Greg Stemm's Open Letter To President Obama...
“I guess he’s speaking to me as a CEO of an American company,” says Odyssey Marine CEO Greg Stemm, “so I’d like to respond in an open letter to President Obama:
Yes, Mr. President!
I’m with you on this. We’ve been trying – but it feels like our efforts are being sabotaged by our own government. We need your help – and all we are asking for is an honest and level playing field.
We did “get in the game,” hired lots of people, innovated and created a new industry out of wasted resources lost for centuries at the bottom of the ocean and abided by all applicable laws – and I am sorry to report that the US Government is “encouraging” us by trying to hand over the fruits of our labor to another government.
Your administration is trying to change long-standing US Government policy and is “reinterpreting laws” midstream to appease a foreign government at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to US investors – hundreds of millions from our “balance sheets” that we could unleash to create new jobs.
It even appears that our own government was offering to “assist” a foreign government in our courts to literally steal hundreds of millions of dollars from the “balance sheet” of the US shareholders who earned it. The US government is helping to “return” property that the foreign government never owned or had any legal or ethical claim to.
How do I really feel about this?
It’s one thing when bureaucrats are beating you down – you learn after awhile that this is just politics and business – and sometimes you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. When you run a business, you learn to take the knocks that come from anti-business bureaucrats – people who have never had to make payroll, never had to hire someone, never had to let someone go – never created a job, and many who wouldn’t know how to begin to do these things.
We build our companies in spite of these obstacles and pray that we aren’t destroyed by a government employee who can inadvertently wipe out our business with the swipe of his or her pen.
That’s something we’ve learned to live with… reluctantly.
It’s quite another thing when the president asks you to “get in the game” while the people under him go to great lengths to create problems for your company. I hope you can understand how frustrating that can be.
Mr. President, if you really want to encourage us to “get in the game,” please send a message to the US State Department and the Justice Department to encourage them to be absolutely honest with the courts about the actual intent and meaning of the laws that have recently twisted to serve foreign interests.
Please encourage them to allow former US government employees, who drafted and understand the intent of these laws, to explain that intent to the courts.
Respond to the members of Congress who are calling for the State Department to allow the courts to do their work uninfluenced by politics and to back down from an anti-American business policy that is costing American jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars to US investors.
Please just tell the people who serve under you to be honest and do the right thing.
If you can do that, we’re hopeful that justice will be served in the US courts. When we are confident that the fruits of the labor of all our employees can go to our “balance sheets,” instead of being stolen from our shareholders, we are ready to unleash that capital to help accelerate the economic recovery.
Sincerely,
Greg Stemm
Odyssey Marine Exploration
(NASDAQ:OMEX)
Chief Executive Officer
