The Wolves are Circling Disney
I am in the process of writing a book on the decline of the Disney empire. Except I may be writing a book on the decline and fall of the Disney empire.
I am really not sure how far Reedy Creek is going to reach.
Sure anybody who looked at it figured that Mickey the Great and Terrible had had a hand in that cookie jar but we also figured that RCID was too much of a golden goose to risk throwing away. The play-it-straight advantages of having your own company town is the real gold mine for Disney. Why risk the mega-bucks that provides by being greedy?
Well, Disney wasn’t just greedy, it was stupid greedy. Mickey the Great and Terrible didn’t just have his hand in the cookie jar, he’d crawled inside and ate everything in it to include the bottom of the jar itself.
Here’s a fun example, Reedy Creek owns some power plants, and these are taxpayer-supported. Although, they are primarily to be used as emergency backups. Please excuse this next bit because I’m going to have to say allegedly a LOT. Allegedly, it would take years to bring one of them online. The other has allegedly been turned into an air conditioning plant, but they both allegedly still collect subsidies. I mean why pay for something out of your pocket when you can get Uncle Sucker to buy it for you?
The auditors weren’t permitted entry into these plants because the employees that run these Reedy Creek government facilities DON’T WORK FOR REEDY CREEK.
Darklings: Gee, I wonder who they work for? Please tell us, we’ll never be able to figure out this imponderable mystery.
Dark Herald: They are Disney employees.
Yeah, who’d have guessed? The chief auditor stated that Reedy Creek produces no electricity at all. This startled the hell out of a lot of us because Disney World has huge banks of solar panels. In fact, they’ve committed quite a bit of ecological damage to the local wildlife trails to build them. To say nothing of how badly those filthy things will poison the land when the inevitable hurricane blasts through and wrecks them.
Disney nonetheless ignored real-world environmental terrorism to pat itself on the back over a being phantom friend of the Earth. Disney World loudly and proudly proclaimed that these panels provide 40% of WDW’s power, cleanly!
Allegedly, all of the electricity provided by those solar panels is sold to a third-party utility. Disney World allegedly buys 100% of its power from Duke Energy and only 10% of that is allegedly provided by anything approaching “clean energy.”
Mind you press statements aren’t made under oath, so their virtue signals aren’t illegal, just sleazy.
I haven’t seen anything like this since Enron.
Which brings up the Arthur Anderson question. AA was one of the biggest auditing firms in the country until Enron blew up and took Arthur Anderson with it.
The two biggest jokes in accounting are, “Numbers don’t lie” and “You get the audit you pay for.”
Price Waterhouse Cooper has been Disney’s since 1934. PWC isn’t in the crosshairs yet but the fact that they have an intern program that takes place at Disney World says a lot without having to say anything at all.
How far up Disney can this go?
The alleged activities have been going on so long it would meet the legal definition of a “criminal enterprise” if these allegations are proven in a court of law. Bob Iger could be looking at a criminal deposition.
Former CFO Christine McCarthy has been on Disney’s financial side for about twenty years according to the internet. Meaning she’s exposed.
Micheal Eisner could face deposition too.
I don’t think there are any other former Disney CEOs still alive.
Oh, wait… I just thought of one.
Bob Iger’s worst nightmare just became the last Bob. In American law, no NDA ever written can stop criminal testimony. Chapek is in a perfect position to rat out literally everyone who got him shitcanned out of the company in the most humiliating way possible.
Disney appears to have been counting on being too big to be allowed to fail. Florida’s investigations are already underway. I don’t know about Federal yet but here’s the thing, this isn’t Hunter’s laptop, following that one down the rabbit hole is a career-killer but this kind of financial scandal is a career maker. The fact that Disney has now had a major negative shift in the public’s perception of the company equals blood in the water to an investigator who is ambitious.
And no, the IRS can’t ignore this. If they do, every business in the country will start doing it.
What was Bob Iger thinking, will be one of the questions I’ll be trying to answer in my upcoming book.
