Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Friday, 8 November 2013

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au

Lipstick on a pig: Hockey must not throw GrainCorp into ADM’s trough

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. Archer Daniels Midland has undergone a corporate makeover in recent years, but it is only the giant global food conglomerate that it is today, and in a position to gobble up one of Australia’s most important agricultural companies, because of decades of corruption, political buy-offs and price-fixing.

Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey must not allow this predator cartel to take over GrainCorp, the largest grain handler on Australia’s east coast.

ADM is one of the big four “ABCD” food conglomerates—ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus—which dominate the global food supply, and dictate prices to both producers and consumers. Australia’s agricultural strength was built on cooperatives and “single desk” statutory marketing authorities which were formed so that Australia’s family farmers would not be at the mercy of such operations. Since the Hawke-Keating era, those structures have been systematically ripped apart, and the less than 40,000 family farmers remaining—down from 200,000 in the 1970s—have been left on their knees.

There is no economic argument for Joe Hockey approving ADM’s takeover of GrainCorp. He either defends Australia’s food security and family farms, or he will be betraying the national interest.

ADM’s history of corruption
[Source: Executive Intelligence Review magazine, 8 January 1999.]

1945-52: Dwayne Andreas works for Cargill [another of the notorious big four ABCD global food cartels], starting as general plant manager, ending as VP in charge of soybean and linseed oil. His assistant James R. Randall (hired at Cargill in 1948), later becomes president of ADM.

1945: Andreas meets Hubert Humphrey, then mayor of Minneapolis, and elected to the U.S. Senate in 1948. Their collaboration involves some 85 world trips; Humphrey is Michael Andreas’s godfather.

1954: The Food for Peace law, PL-480, is enacted. Humphrey and Andreas travel to Poland and to the Vatican, as a showcase bi-partisan move with Eisenhower administration, to pave the way for paying Cargill and other cartel firms to ship food to the East bloc.

1965: Archer Daniels Midland formed, merging assets of the Archer, Daniels, and Andreas families.

1966: Dwayne Andreas becomes president of ADM.

1968: Andreas “loans” $100,000 to Humphrey’s Democratic Presidential campaign, and is charged with illegally transferring corporate funds for election purposes. A Minnesota Federal judge, a friend of Humphrey’s, dismisses the case. Andreas, via a Minneapolis business partner, Kenneth Dahlberg—chairman of Minnesota branch of Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President, or CREEP—funnels $25,000, which ends up in the account of Watergate burglar Bernard Barker. Rep. Wright Patman (D-Tex.), whose Banking and Currency Committee was investigating the case, expressed concern that Andreas was one of the investors granted a Federal bank charter in a Minneapolis suburb. Dahlberg was among the five applicants for the charter. After Nixon’s resignation in 1974, $100,000 in cash, provided by Andreas, was found in the White House safe. Andreas got his money back in full, and reportedly, was able to successfully dodge subpoenas from Sen. Sam Ervin’s impeachment hearings.

1971: Michael Andreas joins ADM at age 23. Trained in speculation by Cargill’s Julius Hendel.

1974: ADM enters into price-fixing scheme, overcharging U.S. government by $19 million in sales of soy-fortified food to the Food for Peace program. ADM is convicted in both criminal and civil suits, but evades repaying the government its share of $19 million.

1976: ADM pleads no contest to Federal charges of systematically short-weighting and misgrading Federally subsidized grain shipped abroad. ADM loses no contracts, and continues shipments. ADM/Cargill start up ethanol production, for non-food use of crops, lobbying for Federal subsidy, because Andreas needs a way to dispose of huge corn syrup excess.

1977: The newly enacted Federal sugar price support nets ADM millions of dollars by preventing sweetener prices from dropping. The staff author of the law, David Gartner, is a top aide to Humphrey; ADM bribed Gartner with a contribution of $72,000 worth of ADM stock to a trust fund established for Gartner and his family.

1978: Gartner is appointed to Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The story of ADM’s bribe to him breaks, but Gartner refuses to resign or to pay ADM back.

1984: President Reagan appoints Andreas to chair a task force on private initiative; Andreas recommends creating an Economic Security Council, which becomes the Economic Policy Council. The joke around Washington is: “Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what your government can do for ADM.”

1990: The Clean Air Act is a boon for ethanol output, with Cargill and ADM owning over 70% of the capacity.

1990s: Under the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Accord, ADM and Cargill extend their control and reposition their operations in North America. Dwayne Andreas joins the board of British intelligence publishing empire, Hollinger Corp., run by [future convicted criminal] Canadian Conrad Black.

1994: Federal grand juries take anti-trust evidence on Cargill, ADM, Tate&Lyle (U.K.), and CPC International on price and supply fixing of lysine, citric acid, corn sweeteners, and starch. These four companies control 74% of U.S. wet corn milling.

1995: On June 27, the FBI raids ADM executive offices and homes in Decatur, Illinois.

1996: In October, top ADM executives Michael Andreas and Terrence Wilson leave the company. On Oct. 14, ADM pleads guilty and agrees to pay fines of $100 million for criminal price-fixing of lysine and citric acid.

1998: Michael Andreas and Terrence Wilson are convicted of criminal price fixing. Dwayne Andreas steps aside as chairman, and is succeeded by his nephew, G. Allen Andreas. ADM commands world’s largest processing capacity for corn, soybeans, and wheat, with 165 processing plants, 300 grain elevators, 10,000 rail cars, 15,000 trucks, and 2,000 river barges.

Post Script

1999: Michael Andreas sentenced to three years in prison.

2007: G. Allen Andreas hands over control of ADM to its current chairman, Patricia Woertz, ending 41 years of direct Andreas family executive control. However, Andreas picked former Chevron executive Woertz to take over, as part of ADM’s corporate makeover to whitewash its notorious history.

Click here for a free back copy of Executive Intelligence Review magazine, featuring a thorough profile of the increasing control of the world’s food supply in a handful of cartel companies, including ADM.

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