1) From Dawn
Thanks for expanding my mind and understanding of Delaware politics through the TransPerfect debacle… eye-opening. Keep up the good work!
2) From Allen
IMPEACH BOUCHARD!
3) From John
Jud, It is extremely disconcerting to realize the incestuous connections between the Skadden Arps law firm, Justice Strine, Chancellor Bouchard, Robert Pincus — then the cute relationship between Kevin Shannon and our Chancellor. I wouldn’t put anything past these rotten bastards. Skadden Arps is corrupt and it sure makes me wonder about Bouchard’s integrity. The records must be released. How come Shawe has not sued to have then released through a “Freedom of Information Request”? Thanks for your outstanding work in bringing all of this to light. You should get a Pulitzer award! All the best!
4) From Linda
OUTRAGEOUS!!!! Where there is smoke there is fire. Bouchard is a disgrace to judicial integrity. Love your articles, Judson.
5) From Peter
JUDSON — This is an extraordinary situation and most disturbing. Nobody should ever have to worry that our Chancery Court could be corrupt.
6) From Carol
Hi Jud, This is beyond an impropriety. Here we have a corrupt law firm (Skadden Arps) and then Strine, Bouchard, Pincus all from the same law firm. They should make a movie about this crazy situation. Everybody is way too cozy in the Delaware Judiciary. I know we have a small state, but come on. Wow — is all I can say!
7) From Don
Hey JUDSON, Read your article and this one really is impactful. You made your point big time. Corrupt law firm, fined $4.6 million by the Justice department and the head of the Delaware Supreme Court and the head of the Chancery are from the same law firm? Bouchard’s handling of the TransPerfect case has been terrible and now he is preventing documents from being given out to the public? This guy at the best should be removed as Chancellor and at the worst should not be reappointed. Hope you will be around to testify when that time comes ! Keep up the great work. Your political articles are amazing, but this TransPerfect stuff is sensational.
8) From Erin
Great stuff JUD. What an excellent article and expose of Andre Bouchard. He has got to go. Keep up the great work!
9) From John C.
JUDSON, It’s a Simple answer: Absolute arrogance and greed!
10) From Eric R.
You are a loose cannon stirring the pot! As your wife Maria used to say as you stomped your feet up the stairs to your office, “Who are you gonna piss off now, Judson?” Keep it up, we know you are right and appreciate your guts. Love you, brother!
11) From Eric B.
I really enjoyed your article. Thanks for continuing to peel off the layers of deceit manufactured by Bouchard. I feel sorry for Mr. Shawe and anyone else that has to come before Bouchard’s kangaroo court.
You won’t be surprised to learn that Delaware’s Chancellor Andre Bouchard’s former employer, who Bouchard himself ordered to be paid $25 million from TransPerfect Global, is the infamous law firm of “Skadden Arps.” This firm, in my opinion, makes the law firm in John Grisham’s book “The Firm” look like a kindergarten summer camp. Skadden Arps is the subject of innumerable investigations, and I’m shaking my head imagining if it isn’t just a legal front for organized crime? Who else is an alumni (and Bouchard’s former intern) from Skadden Arps? Of course, Leo Strine, now Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court. Who else worked at Skadden Arps and got rich off of TransPerfect by the Court-Ordered rates of $1,475 per hour (in Delaware) for over 3 years? You guessed it, another Skadden Arps lawyer, custodian Robert Pincus. For those of you that think I’m too harsh on Bouchard’s former law firm, know this, they were just fined $4.6 MILLION by the US DOJ for aiding what could be considered serious federal crimes-illegally operating as an agent for a foreign government. Compare Skadden Arps illegally operating as an agent for a foreign government to Chancellor Bouchard fining Philip Shawe $7.1 million for insignificant findings like “failing to safeguard an old cell phone” — all trumped up charges by Bouchard — not proven in front of a jury as Shawe demanded. The difference in the amount of the fines is in no way justifiable. It seems that some of the Chancellor’s evidence was a ridiculous example of subjective adjudication, which is not what justice is supposed to be about. Bouchard in fact, from what I understand, used a “smiley face” text message 🙂 as part of what I consider this absurd justification for dissolving a 4,000-person industry leader and putting his friends in charge of TransPerfect for 3 years of what should be recognized as an unprecedented, court-ordered fleecing. Again folks, please take a moment, and digest, just how crazy this whole scenario is. In my view, Bouchard’s and Strine’s former employer, as I understand it, actively violated laws against the United States and then apparently lied to federal investigators about it, and then were slapped with a $4.6 million fine as a result. Shawe, an individual who from what I’ve heard and read is unquestionably one of American’s greatest entrepreneurs with a spotless record, got a $7.1 million fine by the Chancery Court! How convenient that $1.4 million of Shawe’s fine is ordered to go directly to Bouchard’s best friend, Kevin Shannon (and his law firm, Potter Anderson)… Shameful on its face, don’t you think? Yes, this is the very person Bouchard traveled to New Orleans with and made a public appearance with during the decision- making period of the case. Yes, this is the sole lawyer in the trial, who Bouchard has clearly created huge benefits for by his suspicious actions, and allowed him to get outrageous sums of money without providing to my knowledge, not one detailed invoice — or substantiation of the work that was supposed to be provided. No other lawyer got treated this way, with the exception of one: Bouchard’s other long-term and former co-worker, Skadden’s (appointed by Bouchard) — Custodian, Bob Pincus who collected outrageous and undocumented fees from TransPerfect ! I’m told Pincus and Skadden are still billing TransPerfect TODAY — And with the case NOW OVER — Bouchard is still ordering his friends to be paid. No wonder the records remain unlawfully sealed by Bouchard. These facts are obscene!!! I urge the Delaware Legislature to make the Delaware Court of Chancery accountable and to force it to cease and desist from these suspicious activities and appearances of impropriety!! By doing nothing and putting their heads in the sand, our elected lawmakers become indirect accomplices in this horrible injustice. Congress orders investigations for much less at a Federal level. YOU folks in the General Assembly are Delaware’s Congress; it is your job to start a needed inquiry!!! The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as Bouchard began learning his, in my opinion, shady dealing techniques young in his career, from his former employer Skadden Arps, who I, and apparently the DOJ, view as a den of thieves. Think about it — if they got caught for federal violations and had to pay $4.6 million in fines, which is a lot of money folks! It makes you wonder… what else have they done? What else could their Wilmington office have been involved in? Perhaps violation of federal laws (perhaps a form of treason?) and the TransPerfect case may just scratch the surface of Skadden’s possible nefarious affairs, for all we know? According to the story pasted below, there are some pretty sordid details on Skadden’s troubles with the U.S. government — requiring them “to retroactively register as a foreign agent and review its policies for responding to inquiries from the government.” Just Google Skadden Arps and DOJ! The more you read, the more you’ll see why I believe that the stench coming from our Chief Chancellor’s office, seemingly and in my view, probably started early in his career. Folks, you simply can’t make these facts up, which is why I will continue to report on it and continue to fight for the records and the bills to be unsealed. If nothing is wrong — why does this irregular “cover up” continue? I again ask for an investigation into Bouchard and his cronies and if these appearances of impropriety are found to be actual improprieties, then these people must be brought to justice and held accountable for harming TransPerfect employees, harming Delaware citizens, and creating the long-term devastation of Delaware’s business reputation, which is now nationally and internationally synonymous with the disconcerting term called “corruption.” Please read the story below, I know it’s long, but this is important stuff, as these are the good ole boys that we’ve entrusted to run our judiciary in Delaware! As always, your comments are welcome.Law360 (January 18, 2019, 11:57 PM EST) — Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP has agreed to pay a $4.6 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice for failing to register as a foreign agent. Here, we look at how the firm got to this point.
Law360, Washington (January 18, 2019, 10:06 PM EST) — Emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice show how Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP lawyers slowly abandoned caution toward a foreign lobbying law and began openly lying to federal investigators during their engagement with the Ukrainian government from 2012 to 2013.
Excerpts of the emails were released Thursday by the DOJ after it announced a $4.6 million settlement with Skadden for alleged violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law requiring people to register any U.S. political lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.
The emails show how lawyers at the high-priced firm were initially cautious about doing anything that would require them to register as foreign agents under the law, and wanted to limit their work to preparing an independent report on the prosecution of Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister.
But over the course of their work, the Skadden lawyers, including the politically connected former White House counsel Greg Craig, slowly abandoned that caution and found themselves involved in the country’s public relations campaign to win over Western media amid a backlash over Tymoshenko’s treatment.
Here, Law360 chronicles the shift in the firm’s work as revealed by the newly disclosed emails, and how it ultimately led to the multimillion-dollar settlement.
Blurring Lines Between Legal Work, PR
Skadden was retained by the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice in the spring of 2012, receiving a $4 million advance provided by an unnamed businessperson with whom Craig had earlier met in Kiev. Shortly after the retainer, a Skadden lawyer identified as “Partner-2” in the DOJ appendix cautioned Craig that someone else should manage the country’s public relations effort because the firm was hired “as lawyers, not spin doctors.”
“Good advice,” Craig responded.
But it was advice that Craig and other Skadden lawyers would loosely follow, as they danced on the line between legal work and public relations in the ensuing months.
Between late April and early May 2012, Craig advised lobbyist Paul Manafort about which public relations firm the Ukrainian government should hire to execute the country’s messaging strategy once the report became public.
After one particularly strong recommendation for a firm that could help its outreach strategy in Europe, Ukraine accepted Craig’s advice.
Still, Skadden and the PR firm kept a watchful eye on their potential FARA obligations. An executive of the PR firm was careful to tell Craig that “i[f] at a future date our brief is expanded and requires U.S.-headquartered personnel and activities, we will then take appropriate steps.”
Skadden lawyers kept an eye on their potential FARA obligations throughout the spring of 2012 but nevertheless continued communicating with Manafort, his associate Rick Gates and members of the PR firm about their work. In July, for instance, the PR firm shared its “communication strategy” with Gates, who forwarded the document to an unnamed Skadden associate.
Media Strategy Heats Up
As the release date for the report approached, Craig and other Skadden lawyers were included in additional discussions about the PR firm’s media plans for the report, such as the list of media and government personnel to be contacted once it was made public.
In one strategy document shared with Craig, the PR firm proposed leaking the report to a specific U.S. journalist at a major media outlet on the night before the report’s release.
In late September 2012, the PR firm scheduled a meeting in New York City with Craig, Manafort, Gates and an unnamed Skadden associate to discuss the upcoming media campaign. Documents circulated by the firm ahead of the meeting indicated that they had chosen to leak to a different news outlet than the one originally planned, in light of Craig’s prior relationship with the newly selected journalist.
On Sept. 24, Craig told Manafort in an email that he didn’t think Skadden lawyers should be providing background to journalists after the release of the report, suggesting it would undermine the integrity of the report. Craig ultimately acceded to Manafort’s request to respond to media requests run through the firm’s communications professionals.
Craig Reaches Out to New York Times
On Oct. 2, 2012, Craig reached out to a reporter for The New York Times he knew and connected him with a lobbyist on the topic of the upcoming Ukrainian report. The reporter could be identified as the Times’ Washington correspondent, David Sanger, by details shared by the DOJ appendix.
Craig followed up with Sanger on Dec. 11, offering to provide exclusive access to the report before it was slated to be released publicly. After receiving a response, Craig sent Sanger an electronic copy and indicated he would “hand-deliver a hard copy of this report to your home tonight.” Craig shared the exchange with the unnamed Partner-2 at Skadden and updated the PR firm.
On Dec. 12, Sanger told Craig via email that he’d read the report and was “ready to talk,” indicating an unnamed Moscow-based colleague would take the lead on the story. The colleague could be identified as David Herszenhorn by details contained in the DOJ appendix. Herszenhorn sent a list of questions to Craig and suggested a conference call.
Following the call, Craig sent Sanger a quote for their story: “We leave to others the question of whether this prosecution was politically motivated. We say nothing about that. Our assignment was to look at the evidence in the record and determine whether the trial was fair.”
The New York Times published Sanger and Herszenhorn’s story — headlined “Failings Found In Trial of Ukrainian Ex-Premier” — that day, just hours before the report was made public on the Ukrainian government’s website. The article used a slightly shortened version of the quote Craig sent Sanger.
Skadden Attracts Attention from FARA Unit
Just a few days after the report was released, finding no evidence of political motivation to the Tymoshenko trial, the DOJ’s FARA Unit sent a letter to Skadden seeking information about its representation of Ukraine, including a copy of their agreement and the services it has provided the country.
The DOJ’s letter bounced around the firm until Craig finally sent his official response nearly two months later in February 2013. In it, the lawyer described the firm’s representation as involving “rule of law issues” and “advice” about Ukraine’s criminal justice system, according to the DOJ. The response did not mention discussions with public relations consultants, lobbyists or reporters.
Craig’s response was wanting, the DOJ apparently thought, and demanded more information in April 2013, specifically homing in on the firm’s contacts with media outlets, as well as how much it made for the work; the initial response made no mention of the $4 million advance.
‘False and Misleading’ Answers
Craig responded to the DOJ’s follow-up with a June 2013 letter that the DOJ now says contained “false and misleading statements.” Specifically, the letter dated Craig’s contacts with The New York Times to Dec. 12, 2012, omitting that he had actually shared an early copy of the report with Sanger the day before. Further, Craig described his contacts as “brief clarifying statements.”
Craig also told the DOJ at the time that Skadden had turned in the final version of the report to Ukraine in September 2012, when in fact it made limited changes in response to input from Manafort through November. Finally, the letter said Skadden didn’t have to share the identity of the anonymous business person who funded the legal work as it had no obligation to register.
“The FARA Unit relied to its detriment on false and misleading statements in this letter,” the DOJ now says. “As a result, the FARA Unit was deprived of the complete information that the FARA Unit expected to receive in response to its inquiry.”
The exchanges between the FARA Unit and Skadden continued through the fall of 2013 and culminated in an in-person meeting in Washington, D.C., to discuss the firm’s registration obligations. At the meeting, Craig once again conveyed “false and misleading” information, the DOJ now says.
After a follow-up letter — in which Craig said he only distributed copies of the report “in response to requests from the media” — the FARA Unit finally gave the firm the all-clear and said it had “no present obligation to register under FARA.”
Three years later — well after Skadden had concluded its work in the country and the Ukrainian revolution of 2014 had driven President Viktor Yanukovych to exile in Russia — the DOJ’s National Security Division, which houses the FARA Unit, began beefing up its enforcement of the lobbying law after an inspector general report found widespread noncompliance.
In October 2017, Manafort and Gates were among the first to be ensnared by that effort in connection with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 presidential election. The pair had worked on then-Republican candidate Donald Trump’s campaign.
Indictments returned by a federal grand jury focused extensively on Manafort’s work for Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions, bringing the attention of federal investigators uncomfortably close to Skadden’s report for the Ministry of Justice.
At Skadden’s Doorstep
Skadden’s legal troubles spilled directly into public view with the February 2018 guilty plea of former Skadden associate Alex van der Zwaan, a member of the report team who admitted to lying to Mueller’s investigators about his communications with Gates regarding the 2012 report. Skadden said in a statement that it terminated Van der Zwaan in 2017 and “has been cooperating with authorities in connection with this matter.”
Days later, the firm released a statement saying, “Greg Craig did not engage in any activity that required him or the firm to register.”
Van der Zwaan was sentenced to 30 days in prison in April 2018 and ordered to pay a $20,000 fine, the first prison sentence to arise from the Mueller investigation. Later that month, the firm confirmed that Craig had left the firm amid increasing scrutiny over the report, although a Skadden spokesperson did not respond to questions about the circumstances or timing of Craig’s departure.
Manafort pled guilty to two counts of conspiracy and obstruction of justice in a September deal requiring him to cooperate with the Mueller investigation. Craig’s lawyers, meanwhile, defended the ex-Skadden partner in the court of public opinion, insisting the “few” media contacts about the 2012 report “were not part of an effort to promote the report on behalf of a foreign government,” and that “as a result, he was not required to register under” FARA.
The DOJ’s $4.6 million settlement with Skadden on Thursday requires the firm to retroactively register as a foreign agent and review its policies for responding to inquiries from the government.
A lawyer for Craig declined to comment Friday.
Chancellor Bouchard, what are you hiding? The law requires you to unseal these documents and let the public examine the court’s activities. If you aren’t covering your tracks and are not guilty of an impropriety, come clean and follow the law? Sad to say, my loyal readers, that the black eye on Delaware is no longer confined to a local or national phenomenon, it has now gone global! Frankly, it is embarrassing for Delaware and it will further denigrate Delaware’s falling, former reputation as the best place for business justice. Bouchard’s unlawful sealing of TransPerfect Global documents are indeed potentially damning to him and his Skadden Arps cronies (who I have been told were just fined $4.6 million by the DOJ for illegal activity that constitutes treason in my view) recently captures headlines in Barcelona, Spain’s second largest city, where I understand that TransPerfect has 500 employees. Transparency is without a doubt required by the Courts. Bouchard, you and your cronies cannot mask illicit activities in the dark of night — by ordering mass sealing of public documents! Who do you think you are? You sir are not above the law! Where did the $250 million go Bouchard? I know repairs on your Bentley are expensive, but don’t you think this is a little overboard?? If you have done nothing wrong, you certainly have nothing to hide. So prove me wrong, unseal the case, and expose the documents for all to see. Right now you are creating an acute appearance of an impropriety. Under no circumstances should the public ever have to even suspect irregularities in the Court of Chancery. As I see it, the Court’s reputation just a couple of years ago was beyond reproach and now it is not! You are now under the global microscope of investigative reports from as far away as Spain! Chancellor Bouchard, you owe the good citizens of Delaware a specific accounting of exactly where your appropriation of these funds, by your orders, to whom they were paid and for exactly what? These TransPerfect documents must be released to the public if the Delaware Court of Chancery is to have any credibility at all. I will not stop investigating, and writing about this until Chancellor Bouchard gives the public the transparency the law requires. Please see the article below.
The American justice dictates a resolution on the company Transperfect / FOTOMONTAJE CG
01.31.2019 00:00 h.
Nine months have passed since Phil Shawe took over 100% of the translation multinational Transperfect , which has one of its main international headquarters in Barcelona and a workforce of nearly a thousand companies. The takeover took place after one of the most mediatic business conflicts in the United States in the last four years. However, despite the resolution of the dispute, the judicial file of the case remains hidden from the public by decision of the Supreme Court Justice of Delaware, André Bouchard .
This new movement of the judge – the same that decreed the forced sale of the company founded in 1992 by Shawe and his ex-partner, Liz Elting – contributes to adding more opacity, if possible, to a shareholder conflict characterized by its lack of transparency and neutrality The dispute put at risk the future of more than 5,000 workers, 500 of whom are in the company’s offices in Barcelona, its most important international headquarters .
The business conflict represented for the company an expense of 250 million dollars –214 million euros – in more than 30 law firms , global investment banks and entities specialized in M & A for the alleged resolution of the conflict. All these expenses had the approval of Judge Bouchard, who in turn, has maintained a long friendship with the leading law firms that have profited most from the forced sale of the multinational.
These benefited firms have been Potter Anderson and Skadden Arps , through the fees of their lawyers Kevin Shannon and Robert Pincus respectively. Sources close to Transperfect say that a large part of the money charged to the translation and dubbing company by these companies comes from invoices approved by Judge Bouchard that do not present details or justifications.
The decision of Judge André Bouchard goes against the current US legislative framework, which requires to make public the detailed information of the cases resolved.
In this sense, several civic associations of Delaware request that the works commissioned by Bouchard be investigated by the law firms, while they reject the judge’s decision to hide the details of the case, contrary to the provisions of the law. prevent the public and the media from accessing their records.
The ‘TransPerfect Case’ has seriously damaged the prestige and neutrality of the State of Delaware, recognized in the world for its flexible and impartial judicial system. The imposition of a forced sale to a private company with positive results, the refusal to include in the bid strategic offers for the company or the opacity of the case demonstrated recently, have been some elements that have undermined the reputation of which it was one of the more attractive places for the American business ecosystem.
According to a survey prepared by the United States Chamber of Commerce, Delaware has fallen from the first to the eleventh position of the judicial neutrality ranking, after canvassing more than 1,300 general counsel, lawyers and senior managers. In turn, it is not surprising the decision of many companies to move their corporate headquarters to more competitive and neutral environments. This is what TransPerfect did to the state of Nevada at the end of 2018, as one of the first actions of Phil Shawe to restore stability to the company and its workers.
Despite the fact that co-founder Phil Shawe had initially been removed from the sale of his company, in May 2018 the businessman put an end to the conflict by buying 50% of his partner and ex-partner for a value of 385 million dollars (330 million euros) thus doing so with 100% of the multinational.
Despite the grueling struggle for custody, TransPerfect closed 2018 with revenues of 705 million dollars – 621 million euros – 15% more than the previous year . This figure has remained positive for 26 years, which marks a clear upward trend in the sector , despite the fact that competitive threats such as Google and Microsoft are already approaching, which already offer translation services, where the results are often repeated awkward and errors in the translation of idioms or phrases.
At the beginning of 2019, Transperfect hired its 5,000th employee. The company has more than 90 offices in cities around the world such as London or Sâo Paulo, however, its second most important headquarters – the first is in New York – is Barcelona, which has doubled its staff every three years.
In this sense, Phil Shawe predicts that the company could reach a thousand jobs in the Catalan capital by 2020.