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What Happened to John Harrison and Why?
By Donald V. Watkins
©Copyrighted and Published (via Facebook) on July 3, 2016
©Copyrighted and Published (via Facebook) on July 3, 2016
On June 30, 2016, John D. Harrison "retired" from his job as Superintendent of the Alabama Banking Department. Harrison announced his hasty departure from the Department in a private email he sent to CEOs of banks regulated by the Department on June 23, 2016. Governor Robert Bentley promptly replaced Harrison with State Representative Mike Hill (R-Columbiana).
Neither Harrison, nor Bentley, gave a public reason for Harrison's sudden departure. We will.
Harrison was a community banker and former mayor of Luverne, Alabama. He was first named superintendent in 2005 by former governor Bob Riley. Harrison was tapped by Bentley to continue serving as superintendent until Thursday.
For many years, Harrison was generally regarded as an even-handed and fairly competent bank superintendent. For the most part, he ran the Banking Department on a very professional and objective basis.
The Bentley-Byrne Team Hijacked the Banking Department
By 2013, Harrison had allowed Bentley to hijack the Banking Department and use it as a platform for administering retribution against the governor's list of targeted enemies. The number one target on the list was yours truly.
In January 2000, I co-founded Alamerica Bank, a state-chartered bank headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. We received the first bank charter ever issued by the state of Alabama to an African-American-owned financial services institution. Alamerica is one of only 21 African-American banks in the United States.
Unlike many banks in Alabama, Alamerica has always been well capitalized and did not require taxpayer "bailout" money during the Great Recession of 2008. Prior to 2013, Alamerica had never experienced any significant issues with its state and federal regulators.
The directive to destroy Alamerica Bank and to run me out of the banking business came directly from Bentley and his chief legal advisor/consigliere, David Byrne. Sources close to the federal criminal investigation of Bentley have confirmed that investigators have obtained evidence that the Bentley-Byrne team used the oversight functions of state regulatory agencies to launch coordinated interagency investigations of targeted persons and regulated institutions on Bentley's list of enemies.
David Byrne has plenty of experience in collapsing bank institutions. As an executive vice president and general counsel of Colonial Bank, Byrne presided over the 2009 collapse of Colonial. The bank's collapse resulted in billions of dollars in losses for shareholders and billions more in losses for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ("FDIC").
The Bentley-Byrne Team Also Targeted Alabama One Credit Union
In August 2015, Bentley, Byrne, Sarah Moore, and others, were accused in a federal court lawsuit of forcing Alabama One Credit Union, a Tuscaloosa-based financial institution with $598 million in assets, into conservatorship under state control. According to the lawsuit, Alabama One lost its autonomy as a financial institution because by the Alabama Credit Union Administration ("ACUA"), operating under pressure from Bentley and Byrne, abused its regulatory authority over the credit union. ACUA is the state agency that oversees credit unions in Alabama.
Moore, who was the chief financial officer at Colonial Bank when it collapsed, was appointed by Bentley in 2014 to head ACUA. At the time of her appointment, Moore had no prior experience in regulating credit unions.
The lawsuit describes numerous acts of retaliation against Alabama One executives who resisted the state's takeover of Alabama One and outlines widespread abuses of executive powers by Bentley, Byrne and Moore.
As was the case with Colonial Bank, the collateral damage to innocent parties in the Alabama One case from Bentley's abuse of executive power was catastrophic. Yet, the Bentley-Byrne reign of terror continued in the financial sector.
The Heavy Cost of Criticizing Robert Bentley
By 2013, I was an outspoken critic of Bentley and his unprecedented gubernatorial takeover of Alabama State University ("ASU"), the university where my father served as president from 1962-1981. Under the pretext of "cleaning up" corruption, the Bentley-Byrne team obliterated ASU's hard-earned "A" category Wall Street credit rating, disrupted ASU's unbroken and record-setting string of clean audits for Alabama public universities, and nearly destroyed the Level-Six accreditation status for ASU that was previously enjoyed in the state by only the University of Alabama and Auburn University.
After noting that Bentley's takeover was directed only at Alabama's two historically black public universities, I proclaimed that Bentley was implementing a "separate, but different" doctrine for the state's HBCUs and HWCUs. This criticism infuriated Bentley.
Under pressure from Bentley and Byrne in 2013, Harrison transformed the Banking Department from a fair and objective banking regulatory agency to a tool for retribution against me. The Department's abusive regulatory oversight of Alamerica Bank was so severe and harsh. It became an open secret within the industry that the Banking Department was trying to administer the "death penalty" to Alamerica Bank.
The severely disparate and harsh regulatory treatment of Alamerica Bank, when compared to the cushy treatment of major state chartered banks in Alabama, was shocking to our peers in the industry. They knew Bentley had targeted Alamerica for destruction. What is more, the Banking Department cajoled the FDIC's Atlanta region office to go along with the governor's regulatory retaliation program.
Bentley's Use of the Alabama Sovereignty Commission Playbook
Because the banking regulatory examination process and its results are confidential by law, I cannot publicly discuss the litany of regulatory abuses to which Alamerica Bank was subjected for the past three years. They were plentiful and unwarranted.
In attacking Alamerica Bank, the Bentley-Byrne team took a page straight out of the playbook used by the old segregation-era Alabama Sovereignty Commission. This public agency targeted black and white civil rights activists for harassment and destruction from 1963 to 1973. Governor George Wallace and Birmingham Police Commissioner Bull Connor headed the seven-member Commission when it was formed. Like the Banking Department, the Commission was exempt from open records laws. The Commission used the organs of state government to make life miserable for the proponents of racial desegregation and equal rights in Alabama.
Fortunately for us, Bentley's coordinated abuse of state banking regulatory powers failed to destroy Alamerica Bank, or me. We withstood all of the abusive regulatory tactics and are enjoying profitability this year. We outlasted the evil that sought to destroy us.
Unlike Alabama One and other institutions that the Bentley-Byrne team attacked, Alamerica Bank was built to withstand the most severe level of scrutiny, abuse, and harassment by bank regulators. The fact that Alamerica Bank has been well capitalized from the first day we opened in 2000 helped us to weather the Bentley-Byrne reign of terror and vindictiveness.
The Federal Criminal Probe Detects Bentley's Abuse of Regulatory Agencies
Federal criminal investigators now know about Bentley's unlawful targeting of fellow online journalist Roger Alan Shuler and me for the destruction of our businesses and reputations. They know that these public officials used state regulatory agencies and unauthorized access to the federal criminal databases as tools for personal retribution. Harrison's hasty departure from the Banking Department last Thursday had more to do with the ongoing federal criminal probe than any planned "retirement".
The wheels of justice are slowly turning in the right direction. Bentley and Byrne, along with the governor's mistress, Rebekah Mason, and other willing accomplices, are under a federal criminal probe of the widespread racketeering enterprise Bentley operated from the governor's office. Bentley has been identified as the racketeering kingpin and Byrne as his consigliere. Byrne escaped a criminal prosecution for his role in Colonial Bank's collapse, but he may not be so lucky this time.
Donald Watkins
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