US: companies not exactly laughing up their sleeves

Eliot Spitzer was the other man in New York's competition to be the leading Democrat Party character. As we all know, his opponent for that was Hillary Clinton. He is, however, Governor of New York state as her successor. They didn't compete for the same jobs.

In a country where the job of senior prosecutor is a political position, he mounted campaigns to become elected and thereafter the raise his political ambition. Spitzer never used his religion as a platform which gave him far wider support than his

But it was widely expected that he would, in perhaps ten years' time, become the first Jewish president of the USA. Not because he is Jewish but because he would be the right man for the job.

Spitzer lived his life as a prosecutor of feared and fearsome power. No company was too big, no individual too connected for him to challenge its business practices. In the era both just before and then after Enron et al, he found rich pickings amongst commercial concerns and up and down Wall Street. Wall Street and other prosecutors had trouble understanding why confrontation and court were his preferred methods instead of the more usual, in the USA, mutual agreements to pay a penalty and sidestep a prosecution. The answer was simple: there is great PR in seeing captains of industry in handcuffs. And while the threat of losing money was not so great, the threat of losing liberty was a great focusser of minds. But under that threat he did the same as everyone else - settled cases without criminal liability. However, Spitzer extracted far greater penalty payments than others.

But something was wrong beneath the veneer. His moral outrage - that seemed so genuine - now seems to be a little synthetic.

Recently, it came to public attention that he had borrowed several million dollars from his father to fund a campaign for the office of State Attorney General. He lost. But the real issue was that he did not declare the money and worse when it was put to him in 1994 he denied the loan - only to admit it later.

But it seems that pigeons are coming home to roost and Spitzer whose team once, allegedly according to Richard Grasso, former chairman of the NYSE and a Spitzer target, circulated unproven allegations that Grasso had had an innapropriate relationship with his secretary, is embroiled in his own scandal.

Spitzer was not one for wheeling out his family for kiss, kiss, cuddle, cuddle photographs. His private life was generally managed in private.

That changed when he became associated with a prostitution racket.

Just last year, soon after coming into office as New York's Governor, Spitzer was a strong supporter of new legislation that increased penalties for so-called "sex tourism" - that is out of state visitors coming to New York for sex - and also sex traffickers who bring out of state - and foreign - persons into the State for the purposes of prostitution. During his splurge on Wall Street, he also took time out to prosecute 19 people involved in "escort services" in New York and several organisers of sex tourism trips to South East Asia, particularly Thailand and Cambodia.

An indictment in a federal prosecution of those involved in a prostitution ring, the accused filed an affidavit which indicated that its clients were wealthy and prominent people. Spitzer was "Client no. 9" in that affidavit, and he has admitted that he is the person referred to and that he paid USD3400 to a prostitute in New York on 13 February this year. He made a public statement from his official lecturn - and for once, his wife was right next to him, in shot for the TV cameras dressed soberly and often appearing to read his prepared statement over his shoulder.

The four accused (Mark Brener, Cecil Suwal, Temeka Rachelle Lewis and Tanya Hollander - all of whom have aliases or multiple spellings of their names) are charged that they together and with others "unlawfully, wilfully and knowingly combine, conspire, confederate and agree together ... to violate [sections] of Title 18 of the United States Code."

It was ironic that the sections relate to interstate prostitution and its supporting business activities.

The four allegedly ran a website called "emporersclubvip.com " which offered prostitutes for rental using photograhs with their faces obscured and a price list. That website has been disabled - interestingly, it was built on the "Homestead" platform which allows rapid construction of websites using templates hosted by the company. The name emporersclubvip.com (note the misspelling) is in use by an advertising company which is seeking to cash in on its notoriety by earning revenue from "clickthru" advertising for context-related advertising.

But parts of it are indexed at archive.org and also, for the short term, in caches at google.com and other search engines. The front page of the website contains the following disclaimer: "

But the front page graphic, of two naked women being extremely intimate (which is why we have not reproduced the page here) suggests a rather different service.

But the final irony is how and why the investigation started. It had nothing to do with Spitzer but it did have to do with some clients. The IRS and FBI had mounted a joint operation on suspicion of people trafficking, tax evasion and money laundering. This facilitated wire taps that provided evidence from telephone calls, including mobile phone calls, and SMS s. The other end of the alleged money laundering operation was in an undefined part of Europe. But the other end of the prostitution was, the FBI says in an affidavit seeking, amongst other things, asset seizure, "prostitution activity between wealthy male clients and more than 50 prostitutes in, among other places, New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Miami, London and Paris." And they had to be wealthy "the defendants charged ..clients fees ranging from USD1,000 to more than USD5,500 per hour for prostitution services." Given that the website says that their escorts are predominently students.

Clients could pay by bank transfer to an account in the name of QAT Consulting Group and, later, QAT International Inc. Or they could pay using an AmEx card.

And despite the words used, it's difficult to imagine that any client could be expecting little more than a pretty young thing on his arm for a dinner date. The following is extracted from the website:

Day Rates (dawn to dawn) :three diamonds -$10,000 I four diamonds - $12,000 I five diamonds - $15,000 I six diamonds - $21,000 I seven diamonds - $31,000three diamonds - £5,000 I four diamonds - £6,000 I five diamonds - £ 7,500 I six diamonds - £10,500 I seven diamonds - £15,500three diamonds - €7,000 I four diamonds - €9,000 I five diamonds - € 1,100 I six diamonds - €15,000 I seven diamonds - €22,000Inquire about our weekend and multiple-day travel package rates!

Hourly Rates:three diamonds -$1,000 I four diamonds - $1,200 I five diamonds - $1,500 I six diamonds - $2,100 I seven diamonds - $3,100three diamonds - £500 I four diamonds - £600 I five diamonds - £750 I six diamonds - £1,050 I seven diamonds - £1,550three diamonds - €700 I four diamonds - €900 I five diamonds - €1,100 I six diamonds - €1,500 I seven diamonds - €2,200

Currency Converter (20% bank exchange fees apply when paying via your reservation country's foreign currency).

portfolio, to choose one of our models.

US: 917 438 9213 // 310 691 5163 // 305 851 2098 // UK: 0207 096 0879 // France: 0172 813 841 // Swiss: 022 533 0819 OR Reserve your date online!

The website offered girls in Montreal, Vancouver and Tokyo in addition to those listed in the affidavit. And it was a very popular site: according to Alexa.Com it ranked at 1,002,180 - a great achievement. Interestingly, the site had been online since 2004 but its copyright notice claims protection from 1987. Alexa figures show that its survey results in 53% of its visitors coming from the USA and 25% from the UK. Other countries rate no more than 3.1%

A copy of the complaint and supporting affidavit is available in WMLRO:Resources.