Seems like the government might want to scrutinize the ownership of
vendors of funding recipients. It ought to send up a red flag when
they're buying lots of things from themselves.
On 10/22/2015 4:17 PM, Eric Kuhnke wrote:
Sounds like this guy it for everyone.
Since 2002, Sandwich Isles Communications has collected $242,489,940
from the federal
Universal Service Fund to serve no more than 3,659 customers.
2
During that same time, Albert Hee, the
owner of Sandwich Isles’s parent company Waimana Enterprises and
affiliate ClearCom, apparently used
the company as his family’s personal piggy bank. For example, the
companies apparently paid $96,000
so that Hee could receive two
-
hour massages twice a we
ek; $119,909 for personal expenses, including
family trips to Disney World, Tahiti, France, and Switzerland and a four
-
day family vacation at the
Mauna Lani resort; $736,900 for college tuition and housing expenses
for Hee’s three children;
$1,300,000 for
a home in Santa Clara, California for his children’s use as college
housing; and
$1,676,685 in wages and fringe benefits for his wife and three children.
3
That’s not all. When the FCC last looked at Sandwich Isles’s corporate
expenses, our staff found
tha
t it was spending $5,460,973 more on corporate operations each year
than similarly sized companies,
with significant management and leasing fees to affiliated companies
(like Waimana and ClearCom) that
benefited Hee and his family.
4
On top of all that, sev
en years ago, Sandwich Isles dropped a $1.9
-
million
-
a
-
year lease it had with
an independent undersea cable network in favor of a $15
-
million
-
a
-
year lease for a cable network built by
ClearCom and owned by Paniolo LLC.
5
Unsurprisingly, Paniolo is itself ow
ned by Blue Ivory LLC,
which is wholly owned by Blue Ivory Hawaii Corporation, which in turn
is owned by private trusts of
Hee’s three children.
6
What is worse, Sandwich Isles appears to no longer be paying what it
owes to
Paniolo
—
yet is still collecting
payments from other rural telephone companies as if it were.
On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 1:14 PM, Steve <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Already trying to control the money. This is why we opted out of
getting involved in any form of Government program. It just
allows them to keep their fingers up your ass and use you as a puppet.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/isps-reminded-to-not-use-government-money-for-alchohol-and-vacations/
Internet service providers who accept government funding in
exchange for providing Internet access in rural areas were
"reminded" this week that they're not allowed to use the money for
food, alcohol, entertainment, personal travel, and other expenses
unrelated to providing Internet access.
The Federal Communications Commission issued a public notice with
a "non-exhaustive list of expenditures" that cannot be reimbursed.
The list includes all of the above as well as political
contributions, charitable donations, scholarships, payment of
penalties and fines, club membership fees, sponsorships of
conferences and community events, gifts to employees, and personal
expenses of employees and family members "including but not
limited to personal expenses for housing, such as rent or mortgages."
