WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's pick for deputy U.S. attorney general supervised a lobbying campaign two years ago by controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff to block legislation aimed at offshore companies escaping American taxes, records and interviews show.
Timothy E. Flanigan, 52, chief counsel of Tyco International Ltd. since 2002, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week and acknowledged supervising Abramoff's work for the Bermuda-based firm. However, he declined to answer questions describing what the lobbyist did for the company.
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At the heart of Abramoff's work for Tyco was an intensive effort to block the Corporate Patriot Enforcement Act and similar bills designed to penalize American firms that incorporated outside the U.S. to avoid taxes, according to records and sources familiar with the lobbying campaign.
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Also during Flanigan's tenure as vice president and general counsel, Tyco stood to benefit from language inserted into a Senate bill, which would have given the firm a no-bid $67.4-million contract to install fiber-optic cable to serve a U.S. military installation in the Marshall Islands. The provision was dropped, however, when the measure went to a House-Senate conference committee in late 2003.
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