Approximately $150 million dollars in missing assets and unverified "intercompany" loans in the range of $275-550 million in 2002 alone. Blatant Sarbanes Oxley Act violations, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations, and the devaluing of a company’s stock from $20 to only 1 CENT!! ; all of this can now be put on Metromedia International Group’s resume` (Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and its subsidiary, News America, were listed as the largest outside or not-Metromedia-employed controlling shareholders). There were MASSIVE losses for investors in Metromedia International Group, many of whom were small time, private investors who used their retirement money for this stock (Enron comes to mind...except it was only worth $1 billion and this company had assets worth OVER 6 TIMES THE ASSETS OF ENRON’S OR MORE).
Why do companies think that they can get away with this? I mean, it’s the United States and not some third world country! Unfortunately, getting away with it is what they’ve been able to do so far: congress has ignored pleas to pressure the Securities And Exchange Commission or even hold a hearing, the SEC has backed down on their initial act of bringing charges for the Sarbanes Oxley Act violations and has missed three opportunities to investigate and may be doing so again now, and no U.S. attorney will even touch the case.
Why is this? It’s not because of a lack of proof! An Iowa investor, Kevin McLaughlin hired a forensic accountant to go over Metromedia’s accounts and this accountant found that approximately $150 million dollars were missing and unverified "intercompany" loans in the range of $275-550 million in 2002, alone...quite the magic trick!! Plus, this same investor has a whole closet full of evidence that shows a bunch of the company’s books don’t match up, etc.... That and the company admitted to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violation and obviously violated the SOX act!!!
Please write, or call the SEC to put pressure on them to fianlly follow through and get answers for the investors who have not gotten answers about all the missing assets and especially the unverified "intercompany" loans, as vaguely described in the 2004 annual filing which, by the way, wasn't even filed until December 16, 2006!
I’ll post more info as I find it...but anyone with questions can also contact Maeve O'Connor and Steve Klugman at Debevoise & Pimpton, attorneys for Metromedia, at 212-909-6649. I also found the contact info for McLaughlin at matthewkevin3@gmail.com .
Here’s a link to Forbe’s "The Incredible Shrinking Metromedia" story: http://www.forbes.com/...
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