Gibson got raided again today by the Feds

[Pilgrim]

I haven't read the entire write-up on the Firebird, but it looks to me like Gibson at least deserves some credit for trying to push the guitar past the last 40 years of copycat bodies and revisiting the models made since the 50's. I think they grossly overdid it, but there seem to be some good ideas in the mega-dump of stuff they packed in.

[Grog]

I was poking around on the Gibson board & this link was posted...................

http://www.gibson.com/absolutenm/templates/FeatureTemplatePressRelease.aspx?articleid=1340&zoneid=6

[Pilgrim]

I was poking around on the Gibson board & this link was posted...................

http://www.gibson.com/absolutenm/templates/FeatureTemplatePressRelease.aspx?articleid=1340&zoneid=6

Technicalities like that can make you crazy. Sounds like some prosecutor has a grudge against Gibson.  (Maybe related to the idiot that won't stop wasting federal money chasing Roger Clemens?)

[Freuds_Cat]

"The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department's interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India."

I guess if the govt agency hasn't laid charges then they ar just supposing but this seems to be the crux of it.

[drbassman]

Our government is a total waste of money.  We are funding insanity on a daily basis.

[Freuds_Cat]

Henry J interview.

http://video.gibson.com.s3.amazonaws.com/Events/press-release.html

Thats 30 mins of my life I'll never get back. still, it was interesting.

[Dave W]

Harassment, pure and simple.

[Denis]

In the army that sort of behavior is called "chickenshit". No value, no purpose, just bs.

[uwe]

Why aren't other guitar companies raided? I'm not impressed. Seems like Gibson used rosewood and ebony whose legality is at least up to discussion. If you do that you should have an arrangement in place to solve the disagreement with the agency legally and without too much smoke and noise. Or did they just say "That is how we see it, the wood is legal, shove your doubts, and we'll be using it accordingly and shipping it as part of our guitars, yours sincerely, stupid agency!"? Well, don't act surprised if you're raided then.

A PR disaster. And unlike other guitar companies Gibson seems to be unable to procure wood of 100% waterproof legitimacy and convince authorities of it.

[Dave W]

Gibson has said all along that they are cooperating fully, so I doubt that they just told a federal agency to shove it.

If what they are saying in the press release is accurate, then you have to wonder why others haven't been raided. The feds think Indian law says wood from India has to be finished by workers in India? Look at all the Indian rosewood fingerboard blanks that their government allows to be export. Sounds like another case of federal prosecutorial abuse to me.

[uwe]

If you cooperate fully you don't get raided, simple as that. And they spare you the embarrassment of locking your workforce out. By compliance standards, this was not handled well. A worldwide conglomerate like Siemens paid a 1.6 billion (!) Dollar fine for its global bribery practices to the SEC after a two year long investigation by a law firm chosen by the SEC (and paid for by Siemens) and was not raided like that. And you are telling me that Gibson's attorneys were not able to avoid this about some rosewood and ebony from India? Dilletants.

The first raid might have been bad luck and out of the blue, but the second one cannot be explained other than through gross mismanagement of the case. As I said, if this had happened here, heads would be rolling. And it doesn't matter whether the agency is right or wrong (I have no opinion on that), that is a matter for the courts to resolve. But you don't let a government agency even get near a situation where it feels that it must raid you.

[dadagoboi]

I agree, Uwe.  Whatever the situation, Gibson's lawyer's definitely aren't the A team.

[Dave W]

If you cooperate fully you don't get raided, simple as that. And they spare you the embarrassment of locking your workforce out. By compliance standards, this was not handled well. A worldwide conglomerate like Siemens paid a 1.6 billion (!) Dollar fine for its global bribery practices to the SEC after a two year long investigation by a law firm chosen by the SEC (and paid for by Siemens) and was not raided like that. And you are telling me that Gibson's attorneys were not able to avoid this about some rosewood and ebony from India? Dilletants.

The first raid might have been bad luck and out of the blue, but the second one cannot be explained other than through gross mismanagement of the case. As I said, if this had happened here, heads would be rolling. And it doesn't matter whether the agency is right or wrong (I have no opinion on that), that is a matter for the courts to resolve. But you don't let a government agency even get near a situation where it feels that it must raid you.

I have no way of knowing the quality of their legal team handling this, but I can't say that the raid proves they have mismanaged things. You're naive about what goes on here. In a country where you see SWAT teams with surplus high powered military equipment conducting raids for alleged white collar crimes as minor as an illegal poker game, this could have been a lot worse. 

[uwe]

You can't even have good old-fashioned fun with a chamber maid where you guys live either!

And then, within a couple of weeks - abracadabra! -, credible witnesses with a spotless history turn into notoriously unreliable liars who can't be trusted to testify and have friends in jail. Or maybe the logic is that it's alright to rape those, whatever ...  

I think the US legal system suffers from its overly adverserial nature, the focus on "winning the case" and the fact that great parts of the judicial personnel face elections. A prosecutor shouldn't be judged by how many cases he "loses" or "wins", but by how often he has helped achieve a just result that can live up to scrutiny years later. And our Western system is built on the premise that we rather let 100 culprits go free rather than convict one innocent (wo)man. Once you think that convicting a few innocents is ok just as long as that hikes the share of guilty ones convicted, you're on a downward spiral.    

[ramone57]

maybe Eric Holder is a diehard fender guy