The March 1 letter, written on House stationery, bases its request on separate securities fraud convictions of former SUWA trustee Bert Fingerhut and SUWA Treasurer Mark Ristow, who pleaded guilty to federal securities fraud charges in August and September.
The letter gives SUWA 30 days to supply bank records and other investment transaction information "for evaluation of whether or not SUWA funds were inappropriately converted or misused in any way."
Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, circulated the letter addressed to SUWA board chairman Hansjorg Wyss to a broad list of e-mail recipients, including rural elected officials, members of off-road recreation groups and attorneys. Forty-five of 75 House members signed the letter, all but three of them Republicans. The letter isn't cast as a subpoena, so appears to have no legal force.
SUWA Executive Director Scott Groene said Tuesday the organization had nothing to hide, and would provide response in a respectful manner. However, he said, the legislators' "malicious" suggestions are false.
A Securities and Exchange Commission investigation that concluded last year found that Fingerhut and Ristow separately circumvented banking regulations, making millions of illegal dollars in the process. Ristow is serving 20 months in federal prison; Fingerhut is serving two years. Both had long association with SUWA.
In October, David Rosenfeld, associate regional director for the SEC, told The Tribune the investigation found no evidence the two were acting in concert. Nor did the SEC case include complaints against SUWA.
"We made no allegations concerning any such conduct in our complaint," Rosenfeld reiterated Tuesday.
Groene said that after the SEC announced their cases against Fingerhut and Ristow, SUWA had a third-party audit of its finances that found no irregularities. "If SUWA as an organization had ever been implicated in these schemes by being used as a shell [investor], we'd have known about it because we'd have been under investigation by the SEC, also," he said.
In the e-mail circulating the March 1 letter, Noel said there would be a news conference today (wed) at 12:15 p.m., regarding SUWA and wilderness. Noel also said full-page ads would be placed in today's editions of The Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret Morning News.
Noel, through a House Republican spokeswoman, declined Tuesday to speak to The Tribune about his plans.
SUWA has had other recent run-ins with Noel and his supporters.
Last month, SUWA staff attorney Steve Bloch was halted in mid-sentence when Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, claiming concerns about Bloch's truthfulness, declared he shouldn't continue testifying on HJR10 before a legislative committee without being sworn in.
HJR10, sponsored by Rep. Aaron Tilton, R-Springville, opposes further wilderness designation.
Tilton is vice-chairman of the pro-petroleum industry group Americans for American Energy. In January, the nonprofit organization circulated a letter purportedly signed by Noel and Tilton that linked SUWA and Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-New York, to terrorism because of their support for wilderness. Western Business Roundtable executive Jim Sims actually wrote the letter.
On Tuesday afternoon Sims said he didn't have full knowledge of Noel's current letter and publicity campaign and wasn't sure if AAE was paying for the newspaper ads. But during a subsequent call, he said AAE had decided not to buy a full-page ad in The Tribune, after all.
"We have an ongoing concern with the fact that The Salt Lake Tribune has refused to investigate this story since it first broke in the paper in August," he said.
