bttt
Gone With the Wind: Carbon Millionaires Arrested for Fraud (Four Winds)
November 15, 2009
Italian Wind Fraud Investigation Extends to the Netherlands, UK, Ireland, and Spain.
For some carbon millionaires, lining their pockets legally through taxpayer subsidies and hand outs is not enough. They choose to cheat even though they’re playing a game that’s already rigged.
The Financial Times reports that:
Oreste Vigorito, head of the IVPC energy company and president of Italy’s National Association of Wind Energy, was arrested on Tuesday in Naples. Vito Nicastri, a Sicilian business associate, was arrested in Alcamo, Sicily.
Two other men were arrested in Sicily and the Naples area, while 11 others were charged but not arrested.
“Gone with the wind”, mounted by the finance ministry’s anti-fraud police, started in 2007 and began by blocking public subsidies worth €9.4m ($14m, £8.4m) granted by the ministry for economic development. Last year, police confiscated seven wind farms with 185 turbines in Sicily linked to IVPC.
Anti-mafia prosecutors in Sicily have launched a parallel investigation.
FT reports that these saviors of our planet were building wind farms that were “BUILT WITH PUBLIC SUBSIDIES BUT HAD NEVER FUNCTIONED.”
Vigorito had ties to BRIAN CAFFYN, founder of the controversial “CAPE WIND” project planned for Massachusetts’ Nantucket Sound, which has been criticized as a poor investment for taxpayers for the energy it will produce. Vigorito was not an investor in Cape Wind...
http://cfact.eu/2009/11/15/gone-with-the-wind-arrests-for-massive-fraud-in-italy/
Ospraie, D.E. Shaw, Developer to Build Rhode Island Wind Farm
By Jim Polson - September 25, 2008 15:22 EDT
Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) — Ospraie Management LLC, D.E. SHAW & Co. and a development company were SELECTED to build a $1 BILLION offshore wind farm that will provide 15 percent of Rhode Island’s power.
Construction is dependent on negotiation of a formal agreement and approval by state and federal regulators, Governor Donald L. Carcieri said today in a statement. DEEPWATER WIND, a venture OWNED BY OSPRAIE, SHAW and a development firm called FIRST WIND, was SELECTED from among seven groups that proposed doing the project.
The state put the project out for bids in April. Deepwater Wind plans to build the wind farm without state funding, the governor said.
FIRST WIND, based in Newton, Massachusetts, has 92 megawatts of wind turbines in operation, according to the statement. First Wind’s backers include investment firms MADISON DEARBORN PARTNERS LLC and SHAW, according to its Web site.
Ospraie is the New York investment firm that shut down its biggest hedge fund this month because of losses on commodities investments.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a_iLNJiO0VBU&refer=us
[...]In September 2009, after FIRST WIND AFFILIATES received $115 MILLION in federal stimulus money, $74.6 million of which for the Cohocton NY project, U.S. Rep. Eric J. Massa (D-N.Y.) wrote to President Barack Obama, calling the grants “very alarming” and saying the company “abused the public trust. “No electricity has been produced for sale out of the projects,” but the company “has already collected production rewards for non-existent energy,” Massa told Obama.
Back in the First Wind SEC IPO application is the acknowledgement that hedging on REC’s was a common practice. One of the projects inclusive in non-existing electric production hedging was the proposed Prattsburgh, NY development. That venture was never built and the developer ultimately made a formal withdrawal from the town and terminated their land leases.
Will the public get an accurate account if those hedges were legal or complied with government regulations? Do not expect federal authorities to keep First Wind honest. THE FINANCIAL OWNERSHIP OF FIRST WIND RESIDES WITH MADISON DEARBORN and D.E. SHAW HEDGE FUNDS, 42% for each firm. Madison Dearborn has friends in high places, RAHM EMMUEL being one.
After leaving the Clinton Administration. Emanuel, engaged in investment banking at WASSERSTEIN PERELLA. Madison Dearborn did business through Emanuel.
Madison Dearborn Partners, a Chicago private equity firm is located is in the same building as Wasserstein’s offices.
The New York Times writes,
“Back in 1998 John Simpson, who ran the Chicago office of the investment banking boutique Wasserstein Perella & Company, had flown to Washington to meet with Mr. Emanuel at the behest of Mr. Simpson’s boss, Bruce Wasserstein, a major Democratic donor and renowned Wall Street dealmaker who had gotten to know Mr. Emanuel. “I had this idea that this could work and that it had upside,” Mr. Wasserstein, now chairman and chief executive of LAZARD, the investment bank, told The Times. “It worked out better than I could have hoped.”
“And better than Mr. Emanuel could have imagined as well. Over the course of a three-hour-plus dinner, Mr. Simpson and Mr. Emanuel discussed how they might work together.”
Upon leaving the private sector, Emanuel received campaign contributions from Madison Dearborn Partners, in the amount of $98,200 from 2002-2010.
Larry Summers did even better....
http://batr.org/reactionary/042510.html
I don’t know that the Emanuel implication can be proven but there’s certainly a link though D.E. Shaw has no need him anyway. certainly didn’t need him as he’s got friends that are a lot higher in the corrupt pyramid.
“UPC (FIRST WIND) has been working in China since 2006, and we have seen this market go from a standing start to one of the largest in the world for wind energy. We expect to see sustained long term growth in the wind market in China, and UPC, with support from GEF, is looking forward to participating fully in this market,” said BRIAN CAFFYN, CEO and Chairman of UPC.
http://batr.org/view/052310.html
5/01/2008: They changed their name from UPC to Four Winds
7/21/2009 First Winds gets 115 million loan from investor - Alberta Management Corporation (AIMCo) and another from HSH Norbank for Four Winds Stetson Project – the largest Windmill Farm in New England.
9/03/2009 First Winds (gets first Recovery Act grant) awarded $115 million in grants from the US Department of Treasury and Energy via The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
http://www.cohoctonwind.com/cohocton/news.cfm?ID=4a6350cf%2Db75b%2D4ba5%2D847d%2D6e2baf3d6bfa&test
http://www.cohoctonwind.com/cohocton/news.cfm
First Wind warns of possible loan default
Date: Friday, May 14, 2010
...First Wind’s projects come with heavy up-front capital costs. In the first quarter, the company’s net loss more than doubled to $10.6 million, compared with a net loss of $3.5 million in the year-ago period...
Over the past 18 months, though, First Wind has proved adept at accessing capital. Since the beginning of 2009, the company said it has refinanced, raised or received about $2 billion for First Wind and its projects.
The company’s investors include Chicago-based private equity firm Madison Dearborn Capital Partners and hedge fund heavyweight D.E. Shaw.
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2010/05/10/daily47.html
2008: Lehman’s was their initial financier (which makes one wonder why Lehman’s wasn’t “saved” - why not?):
http://www.cohoctonwind.com/cohocton/news.cfm?ID=4670bd36-5d3d-403c-af6e-3358f759a6c1&test
D.E. SHAW & CO LP:
In 1994, Shaw was appointed by President Clinton to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, where he was chairman of the Panel on Educational Technology.
In 2000, he was elected to the board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science served as its treasurer 2000-2010.
In 2007, Shaw was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 2008, Forbes estimated his wealth to $2.5 billion.
In 2009, he was appointed by President Obama again to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.[3]
In 2007, David Shaw sold a 20% minority stake in the Shaw group to LEHMAN BROTHERS, as part of a broader strategy to diversify his personal holdings.[citation needed] At the time of its bankruptcy in September 2009 Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., had holdings in D.E. Shaw & Co.[15]
In 2006, Lawrence Summers became managing director at D.E. Shaw & Co. and left in 2008, receiving $5.2 million in compensation for that period.[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_shaw
MADISON DEARBORN PARTNERS
Madison Dearborn Partners (MDP) is a private equity firm specializing in leveraged buyouts of privately held or publicly traded companies, or divisions of larger companies; recapitalizations of family-owned or closely held companies; balance sheet restructurings; acquisition financings; and growth capital investments in mature companies.
MDP invests through a series of private limited partnerships and its investors include a variety of PENSION FUNDS, endowments and other institutional investors:
1993 - Madison Dearborn Capital Partners ($550 million)
1997 - Fund II ($925 million)
1999 - Fund III ($2.2 billion)
2000 - Fund IV ($4.1 billion)
2006 - Fund V ($6.5 billion)
2010 - Fund VI ($4.1 billion)[11]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Dearborn_Partners
Madison Dearborn Partners - John Canning - board members (I think this is the bunch who got Obama elected):
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/relationship.asp?personId=74410
D.E.Shaw Co., LP - board affiliations - one of them is Jonathan Silver from the DOE (Silver ...
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/relationship.asp?personId=232164
Shaw was a major contributor to Obama’s inaugural and he’s a fund raiser for his 2012 election...the Blackstone Group has popped up - it was only a matter of time....
http://www.muckety.com/D-E-Shaw-Co-LP/5012812.muckety
Senator Wyden’s Son Starts Hedge Fund After D.E. Shaw Stint
February 24, 2011
...Before graduating last year from Columbia University’s business school in New York with a master’s degree, Adam Wyden worked as an intern at the $19 billion hedge fund founded by David Shaw, a Democratic fundraiser who backed Ron Wyden’s campaigns in 2004 and 2010....
Ron Wyden received contributions totaling $9,600 from Shaw and his wife, Beth, during 2009, with each giving the maximum $4,800 that individuals are allowed to donate for any election cycle, OpenSecrets.org said. Shaw gave $5,000 last year to Holding Onto Oregon’s Priorities, a political action committee set up by Wyden to help other Democratic candidates, and $33,500 to the party’s senatorial and congressional campaign committees...(he’s also a friend of BIll and Hill)
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-02-24/senator-wyden-s-son-starts-hedge-fund-after-d-e-shaw-stint.html
Merkley, Wyden Announce Nearly $150 Million in Recovery Act Funding for Oregon Wind Farms
Sep-01-2009
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/september012009/wind_farms_9-1-09.php
One wonders who got our money this time.