Now that one of Balch & Bingham’s former top partners will be reporting to prison for 5 years, the sleazy stigma of corruption, bribery, money laundering, honest services fraud appears to have heavily impacted the once prestigious firm and their high-profile clients.
Sources tell us that Buddy Parker, the RICO attorney and former Assistant U.S. Attorney, who is meticulously and carefully putting together the civil RICO suit for Burt Newsome, and his legal team are thoroughly investigating each mundane detail of the case and have now found a solid, direct link between Alabama Power and the Newsome Conspiracy Case.
The direct link is so damaging we are told, that it not only establishes Alabama Power and their parent company, Southern Company, as parties in the civil RICO action, but will show alleged racist views against Muslims and minorities.
And allegations of discrimination against Muslims by Southern Company and its subsidiaries are not new. In 2012, Southern Nuclear, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Southern Company was sued for Civil Rights Violations by a former senior engineer, a Muslim, who had worked at Southern Nuclear for 19 years. The matter, eventually settled out of court, was of course defended on behalf of Southern Nuclear by Balch & Bingham.
Although we have been harshly critical in the past of Southern Company’s decision to continue to utilize Balch & Bingham, we strongly believe Southern Company’s CEO Tom Fanning is an inherently good man. He would have not personally called us last year if he were not.
But we believe he and his team were probably given a bucket of bull from Balch & Bingham about the Newsome Conspiracy Case.
The close relationship, sister-wife relationship, revolving door of lateral promotions between Southern Company and Balch & Bingham appears to have, in regards to Newsome, blinded them to a severe liability, an enormous third-party risk.
Sleazy stigma. Buckets of bull. Third-party risk. Racism. Civil RICO lawsuit defendant.
Institutional investors won’t tolerate the misconduct, and neither should Fanning.
