Interesting about the connections between Basulto and Recarey and between
Recarey and Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida.
Linda Minor
http://www.newsmakingnews.com/
Date: 28 FEB 1996 06:35:24 GMT
From: Lisa Pease [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Newgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: Massive US Government Hypocrisy on Cuba
Neither the Government nor the corporate press are giving you the truth
about the planes the Cubans downed, and what their leader really represents.
Here is some background on Brothers to the Rescue founder, Jose Basulto
Leon.
JOSE BASULTO LEON: BACKGROUND BY PETER DALE SCOTT
...
Felix Rodriguez told the Kerry Committee that he met Contra leaders Enrique
Bermudez and Adolfo Calero in Miami at Jose Basulto�s home (Kerry Hearings,
340-41). He later wrote in his book Shadow Warrior that he and Basulto "have
been like brothers" since their training together in Guatemala for the Bay
of Pigs. He added that Basulto had "been to contra camps in Central America,
helping to dispense humanitarian aid" (p. 109).
Basulto and Felix Rodriguez together appear to have been part of a plan for
treating wounded Contras in Miami, worked out under the direction of Oliver
North. A note in North�s diary reads "22-Jan-85 Medical Support System for
wounded FDN [Contras] in Miami�HMO in Miami as oked to help all WIA [wounded
in action]... Felix Rodriguez." This HMO was International Medical Centers
(IMC), whose head (Cuban-American Miguel Recarey) fled the U.S. after being
indicted in what Mother Jones called "the largest HMO Medicare fraud in U.S.
history." Jose Basulto told the Wall Street Journal in 1987 that he had
attended meetings at IMC with Felix Rodriguez and Adolfo Calero. A former
agent of the Department of Health and Human Services told Stephen Pizzo of
Mother Jones that Recarey used part of the $30 million a month he received
to treat Medicare patients "to set up field hospitals for the contras"
(Mother Jones, Sept./Oct. 1992, 31-33).
+++++++
http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/SO92/pizzo.html
Jeb and Miguel Recarey
With Miami awash in empty office space in 1986, it was no small event when
bagged International Medical Centers as a key tenant for Padreda's
HUD-financed building. IMC, which leased nearly all the space in Padreda's
vacant building, was at the time one of the nation's fastest-growing
health-maintenance organizations (HMO) and had become the largest recipient
of federal Medicare funds.
IMC was run by Cuban-American Miguel Recarey, a character with a host of
idiosyncrasies. He carried a 9-mm Heckler & Koch semiautomatic pistol under
his suit coat and kept a small arsenal of AR-15 and Uzi assault rifles at
his Miami estate, where his bedroom was protected by bullet-proof windows
and a steel door. It apparently wasn't his enemies Recarey feared so much as
his friends. He had a long-standing relationship with Miami Mafia godfather
Santo Trafficante, Jr., and had participated in the illfated, CIA-inspired
mob assassination plot against Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. (Associates
of Recarey add that Trafficante was the money behind Recarey's business
ventures.)
Recarey's brother, Jorge, also had ties to the CIA. So it was no surprise
that IMC crawled with former spooks. Employee r�sum�s were studded with
references to the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Cuban
Intelligence agency; there was even a fellow who claimed to have been a KGB
agent, An agent with the U.S. Office of Labor Racketeering in Miami would
later describe IMC as a company in which "a criminal enterprise interfaced
with intelligence operations."
Recarey also surrounded himself with those who could influence the political
system. He hired Jeb Bush as IMC's "real-estate consultant." Though Jeb
would never close a single real-estate deal, his contract called for him to
earn up to $250,000 (he actually received $75,000). Jeb's real value to
Recarey was not in real estate but in his help in facilitating the largest
HMO Medicare fraud in U.S. history.
Jeb phoned top Health and Human Services officials in Washington in 1985 to
lobby for a special exemption from HHS rules for IMC. This highly unusual
waiver was critical to Recarey's scam. Without it, the company would have
been limited to a Medicare patient load of 50 percent. The balance of IMC's
patients would have had to be private�that is, paying�customers. Recarey
preferred the steady flow of federal Medicare money to the thought of
actually running a real HMO. Former HHS chief of staff McClain Haddow (who
later became a paid consultant to IMC) testified in 1987 Jeb that directly
phoned then-HHS secretary Margaret Heckler and that it was that call that
swung the decision to approve IMCs waiver.
Jeb admits lobbying HHS for the waiver, but denies talking to Secretary
Heckler�and denies as well the charge that his call won the HHS exemption.
"I just asked that IMC get a fair hearing," said later. After the IMC
scandal broke in 1987, Heckler left the country, having been appointed U.S.
ambassador to Ireland, a post she held until 1989. (Heckler is now a private
citizen living in Virginia. We left a detailed message with her secretary,
outlining our questions, but she declined to respond.)
In any case, the highly unusual waiver by federal officials allowed IMCs
Medicare patient load to swell�to 80 percent�and the money poured in. At its
height in 1986, IMC was collecting over $30 million a month in Medicare
payments; in all, the company would collect $1 billion from Medicare. (Jeb
would not discuss the IMC affair with Mother Jones. But in an opinion piece
he wrote for the Miami Herald last May, he insisted that he had worked hard
for IMC, looking for real-estate deals, and had earned his $75,000 in
commissions. While acknowledging making a telephone call to one of Heckler's
assistants on IMC Is behalf, he claimed the waiver was not granted on his
account. The allegation of a connection, Jeb wrote, "is unfair and untrue.")
Despite Jeb's involvement, trouble began brewing for IMC when a low-level
HHS special agent in Miami, Leon Weinstein, discovered that Recarey was
defrauding Medicare through overcharges, false invoicing, and outright
embezzlement. Weinstein had been following Recarey's activities since 1977,
and as early as 1983 he believed he had enough information to put together a
case. However, he found his HHS superiors less than receptive; they took no
action on Weinstein's information.
But Weinstein kept digging and in 1986 renewed his investigation of Recarey
and IMC�and again his HHS superiors blocked the probe. "Washington just
refused to pursue my evidence," Weinstein, now retired, told Mother Jones
last spring. "And they made it perfectly clear that I was not to pursue IMC.
When I did, they threatened me and threatened my job."
Weinstein dug in his heels. "I had them this time. I told my superiors I
would fight this time because I had nothing to fear. I had just reached
retirement age. They immediately backtracked," he says. Weinstein was
allowed to continue his investigation�though HHS still took no formal action
against Recarey. Eventually Weinstein turned to Congressmen Barney Frank
(D-NY) and Pete Stark (D-CA) with his information, sparking congressional
hearings into the scandal.
Had it been up to HHS, Recarey would still be running his Medicare racket.
But by chance, the now-disbanded U.S. Miami Organized Crime Strike Force was
also investigating Recarey. (Recarey was bribing union officials in order to
get them to sign workers up as patients at IMC, apparently so that IMC could
meet its reduced non-Medicare patient requirements of 20 percent.) "We
didn't know anything about the HHS investigation," former Organized Crime
Strike Force special attorney Joe DeMaria says. "Recarey was bribing union
officials.... But HHS never contacted us or told us anything."
Before Recarey's trial on bribery charges began, DeMaria's investigators
also caught Recarey using his former spooks to wiretap IMC employees in an
effort to discover who was talking to federal agents. DeMaria had Recarey
indicted a second time, for the illegal listening devices. During Recarey's
trial on the bribery charge, a lawyer who handled the bribe money testified
that the money IMC gave him was not bribe money but "commissions" he had
earned while doing work for the company. "See, that commission thing was
Recarey's MO. They didn't call them bribes, they called them commissions,"
DeMaria explains.
After he was convicted, Recarey resigned from IMC and was immediately
replaced by John Ward. (Ward had been law partner to Reagan-Bush campaign
manager John Sears. And Sears had also been a lobbyist for IMC.) But
Recarey's Medicare scam would never get to a public courtroom airing. Before
his trial on the wiretap charge, Recarey skipped the country. His getaway
was remarkable: just in time for his flight, the normally tight-fisted IRS
expedited a $2.2 million income-tax refund, which Recarey claimed he had
coming.
The tax refund was a windfall for Recarey. "Yeah, that was his getaway
money," says a former IRS investigator who worked in the Miami office at the
time but asked not to be named. "Though there is a special IRS procedure to
expedite tax refunds for companies in financial distress, I don't think you
can overlook the possibility that there was influence from the
administration."
Recarey's last act before becoming a fugitive was an attempt to wire $30,000
into the bank account of Washington consultant and lobbyist Nick
Panuzio�whose partner was then managing George Bush's 1988 presidential
campaign. (The wire transfer failed only because, in his haste, Recarey had
gotten Panuzio's account number wrong.) It was only after Recarey was safely
out of the country that the U.S. attorney in Miami�a political
appointee�filed formal charges of Medicare fraud against him.
Whistle-blower Leon Weinstein retired in disgust from HHS and tried to get
the IMC case before a judge by filing a Qui Tam suit. Such suits allow a
private citizen to sue to recover money for the government in return for a
share of any settlement. In his case, Weinstein named IMC and Recarey as
defendants. But HHS continued to fight Weinstein, first challenging his
right to bring such a suit and later accusing him of stealing HHS documents
before leaving his job. When the courts supported Weinstein, HHS then
stepped in, took over his lawsuit, and shouldered him out. The case remains
in the courts and is still unresolved.
HHS officials now pursuing the litigation claim that Recarey defrauded the
Medicare system of at least $12 million. Leon Weinstein says the government
is lowballing the loss and that Recarey's take from his IMC scam could
easily be many times that figure.
Since skipping Miami in 1987, Recarey has been living comfortably in
Caracas, Venezuela. Thomas Holladay, the consul general of the U.S. Embassy
in Caracas, told Mother Jones that officials there were aware of Recarey's
presence and had formally requested his extradition. "We made a formal
request for his extradition," Consul General Holladay says. "But we can't do
anything until the Venezuelans turn him over to us, and they have not done
that." The conversation then ended abruptly. "You know, I'm really not
supposed to be talking to you about this," Holladay says.
In May, following inquiries from Mother Jones, Congressman Pete Stark, who
sits on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, wrote to both the
Department of Justice and the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, demanding
an explanation for six years of inaction on the Recarey case.
Jeb and the Contras
The fact that Recarey is living free in Caracas rather than in shackles at
Fort Leavenworth could well be a result of the role IMC may have played in
Oliver North's secret contra-supply network. Though members of the House
Intelligence Committee claimed they found no reason to believe that Recarey
was using IMC's Medicare facilities and funds to aid the contras, the
evidence that IMC was involved remains compelling. In 1985, the same year
that Jeb Bush was dialing for dollars to HHS officials for IMC, Jeb also
hand-carried a letter from Guatemalan physician Dr. Mario Castejon to the
White House�directly to his father's office in the Executive Office
Building. Dr. Castejon's letter to Vice President Bush requested U.S.
medical aid for the contras. George Bush penned a note back to the doctor,
referring him to Lt. Col. Oliver North�whose pro-contra activities the
president now claims he knew little about.
...
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