WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker appeared on her way to becoming Commerce Secretary on Thursday, after a top Republican said she had satisfactorily answered most of his questions about her role in the failure of an Illinois bank and her family's use of an offshore tax haven.
"I can't see that there is anything that would keep her from getting through the process in pretty good shape," Senator John Thune, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, said after a hearing on her nomination.
"I thought she did well today," Thune said, adding he had a few more questions he wanted Pritzker to answer in writing.
Pritzker, the 271st richest American according to Forbes magazine, was President Barack Obama's national finance chairman in 2008 and his campaign co-chair in 2012. Her personal fortune is worth an estimated $1.85 billion dollars, putting her at the pinnacle of the top 1 percent of American households.
A 184-page financial disclosure form released by the White House showed she received $54 million in consulting fees from the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Trust Co, which manages an offshore trust for the Pritzker family in the Bahamas.
Some Republicans say it is hypocritical of Obama to nominate Cabinet members who benefit from offshore tax havens when he has criticized that practice by others.
Pritzker said the trust was set up when she "was a little girl" and that she has asked the current trustee "to remove themselves and appoint a U.S. trustee."
The Stanford University-trained lawyer and businesswoman is currently on the board of the Hyatt Hotels Corp, which her uncle Jay Pritzker founded in 1957, two years before she was born. She plans to leave that position if confirmed.
In her prepared testimony, Pritzker highlighted the entrepreneurial success of her family, which she said began when her great-grandfather "came to the United States from Czarist Russia, dirt poor, at the age of 10. He taught himself English, worked several jobs, earned his law degree at night, and opened a law practice at the age of 30."
She told the panel that after her father died when she was 13, she asked her grandfather to be trained in the family business.
About 30 members of the Unite Here hotel workers' union attended the hearing to show their disapproval of the nomination. The union has called Hyatt "the worst hotel employer in America" because of its treatment of workers, failure to reach a new labor contract and opposition to allowing workers at additional Hyatt hotels into the union.
"Today, we send a message to President Barack Obama that Penny Pritzker is not a good choice. She doesn't see people like human beings. (She sees people) like slaves," said Wanda Rosario, one of 100 housekeepers fired by Hyatt in Boston in 2009 as a cost-cutting move. "It was my dream to retire from Hyatt, but they broke it," she said.
Pritzker served on Obama's fundraising committee during his successful 2004 run for U.S. Senate and was national finance chairman for his 2008 presidential campaign, which raised nearly $750 million, breaking the record.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Republicans attempted to tar Pritzker with the failure of Superior Bank, which in the 1990s was a pioneer in subprime mortgages that a decade later were blamed for the global financial crisis.
Regulators closed the bank in July 2001 after auditors concluded that income from the mortgage securizations had been overstated. Five months later, the Pritzkers agreed to pay the FDIC $460 million over 15 years as part of a deal where the family and the other half-owner admitted no liability.
Pritzker said she was chairman of the bank from 1991 to 1994, but never played an active role in its management.
"I stepped down as the chairman of the bank ... seven years before the bank failed," Pritzker said.
After the bank got into trouble with regulators, "I stepped in on behalf of the 50 percent ownership of my family to try to salvage the situation. Unfortunately those negotiations failed and the bank failed," Pritzker said.
The voluntary settlement with the FDIC "was the right thing for us to do, both for the depositors and for us as a family," Pritzker said.
(Reporting by Doug Palmer; editing by Jackie Frank and Doina Chiacu)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/commerce-nominee-faces-questions-failed-bank-tax-havens-160403279.html
Mockingbird Lane peyton manning sf giants gold rush gold rush windows 8 Emanuel Steward
কোন মন্তব্য নেই:
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন