While this week didn’t have any new scandals–damn–Greg Meeks’ involvement with financier schemer R. Allen Sanford has been brought back to the surface as allegations that the SEC ignored one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history for eight years.
It may be difficult to comprehend that a commission who’s mission is ” to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation” would miss out on such a large show, especially since numerous insiders and examinations by their own employees pointed out that the financial group was, perhaps, a cover for something else from as early as 1997. And what about Mr. Madoff? How’d they miss that one? What could they have possibly been spending their time doing that they couldn’t have followed up on the complaints?
Greg Meeks’ involvement with Sanford goes back to 2006, when the Congressman was allegedly contacted by Sanford to “retaliate” against a former Venezuelan employee of Sanford’s who was threatening to blow the whistle on the whole thing. So, like any self-respecting Congressman would do, Greg Meeks paid a visit to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (paid, allegedly, by Sanford). A year later, the whistle blower was indicted. And Meeks? He was rewarded with a trip to the Caribbean funded by the Inter-American Economic Council–a non-profit created by Sanford.
I’d wondered how Greg Meeks could be so pro-bank coming from an area that was hit so hard by corporate greed and shoddy mortgages. But now, it’s coming more into focus. You want to run for re-election? You need money. You want to get a better gig down in DC? Cash money, yo. And as far as the trips go–I can see Meeks’ brain working to explain it. Everybody was doing it; why should he get in on a little fun? The thought that it would risk his career didn’t really occur to him. Meeks, clueless and out of touch, jumped the shark.