ConCen

I like gibson guitars so I'm all strung out over this.

Peter Schiff Radio 9/1/11 Gibson Guitars CEO Henry Juszkiewicz



Hear the latest on the Obama Justice Department Thugs invasion and seizure of property from Gibson Guitar's Tennessee factory with little to no explanation.

This is not the first time they have been raided. They live just down the road from me, so to speak, and here's some of the local news reports.

Quote:Gibson Guitar raided but lips zipped

Federal authorities conducted simultaneous raids at Gibson Guitar offices and factories in Nashville and Memphis on Wednesday in the latest of a series of legal woes to strike the legendary guitar maker.

Gibson has been the subject of an ongoing federal lawsuit and a separate investigation into whether it illegally imported endangered ebony woods to use in its sought-after instruments.

Federal agents were tight-lipped about the reason for Wednesday’s raids — the second in two years — or what they yielded.

“We can’t get into specifics right now,” said Nicholas Chavez, special agent in charge with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which conducted the raids along with agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “This is an ongoing investigation.”

Chavez said the raid stemmed from a Texas case, but he declined to elaborate.

At Wednesday’s raid on Gibson’s Massman Drive facility — which manufactures the iconic Gibson Les Paul electric guitar — federal agents gathered inside while news reporters and photographers strained to see what was happening from across the street.

Tourists arriving at the Gibson Guitar factory in downtown Memphis found the doors locked and agents inside, the Commercial Appeal reported.

At Gibson headquarters on Plus Park Boulevard, a receptionist told a reporter that officials would not comment.

Efforts to reach Gibson officials and their attorney by phone were unsuccessful. Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz has said previously the company was “fully cooperating” with federal officials.

The guitar maker is currently in the midst of a lawsuit stemming from the last federal raid.

In the November 2009 raid on its Nashville factory, authorities seized six guitars and pallets that they alleged were stacked with ebony wood from Madagascar rain forests. Federal authorities said the wood was imported in violation of the federal Lacey Act, which bars the importation of endangered plants and woods.
Claim contested

The government sued the company to permanently forfeit the items, claiming they are contraband — a claim Gibson is contesting.

In recent papers filed in that case, U.S. attorneys indicated that the government was weighing whether to pursue a separate criminal prosecution against Gibson or particular individuals — a process which could subject the company, its officials or other individuals to fines or jail time.

They’ve asked the judge in the case, William Joseph Haynes Jr., to temporarily suspend the forfeiture case while the criminal investigation is pursued. The case resumes on Monday.

U.S. Attorney Jerry Martin, citing ongoing investigations, said he was unable to comment on whether Wednesday’s raids were directly related to the case.

The raids come during a particularly trying period for the guitar company, which can trace its roots back to the late 19th century.

Gibson sustained extensive flood damage in May 2010 at the Massman Drive facility, which produces 2,500 guitars a month. The facility went offline for nearly three months.

Last March, the company sued its insurers, claiming the companies failed to fully cover its damages, which it placed at $17 million. That lawsuit was recently transferred from federal court to Davidson County Chancery Court.

Quote:Gibson Guitar chief denies wrongdoing after raids

Gibson Guitar Corp. CEO Henry Juszkiewicz seethed at the federal government Thursday, one day after agents raided the iconic luthier for the second time in less than two years.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents believe Gibson is illegally smuggling wood from India to make fretboards, according to a search warrant unsealed Thursday.

Hundreds of items were seized from Gibson’s Nashville facilities including rosewood and ebony in various forms, shipping documents, travel records, guitars including several Les Pauls, product specifications and hard drives, according to the search warrant. A Memphis facility was also raided Wednesday.

Juszkiewicz said the lost day of productivity could cost the company $1 million.

“What is more troubling is that the Justice Department’s position is that any guitar that we ship out of this facility is potentially obstruction of justice and will be followed with criminal charges,” said Juszkiewicz, who added later that he plans to defy the government and resume operations. “I have taken personal responsibility. I have instructed our staff to continue building product.”

Juszkiewicz denied any wrongdoing. He said the wood materials seized Wednesday are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, a third-party organization that promotes responsible forest management. According to the search warrant, however, federal authorities aren’t concerned with the way the wood was harvested, but the way it was imported to the United States.

On June 27, authorities in Dallas seized a shipment that arrived by air and included 1,250 sawn Indian ebony wood logs. The logs were cut to a size that could be used to make fretboards, but were unfinished. According to a federal affidavit, Indian law prohibits wood in this form from being exported and the federal Lacey Act requires American importers to obey foreign laws pertaining to the export of plants and woods.

Various shipping documents misrepresented the package’s contents, according to the affidavit. One document said the shipment included veneer sheets of wood less than 6 millimeters — the type of materials that would be used to build guitar bodies, not fretboards — and another labeled the shipment as “finished products of musical instruments,” according to the affidavit.

Juszkiewicz bristled at the notion that Gibson could import fretboards finished by Indian workers, but that allowing partially finished fretboards to be completed by American workers is illegal.

“Over the last two years, we have hired 580 American workers,” he said. “We are one company that is manufacturing in the United States, that is hiring people ... and yet the government is spending millions of dollars on this issue.

“We feel totally abused.”

Gibson has not been charged criminally. The government filed a still-pending civil forfeiture lawsuit against Gibson following the seizure of Madagascar wood products in 2009.

Nicholas Chavez, a New Mexico-based Fish and Wildlife Service agent, said investigators also presented a criminal case to the Justice Department after the 2009 raid. While no charges have yet to be filed, federal prosecutors in Nashville recently asked a judge to temporarily suspend the civil case while a criminal investigation is pursued.

Quote:Gibson goes on the offensive

Eleven days ago, Gibson Guitar CEO Henry Juszkiewicz was getting ready for work when he got a phone call at home from his assistant, whose voice sounded panicky.

Half a dozen armed federal agents with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were searching the Gibson executive suite. Two of the company’s South Nashville guitar factories also had just been raided, along with one in Memphis.

By the time Juszkiewicz (pronounced Juss-ka-witz) reached his office, agents were forensically imaging his computer and carting out boxes of paperwork and company hard drives. At the factories, agents were loading trucks with pallets of rosewood and ebony, guitars, guitar necks, computers and shipping documents.

It was the second time in the past two years Gibson had been raided by federal agents in search of illegal imported woods. A 2009 case hasn’t led to any charges against the 117-year-old guitar maker, although it is continuing.

In both instances, federal authorities spelled out in search warrants that they suspect the company was illegally importing protected hardwoods from rapidly dwindling rain forests to make prized Gibson guitars.

In recent days, Gibson’s CEO has gone on a counterattack, telling various talk radio and TV news programs that the raids are an “outrageous abuse of federal power” that have unfairly singled out his company, perhaps for political reasons.

“There’s no doubt we’re being persecuted,” Juszkiewicz said. “But while I was sitting in my conference room, while agents blocked the door to my office, I decided two things. One, we were going to try and fight this in court. Secondly, we were going to give this issue visibility.”

Juszkiewicz’s impassioned message of government overreach into the affairs of private business has resonated, particularly with audiences of conservative talk programs he has appeared on in the past week: Glenn Beck, Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, NRA News Radio and programs on regional conservative talk radio stations. (He also has spoken to CNN, National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Tennessean.)

Gibson also has tapped into an active anti-big-government audience online, where its Twitter campaign — hashtagged #ThisWillNotStand — has been finding ready re-tweeters such as raywilie, who was one of dozens who tweeted on Friday: “They can pry my Gibson from my cold, dead hands.”

Environmentalists — with whom Gibson has tried to work since the 2009 investigation — have had a muted response to the most recent episode.

A statement from the Rainforest Alliance said Gibson has made a good effort to locate and import legal woods since the earlier raid, but added that the effort “also must be accompanied by a clear commitment to eliminating any volume, no matter how small, of illegal wood that may contaminate its supply chain.”
Feds cite illegal woods

The Justice Department and U.S. Fish and Wildlife agents declined to comment last week, citing the ongoing investigations.

Gibson’s Juszkiewicz said the only update he has had is a letter he received from federal authorities two days after the Aug. 24 raid, stating that the Indian rosewood and ebony the company imported were illegal.

Four search warrants spell out federal suspicions that Gibson, for a second time, has violated the Lacey Act, a century-old law that bars imports of endangered species and was amended in 2008 to include plants as well as animals. The law also makes it illegal to import wood that was unlawfully exported under another country’s laws.

On June 27, a shipment containing 1,250 pieces of Indian ebony wood that agents determined was bound for Gibson’s Nashville factories was intercepted in Dallas, according to a warrant in court records.

The search warrant said the shipment was improperly labeled as finished or veneered wood, which is legal to export from India. Inside the boxes, however, agents found unfinished ebony wood, they said.

The distinction is important in Indian law, which requires ebony to be finished by Indian workers as part of an effort to add value to diminishing natural resources leaving that country. The Lacey Act requires companies to comply with the laws of the country from which they are exporting the protected materials.

Juszkiewicz said last week that the materials, used for the fingerboards — basically the top layer of guitar necks — were simply mislabeled. He disputes the federal agents’ interpretation of both Indian law and the Lacey Act that requires the wood he imports to be finished.

“We’ve been importing the same wood from India for 17 years,” he said. “All these came in exactly the same way.”
2009 case is different

Gibson faced a different sort of dispute after the November 2009 raid on its Nashville factory.

In that instance, the government confiscated $76,000 worth of ebony fingerboards from Madagascar. The company, which has not been charged in the case, is still seeking to get those materials back, most recently in a hearing in a Nashville federal courtroom. Last week, attorney Steven Riley, who represents Gibson, argued that the fingerboards had been finished by Madagascar workers in accordance with Madagascan and U.S. federal laws and should be returned to Gibson.

Meanwhile, the issue that foreign workers — rather than Gibson employees — are required to do finishing work has resonated strongly in social media, where Gibson’s Facebook page has been filled with angry comments that the government is keeping American workers from doing the same job.

Some in the music industry are beginning to line up behind Juszkiewicz.

The Gibson raid “has created fear and uncertainty for all those involved in the manufacturing, distribution and retailing of instruments and increasingly, artists and owners of musical instruments,” read a letter sent Thursday to members of Congress and President Barack Obama from the chairman and president of NAMM, the musical instrument industry umbrella group.

Other companies in the sometimes fiercely competitive industry say they support federal efforts such as the Lacey Act.

“Every industry has its challenges and responsibilities, including making sure that business practices are in line with legal regulations on local, national and international levels,” said Chris Martin, CEO of C.F. Martin & Co., the oldest guitar maker in the world.

“This includes the Lacey Act, which, while tedious, is also essential to address very serious issues such as illegal logging,” he said. “We take this responsibility seriously.”

The issue is sure to remain a big one for the guitar industry, with consumers driving the demand for scarce woods.

Rosewood, ebony and mahogany have been the woods of choice for guitars for a century, but those raw materials are rapidly depleting and take a long time to grow, according to luthier Joe Glaser.

That puts companies such as Gibson in a tough spot.

“If you won’t use ebony and someone else will, they won’t buy your stuff,” he said. “A company like Gibson, which is a great brand, has to use things that sell, and ebony and rosewood are what sells.”

Quote:(2009) Gibson Guitars Raided by FBI Feds for Illegal Importation of Rosewood [Updated]

The next time you rip a sweet, sweet pentatonic riff on the fretboard of your totally awesome Gibson guitar, think about the lemurs. Nashville-based Gibson Guitars was raided by the FBI United States Fish & Wildlife Service (!) today, according to SouthComm's resident bow-tie-wearing emo apologist, J.R. Lind, who writes over at the Nashville Post:

Quote:Sources say the Nashville-based guitar manufacturer is being investigated for violating the Lacey Act, a key piece of environmental law, for importing endangered species of rosewood from Madagascar.

Rosewood is widely used in the construction of guitars and sells for $5,000 per cubic meter, more than double the price of mahogany. The island nation off Africa's east coast is a key producer of the hardwood, the export of which has links to international criminal activity.

A statement from Gibson released late Tuesday afternoon says the company is "fully co-operating" with the investigation.

Full disclosure: I own two Gibson guitars, manufactured in 1966 and 1975, respectively--in other words, back when we didn't care what no lemurs in Africa was doin' long as we could have us some nice geetars. Lind promises to update the story as more information becomes available. It all begs the question: Could Lenny be a mole?

Update 5:26 p.m.: It was the United States Fish & Wildlife Service, not the FBI. Also, no charges have been filed.

Update 8:47 p.m.: To further clarify, the blockquote has been replaced to reflect the update to the Nashville Post story.

I'm an Ibanez man, myself, but any assault against musical companies pushes my buttons.

This seems such a symbolic act to me. Almost as if the PRIMARY aspect of the operation was for a government agency to be seen to tear down one of the quintessential icons of the USA in full view - as if goading you to stop them.

The repeated humiliation must be taking its toll.

Could the future of your republic be in any more peril than it is right now? It's bad enough here in Blighty, but it's sad (and very frightening) to see you lose your confidence and fold like we did in the early '80s.

Quote:Feds seek forfeiture of more Gibson wood

Agent's affidavit cites CEO's press conference in asserting guitar maker knowingly violated Lacey Act
Published September 28, 2011 by J.R. Lind

The federal government has filed a new forfeiture complaint against renowned local guitar maker Gibson.

In addition to now-two-year-old forfeiture of Malagay ebony sought by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Nashville icon now faces the civil forfeiture of Indian wood seized in late June, which led to a raid in August on the company's Nashville and Memphis offices.

According to an affidavit sworn by FWS Special Agent Kevin Seiler, the wood — upon export from India — was classified as "finished parts of musical instruments," which is permitted under Indian law. However, the exported wood was, in fact, a batch of 1,250 sawn logs, unfinished. This is a violation of Indian law and, therefore, a violation of the Lacey Act, according to the complaint.

"Because the description and ... code ... are fraudulent, the shipment paperwork as to the [wood] was deceptive, concealed the true nature of the import and fraudulently presented as a shipment that would be legal to export from India, even though it clearly was not a legally exported or imported shipment," Seiler testified.

Seiler traces the wood in question to Gibson's importer, Luthiers Mercantile, itself owned by German company Theodor Nagel GmbH, and back to India, claiming a series of false customs codes throughout shipment.

Later, Seiler uses Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz's Aug. 25 press conference as evidence he was aware that importing unfinished Indian wood was a violation of that country's laws and thus, by extension, the Lacey Act. That regulation prohibits the importation of certain types of lumber into the United States if the exportation of the wood violates the laws of the country of origin.

"[I]t is clear that Gibson understands the purpose of the Lacey Act, and understands that the Defendant Property, which is fingerboard blanks, are not finished fingerboards and thus Gibson is aware that its order for fingerboard blanks was an order for contraband ebony wood or ebony wood which is illegal to possess," Seiler wrote.

While the investigation into the Indian wood was unfolding, the U.S. Attorney requested a stay in the Malagay wood forfeiture case. With the filing of the newest complaint, the original seizure claim was dismissed with an eye to combine the two forfeiture claims.