Once Upon A Time In The Bush Family Series
Prince Neil Bush -- I am Not a Crook
by Evelyn J. Pringle
www.dissidentvoice.org
December 24, 2004

Once upon a time, Prince Neil Bush took up with Asian Hookers, caught a venereal disease, stole the wife of a business associate, and sent an email to his wife of 23 years saying he wanted a divorce.

I will never understand why the Prince sought a divorce; being married certainly never cramped his style. Neil filed the suit on Aug 26 2002 and cited 'discord or conflict of personalities' as the reason for the divorce. I wonder if that means that Sharon got crabby and unreasonable when she found out about the hookers and VD?

During the divorce proceedings, many of Neil’s past business dealings came under intense public scrutiny after he was forced to testify in a deposition on March 3, 2003. For instance, he testified that on July 19, 1999, he made over $171,000 in a single day, by buying and selling shares of stock in Kopin Corp, a small Massachusetts company where he had previously been a consultant.

According to the Prince, his good fortune began while he was a consultant for Telecom Holdings, which is part of the Charoen Pokphand Group (CP Group), and the firm wanted him to find US companies to invest in. "We searched for a viable fit and found Kopin Corporation," Neil claimed.

In a more detailed explanation, he said, "We made introduction of the Asian group to Kopin and they ended up investing a significant amount of money in Kopin," Neil said. "I believe it was in excess of $20 million. They're in Hong Kong and Thailand."

Well, actually the deal that Neil arranged was for a tad more than $20 million, it was for $27 million. But then what’s $7 million here or there to a Prince.

According to the Dec 30, 2003 Baltimore Sun: Neil earned nearly $1.4 million in 2000 and nearly half of it came from simply introducing the executives of a Thailand-based conglomerate to the executives of a US company that makes computer components.

Finally, on Dec 31, 2003, Neil’s attorney, John Spalding explained the transaction to the Boston

Globe, ''Neil helped put together an approximately $27 million dollar deal and was awarded stock options for his efforts. Stock options can range from anywhere to being utterly worthless to very valuable,'' Spalding said. ''A realtor in a similar deal would have made three times as much money and it would have been paid at closing. Neil eventually made around $500,000 in compensation for his work that was not guaranteed,'' he said.

That $500,000 figure is not quite right either. In his deposition, Neil said he earned $642,000 from the deal. But then here again, what’s $142,000 to a Prince.

Ex-King George & Prince Neil Are A Team

An interesting point not often mentioned about the Kopin-CP Group venture, is that during the Clinton years, Republicans held endless hearings on Clinton's alleged ties to Asian businesses that were buying influence for China. One of the main companies they zeroed in on was none other than the CP Group.

But here come to find out, at the same time that they were accusing Clinton of wrong-doing, Ex-King George and Prince Neil were involved in extremely profitable business deals with the CP Group. George raked in $250,000 in one trip to Bangkok, supposedly help the company attract new customers, and as we know now, Prince Neil formed a joint venture with Kopin and the CP Group and made out like a bandit.

Where was the outrage when the ex-President and his son were peddling the Bush family influence to China?

Stocks Not Utterly Worthless

According to Kopin executive, Richard Sneider, Neil received 20,000 shares of Kopin stock options as partial compensation for his work on the Kopin-CP Group deal.

And contrary to the Attorney Spalding hypothetical comment to the Globe, those stock options were definitely not worthless. In fact, they became extremely valuable on July 19, 1999, the day that the

Wall Street Journal published a story saying that a Japanese video camera company had started using tiny liquid crystal display viewfinders manufactured by Kopin. The company itself had not even announced its good news until that same morning.

Now then, here’s where it gets interesting. According to Neil‘s deposition testimony, on July 19, at 9 am, his financial adviser called and told him to buy 15,000 shares of Kopin stock and then turn around and sell them the same day. That morning, he purchased the stock for $28.62 per share and a few hours later he sold it for $33.25, raking in over $171,000 in one sweep.

Although the $171,000 was made in one day, Prince Neil’s luck held up over time. His tax returns show that he actually made $798,218 from 3 transactions involving Kopin stock, according to the AP on Jan 26, 2004.

I wonder if Neil would be willing to refer his advisor to the rest of us?

Prince Neil -- I Am Not A Crook

During his deposition, Neil tried to explain his stroke of good luck. "My financial adviser ... recalls that I had instructed her to keep an eye out for an opportune time to exercise the options to buy 15,000 shares of Kopin stock as early as March of 1999,” he said.

And of course, he strenuously denied any involvement in insider trading. "Any increase in the price of the stock on that day was purely coincidental, meaning that I did not have any improper information," he said. "My timing on this transaction was very fortunate,” according to the AP.

I wouldn’t call the timing coincidental or fortunate, I’d call it miraculous, being the hot tip just happened to come on the very same day that the company announced a deal that sent its stock value soaring. All I can say is that in light of what happened to Martha Stewart and her broker, Neil had better hope that his psychic financial adviser sticks to the same story.

As far as coincidences go, it seems to me that members of the Bush Royal Family have made more money off “coincidences” than many Americans earn in a lifetime.

The moral of this story is that crooks, like Prince Neil Bush, should remain married, no matter what, to avoid testifying in a divorce deposition at all costs.