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BE SMART ABOUT: Albert Kelly, Banned from banking industry for life, then hired as an EPA top official by Pruitt
Sometimes there are no words to explain and the headline says it all. Let's just get right to it about Albert Kelly, who we all need to Be Smart About.
The EPA has tasked a banker who was banned from the banking industry for life with oversight of the nation’s Superfund program.
The Environmental Protection Agency has tasked a banker who was banned from the banking industry for life with oversight of the nation’s Superfund program.
In May, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation fined Oklahoma banker Albert Kelly $125,000. According to a consent order.... the FDIC had “reason to believe that [Kelly] violated a law or regulation, by entering into an agreement pertaining to a loan by the Bank without FDIC approval.”
In July, the FDIC went further, banning Kelly from banking for life. The “order of prohibition from further participation” explained that the FDIC had determined Kelly’s “unfitness to serve as a director, officer, person participating in the conduct of the affairs or as an institution-affiliated party of the Bank, any other insured depository institution.”
To summarize, Kelly's bank made a generous loan to Pruitt before Kelly was banned from being a banker. Needing a new job, Pruitt hired him to run an EPA program. Yes, you read that.
Two weeks later, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt appointed Kelly to lead an effort to streamline the Superfund program. Pruitt, who had received loans from Kelly’s bank, apparently didn’t find Kelly’s unfitness to serve in the financial industry as disqualifying his longtime friend from serving as a top official at the EPA.
.... Kelly would become a senior adviser in the federal environmental agency despite having no previous experience with environmental issues. Kelly listed motivational speaking and political activity among the core competencies on his resume. The descendant of a long line of bankers and Republicans, Kelly had worked at his family’s bank for the previous 33 years.
Has anyone seen this on the news? Of course not. It should be on non-stop until Pruitt is shamed into forcing Kelly to resign.
Source: https://theintercept.com/2017/12/28/scott-pruitt-failed-banker-running-epa-superfund-program/
Additional coverage:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14518994/scott-pruitt-epa-jobs/