It looks like another liberal mainstream media outlet may be about to level a broad-gauge hit piece against Charles and David Koch. A couple of Bloomberg reporters have been digging dirt on the Kansas brothers who own one of the world’s largest private corporations. For years, the two have devoted part of their substantial private wealth in support of political activities and causes with which they agree.
It’s OK with the liberal mainstream media when lefty billionaires like George Soros thus spend their fortunes, but Lord help those on the Right who do so.
The Kochs are libertarians who believe that free enterprise, individual liberty and the rule of law are the best creators and guardians of prosperity and opportunity for everybody.
That’s not a radical notion, as a majority of Americans would mostly agree with the Kochs. So nobody outside of the fever swamps of the Left was surprised to discover a Koch-backed group — Americans for Prosperity — is a major player in the Tea Party movement.
When it became clear during the 2010 campaign that the Tea Party movement was no passing fancy for millions of Americans, however, the Left shifted multiple divisions of its hate army from the continuing assault on Sarah Palin to go after the Kochs.
The Koch brothers provided the Left with a convenient stereotype — two rich guys from middle America running an allegedly evil corporation with world-encircling tentacles — to glom onto the Tea Party to discredit it.
And so we’ve heard ever since how the Tea Party is an astroturf tool the Kochs created to protect their millions. Jane Mayer’s lengthy conspiracy-sopped August 2010 New Yorker article is the piece de resistance in this effort.
More recently, several Bloomberg reporters have been trolling among former Koch employees across the pond in search of disaffected voices willing to talk.
One of those appears to be Ludmila Egorova-Farines, formerly European manager for ethics and commercial compliance for Koch-Glitsch Sarl, or KGF, a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Koch’s international operations that was dissolved last year.
Evidence was found four years ago that other KGF employees had paid bribes to obtain business. An investigation was begun, and Egorova-Farines was one of the investigators. Ultimately, more than two dozen people were either terminated or allowed to resign.
Koch USA officials say they were as surprised and angered as anybody else when they were first apprised of the bribery allegations, and moved as quickly as possible to get to the bottom of the situation and fix it.
But, during this period, Egorova-Farines grew progressively unhappy with KGF, allegations of discrimination were lodged, and her case went to the Employment Tribunal of Paris.
All of Egorova-Farines’ claims were dismissed. She appealed and the decision was overturned on a technicality. KGF and Egorova-Farines then settled out of court.
I spent a lot of my reporting years working with whistleblowers, mainly within the government, and generally find them admirable. But, like the rest of us, they’re just human and can have very mixed motives, of which careful journalists must always be aware.
A former U.S. government official of my acquaintance was approached recently by one of the Bloomberg reporters working on a Koch investigative piece. After some conversation about the French case, the reporter said, “the other interesting thing here is Koch has strong ties to the Tea Party.”
When the official asked what the Tea Party had to do with French bribery allegations, the reporter dropped the topic.
I’ve also had occasion to meet a lot of Bloomberg journalists over the years and have been unfailingly impressed by their professionalism. But they’re human, too, and can make mistakes.
Joining the rampant Koch-bashing would be a mistake.
Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner.
