The Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil charges against a pair of executives at Engineered Support Systems Inc., accusing them of backdating stock options between 1997 and 2002.
The SEC charged Gary Gerhardt, the St. Louis-based defense contractor's former chief financial officer, and Steven Landmann, the former controller, of granting its directors between $15 million and $20 million in unauthorized compensation as a result of the grants.
The complaints alleged that Mr. Gerhardt instructed Mr. Landmann to backdate company stock option grants to coincide with historically low closing prices of the company’s common stock.
Mr. Gerhardt and Mr. Landmann received $1.9 million and $518,972, respectively.
Why is Gary smiling? (I mean, besides the $1.9 million he gave himself for pretending his stock options were older.) Because war profits are so fucking sweet! Here are a couple more fun facts:
Annual Engineered Support Systems Revenues: 1999 — $147 million (Clinton impeachment — no war.) 2003 — $573 million ("He tried to kill my dad" — war!)
War means quadruple revenue! Who cares how many children Bush-Cheney are willing to kill — these St. Louis contractors are making a fortune! And it's only getting better: "Engineered Support Systems is rapidly approaching revenues of $1 billion."
And here's the ugliest part of all: "President George W. Bush’s uncle, William H.T. “Bucky” Bush, was part of a group of outside directors at a defense contractor [Engineered Support Systems] who realized about $6 million in unauthorized pay from an options backdating scheme, according to U.S. securities investigators." That's right, Saddam Hussein tried to kill Dubya's daddy and Bucky's brother.
