We still haven't recovered. That's what our annual losses are now. That allegation would have to be reserved for the legal fiasco surrounding the Fleming Cos., a food marketing and distribution company where Leach served as a director for 23 years. According to hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of lawsuits filed by grocery chains from Texas to Hawaii, Fleming covered up its fraudulent price gouging with phony invoices and two separate sets of books for financial record-keeping. But their cost was a bogus cost.
Similar lawsuits are pending around the country.
In the American style of corporate governance, it is possible for even such egregious malfeasance to go on unbeknownst to part-time directors. The cost was covered by insurance policies carried by the company executives to protect them against such suits. Still, these corporate and public-sector missteps don't necessarily mean Leach will run a casino out of our Paris embassy and skim the profits. But even if he doesn't turn the embassy into a bunco parlor, Howard H. Leach is certain to confirm Parisians' opinion that Americans are boobs, just as Bush's appointments to embassies elsewhere will cement our international reputation for gaucherie. Which means that in Western Europe, the Caribbean, and anywhere else tycoons enjoy vacationing, we will be represented by the ignorant.