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Greenlight Capital attorney criticises whistleblower settlement

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The whistleblower attorney who represents David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital hedge fund and has helped qui tam whistleblowers return more than a half-billion dollars to taxpayers, has criticised the USD26.3m federal False Claims Act settlement with Allied Capital’s Business Loan Express as "not close to what the government should have recovered."

"It’s more than USD100m short of what taxpayers should have gotten back from Allied Capital Corporation’s fraudulent small business administration coast-to-coast lending practices," says Mark Allen Kleiman (pictured), who has represented whistleblowers across the US in healthcare, defence contracting, higher education, and other sector qui tam cases brought under federal and state False Claims Acts.

Kleiman filed the Greenlight Capital allegations against Allied Capital under seal in December 2004 as required by federal law.

Greenlight’s False Claims Act filing came more than two years after Allied Capital launched a series of attacks against Einhorn, after he told a May 2002 charity event that Allied Capital was highly overvalued.

Allied Capital first used its political connections and retained former US Securities and Exchange Commission officials to persuade the agency to instead investigate Einhorn, according to a highly critical and censored SEC Inspector General’s January 2010 report.

"Allied Capital should not have been able to use the SEC as its private attack dog against David Einhorn," Kleiman says, calling for the entire report to be released uncensored so taxpayers and the investing public can see exactly what is going on.

"It’s frightening how political influence at the SEC enabled Allied Capital to become Einhorn’s accuser and deflect the investigation away from its own valuation practices.”

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