AP: Carolinas politicians get payouts from broker
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) Soon after taking office, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory and U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina accepted six-figure stock payouts from an online mortgage broker accused by regulators of deceiving its customers.
The two Republicans served as directors at Tree.com, the Charlotte-based corporate parent of the website LendingTree. As board members, they were entitled to large chunks of restricted company stock if they held their positions long enough. Both resigned after their election victories, which would have rendered their unvested stock worthless had the board not taken special action to provide them early payouts.
McCrory and Sanford deny they did anything improper by accepting the stock payouts, which were not fully described in their ethics statements. Their timing and total value are only being revealed now, as the result of an Associated Press investigation into the company's financial records and interviews with Tree.com officials.Early vesting of restricted shares for departing directors is not unheard of in the corporate world.
However, more than a dozen securities lawyers and ethics experts told the AP that such stock payouts are uncommon for elected officials, and raise significant concerns. These experts gave differing opinions about whether laws were broken.But "there is no question (this) raises a host of red flags for prosecutors and regulators," said Jacob Frenkel, who handled corruption cases as a federal prosecutor and served as senior counsel in the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Enforcement.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/3ffc1f3bc6ba41e5ba1df925a967ffb8/ap-carolinas-politicians-get-payouts-lender