Recent reporting has stirred up quite a hornet’s nest with stories about Romney’s Bain Capital investing in a Chinese company whose main “product” was the outsourcing of American jobs to China. Amazingly, however, it’s not the articles that have raised all the buzz. It’s Romney’s response. You see, the Mittster claims that he wasn’t in charge of Bain during that period of time (which is what he says no matter which period of time is mentioned). Unfortunately, Bain’s own SEC filings show that he was.
On April 17, 1998, Brookside Capital Partners Fund, a Bain Capital affiliate, filed a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission noting that it had acquired 6.13 percent of Hong Kong-based Global-Tech Appliances, which manufactured household appliances in a production facility in the industrial city of Dongguan, China. That August, according to another SEC filing, Brookside upped its interest in Global-Tech to 10.3 percent. Both SEC filings identified Romney as the person in control of this investment: “Mr. W. Mitt Romney is the sole shareholder, sole director, President and Chief Executive Officer of Brookside Inc. and thus is the controlling person of Brookside Inc.” Each of these documents was signed by Domenic Ferrante, a managing director of Brookside and Bain.
So, the big question becomes did Mitt lie to the American people, or did Mitt lie to the SEC? If he lied to the SEC, well, that’s big news because it’s a felony. On the other hand, I suppose you could say that a politician lying to the public is just par for the course. But it does make it harder for folks to believe anything the man says.
Providing, of course, that you ever did…
Sources: Boston.com, Mother Jones, Salon, Washington Post
