$PIP: Another Company with Obama Ties May Be Hiding Information from SEC

by Capitol Confidential

A well-connected company with close ties to a key Obama Administration official may be running afoul of the SEC by failing to report to its investors material events that significantly impact its bottom line. Just another day in Barack Obama’s Washington, DC “favor factory.”

Capital Confidential has in the past covered the saga of PharmAthene, a company that produces “medical countermeasures to biological and chemical weapons” and its great fortune to have been awarded the sole-source contract from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). We have also learned that the firm has very close ties to Tara O’Toole, the Department of Homeland Security Under Secretary for Science and Technology, who, as it happens, was once a lobbyist for an industry association that is essentially funded and run by PharmAthene.

All this has been covered and, to be cynically frank, is somewhat familiar behavior from Washington, DC. But what is not so familiar (though it is becoming more so every week) is for well-heeled companies who essentially exist due only to government contracts, connections, loans or bailouts to play fast and loose with laws and regulations designed to protect taxpayers and investors. And here is where PharmAthene reenters the picture.

PharmAthene is publicly traded (NYSE amex: PIP) and therefore has an obligation to publicly disclose material events that might reasonably be expected to affect the company’s stock price. Nevertheless, important pieces of information are missing from recent press releases issued by PharmAthene and posted to the Investor Relations section of its website; information that the company had included in previous releases.

Read the rest here.