Mitt Romney the CEO

The Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, has been under fire from his Democratic opponents due to the wealth he accumulated as founder and managing partner of the investment firm Bain Capital. A series of television advertisements highlighting the role the firm played in the impoverishment and subsequent closure of a number of industrial enterprises, as well as its investments in companies that heavily outsourced American jobs, are being broadcast in the so-called “swing states” that Barack Obama needs to win in order to secure a second presidential term.

Concurrently (as has already been demonstrated in the competitive Republican primaries), Romney has been plagued by public suspicion of his financial history: An article recently published by Vanity Fair declared the existence of Romney’s offshore bank accounts, of an indeterminate value, in the tax havens of Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.

Today, an article in the Boston Globe has brought to light new evidence: a series of official documents filed by Bain Capital with the Securities and Exchange Commission, stating that Romney had remained its sole shareholder and CEO until 2002 and was receiving $100,000 annually in compensation. These new findings are a blow to Romney’s credibility, as he claims to have left this position in February of 1999, when he assumed responsibility for the management and organization of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

The facts related in this new report may have an administrative explanation, as his campaign has seemed to insinuate: that, in fact, Romney hadn’t yet transferred his shareholdings to the other members and therefore appeared in the documents as “technically” its primary shareholder and CEO, even though he had, according to his campaign, relinquished his authority and therefore cannot be held responsible for investment decisions made in those years.

However, this new information could also open a Pandora’s box and expose Romney to a new line of questioning (and attacks) that may be difficult to answer. For one, if Romney had nothing to do with Bain Capital after 1999, why were they continuing to pay him a $100,000 salary?