May 27, 2008

$370,000 in suspicious campaign funds, or as much as 75% of Kevin Calvey's total 2006 Congressional campaign donations. Money given at a time Calvey was involved in rewriting tax credit legislation, that evidence has since surfaced failed to close the tax credit abuse loophole allowing at least another hidden $630 million to be bilked from Oklahoma taxpayers. Losses appearing on no public records. Only to later surface as unidentifiable tax revenue shortfalls. Costing every state program for years to come.

The donations became questionable when Calvey's donation pathology was compared with the other major candidates and showed a profound difference in donor patterns. E.g., while the 3 major candidates Fallin, Hunter and Cornett each received 7%, 5% and 6% respectively from donors out of state and/or with ties to the investment community, Calvey received 76% or more than 10 times as much as the others in this same donor class share of total contributions. The contributions from the donors in question, many out of district and state, were a significant variation from these donors typical contribution pattern. In most cases donating more to Mr. Calvey's campaign than their own representatives. In many cases donating more to Calvey than ever given any individual candidate.

Most prominent in this odd pattern was, Altus Venture, the biggest known abuser of the tax credit loophole, who along with associates have a history of being named defendants in at least three cases of financial wrong doing.

During the time of Calvey's involvement with the legislation Paul Doughty, the president of Altus Venture, delivered Calvey a large bundled donation. Calvey in turn accepted Doughty's input, on the contents of the legislation. Altus Venture by nature of its position in the financial investment community would be expected to have working ties with many if not all of the donors in question. All of who could realize major financial gains or losses with this legislation!

One particular point of interest is there is nothing to prevent state officials from participating as investors and reaping huge windfall profits. While remaining totally unknown to the public. There is only one state official, an appointee at the Oklahoma Tax Commission, allowed access to the information showing how much this program is costing the state and where the money is going. The end beneficiaries are revealed to no one. Not even the appointee.

Details and references available at http://prowlingowl.com, a companion subset of ProwlingOwl.com, created to expose Oklahoma's massive tax credit abuse