In the '90s, Deval Patrick was a civil rights attorney. He was appointed by a judge to a committee overseeing Texaco's employment practices following a $176M racial discrimination lawsuit. Then Texaco's CEO offered him a job. He took it.
Patrick defended Texaco and, later, as general counsel to the company, Coca-Cola, against allegations of environmental pollution and human rights abuses. As an Ameriquest board member ($360K/yr), he assisted in the settlement of a massive predatory lending case.
Ameriquest was the largest predatory subprime lender in the US. In Feb. 2007, as Massachusetts Governor, Patrick called Bob Rubin at Citigroup as a "reference" for Ameriquest's parent company, ACC Capital Holdings, which was seeking a cash infusion from Citi (it got it).
Patrick and Rubin knew each other from their work together in the Clinton administration.
There is one bright point in Patrick's corporate career: after Coca-Cola's CEO reneged on his commitment to an independent investigation into allegations that managers of bottling plants in Colombia conspired with right-wing militias to assassinate labor leaders, Patrick quit.
