Grijalva on Bain startup money

by David Safier

Here's the complete text of Raúl Grijalva's Media Release about the funding Romney used to start Bain Capital.

July 19, 2012

Washington, D.C. – Rep. Raúl Grijalva released the following statement today in response to this morning's Los Angeles Times article examining the funding sources Mitt Romney used to start Bain Capital.

"Today's Los Angeles Times investigation into where Mitt Romney got his money to start Bain Capital convinced me, and I imagine everyone who read it, that he needs to come clean about his finances. We now know that he built his fortune thanks to murky foreign donors who routed their money through Panamanian and Swiss accounts that helped obscure their sources. Among those early donors were British financiers later convicted of fraud and an expatriate Salvadoran group with family ties to paramilitary death squads. Mr. Romney may try to convince us there’s nothing to see here. After reading this story and other recent revelations about his past, I don’t think anyone believes him.

"The question here is simple: What is he hiding? Why was he willing to give 23 years of tax returns – dating back to 1985 – to the McCain presidential campaign only to refuse to share that information with the public? Why won’t he clarify once and for all where he got the money to start his investment firm? The public interest, to say nothing of his own credibility, is not served by secrecy or refusal to answer these legitimate questions.

"What we do know is troubling enough. In the mid-1980s, in the very depths of a Salvadoran civil war instigated by an indefensible military regime that killed thousands of civilians, Mitt Romney took money from the Poma family – one of the richest and most influential in the country – to make his fortune because more established financiers turned him down. As the Times reported, “At the time, U.S. officials were publicly accusing some exiles in Miami of funding right-wing death squads in El Salvador. [. . .] Romney has said he checked the foreign investors’ backgrounds. His campaign and Bain Capital declined to provide specifics.”

"That’s not good enough. Mitt Romney should reveal everything he can about the troubling issues raised in the Times story. He owes the country nothing less."