As I understood it, Mitt Romney left his job at Bain Capital in February 1999 in order to take over the planning and management of the 2002 Winter Olympics that were to take place in Utah. He made a big deal about not accepting any salary for his efforts. And he used the success of the Winter Olympics as a springboard to launch his political career in Massachusetts, winning the governorship that same fall. It’s a nice story, but it isn’t entirely true.
While the truth isn’t entirely clear, Romney didn’t actually resign from Bain Capital. He remained the “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president” until 2002. The Boston Globe has unearthed numerous documents that prove this. In addition, they discovered that Mitt Romney testified before the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission in 2002 that he had merely taken a leave of absence from Bain Capital.
During the four years in question, Romney received a salary of $100,000 in addition to all his investment income from Bain.
Why does any of this matter? Because Romney has been defending himself against layoffs Bain Capital made in the 1999-2002 period by saying that he had left the company and had no responsibility for those decisions. He made that argument in the governor’s race in 2002, in his presidential bid in 2008, and during the current contest in 2011-12. But, at best, he was taking a paid leave of absence.
Moreover, throughout that entire period of time, Bain Capital was making representations that Romney was still their CEO, which could constitute fraud if investors were misled into thinking that Romney would be handling their money.
So, on the one hand, maybe Romney has been lying about having no control of Bain’s decisions in 1999-2002. On the other hand, maybe he and Bain were defrauding investors during that time period. Which is it?
Even if we believe Romney, it must be nice to get paid a hundred grand a year to do nothing. But who would believe that Romney would exercise no control over a company for four years while remaining the sole stockholder?
Anyone?
