Plato-quoting, West Point valedictorian, Rhodes scholar, former NATO Supreme allied commander, and one-time Presidential hopeful Gen. Wesley Clark had a carefully laid, three-point plan for life after public service. Here’s how The NY Times described it over a decade ago:
In searching for an aperture into civilian life, he sketched out three fresh careers. First he would enter business and amass $40 million (a figure he plucked out of the air to have a goal) and metamorphose into a modest version of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist. That done, he would recede into a university and teach leadership. He would also work at compressing his golf handicap (last seen stuck at 18) in preparation for Career No. 3: a teaching golf professional.
As it turns out, the part of that plan that would be most difficult for the average person (making $40 million) is much easier when your political and military career affords you lucrative business opportunities — like becoming the chairman of a notorious penny-stock-pushing, Chinese-fraud-promoting investment bank.
Via ABC (from 2013):
The SEC has brought more than 40 civil cases against Chinese firms, and the former head of the financial watchdog agency told ABC News that investigators were also looking into the conduct of key players in the U.S. who promoted the Chinese firms to potential investors.
One of the firms that pushed most aggressively for investment in Chinese companies was Rodman & Renshaw, a boutique operation based in New York and chaired by Clark, the retired four-star general and war hero who mounted a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. Clark became chairman of the investment firm in 2009, just as it was emerging as a central player in the China investment wave...
"Our firm was a leader in bringing small and medium-size Chinese companies to the U.S. capital markets," he said. "No one is more disappointed than the bankers at the firm that some of these companies -- despite receiving consistently clean bills of health from well-respected lawyers and auditors -- apparently concealed improper business practices."
The general did not run day-to-day activities at the firm, instead chairing board meetings and lending his star power during extravagant annual conferences, where investors were invited to hear presentations from dozens of Chinese companies trying to attract financing as they joined American stock exchanges. The conferences were luxurious affairs held at the Waldorf in New York and Le Royal Meridien Hotel in Shanghai. Henry Kissinger spoke at one, former Sen. Chris Dodd, D.-Conn., at another. Diana Ross performed, as did En Vogue.
Rodman & Renshaw shuttered its securities business following the Chinese fraud revelations, but that hasn’t stopped Clark from pitching pennies so to speak. As Bloomberg reports, Clark has lent his name (and fame) to at least 10 OTC companies ranging from a food truck operation aimed at convincing veterans to become traveling grilled cheese salesmen to a hydroponic lettuce outfit run by the trader who inspired Charlie Sheen’s Bud Fox.
Here are the details:
Sixteen years ago, Wesley Clark was the four-star U.S. Army general running the Kosovo war. These days, he’s been pitching food-truck franchises to military veterans and helping a convicted felon raise money to grow hydroponic lettuce...
Since he ran for president in 2004, Clark has joined the boards of at least 18 public companies, 10 of them penny-stock outfits, whose shares trade in the “over the counter” markets, a corner of Wall Street where fraud and manipulation are common.
All but one of the 10 lost value during Clark’s tenure. Three went bankrupt shortly after he left their boards, and the chief executive officer of one pleaded guilty to fraud. Only four of the 30,958 people in Bloomberg’s database of over-the-counter board members have served on more boards than Clark...
Besides serving on boards, Clark has worked as a consultant and an investment banker. His clients include the man behind the lettuce project, Dennis Levine, whose role in a 1980s insider-trading ring helped inspire the Charlie Sheen character in the movie Wall Street…
Levine, Clark’s client in the lettuce venture, pleaded guilty to securities fraud in the 1980s investigation that brought down Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken, the junk-bond king. A dapper dresser who drove a red Ferrari, Levine served two years in prison and was banned from the securities industry for life. In December, Clark helped Levine raise $500,000 from two investors through a small investment bank he runs, Enverra Capital. Securities filings show that was the first step in a planned $5 million fundraising. “We checked him out,” Clark says, “and he seemed honest and legitimate in this business”...
Levine runs VFT Global which, according to its website, “has integrated technologically advanced farming methods with greenhouse crop growing experience to develop innovative CEA production technology.” Only they haven’t. Here’s Bloomberg again:
Levine, 62, acknowledges in an interview that the company has never grown anything.
much more...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-14/former-nato-commander-presidential-candidate-makes-millions-pushing-penny-stocks
