I googled Susan Arceneaux out of curiousity and I think I may have found an accounting irregularity involving Swift Boat Vets and Political Compliance Services.

Arceneaux, as you know, is or very recently was partners in Political Compliance Services with Christopher J. Ward. Ward is the former NRCC treasurer who is under investigation by the FBI.

Arceneaux and PCS handle the accounting for Swift Boat Vets which is a 527 for tax purposes. Arceneaux also handles the books for the Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann Foundation. In fact, the foundation’s address is the same as PCS’s.

Admiral Roy F. Hoffman is a co-founder of Swift Boats.

According to the Swift Boat Vets 8872 filed with the IRS for the first quarter of 2006, Swift Boat Vets contributed $100,000 to the Admiral Hoffman Foundation on 2/8/06.

But, according to the 2006 990 filed with the IRS by the foundation, the foundation either never received or never recorded the $100,000 contribution from Swift Boat Vets.

The foundation did record a $10,000 contribution from Swift Boat Vets in 2005.

Where did the $100,000 disappear to?

Over the last decade, Wachovia (WB, Fortune 500) (nee First Union) has purchased the likes of Wachovia Bank, CoreStates Financial, Golden West Financial and The Money Store. At the end of the buying spree, the Charlotte-based mid-sized regional banking player had become a national money center bank and a powerhouse on Wall Street.

Another, perhaps less-considered result was that Wachovia’s balance sheet became literally full of goodwill – the accounting equivalent of hot air. An accounting term for the difference between the price an acquirer paid for a company’s shares and their market value at the time of the acquisition, goodwill is classified as an intangible asset. Because of bank management’s ceaseless appetite (and willingness to pay up for its acquisitions), Wachovia’s asset ledger has a substantial amount of something that has no appreciable value.

Emphasis mine.

DOJ:Wachovia Sec Former SVP Pleads Guilty To Bank Larceny A random bad apple in all liklihood.

Evidence Wachovia Knew of and Profited from Theft This nakedcapitalism post echoes one of the NYT articles, but with comments.

Wachovia Net Falls 98% on Mortgage-Linked Writedowns (Update5). No doubt they have everything already covered and won’t be needing a lifeline anytime soon.

“…Erik Iverson, Rehberg’s chief of staff, confirmed Thursday that the man reportedly under investigation is Chris Ward, a Washington, D.C.-based financial consultant, who also served as treasurer for Rehberg’s Bringing Our Opportunities Together political action committee in 2006 and 2007.

Barbara Barrett, a spokeswoman for Rehberg’s campaign, said in a written statement that Ward was terminated as the BOOT PAC’s campaign treasurer on Dec. 7. Barrett did not give specifics as to why Ward was fired, but Iverson said in an earlier interview that he heard from campaign staffers that Ward was expensive and unresponsive to campaign contributors.
Rehberg’s leadership PAC raised $47,000 during the 2006 election cycle, and $15,000 so far for the 2008 election cycle, according to Federal Elections Commission filings. Most of that money was spent on fundraising consulting fees and accounting and compliance fees. The Fairfax, Va.-based Political Compliance Services, the firm in which Ward is a partner, was paid $4,500 by Rehberg’s leadership PAC in 2006 and $5,500 in 2007 for accounting and compliance fees…”

They need to keep the deck stacked with folks who could recognize the dead bodies and smoking guns on sight, and who’d drag their feet taking any action.

Thing is, this Christopher Ward stuff looks like it is using a back–Wachovia. But interestingly, he’s sprinkling it around different branches in the DC metro area and even Charlotte. I suspect there’s a lot of laundering going on in Wachovia.

That is, are there real, criminal jailtime penalties? Because if all that happens is that campaigns are fined after the election, this is just a cost of doing business.

Dole’s campaign was out of money between his wrapping up his primary delegate count and the convention. By law, he couldn’t campaign; he was out of funds and was accepting matching money. But he nonetheless continued to campaign. After the election, the campaign was fined.

Seemed toothless to me at the time.

A lot of corporate monies were handled this way; there are PAC’s that very clearly are used in this fashion, can predict which PAC’s will have been used before one even goes digging too far. Coburn’s contributions, for example, have a lot of this kind of PAC traffic. And DeLay’s money…perfect example.”

I too spent considerable time working on trying to trace the swaps back in the summer of 2006, but I did it by Legislative Issue. For instance I identified the primary lobbyies working on not regulating the cost of student loans, the Leadership PACS that initially received the funds, and then the distribution of those funds to other legislators and non-incumbant campaigns. Found much interesting stuff. Not sure if it is illegal, but still of interest. Found a mass of charges against individual congressmen’s accounts of what appeared to be fees for donations, in other words if Congressperson X gives Congressperson Y ten thousand from a leadership PAC, a fee of 10% is charged against the donation. Paid to a firm in NVirginia founded and owned by Haley Barbour that apparently had at least 100 R congresspersons funding. Because the firm is private, does not report to FEC — thus no way to track the use of the PAC funds. Another firm in California apparently did congressional issue mailings, probably microtargeting, thus when a potentially controversial matter was in the news — up for floor or committee vote, and yes, you could track congressional payments from PAC transfers to the California firm in the same time frame as congressional action. In the case of student loans, it looked like micro targeting to those in districts concerned with this specific issue. I only did one issue, the Student Loan matter, but suspect this could be followed across multiple issues. But what amazed me was the centralization — normally Congress critters make a big thing of supporting local vendors for printing, mailing and all — not this gang, they way over paid, as well as paying all these fees, for what should, in fact, come out of a local congressional office. There apparently was a non-bank bank where they held all their funds, again in N Virginia.

Would be a good focus for closer investigation.

You’ll of course recognize the other names too…

One other to point out is Timmy Teepel. Homeschooled Timmy up until recently was the director of the “Madison Project” (a political fundraising group) but recently moved to Louisiana to work for Gov. Bobby Jindal.

While Timmy was running the Madison, however, he shared office space at 119 C St, SE on Capitol Hill with Carolyn Malenick. Malenick ran the illegal GOP “Triad Management” fundraiser conduit during the 1996 election. Malenick was only recently fined by the FEC in 2004 for that work. Eight years to adjudicate, sheesh.

Anyway, more phyiscal manifestations of the shady money train.