Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital With Money From Families Tied To Death Squads

[Lakhota]

By Ryan Grim and Cole Stangler

In 1983, Bill Bain asked Mitt Romney to launch Bain Capital, a private equity offshoot of the successful consulting firm Bain & Company. After some initial reluctance, Romney agreed. The new job came with a stipulation: Romney couldn't raise money from any current clients, Bain said, because if the private equity venture failed, he didn't want it taking the consulting firm down with it.

When Romney struggled to raise funds from other traditional sources, he and his partners started thinking outside the box. Bain executive Harry Strachan suggested that Romney meet with a group of Central American oligarchs who were looking for new investment vehicles as turmoil engulfed their region.

Romney was worried that the oligarchs might be tied to "illegal drug money, right-wing death squads, or left-wing terrorism," Strachan later told a Boston Globe reporter, as quoted in the 2012 book "The Real Romney." But, pressed for capital, Romney pushed his concerns aside and flew to Miami in mid-1984 to meet with the Salvadorans at a local bank.

It was a lucrative trip. The Central Americans provided roughly $9 million -- 40 percent -- of Bain Capital's initial outside funding, the Los Angeles Times reported recently. And they became valued clients.

"Over the years, these Latin American friends have loyally rolled over investments in succeeding funds, actively participated in Bain Capital's May investor meetings, and are still today one of the largest investor groups in Bain Capital," Strachan wrote in his memoir in 2008. Strachan declined to be interviewed for this story.

When Romney launched another venture that needed funding -- his first presidential campaign -- he returned to Miami.

"I owe a great deal to Americans of Latin American descent," he said at a dinner in Miami in 2007. "When I was starting my business, I came to Miami to find partners that would believe in me and that would finance my enterprise. My partners were Ricardo Poma, Miguel Dueñas, Pancho Soler, Frank Kardonski, and Diego Ribadeneira."

Romney could also have thanked investors from two other wealthy and powerful Central American clans -- the de Sola and Salaverria families, who the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe have reported were founding investors in Bain Capital.

While they were on the lookout for investments in the United States, members of some of these prominent families -- including the Salaverria, Poma, de Sola and Dueñas clans -- were also at the time financing, either directly or through political parties, death squads in El Salvador. The ruling classes were deploying the death squads to beat back left-wing guerrillas and reformers during El Salvador's civil war.

The death squads committed atrocities on such a mass scale for so small a country that their killing spree sparked international condemnation. From 1979 to 1992, some 75,000 people were killed in the Salvadoran civil war, according to the United Nations. In 1982, two years before Romney began raising money from the oligarchs, El Salvador's independent Human Rights Commission reported that, of the 35,000 civilians killed, "most" died at the hands of death squads. A United Nations truth commission concluded in 1993 that 85 percent of the acts of violence were perpetrated by the right, while the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, which was supported by the Cuban government, was responsible for 5 percent.

When The Huffington Post asked the Romney campaign about Bain Capital accepting funds from families tied to death squads, a spokeswoman forwarded a 1999 Salt Lake Tribune article to explain the campaign's position on the matter. She declined to comment further.

"Romney confirms Bain had investors in El Salvador. But, as was Bain's policy with any big investor, they had the families checked out as diligently as possible," the Tribune wrote. "They uncovered no unsavory links to drugs or other criminal activity."

Nobody with a basic understanding of the region's history could believe that assertion.

Much More (with live supporting links): Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital With Money From Families Tied To Death Squads

 

[Truthmatters]

man oh man

 

[Sallow]

Ruh roh.

That's going to leave a mark.

 

[edthecynic]

Death panels - bad
Death squads - good

 

[Sallow]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVJkfXeTs9Q]The Rolling Stones - Undercover Of The Night - OFFICIAL PROMO (EXPLICIT) - YouTube[/ame]

 

[High_Gravity]

Yikes.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Democrats and their Scorched Earth Tactics.

Wow.

 

[Truthmatters]

yeah telling all the truths and things

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Dems ? Racist?

Pshaw! All Salvadorans backed death squads...eveyone knows that!

 

[Politico]

Gotta get funding from somewhere right?

 

[Sallow]

Dems ? Racist?

Pshaw! All Salvadorans backed death squads...eveyone knows that!

Did they?

I thought it was only the nun rapers that Reagan gave US tax dollahs too.

You know..murdering and raping nuns is just good old fashion fun in those parts.

Especially American ones.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Did Reid tell you this?

 

[Sallow]

Rush's "brilliant" retort!

Limbaugh's comment was part of several diatribes on Wednesday aimed at what he frequently refers to as the "Huffing-and-puffing-ton Post."

"The 'Huffing-and-puffing-ton Post' reported today that Bain Capital was seeded from money with Hispanic families, by the way, with ties to right-wing death squads in El Salvador and other Latin American counties. No, no, no, no, not talking about the Kennedys. They don't talk about that aspect of the Kennedys, no, no. Don't you find it interesting -- yesterday, Romney essentially killed a guy's wife, and today Bain Capital was seeded with money from death squads?"

Limbaugh claimed that Democrats are the real culprits behind the so-called "death squads," pointing to Democrats' historical support for pro-choice institutions.

"What do you call Planned Parenthood if that's not a death squad?" he asked, referring to the abortion provider.

"This is stuff we do parodies over," Limbaugh said of the death squads piece. "It is depressing to know this stuff works."
Rush Limbaugh Responds To Bain Story: 'What Do You Call Planned Parenthood If That's Not A Death Squad?'

Death panels, death squads, what's the diff?

It's all a wash..see?

 

[Sallow]

Did Reid tell you this?

Naw.

During the Salvadoran civil war, death squads (known in Spanish by the name of Escuadrón de la Muerte, "Squadron of Death") achieved notoriety when far-right vigilantes assassinated Archbishop Óscar Romero for his social activism in March 1980. In December 1980, three American nuns and a lay worker were raped and murdered by a military unit later found to have been acting on specific orders. Death squads were instrumental in killing thousands of peasants and activists. Funding for the squads came primarily from right-wing Salvadoran businessmen and landowners.[53] Because the death squads involved were found to have been soldiers of the Salvadoran military security forces, which were receiving U.S. arms, funding, training and advice during the Carter, Reagan and Bush administrations, these events prompted some outrage in the U.S. Human rights activists criticized U.S. administrations for denying Salvadoran government links to the death squads
Death squad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Sandinista militiaman interviewed by The Guardian stated that Contra rebels committed these atrocities against Sandinista prisoners after a battle at a Sandinista rural outpost: "Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then they cut into her chest and took out her heart. The men had their arms broken, their testicles cut off. They were killed by slitting their throats and pulling the tongue out through the slit."[69]

Americas Watch – which subsequently became part of Human Rights Watch – accused the Contras of[70]:
targeting health care clinics and health care workers for assassination[71]
kidnapping civilians[72]
torturing civilians[73]
executing civilians, including children, who were captured in combat[74]
raping women[71]
indiscriminately attacking civilians and civilian houses[72]
seizing civilian property[71]
burning civilian houses in captured towns.[71]
Contras - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Boys will be boys..

 

[Zander]

Democrats have no bottom.There is really no depth to which they will not sink. No low that is low enough.......this rotted sewage is what passes for discourse...it's disgraceful.

 

[Truthmatters]

Robmoney was a corporate raider who took start up capital from people who murdered their fellow citizens

 

[Truthmatters]

http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/239249-obamacare-passed-through-voter-fraud.html

Zander how do you feel about these lies?

 

[Sallow]

Democrats have no bottom.There is really no depth to which they will not sink. No low that is low enough.......this rotted sewage is what passes for discourse...it's disgraceful.

What are you talking about?

The "low" is starting a company with money from business people that supported death squads.

If this is true..it's pretty fucking bad.

 

[Sallow]

Robmoney was a corporate raider who took start up capital from people who murdered their fellow citizens

The people who gave him money..more then likely didn't personally murder anyone.

They were business people that funneled money to counter revolutionaries. That's if these allegations bear out.

At least get it right.

 

[Oldstyle]

The people that gave Romney money to start Bain Capital were wealthy El Salvadorans who contributed money to the opposition when a socialistic government nationalized the coffee industry and seized their lands. To say that they funded death squads is a charge that is unsubstantiated by the Huffington Post. But what else is new? If you want to see yellow journalism at it's worst...then go to HuffPo.