Accuses Bush administration of allowing energy companies to pay Indians far less than non-Indians; administration pursued Balaran’s recusal to cover up conflicts of interest and evade liability in Cobell in the “billions of dollars”
WASHINGTON, DC (April 6, 2004) – With a stinging rebuke of the Bush administration and the U.S. Department of the Interior, respected Washington D.C. attorney Alan Balaran resigned as Special Master in the Cobell v. Norton Indian Trust case, stating that the administration has been pursuing his recusal to silence criticisms of the Department of Interior’s handling of individual Indian trust accounts.
Balaran cites findings made in the course of his investigation that the Bush administration knowingly allowed energy companies to pay Indians far less than non-Indians for oil, gas and other leases. Balaran states that this conflict of interest is the reason the administration has refused to settle the case—instead seeking repeatedly to have Balaran recused as Special Master and delaying a final resolution of the matter.
“Alan Balaran served the Court with fairness and honor,” said Elouise Cobell, lead plaintiff in Cobell v. Norton. “We are sorry that he felt the need to resign, and we are disturbed that the Bush administration seems determined to remove any court official critical of its handling of the individual Indian trust and this litigation.”
Balaran issued a report in August, 2003, that detailed how energy companies were paying Indians “a fraction” of what they were paying non-Indians, based on Department of Interior appraisals that were intentionally set far below market value. The Chief Appraiser admitted to Balaran and Justice and Interior department lawyers that he had been doing this for more than 20 years, and that he intentionally destroyed valuable trust information in order to conceal evidence of his complicity.
After Balaran released his findings, the Bush administration began to seek his recusal.
“The reason for this dramatic shift in policy is obvious,” Balaran writes in his letter. “[m]y… findings implicated the agency’s systemic failure to properly monitor the activities of energy companies leasing minerals on individual Indian lands. The consequences of these findings could cost the very companies with which senior Interior officials maintain close ties, millions of dollars.”
“If you want to know why this case hasn’t settled, here’s your answer: the energy companies don’t want it,” said Dennis Gingold, attorney for the plaintiffs in the Cobell suit. “The big Bush campaign contributors know a sweetheart deal when they see one—and so the administration decided to make the Special Master the issue, in order to delay, divert and, ultimately, destroy the case.”
The resignation letter also marks the first time a court official has officially stated that the Cobell litigation is worth “billions.” Up until now, the Special Master had not commented on the monetary impact of the case.
“Justice has been much too long in coming for the hundreds of thousands of Native Americans whose land the government supposedly held in trust, in some cases for over a century,” Balaran wrote in his letter. “Billions of dollars are at stake. It is past time to get systems in place that will enable the Departments of the Interior and Treasury to track trust date accurately in the future, as well as render and honest and reliable accounting in the present.”
Balaran added: “I hope that, with my resignation, the parties will be able to move rapidly toward fundamental reforms.”
About Cobell v. Norton
Cobell v. Norton was originally filed in 1996 by lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell, who had tried for years to get an accurate accounting of funds held in trust by the U.S. government for individual Indian-owned land that had been leased by the federal government for mining, grazing, oil and gas exploration and other uses. In two separate trials, a federal judge found that the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Treasury engaged in "fiscal and governmental irresponsibility in its purest form” in maintaining and accounting for the trust assets belonging to 500,000 individual Indians.
contact: James Haggerty 212.683.8100 X224
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