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Sen. Barack Obama’s Stock Deals Questioned
Just weeks after taking his seat in the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama was involved in two questionable business deals, buying stock in companies whose backers included major donors to his political campaigns. In February 2005, Obama bought about $5,000 worth of stock in AVI BioPharma, a drug company working to develop a medicine to treat avian flu victims, according to Senate disclosure statements cited by the New York Times. Less than two weeks later, Sen. Obama began pushing for an increase in federal financing to fight avian flu, a move that eventually helped lead to the Senate’s approval of a $3.8 billion appropriation to fight the flu. George Haywood, a major investor in AVI BioPharma, and his wife have contributed nearly $50,000 to Obama’s campaigns and his political action committee.
Story Continues Below Obama also bought more than $50,000 worth of stock in Skyterra, a satellite communications company. Tejas Securities, a brokerage that handled investment banking for Skyterra, and people associated with it have raised more than $150,000 for Obama’s political action committees since 2004, the Times reported. Tejas’ chairman, John Gordon, has held fund-raisers for Obama, and the Illinois Democrat used Gordon’s private plane to travel to political events in 2005. At the time Obama made the stock investments, he was "enjoying sudden financial success,” according to the Times. He had signed a $1.9 million deal for his book "The Audacity of Hope” after becoming the third African-American elected to the Senate since Reconstruction. And his wife Michelle, now vice president for community and external affairs at University of Chicago Hospitals, had received a promotion that nearly tripled her salary to $317,000. Obama’s spokesman Bill Burton said the presidential hopeful was unaware that he had invested in the two companies. Obama’s broker had bought the stocks without consulting with him, under a blind trust that was being set up at the time, according to Burton.
Obama finally learned of the investments in the fall of 2005, said Burton, and sold the stocks at a loss of $13,000. "There is no evidence that any of [Obama’s] actions ended up benefiting either company during the roughly eight months that he owned the stocks,” the Times disclosed. "Even so, the stock purchases raise questions about how he could unwittingly come to invest in two relatively obscure companies, whose backers happen to include generous contributors to his political committees.” After the Times article appeared, spokesman Burton insisted that Obama’s "dealings were completely above board."
© NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: Inside Cover Stories
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