Okay heres my question

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Okay, here’s my question: where’s the money?

The accepted number has it that Jack Abramoff collected more than $80 million in fees from his Indian gambling clients. And, remember, those weren’t his only clients.

Take the example of Abramoff’s work for Tyco, handled by the company’s counsel Timothy Flanigan.

Abramoff had Tyco pay ‘Grassroots Interactive’ $2 million for doing various astroturf bamboozlement on their behalf. But a subsequent investigation found that $1.5 million of that money was “diverted to entities controlled by Mr. Abramoff” and spent on other things. (This is sort of like being defrauded out of your rightful fraud.)

That’s a decent amount of money. Where is it?

Abramoff has been telling friends and, at least indirectly, reporters for some time that he’s close to broke. And I’ve seen at least some evidence that suggests that that is either true or that he is, as the finance types says, very illiquid.

You only have to look at the stories of Abramoff’s lifestyle and various projects to know he was probably burning through lots of money in his glory days. But I don’t think that quite explains it. The sums coming in are just too big.

We keep hearing of pretty sizeable sums of money that disappeared into this or that Abramoff-controlled entity. Where did it all go?

I think that’s where the story is.

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