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Dark Side Last Updated: Jun 21, 2018 - 10:13:24 AM


Wilbur Ross, known liar, is still lying
By Bess Levin, Levin Report 18/6/18
Jun 19, 2018 - 11:09:11 AM

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With the Trump administration putting kids in detention centers and trying to claim they’re sleep-away camps that hold up to the standards of Jesus himself, it can be hard to think of this collection of people as anything but utter monsters. But it‘s important to remember that they’re not just monsters—they’re also money-grubbing con artists exclusively out to enrich themselves.

Luckily, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, last seen lying about his net worth(possibly for a decade!), concealing his investment in a Russian shipping firm with ties to Vladimir Putin, and allegedly bilking his former colleagues out of millions, will never let us forget. Forbes’s Dan Alexander has the latest:

Unlike his boss, Ross promised to divest from almost all his holdings upon entering government, drawing bipartisan praise en route to an easy confirmation. “You have really made a very personal sacrifice,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut. “Your service has resulted in your divesting yourself of literally hundreds of millions of dollars.” In November 2017, Ross confirmed in writing to the federal Office of Government Ethics that he had divested everything he promised.

You can probably guess where this is going . . .

But that was not true.

Instead, per Forbes, Ross spent most of 2017 “serv[ing] as secretary of commerce while maintaining stakes in companies co-owned by the Chinese government, a shipping firm tied to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, a Cypriot bank reportedly caught up in the Robert Mueller investigation, and a huge player in an industry Ross is now investigating. It’s hard to imagine a more radioactive portfolio for a Cabinet member.” What’s more, Ross’s family reportedly maintains an interest in these holdings, because Ross sold some interests to Goldman Sachs and put others in a trust for his children, meaning he “continued to deal with China, Russia, and others while evidently knowing that his family’s interests were tied to those countries.” But wait, there’s more:

In addition, five days before reports surfaced last fall that Ross was connected to cronies of Vladimir Putin through a shipping firm called Navigator Holdings, the secretary of commerce, who likely knew about the reporting, shorted stock in the Kremlin-linked company, positioning himself to make money on the investment when share prices dropped.

While Ross’s conflicts of interests are seemingly legal, albeit disreputable, Forbes posits that he may have broken the law at least once: when he submitted a sworn statement to federal officials in November saying he’d dutifully divested from everything he said he would. According to the magazine, he maintained ties to at least two companies until a full month later. Oops!

When reached for comment on his holdings, Ross passed the message to his spokesperson, who eventually sent a one-sentence statement. When asked to “respond to a list of detailed questions,” the spokesperson reportedly “declined to answer most of them,” but reportedly emphasized the fact that Ross had eventually divested of his holdings. “The secretary did not lie,” the spokesperson said in response to allegations that Ross had broken the law.


Source:Ocnus.net 2018

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