NEW YORK - A former star investment banker with Credit Suisse First Boston [CSFB] was arrested Wednesday on charges of obstructing investigations by a federal grand jury and the Securities and Exchange Commission and witness tampering.
The complaint said Frank Quattrone "unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly, corruptly influenced, obstructed and impeded ... the due administration of justice."
Quattrone was released on his own recognizance after agreeing at his initial court appearance to surrender his passport and confine his travel to within the United States. He declined comment outside court.
But the current administration prefers to keep children incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay (LA Times) rather than to imprison legitimately despised corporate criminals like Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, the Enron CEOs still at large. Instead, the Quattrones and Lays and Skillings of the world are free to move about the country on their own recognizance or lack of indictment, instead of rotting away like the economy they destroyed.
Keeping corporate criminals free exposes true Republican priorities. After all, only the people who know how to fuck with finance at the highest levels are going to enable the GOP to double their campaign spending to a record-breaking $200 million (NY Times) leading up the Republican primary to advertise the appeal of an unopposed candidate.
(Why is Big Media so complacently uncritical of Bush? The answer will cost you $200 million — which is what corporate media will receive next year as a keep-your-voice-down gratuity for running homespun ads of Bush chopping cedar on his golf-cart ranch to prop up a counterfeit image without competition. It's every capitalist's dream — a monopoly — applied to its newest indentured servant, the George W. Bush presidency.)
