Corporate Welfare: The Empire Of The Pigs

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Harry Bresky, president of both Seaboard Corp. and Seaboard Flour, presides over a work force of 12,000 employees, 10,200 of them in the U.S. Holdings include flour mills in Ecuador, Guyana, Haiti, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Democratic Republic of Congo; feed mills in Ecuador, Nigeria and Congo; 3,100 acres of shrimp ponds in Ecuador and Honduras; 37,000 acres of sugarcane, 4,200 acres of citrus and a sugar mill, all in Argentina; a winery in Bulgaria; other agricultural and business interests in Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Venezuela; electric-power-generating facilities in the Dominican Republic; shipping companies in Liberia; containerized cargo vessels running between Miami and Central and South America; and, of course, the processing plant and hog farms in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and Colorado, along with poultry-processing plants, feed mills, hatcheries and a network of 700 contract chicken growers in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Harry Bresky, who earned just under $1 million in salary and bonus last year as Seaboard's top officer, didn't respond to TIME's requests for an interview. But details of the business dealings of Seaboard and Bresky have emerged in a series of lawsuits filed over the years.

It all began in 1987, when Bresky fired Seaboard's vice president and chief financial officer, Donald Robohm, who had been with the company for more than a decade. Robohm sued, charging "illegal and improper activity by Seaboard and other components of the Flour conglomerate, as directed by Bresky."

Robohm claimed the activities included "improper diversion of corporate opportunities from Seaboard," a public company, to Seaboard Flour, Bresky's private company. When Robohm refused to "cover up the conduct," he claimed, Bresky fired him for "not being 'a team player.'"

The lawsuit was settled and, according to court documents, both parties are prohibited from disclosing "information concerning the substance of the...litigation and the substantive terms of its settlement."

Three years later, in 1990, Alan R. Kahn, a Wall Street investment broker and Seaboard stockholder, filed a lawsuit in Delaware seeking an accounting of the profits earned by the Breskys through their intercompany dealings. Kahn alleged that the Breskys required Seaboard Corp. to enter into business deals with Seaboard Flour that generated "unlawful profits" for Seaboard Flour. In short, according to Kahn's allegations, the Breskys used their controlling positions in the two companies to move money from the public company to their private business.

Robohm was subpoenaed in the Kahn lawsuit, and he recited a litany of business dealings in which, he said, Bresky had interests in companies that profited from inflated contracts with Seaboard Corp. According to his deposition, kickbacks were paid to officials in foreign governments; contracts were padded, with the excess money diverted to Swiss bank accounts; management fees were inflated; brokerage commissions ran 2 1/2 to five times the usual rate. And in the case of one Seaboard subsidiary, "there was a great deal of cash that was...unaccounted for."