PB Exclusive: The [Redacted] Coingate Interviews

By Joseph On September 27, 2015 · 2 Comments

Last week Ohio Inspector General Randy Meyer finally provided us a limited and redacted set of transcripts for the interviews conducted as part of the CoinGate investigation We are making all of those interviews available for download below in the format received by the IG’s office. Note: the records were delivered seventeen months after our public record request and nearly a decade after the original IG investigation started.

CoinGate is one of Ohio’s best-known political scandals. Wikipedia sums it up nicely: “The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) invested hundreds of millions of dollars in high risk or unconventional investment vehicles run by people closely connected to the Ohio Republican Party who had made large campaign contributions to many senior Republican party officials.”

Multiple Republicans were convicted or pleased no contest to ethics violations as part of the scandal, including Ohio Governor Bob Taft.

Republicans in the Ohio Inspector General’s Office spent nearly a decade refusing to release records related to the case, using a number of different tactics to keep the information from the hands of the public. They finally released a very limited “report” in April of 2014 that then-ODP Chairman Chris Redfern described as “nothing more than a compilation of already released, seven-year-old reports from other government agencies.”

According to an additional document provided by the IG’s office, 107 other files were excluded from release because they may have contained “federal grand jury information.”

These records are a start, but we still don’t have a complete picture. There are certainly some interesting bits of information available in the documents below, but without a copy of the interviews with the big players like Tom Noe, Mark Lay and Brian Hicks, we’ll never know the full story.

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Annarino, John #1 Interview Attachments-REDACTED2

Williott, Lou-REDACTED

Wachtmann, Lynn Summary

Thurber, Maggie-REDACTED

Swartz, David-REDACTED

Smith, Patricia Interview Attachments

Seminatore, Kenneth Interview Summary

Reed, Randall

Nemec, Jaymee-REDACTED

Nedved, Mark

Lundberg, Jack