SERIES:

As the Press Spins – Anatomy of an Award-winning expose

Do not believe anything you read in the press, particularly in the Miami Herald. We have already proved in our anti-award winning series, 'As the Press Spins - Anatomy of an Expose', that Miami’s daily mainstream rag must be full of half-truths if not complete falsehoods.

Of course any news consumer familiar with the wisdom of the messiahs should know in advance that neither truth nor salvation nor wisdom can be purchased. Truth, salvation, and wisdom must be worked for, so beware of anyone who would try to sell it.

Now the Miami Herald has won yet another award for its misleading and slanderous series, WATCHDOG – ALLEN STANFORD: In addition to winning a prestigious award from a self-congratulating society that has been fully apprised of the spurious nature of the Herald series, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Herald announced (6/26/10) that it has won the National Press Club Award in the Newspaper Consumer Journalism Category "for revealing government failures that allowed billionaire Allen Stanford to launch a $7 billion Ponzi scheme from a bayfront Miami high-rise." The award for its entry, entitled ‘Allen Stanford’s Miami Connection,’ should have been for newspaper consumer fraud.

The Miami Herald falsely and repeatedly accused Florida's banking division and its director Arthur M. Simon, of “permitting” Allen Stanford to illegally open an office in Miami “over the objections” of his banking counsel Richard Donelan, to launder money stolen from investors, shipping bags and bags of the booty from its opulent offices to the airport, to be privately jetted to Stanford's Potemkin bank in Antigua - actually, most of the funds went elsewhere.

Our anti-award winning series has demonstrated that the newspaper's indictments were false. And since the Miami Herald editors and writers were made aware of the falsehoods, yet neither retractions nor apologies have been published, they are now convicted scoundrels, for they consciously continue to propagate a pack of lies and accept awards for their misconduct.

At least the article trumpeting the gratuitous award received from their private club has softened its tone a bit:

"The Herald stores revealed how Florida regulators permitted the banker to open an unregistered office in Miami a decade ago, despite concerns from the state's chief banking counsel."

Well, we have shown that anyone could have opened up the kind of office Stanford opened in Florida without any permit from the State of Florida at all, but Stanford counsel erred when they tried to file corporate papers with the words "trust company" in the name, so the corporations department automatically kicked out the application, for trust companies are regulated "financial institutions" that do have to obtain statutory permission from the state bank regulators.

Stanford counsel went to the banking division and insisted that the filing was not for a financial institution but was for an out-of-state trust company representative office, for which no permission from banking was necessary. Banking analysts agreed with that proposition, but the fact that "out-of-state" in this case was "offshore" raised concerns with the regulators, including its director Arthur M. Simon.

Therefore a memorandum was drafted whereby the U.S. affiliate of Stanford Trust Company Limited would be called "Stanford Fiduciary Investor Services" and agree to abide by the usual rules observed by out-of-state trust representative offices, which, again, do not have to obtain any permission from banking.

If the banking division had refused to allow Stanford Trust's representative office to do business in Florida, Stanford counsel could have gotten a writ from the court mandating the allowance, for an allowance was not required by statute in the first place.

Dr. Simon signed off on the memorandum after all concerns were allayed, obviously including those of Mr. Donelan. The repeatedly published assertion that he finally signed off “over the objections” of Mr. Donelan, which there is not a shred of written evidence for, is obviously absurd to anyone who knows anything about how lawyers work.

The reporters honored for the series were Michael Sallah, Rob Barry, and Lucy Komisar. Again, the Herald is careful to mention its investigations and government editor on the case, Ronnie Greene. The fact that none of these persons have publicly admitted to error nor apologized for it compounds the seriousness of a falsity rooted in their apparent want of conscience; lack of scruples is a better way of putting it.

Mind the reader that we do not envy professional i.e. paid reporters their awards for spurious reporting, for our job as members of the truly free press, where truth cannot be purchased, is to deface the common coin that couches so many public lies. That the Miami Herald would continue to propagate the falsehoods after proven false demonstrates that the Miami Herald is the slanderer's herald. In fine, we do not envy liars.

Fie on the Miami Herald!

For it heralded not the truth about the Stanford affair when it blamed the Florida banking division and its director Dr. Simon for illegally creating the Ponzi-scheme disaster and allowing Stanford's Miami office to bilk billions out of innocent foreigners seeking high returns, and in many cases the classical benefits of trusts - to hide assets, to avoid and evade the taxes of undemocratic governments.

Fie on the Miami Herald!

The Miami Herald heralded not the truth but a pack of trumped up charges calculated to sell papers and win awards by feeding not off the truth but off the mass hysteria, off the characteristic fascist fear of Jewish bankers and hatred for republican government no matter what government does or does not do.

Fie on the Miami Herald!

If any branch of government were to be rightly accused of consumer fraud, it would be the fourth branch. Indeed, in this case the fourth branch itself should be indicted for consumer fraud. But it has managed to shield itself from liability for its libels and other falsehoods while prostituting itself to Mammon.

Fie on the Miami Herald!

This insensitive watchdog of ours is indeed a slobbering bitch, attending to its own brute needs while posing as a sophisticated liberal democrat - yes, it is a werewolf in sheep's clothing.

Fie on the Miami Herald!

This ingratiating watchdog of ours turned tricks for the power elite and slept soundly while we were robbed of our money and democratic heritage.

Fie on the Miami Herald!

This Rip Van Winkle watchdog of ours awoke only after we were robbed blind, and then barked at the wrong wheels rolling down the street.

Fie on the professional press associations and clubs!

And for all that its self-serving professional associations and private club pins medals on its chest instead of drumming it out of the corps and exiling it for condemning Dreyfus!

Fie on the Miami Herald!

As the reader can see, this scoundrel loves polemic, so much so that I've hurt my arm typing it. I shall in a more measured tone continue our anti-award wining series later, further debunking the Miami Herald’s award-winning myth in a discussion of another matter the rag is taking deep bows for: "The reports sparked legislation that expanded state oversight over all foreign financial institutions in Florida." For now, I recapitulate what our independent investigation has found and published thus far:

We have demonstrated that 1) former Florida bank regulation director Arthur M. Simon was repeatedly and unfairly defamed by the Miami Herald, as he did not, over the objections of the banking department's chief counsel Richard T. Donelan, approve of an agreement with Allen Stanford et al to open an international trust representative office in Miami; 2) contrary to Miami Herald reports, the agreement he signed was in no way illegal or contrary to state or federal law; 3) contrary to Miami Herald reports, Dr. Simon did not permit Stanford Trust Company Limited d/b/a Stanford Fiduciary Investor Services to violate Florida law during his tenure as director of the banking division; 4) contrary to Miami Herald reports, Florida law did not prohibit such an office from opening; 5) contrary to the Miami Herald reports, Stanford could have otherwise legally proceeded to open such an office, but decided to submit to criteria proposed by the Department of Banking, criteria that in principle was already standard in respect to out-of-state domestic trust representative offices; 6) contrary to the Miami Herald reports, the agreement did not exempt the Florida representative office of Stanford Trust Company from state and federal anti-money-laundering laws or any other laws whatsoever including securities violations; 7) contrary to Miami Herald reports, the actions brought against the Stanford Group entities and related persons are for securities violations and not for trust representative office activities per se, therefore the regulatory responsibility for that would not have been with the state banking division but with the state securities division and the federal regulatory agency; 8) contrary to Miami Herald reports, no red flags were raised during the first examination of Stanford's Miami office by bank examiners, and the Miami Herald literally created a whistleblower out of thin air; 9) the Miami Herald investigators did not notice an enormous red flag in the record of the second visit by bank examiners - a "red flag" in the sense that the trust representative office might have been operating outside of the normal rules for all out-of-state trust representative offices, something that might have warranted a further investigation.