Forms Show Romney Ran Bain for Longer Than He's Claimed
Mitt Romney was still making decisions at Bain Capital, and still getting paid for it, for at least three years longer than he's previously said, the Boston Globe reported on Thursday. The story, from reporters Callum Borchers and Christopher Rowland, cited a 2001 SEC filing which stated that Romney remained remained the firm's "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president" after 1999, when he's always said he left to go run the Winter Olympics in Utah. They also point to a Massachusetts financial disclosure form from 2003 that said he owned 100 percent of the firm in 2002. They write, "Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings."
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The report will give the Obama campaign new ammunition to attack Romney's record at the financial firm, which is already the subject of a series of videos on the website Romney Economics, set up by the Obama campaign. Layoffs and bankruptcies of companies Bain owned have haunted Romney's political career going back to his gubernatorial run in Massachusetts when his Democratic opponent's campaign featured a laid off worker at Kansas City's GST Steel. Romney's explanation then, and to similar attacks from the Obama campaign, has been that he wasn't in control of Bain when they happened in 2001.
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The 1999 departure date appears to come from a retroactive clause in his severance agreeement. Borchers and Rowland write, "Romney did not finalize a severance agreement with Bain until 2002, a 10-year deal with undisclosed terms that was retroactive to 1999. It expired in 2009." The Globe's been beating up on Romney for Bain's record running various companies for years, such as the 2008 report that he "stayed to the side" as paper company Ampad went down.
