Word: sec
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...SEC says Miller knows about Textron's wining and dining...
...said G. William Miller, suave, silver-haired chairman of the giant conglomerate Textron Inc. to his stockholders in 1976. Such statements were "erroneous and misleading," the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged last week; after a two-year investigation, it said Textron had made improper payments overseas. And while the SEC left open the question of whether Miller, who is now Secretary of the Treasury, knew about the payments, it said flatly that Miller did know about questionable entertainment provided by Textron at home...
These charges raised the possibility of a major scandal involving a member of the Carter Cabinet. The SEC's civil suit against Textron-Miller was not even named-accused the corporation of extensive bribery of foreign officials to push sales of helicopters, and of improperly wining and dining Pentagon officials. SEC charges have been filed against scores of other major U.S. corporations in the past few years, and Textron responded the way most others have: it did not admit guilt, but declined to put up any defense. Instead, it agreed to an injunction ordering it not to commit...
...would have been, if the company had been almost any other. But the SEC specifically alleged that Textron's "chairmen"-Miller was chairman from 1974 to 1978-knew that the company had spent $600,000 on liquor and meals for unnamed Department of Defense officials. Although the agency does not say so directly, Miller presumably should have known that such payments violated regulations prohibiting officials from accepting any kind of gratuity from a defense contractor. The SEC did allege, however, that Textron's chairmen knew that the company kept no accounting of the entertainment, even though...
Even more serious, the SEC charges reopened-but did not answer-an old question: Did Miller also know about Textron's foreign bribery? Stories about such bribes began to circulate in 1978, just as Miller came before the Senate Banking Committee for confirmation hearings on his nomination to be chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Committee Chairman William Proxmire questioned Miller closely. "My company did not bribe anybody," said Miller. If it had, he implied, he should have known Said Miller: "I have insisted that I be fully informed about any question of ethics that comes...