| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
28 Nov 2003 10:06:15 AM |
| Object: |
Neil Bush's China scandals |
From Salon, 11/26/03:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2003/11/26/neil_bush/
Joe Conason's Journal
As fans of the ruling dynasty know, Neil Bush is winding up an
exceptionally messy divorce.
Lawyers representing his ex-wife Sharon have extracted fascinating
details of his current business affairs, evoking memories not only of
his involvement with the infamous Silverado Savings and Loan but also
of the "China scandals" that once plagued the Clintons.
Apparently the presidential sibling is now on the payroll of a
Taiwan-based company with powerful connections in Beijing.
Sharon Bush's attorneys questioned her former husband last March, but
the documents that included his deposition weren't released until
yesterday.
According to this Reuters dispatch, Neil Bush admitted under oath that
he made a highly lucrative deal in August 2002 with Grace
Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp.
That company, which is reportedly "backed by Jiang Mianheng, the son
of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin," recently opened a large
manufacturing plant in Shanghai.
Bush explained that he had been invited to join Grace's board by
Winston Wong, a co-founder of the company and son of the chairman of
Taiwan's largest business group, Formosa Plastics.
His consulting contract with Grace will eventually provide Bush with
$2 million in stock.
(Wong has also provided financing -- along with numerous other Asian
and Arab investors -- for Ignite!, Bush's educational software
company.)
Why would Winston Wong and Jiang Mianheng procure the costly services
of Bush, who barely escaped prosecution and whose business history
ranges from moribund to disastrous?
That same question occurred to Marshall Davis Brown, a lawyer for
Sharon Bush.
"You have absolutely no educational background in semiconductors do
you?" Brown asked Neil Bush during the March 4 deposition.
"That's correct," he responded.
"And you have absolutely, over the last 10, 15, 20 years, not a lot of
demonstrable business experience that would bring about a company
investing $2 million in you?"
Bush replied that he didn't think Grace had invested $2 million in him
because he hasn't actually received any of the stock yet.
Reuters only provides a few more brief excerpts from the deposition,
although his wife's attorneys questioned him closely about several
curious business deals that provide tidy sums for little or no work.
All this is business as usual in the Bush tradition of crony
capitalism.
Cashing in on the family name is an entitlement that very few of them
have passed up.
But I can't help wondering about the media firestorm this news would
have created if the errant relative's name were Clinton (or Rodham)
instead of Bush.
We'll see whether the Chinese Communist angle draws the attention of
the Washington press corps.
But the media, almost always enticed by sexual misbehavior, has mostly
avoided the gamy stories that have already emerged from the Bush
divorce.
That subject arose again during the March deposition, when Sharon
Bush's lawyer asked about women who had mysteriously showed up at Neil
Bush's hotel rooms in Thailand and Hong Kong for sexual assignations.
Neil Bush insisted that he didn't pay the women and didn't know who
might have arranged for their services.
His ex-wife's attorney sounded skeptical.
"Mr. Bush, you have to admit it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man
just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing
there and have sex with her," said Brown.
"It was very unusual," the errant husband replied.
Obviously this could provide rich material for cable television, with
Sharon Bush's lawyers telling tales on "Hardball" or "Larry King
Live."
Yet I suspect that discretion, -- and double standards known as "the
Clinton rules" -- will prevail.
_______________________________________________________
Shades of Silverado.
Harry
.
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