Insurance Commissioner John W. Oxendine has denied persistent rumors that he was once the subject of a corruption investigation. But newly obtained documents show that the Republican gubernatorial front-runner was indeed the focus of a state probe that was later referred to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Former Georgia Attorney General Mike Bowers told the AJC that his office opened the investigation in the mid-1990s, not long after Oxendine was elected insurance commissioner in 1994. Bowers provided the newspaper with copies of documents describing the investigation.
There’s some evidence the feds also pursued the case, but Oxendine has refused the AJC’s request to authorize the newspaper’s access to any file the federal government may have compiled.
The documents show that the state was investigating allegations that Oxendine was pressuring insurance companies seeking rate increases to hire attorneys who had been close supporters of his campaign.
Oxendine was never charged with wrongdoing. He said he was unaware of the investigation.
“I have never, ever, been, to my knowledge, the subject of or contacted by anybody on any kind of investigation,” Oxendine said last month.
After his staff reviewed the state documents Friday, Oxendine’s campaign manager Stephen Puetz accused Bowers of playing politics. “This is simply political payback for a 16-year-old political feud,” Puetz said.
The documents released by Bowers show that the state sought to keep the investigation secret and nothing indicates that Oxendine knew of the probe.
The state documents include notes compiled by an investigator and attorneys in Bowers’ office, based on interviews conducted with insurance executives and others who worked with the industry. The interviews contain numerous allegations of improper behavior by Oxendine. The attorney general’s office planned to conduct an undercover operation to determine whether the allegations were true.
Bowers instead referred the case to federal prosecutors because his office was tied up with a complicated investigation of two doctors at the Medical College of Georgia and did not have the resources to pursue both cases, Bowers said.
“I thought it was significant enough to refer it to the U.S. attorney,” said Bowers.
Bowers, a Republican, was the state’s attorney general from 1981 to 1997, when he resigned to run for governor. He has endorsed Karen Handel, who is running against Oxendine in the Republican primary.
Bowers is “playing fast and loose with the truth to help his pal Karen Handel,” said Puetz, Oxendine’s campaign manager. “Nothing ever came of this sham because nothing ever happened.”
Bowers provided the documents and discussed the matter with the AJC after the newspaper contacted him to determine whether an investigation had taken place and after Attorney General Thurbert Baker’s office said its files no longer contained documents related to an Oxendine investigation.
“I am doing this because I think it’s important enough in a governor’s race that people see this,” Bowers said. “It’s something the people ought to know about.”
Bowers said he obtained copies of the documents from Richard L. Hyde, the former chief investigator for the attorney general’s office who is now an employee at Balch & Bingham, the law firm where Bowers is a partner. Hyde, who was the investigator on the Oxendine case, refused to be interviewed when contacted by the AJC.
Bowers’ statement was confirmed by a copy of a 1996 letter in which now-U.S. Attorney Sally Yates, then an assistant in the office, acknowledges “receipt of the records you forwarded to [U.S. Attorney] Kent Alexander regarding Commissioner John Oxendine.”
Yates was then the chief of the U.S. attorney’s fraud and public corruption section.
A spokesman for Yates said she refused to comment on whether the federal government conducted an investigation.
The AJC asked Oxendine last month to sign a privacy waiver that would allow the newspaper to request a copy of any investigative file the Federal Bureau of Investigation may have compiled on Oxendine, through the federal Freedom of Information Act.
Under law, the federal government does not release an FBI file unless the subject of the file requests it or authorizes the release to a third party. Once the subject is deceased, the public can access an FBI file, federal officials said.
Oxendine declined the request.
Explaining the decision, Oxendine campaign manager Stephen Puetz said last month: “For the record, John has never been the target of an investigation that he is aware of.”
When the AJC asked Oxendine to sign the release, Puetz said “establishment folks who don’t want him transforming government” have claimed since the campaign’s outset that Oxendine’s bid for the governor’s office would founder because of explosive information or misstep.
“Now they are stretching beyond belief and even being made fun of on their own blogs,” Puetz said. “It’s absurd at this point is what it is.”
Oxendine’s campaign sent a staff member to the AJC’s offices to read the state documents late Friday.
The feds apparently took at least a cursory look at Oxendine.
Andy Owen, an attorney in private practice in the mid-1990s, confirmed that an FBI agent and a postal inspector met with him seeking information in an investigation of Oxendine. Owen had worked in the attorney general’s office in the 1970s representing the Department of Insurance and had represented insurers after leaving the office.
“They sought confirmation from me of certain allegations,” Owen said. Owen said the meeting was brief and that he had no information to provide to the agent.
Asked by the AJC whether he was ever interviewed by the attorney general’s office as part of an Oxendine investigation, former GEICO executive David Pushman was vague. The attorney general’s file included notes from an interview with Pushman.
“You’re talking about 15 years ago,” Pushman said. “I guess, yeah. I don’t know... I guess they might have come down to Macon. I don’t remember.”
Oxendine said the Republican establishment is splitting its support among his opponents and doing everything possible to derail his campaign.
“If anyone represents the political establishment, it’s Mike Bowers,” Puetz said. “Since losing in 1998 because of his lack of conservative values, he’s been a power broker whose interest is nothing other than protecting the status quo.”
Oxendine said he’s never been part of the Republican establishment.
“The reason they are not for John Oxendine is because it all comes down to money,” Oxendine said. “It’s people that want someone [to win the governor’s race] that’s in their little clubby thing and will take care of their clubby friends so they can make money. I have never been one of those guys to be in that little group.”
Oxendine declined the AJC’s request to authorize a Freedom of Information Act search even though he said during a recent interview with the newspaper that he had a track record of being open with the press.
“You know, I’ve always been open,” he said. “Same kind of governor I’ll be. I’ve always been open. Open book. I believe in accessibility to the press, which you don’t always get in a governor.”
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