Washington – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he was not aware he had invested in two companies backed by some of his top donors and said he had done nothing to aid their business with the government.
The Illinois senator faced questions about more than $50,000 in investments he made immediately after taking office in 2005 in two speculative companies, AVI Biopharma and Skyterra Communications.
Obama said his broker bought the stocks as part of a quasi-blind trust in which he was not consulted when trades were made.
“At no point did I know what stocks were held, and at no point did I direct how those stocks were invested,” Obama told reporters at the end of a news conference called to tout an immigration bill. He said he would provide the paperwork relating to the trust.
“What I wanted to make sure is that I didn’t want to invest in companies that potentially would create conflicts with my work here,” said Obama, who has campaigned on the need for stronger congressional ethics rules. “Obviously, the thing didn’t work the way I wanted it to.”
Obama purchased $5,000 in shares for AVI, which was developing a drug to treat avian flu. Two weeks after buying the stock, as the disease was spreading in Asia, Obama pushed for more federal funding to fight the disease, but he said he did not discuss the matter with any company officials.
Obama also had more than $50,000 in shares of Skyterra, a company that had just received federal permission to create a nationwide wireless network that combined satellite and land- based communications systems.
Among the company’s top investors were donors who raised more than $150,000 for Obama’s political committees, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The stock holdings were first examined Monday by the financial website Thestreet.com.
The reports found no evidence that any of his actions ended up benefiting either company during the roughly eight months he owned the stocks. Obama lost about $15,000 on Skyterra and earned a profit of about $2,000 on AVI.
