In his nomination hearing today, State Department nominee Robert Hormats was forced to discuss his role in the IPO of PetroChina. The IPO was the focus of a LittleSis / PAI report in late July and led anti-genocide groups to raise questions about the nomination. The nominee also faced repeated questions from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the issues of human rights, sanctions, and transparency.

I am in DC for the Gov 2.0 summit, so I went to the hearing. Sam Bell of the Genocide Intervention Network also covered the hearing on twitter.

Hormats was introduced by Senator Schumer, who announced his “unthrottled, full-throated support” of the nomination based on their friendship of over thirty years. In an early (but not explicit) nod to the PetroChina issue, Hormats’s opening statement emphasized his time spent in Africa.

After asking about his views of human rights issues, Senator Cardin raised the issue of PetroChina and Sudan, and the fact that there was significant concern in the human rights community about his role in the IPO.

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Anti-genocide groups are now taking action in response to our report on State Department nominee’s Bob Hormats’ suspect ties to Sudan. After the Senate Foreign Relations Committee met last Thursday to discuss a long-range strategy for Sudan, anti-genocide groups decided they had to speak up before Hormats’s nomination hearings begin on Sept. 14.

On Monday, Sam Bell of the Genocide Intervention Network and Eric Cohen of Investors Against Genocide wrote a joint letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee raising key questions about Hormats’s nomination.

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On Sunday I blogged about the key role of Bob Hormats, Obama’s recent nominee for undersecretary of state, in the stock offering of PetroChina, a company linked to Sudan’s genocidal regime.

Hormats’s Goldman Sachs connection has been criticized elsewhere, but his Sudan ties deserve more scrutiny.

This is no insignificant matter: as a Goldman Sachs executive, Hormats threw his weight behind a stock offering that helped to finance Sudan’s genocidal regime. He did so in a deceptive and, as it turned out, illegal manner. And he did so despite the fervent opposition of a broad coalition concerned about the link between oil revenues and the Sudan genocide. This coalition included government officials (including members of the Reagan administration), labor unions, human rights organizations, and religious groups.

The Public Accountability Initiative (PAI, the 501c3 behind LittleSis) will be releasing the Hormats research in the form of a report and circulating it to various stakeholders and Senate offices. The introduction is below, the full report is here.

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Since Friday’s post about Bob Hormats, Obama’s most recent Goldman nominee, I’ve done a bit of research on his record. It looks very bad.

Hormats was one of Wall Street’s top diplomats over the past two decades, which means that he played a starring role in every foreign financial crisis: Mexico, Russia, Thailand, etc. The formula was fairly consistent: before each crisis, as Goldman’s chief international banker, Hormats advised these countries on how to open their markets (deregulation, privatization, etc) and invite foreign flows of capital. This, in turn, created speculative bubbles. Once they burst, Hormats advised the US on the necessary bailout and issued warnings about what Wall Street would do if no bailout came through.

In Hormats’ career as international financial villain, one incident looks especially bad: his role in Goldman’s stock offering for PetroChina, the Chinese oil company linked to Sudan, in 2000.

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