Skip to main content

Something or nothing? You decide: Kuwaiti broker dies only days after SEC files suit

(Burned and wet dollar by gothick_matt via Flickr.com)

Maybe this is something, maybe it’s nothing; maybe it's only a movie script waiting to happen.

There’s a rash of stories today about the “apparent” suicide of Kuwaiti broker Hazem Khalid al-Braikan, found shot to death in his home Sunday morning Kuwait time.

Seems al-Braikan had been involved in running up the price of stock(s) in fake takeover attempts; he bought up enough stock that it appeared someone was going to take controlling interest of a firm, then dumped the stock after the price had run up because other firms bought into the uptick.

The SEC had filed a lawsuit against al-Braikan’s firm and several others on Thursday this week, for alleged trading “around hoax bids for US companies.”

Textron, a firm which has historically had government contracts, was one of the firms in which al-Braikan had been trading earlier this year.

The most recent stock in which al-Braikan took an initial position on June 1 and sold out on July 20?

Harman International.

You may recognize the name Harman, of course; the firm was founded in 1978 by Rep. Jane Harman's (D-CA) spouse, Sidney Harman. Sidney stepped down as CEO of the firm in 2007, replaced as part of a turn-around plan in advance of a planned buyout by KKR and Goldman Sachs. KKR and Goldman backed out, however. The CEO stepped up to the chairmanship the following year, with Sidney retaining only an honorific position with the firm.

Rep. Harman's 2007 financial report reflected holdings including as much as $200 million in Harman International stock along with a half-million in the same firm's retirement plan.

Is this something or is it nothing, purely coincidental that a now-dead Kuwaiti broker picked on Harman International? Who knows...but SEC sure can hustle and take action when it wants to, can’t it? it was only 3 days between the time the accumulated positions were dumped and the SEC filed suit…

[Cross-posted at FDL's The Seminal]

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Veep in deep

The Veep "accidentally" shoots a fellow hunter. From here on there is absolutely nothing good about this story. It stinks like curdled milk and three-day-old fish on a summer's day in Dallas. How do we even begin to count the ways in which this reeks? The 22-hour gap: WTF? There's absolutely no excuse for this, we can all agree on this point. But why? Was a key person in this story under the influence of a substance that would take a day to clear? Were they trying to get their stories straight? Heck, could they not come up with a story? Or was the victim not in the clear for that long? The "group" of hunters: Why did it take even longer than the 22-hour gap to identify the third hunter? Why is the media repeatedly using the word "group" to describe two people (Dick Cheney and Pamela Willemore)? The composition of the party: A divorcee ranch owner. An older man who does not appear to be married at this time. A woman sans spouse....
7 comments
Read more

Tinkering in progress

Nuts. I tried to post a rather long piece yesterday, attempting to create an expandable post so that only a lead-in appears on the main blog and the body is expanded only on selection of a link. I'm tripping over the auto-formatting that Blogger inserts into posts; it insists on embedding a begin-font tag all over the place, but no closing font tag. It's driving me nuts! I guess I'll have to try using a post template so that the text on all posts is the same unless indicated otherwise, to try and override the default fonting. Bear with me; you might see what looks like an old post appear between here and the previous post. But enough about me -- how are you?
6 comments
Read more

Birth of an activist: So you want to be a grassroots activist...

Yeah, me too, I wanted to become something more than an angry American, nauseated every day by what I read and saw at work in government. I'd recently started blogging, but it wasn't enough. I needed results, something more than yelling into the void every day over a hot keyboard. As days went by I felt more and more isolated, alone, freakish, and horribly frustrated by the perception my country was sliding rapidly down a slippery, ugly slope towards something I couldn't label. I'd read about a campaign that intrigued me, some guy out east that had a straightforward and pragmatic way of looking at matters and addressing them, a guy who actually had some chops at doing what needed to be done. He'd balanced a budget for more than a decade, while providing healthcare to all senior citizens and children in his state – and he did not believe we had solid intelligence to go to war in Iraq. Damn, I thought, I want some of THAT. Where do I sign up? Mind you, I...
4 comments
Read more