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| Kim Tanaka |
The story of accounting fraud engulfing Atlanta-based Southern Company, the nation's second largest utility, has been ugly for months, even years. But a new element -- the payment of hush money to at least two people -- has been added to the story in recent days. And that makes the story even uglier, according to a report at banbalch.com, which operates under the CDLU public charity and advocacy group.
Adding the words "hush money" to a situation can complicate matters significantly, as many Americans know from following the legal travails of former president Donald Trump. Those two words -- hush money -- might be about to complicate matters for Southern Company, according to K.B. Forbes, CEO of the CDLU. Writing under the headline "Holy Tanaka! Southern Company Pays Hush Money to Fanning’s Ex-Girlfriend and the Spy who Infiltrated Her Life," Forbes first provides background:
Ex-Alabama Power Chairman and CEO Mark A. Crosswhite was ousted in November for spying on his boss Tom Fanning, the Chairman and CEO of Southern Company, in 2017 and his then-girlfriend, Kim Tanaka.
Tanaka is a beautiful, dedicated, hard-working and “pleasant to the eyes” gym instructor.
The surveillance in 2017 was to find evidence of a bisexual tryst to blackmail and force Fanning to step down so that Crosswhite could take over. But Fanning was a heterosexual male, killing the scheme.
But the surveillance appears to have never ended. Holy Tanaka!
Longtime Alabama attorney and online journalist Donald Watkins uncovered "hush money" payments -- which were never reported to state or federal regulators or law-enforcement officials -- in the Southern Company story. That means the company's executives might have some new, and serious, problems on their hands. Writes Forbes:
On September 22, 2022, Kimberly Tanaka finally had enough of the Southern Company’s corporate surveillance program that had turned her life upside-down since 2017. Tanaka called police to a location in Metro-Atlanta to report a “stalking incident.”
While visiting AFPI Global Investigations in Atlanta, Tanaka and her private investigators found a GPS tracking device with a magnet under her car.
She was livid.
In 2022, Tanaka was still under surveillance and worse, alleged paid operatives of obscure political consulting firm Matrix, LLC, founded by the Oompa Loompa of Alabama politics, Joe Perkins, infiltrated Kim Tanaka’s circle of friends.
DonaldWatkins.com reveals:
Beginning in May of 2017, the espionage crew hired Kristen Hentschel, a Florida-based free-lance field producer for ABC News and “several PR firms in different states, non-profit organizations and private companies to investigate stories, interview subjects and provide information and materials and footage to whomever she is working for.”
Hentschel was paid to develop a close personal friendship with Kim Tanaka, a professional and very credentialed fitness trainer at an Atlanta area gym. Even though Hentschel was living out of state, she succeeded in becoming one of Tanaka’s best friends and confidants. They even vacationed together.
Tom Fanning, who cut off all telephone contact with Tanaka in late 2017, desperately tried to reach her after she contacted Fanning via email about a call she received from a Bloomberg News reporter (Josh Saul) who was in the mix with the spy operatives who planted Kristen Hentschel within Tanaka’s friendship circle.
Remarkably, Fanning confessed to Tanaka, via a reply email, that he knew about the surveillance, but he did not say when or how he learned about it. Tanaka refused to accept Fanning’s repeated phones calls to discuss the matter, but she saved his voice messages in which he pleaded with Tanaka to call him back.
Tanaka ultimately achieved some measure of justice for the headaches Southern Company had caused for her, Forbes writes:
Tanaka ended up getting a stack of gold from Southern Company for the invasion of her privacy and the intrusion of her seclusion.
Watkins reports:
After learning that she was the victim of a Southern Company surveillance program, Ms. Tanaka threatened to sue the Southern Company for violating her right to privacy. Tom Fanning and Jim Kerr promptly resolved Tanaka’s legal claims. However, they did so in a clandestine manner and in amounts that evaded the company’s reporting requirements on its 10-Q and 10-K regulatory filings.
Instead, the payments to Kim Tanaka are/were laundered through a Southern Company vendor. These payments are the subject of an upcoming article.
In addition to Kim Tanaka, Kristine Hentschel received “hush money’ payments, as well. Again, the money was laundered through a Southern Company vendor to avoid detection.
Forbes closes by imparting information that might cause discomfort at Southern Company -- not to mention its vendors:
Money laundering. Hush money. Pay throughs.
What will the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission say?
“Pleasant to the eyes” has now provoked internal strife.
As the old moralists say, the pleasure is momentary, the price abominable!
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