to Webb but that she was indeed his fiancée. What I found interesting in the letter was that Baca’s attorney, David Secrest, had written, “We also demand that you immediately take all steps necessary to respect Ms. Baca’s privacy and anonymity, as did the Dept. of Justice and the CIA in their respective reports.” Why were those agencies been deferential to her? If she was a fraud, couldn’t they discover it? My only error, since scrupulously corrected for this story, was in not seeking her comment before writing. I could have.

I stand by that story and no lawsuit has ever materialized.  [The letter may be viewed at www.copvcia.com .]...

Other documents, in particular an undated two-page “Report of Investigation (Law Enforcement)” from the U.S. Treasury Special Agent In Charge, San Francisco District Office (possibly the IRS), appeared credible but remained unverified. The “Treasury” report, which was later to become very important to this story was, in November 2000 — after seven phone calls, a fax, a Fedex package and much delay, evaluated by Treasury Dept. spokesman John D’Angelo. He told me, “I have not been able to figure out what this report is. I can’t figure it out. Things don’t match. It looks like something that was used at one time.” That decidedly unsatisfying response had come after Treasury spokespersons had advised that I contact each of Treasury’s component agencies (IRS, Customs, Secret Service and the ATF) for comment. Of course, each of those agencies had referred me back to where I had started.

What was so compelling about the Treasury report was that it contained a wealth of information on the Lehders that was to be subsequently confirmed by Talavera herself. More damning is the fact that in June 2001 I secured confirmation from a confidential source close to the Lehders that the document was authentic. Then, a former senior paralegal who had worked on Lehder’s appeals efforts (speaking on condition of anonymity) found it to be possibly authentic and “consistent with other government documents I have reviewed in the case.” Just to be sure I asked the paralegal for a place to check the paralegal’s credentials vis a vis Lehder. That was instantly provided and credible confirmation was instantly given. “Kincaid,” as I have named the source, had worked for a law firm representing Lehder and knew him personally.

The Treasury report stated that in 1987 (when she was 23) — the same year that Lehder was captured and would have begun hiding his assets — Talavera had founded a “Bohemian” company called Capital Investment Group (CIG) with an initial capitalization of $10 million. By 1997 the estimated worth of CIG was listed as $132 million. In financial parlance a “Bohemian corporation” is a company founded by two parent companies, located in two different countries, in yet a third country. This is usually done for the purposes of avoiding regulation by tax or legal authorities. The first thing I had done after receipt of this document in the summer of 1999 was to ask my researcher to pull the files on Capital Investment Group at the Secretary of State’s office in Sacramento and send them to me.

Among other things, the Treasury report says that Carlos Lehder was an employee of the Treasury and a free man.

Another document, typeset like a news story but well sanitized to remove the publication name or date was titled “Beauty And The Beast.” It read, “Just three days after the birth of her son, Carlo Rafael, the lovely Coral Lehder, adorned the arm of her husband, one-time Medellin cartel cocaine kingpin Carlos Lehder, during St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital annual benefit where Mrs. Lehder was honored for her exemplary work with underprivileged children.

“When asked to comment on the recent birth of his son, Mr. Lehder coyly remarked, “Once again it appears I have received a lot of quid [gesturing to his wife] for very little pro quo. America, where anything is possible. Even a beauty like that loving a wretch like me,” The quid pro quo statement rang a bell. I checked my files and found a June 15, 1996 story by reporter Bill Moushey that quoted prosecutor Merkle as stating that Lehder “received a very large quid for a very small quo.” Sources familiar with Lehder and his speech patterns have indicated that he has never been this eloquent and never uses Latin. But could he have been taking a subtle, mocking swipe at the man who had tried to put him away? In the quote the Latin grammar was butchered. He should have said quo, instead of pro quo.

On the lower right hand portion of the page a photo of a reclining Coral bore the caption, “There’s a lot more to being good looking than make up and prettiness. There’s a lot more to being a woman than that. When I look in the mirror, I just want to like myself. And if I like myself, then I look good.” — Coral Lehder....

Still the faked documents forced me to put the investigation on hold. It was not until January of 2000, when the fax machine received an unsourced newspaper photo caption stating that Talavera had served as a technical advisor on the movie Traffic, that I reached out to Talavera directly to find out what the hell was going on. The Traffic clip had particularly offended me because I had been meeting and talking during the preceding weeks with the personal manager (Patrick Dollard of Propaganda Films) for Traffic’s director, Steven Soderbergh. I knew that Coral had nothing to do with the film. Arriving with the Traffic clip was another document the government already knew I had and knew that I knew was a fake.

So, in January I contacted Coral to ask about the documents. I wanted as much to know who had sent them and why as to find out whether they were real. That contact led to a number of private conversations in which I was satisfied that the sender had intended personal harm to Coral and possibly to me if I published them. Lacking the ability to further authenticate those documents that I believed to be accurate, I assured Coral that I had no intentions of going to press or discussing personal information she had revealed in helping me check them out. I have since learned that several other journalists had received many of the same documents and withheld them for the same reasons. Curiously, however, none seem to have received the Treasury report.

It was during this period that I first learned of Talavera’s employment by the American International Group (AIG) in San Francisco. She had given me contact numbers at her San Francisco office and sent e-mails and faxes so indicating. Included was a February 13, 2001 fax sent unsolicited to me and author Peter Dale Scott, PhD, Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley. The cover sheet had a letterhead in the name of Coral Marie Talavera Baca and showed a street address at Two Rincon Center. This is the address of the AIG building in San Francisco. The cover sheet showed a return e-mail address of Coral.Talavera@AIG.com. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it The heading read, “RE: Penthouse article re: Carlos/Atlantic Monthly article.”

The message on the cover sheet said, “Dear Peter and Michael: Attached please find The Atlantic Monthly article regarding the CIA, which I am passing along for your pleasure. I got a good chuckle out of it hope you both do also. It’s nice to know that others find humor in the CIA’s incompetence. — Regards, Coral.”

[NOTE: This document, the Treasury report, and other on-the-record e-mails concerning this investigation and confirming a June 20 lunch date for Talavera and me can be viewed on my web site at www.copvcia.com . Go to the section for this series of special reports and, from the Table of Contents, click on "Support Documentation."]

Coral Reinsurance

In the Spring of 2001 I was checking my e-mails when I opened one from a colleague that immediately caught my attention. It was titled “Google Search for AIG + Goldman + Harvard.” Several themes immediately sprang to mind. First, I was aware that Coral was a manager at an American International Group (AIG) legal office in San Francisco. Coral’s name was the same as the subject of the story attached to my e-mail. Secondly I had, through my newsletter From The Wilderness (FTW), been writing for many months about the roles played by Goldman Sachs, its past President, Robert Rubin (former US Treasury Secretary) and The Harvard Endowment in the massive looting of Russia — to the tune of as much as $300 billion — during the 1990s. [This tragedy has been compellingly documented by journalist Anne Williamson. Information on Williamson's writings can be found at www.newsmakingnews.com. Her forthcoming book on the subject, Contagion, is to be published in serial form by SRA Associates in London.]

The extract attached to the e-mail described a suspicious relationship in 1987 between AIG, the Arkansas Development Financial Authority (ADFA) and Goldman Sachs, then headed by Rubin, to found an offshore (Barbados) reinsurance company named Coral Reinsurance. (Reinsurance is simply the insuring of one insurance company by another to spread risk).

According to a confidential Goldman Sachs stock placement memorandum dated December 1, 1987, which I have since obtained, Coral Re, as it is known, was founded by AIG. All potential investors, including the State of Arkansas’ ADFA, were bound to return or destroy the memorandum if they did not participate. Coral Re was clearly an AIG progeny and ADFA has been voluminously linked to allegations of drug money laundering in the 1980s. Moreover, there are also longstanding published links, some confirmed by CIA documents, between drug smuggling, Barry Seal, the Contras and the Medellin Cartel. All of those links joined at the Mena (Arkansas) Regional Intermountain Airport. [These subjects will be discussed in detail in Parts II and III of this series.]

This was something I had to investigate. I was aware of AIG/CIA ties dating back to the early fifties. From reading the full text of a 1995 story entitled Gray Money by journalist and mechanical engineer Mark Swaney I learned that the CEO of AIG, Maurice (Hank) Greenberg had also been a candidate to become CIA Director in 1995. Greenberg is also the former Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

In a number of e-mails, phone conversations and one face to face meeting Talavera consistently denied that she, her husband Carlos Lehder, or their good friend, fugitive financier Robert Vesco, had any connections of any kind to Coral Reinsurance. Notwithstanding that my investigation into that possible connection continues. If she is officially labeled as a fraud what then does one make of her denials about Coral Reinsurance? Of AIG as her confirmed employer? On June 12 she e-mailed, “Carlos is in no way, shape or form had/has anything to do with Coral Reinsurance and or AIG’s involvement in same.

“Let me save you the next question. Robert Vesco had/has nothing to do with the above either. [I had never mentioned to her that I knew about Vesco.] Let me go one step further. No one that I know had/has anything to do with Coral Reinsurance and/or AIG’s involvement in same.

Coral later agreed to meet me for lunch on Wednesday June 20, across the street from her San Francisco office. Before leaving for San Francisco I had occasion to speak to an AIG spokesman, Michael Murphy of Bermuda, said by many in the insurance business to be Hank Greenberg’s right-hand man. To my question regarding Coral’s status as the wife of Lehder Murphy responded, “I asked her the question whether that was her past and she said that she really preferred not to discuss her personal affairs in a company situation. I didn’t want to pry into her life.”

The Russians Are Here

I went up to San Francisco a day early. With the Secretary of State documents in hand I went to see what I could find out about Capital Investment Group (CIG). Its address, 601 Gateway Blvd. is a new, large, approximately ten story office building near the San Francisco airport. The incorporation papers showed that CIG had been there for at least three years until their corporate filings ceased in 1997. I poked around until I found someone on the building staff who had been there in the mid 90s.

“Oh yeah,” said the building employee who asked that I not use his name. “I remember the Russians. There was Boris and Vladimir and Natasha.” He laughed. “Real thick accents. They treated the eighth floor like it was Russian territory. Everyone knew about the Russians. The FBI came and were investigating them. They said they might be KGB.”

The employee remembered one other thing. “They had so many extension chords running into so many computers that they blew the fuses in the building six times a day. Everyone was complaining about them. They left in 96 I think. I have no idea where they went after that.”

Doing Lunch

Don’t laugh. The name of the restaurant where Coral and I had lunch was The Red Herring. I stood waiting for her out front at noon. She came across Steuart Street wearing a black dress and pearls. She was and remains every bit as lovely as I had remembered. But during the lunch, I found her to be more elegant than vixen, more intelligent than bimbo, more loyal to her husband Carlos Lehder and much more “savvy” than Gary Webb’s description had led me to expect. She declined to answer any on-the-record questions about the status or current activities of her husband or her family. The purpose of the lunch was to thank me for not publishing the faked documents and to discuss Coral Reinsurance.

Coral repeated all of her earlier categorical denials of any involvement with Coral Reinsurance. The same went for Carlos and Vesco. She stressed that Lehder had absolutely nothing to do with the drug business any more. A question about Capital Investment Group’s possible involvement got her agitated after I told her what I had discovered at Gateway Blvd. the day before.

“The last thing I need is to be connected with any Russians!,” she said. “My Capital Investment Group is in the Bahamas. I fund an orphanage with it. That’s all,” she said. I produced a copy of the Treasury report and she went through it line by line looking for information about CIG. While not confirming that report was authentic she did not dispute any information it contained with one exception. She confirmed that the aliases of Coral Marie Talavera, Coral Marie Baca and Coral Marie Lehder were correct. The date of birth was correct. The relationship with Lehder (the employee) and Talavera (the subject) was at least 18 years old. She breathed a sigh of relief to read the information showing Capital Investment Group having been founded by her in 1987 and agreed with the statement that she and Lehder were the only shareholders. An entry indicating that in 1995 she had been instrumental in negotiating Lehder’s release from the Bureau of Prisons drew a nod. She made no comment about the fact that the report showed that she had been investigated by the FBI, Department of Justice, Department of Defense and the CIA by means of traditional investigation, “wiretaps” and informants.” She also did not question the fact that the report showed her and Lehder as having multiple residences in Oakland California; San Francisco; Boca Chica, Florida; Salinas Ecuador; and Great Exuma, the Bahamas. Her net worth was conservatively “estimated” at $7,369,024.

The only item on the report she disputed was a statement indicating that she might possibly be Lehder’s adopted daughter. That made her angry.

Turning back to Capital Investment Group she said, “Capital Investment Group is my company. But I work for AIG. My company has nothing to do with these Russians. This Coral Reinsurance is a good story. You should go after it.” I remembered that in an earlier conversation where she was giving me on-the-record quotes about her non-involvement with Coral Reinsurance she had said that reinsurance was a great way to launder money.

Coral told me that she was planning on leaving AIG in December. That, she said, had nothing to do with my work on Coral Reinsurance. We then talked about the painful experiences I had had many years ago when, as a young policeman in 1976, I had fallen in love with a female CIA agent and come across evidence of CIA involvement in the drug trade. My refusal to go along with her work cost me the relationship and my attempts to expose CIA wrongdoing had cost me my career. I remarked that my lover had been every bit as beautiful as Coral. I had been left with an obsession that had lasted for many years. As we left the restaurant Coral turned to me sympathetically and said, “Who knows. Maybe one day there’ll be a knock at your door.”

As I shook her hand goodbye I answered, “I’ve worked through that… I would be immune now.”

During the lunch I mentioned the fact that someone connected with Carlos’ defense (Kincaid) was trying to reach him and I mentioned the name. This is the senior paralegal who has given me information for this story. After the lunch I sent an e-mail to Coral saying that I had given the paralegal Coral’s office number and that she would be calling. I had no wish to interfere with attorney-client privilege.

The following Monday Kincaid called me at my Sherman Oaks office and told me that Coral had resigned on Friday, two days after our lunch and gone to Cuba. An immediate call to the receptionist confirmed this. Coral was gone.

Official Responses

The FBI — A spokesman for the San Francisco Office of the FBI stated that he is unaware of any such (wiretap or e-mail) investigation.”

The Department of Justice — Asked on June 28^th to state whether or not Carlos Lehder is still in prison and/or a member of the Witness Security program or whether he was an employee of the U.S. government, spokeswoman Susan Dryden stated that she would look into it and have someone call me back as soon as possible. As of press time a week later, no one has called me back.

The Treasury — After three phone calls and voice mail messages resulting in no response, Treasury spokesperson Tasia Scolinos stated on June 29^th that she did not know the John D’Angelo whom I had spoken to last November and did could not find the material I had sent him then. I found this strange since she gave me the same phone number I had used to reach D’Angelo and she had replaced him. She asked me to write a detailed request for the information I was seeking (which I did) and send her another fax of the document (which I did). She then suggested that, because the document had been stamped “Sealed by the Court” that I visit each court house in the San Francisco Bay area to see if I could find the file. She would consult an attorney at Treasury and get back to me. As of press time I have received no further response.

Question: If, after this story breaks, the Department of Justice holds a press conference and invites CNN and TIME into a prison to interview and photograph Carlos Lehder, will anyone believe that he will still be there the next day?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: – Special thanks to: Mark Swaney, Al Giordano, Lois, Lara Johnson, Linda Minor, Dave Hendrix, Marc Harris, Kincaid, and Peter Dale Scott.

See Fed nears a deal to take over ailing AIG

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/who-is-aig-and-why-should-you-care-by-mike-ruppert-2001/

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American International Group (AIG)

http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/american_international_group_aig